Yet whenever there is a topic about alps, I always hear, "blue alps are the best!" and I really haven't heard much else. Are there some other switches that people like more in the alps department? Or is blue alps the undeclared victor?
I personally like most of the Alps switches I’ve tried from ~1985–1989, including green [linear], blue & amber [clicky], ivory & brown & orange [tactile] switches. The ivory ones are a little bit too light and not tactile enough for my taste, whereas the brown ones are too heavy for heavy daily use for me. Both blue and amber switches are really nice, very smooth and a nice click, with the amber switches being both stiffer and more tactile than the blue ones. Orange switches are probably in between those in terms of force, also great to type on. Personally I’m not a big fan of linear switches, but I could definitely see myself typing on green Alps switches, especially with the addition of a solenoid for some click. They’re exactly the right spring weight for a linear switch.
I still like the Alps switches from ~1990–1993 but not quite as much, after the switch to the short switch plates. These include yellow [linear], white [clicky], salmon & green & black [tactile], cream [dampened]. I find them not quite as smooth or even, and most types are slightly too stiff for my taste. White and tactile green switches are probably my favorites of this bunch.
The Alps switches from after 1994 aren’t as nice, IMO. You can pick those out by the lack of little “slits” in the top housing. I believe they were still making yellow, white, green, black, and dampened white (they gave up on the cream color apparently) switches for another couple years.
Alps’s keyboard switch department really got battered by Apple switching to rubber dome keyboards in the mid-1990s. I believe Apple had previously been their biggest customer, and then stopped ordering switches fairly abruptly. Within a few years, everyone else had also stopped ordering mechanical switches, and Alps got out of the game entirely.
I’m not sure if Alps themselves ever made “simplified Alps” (“SKBM”) switches themselves, or if that was Fuhua (Forward Electronics) from the start. I believe Alps did do the design work for those switches, which are basically an inferior reduced-cost mechanism compared to the earlier “complicated” switches.
I quite like some Alps clones, including the still-available Matias switches. Matias was ordering “simplified Alps” switches from Fuhua for a few years, but at some point Fuhua decided to get out of the business, so Edgar Matias took the design, tweaked it, and went to a bunch of Chinese manufacturers for parts and assembly, and managed to resurrect a switch that’s in my opinion better than many of the switches Alps / Fuhua made. It has a really fantastic click or tactile leaf IMO, which results in a smooth and definite click. Like other switches based on the simplified Alps design, it does suffer from a bit of a wobble, and makes a slightly different click when you press the slider/keycap from different angles. Also, I wish they’d slightly reduce the force of the spring. But overall I think they’re great switches, and they’re cheap with good availability, and Matias (both the man and the company) are very responsive and friendly Canadians. The clear housing should make it possible for keyboards to use surface-mount RGB LEDs, for those folks who need blinky lights.
