Addressing Some Switch Misconceptions
Does anyone else still remember the schoolyard rumors that spread around like wildfire when they were in elementary and middle schools? While I could obviously point to celebrities like Michael Jackson or Marilyn Mason as obvious examples of people embedded deep in our memories for completely unrealistic reasons, the specific falsehood that sticks with me to this day came in the form of a ‘tip’ my 2nd grade teacher had for our entire class: if we all flushed ice cubes down the toilet on certain days of the year that she reminded us to do it, we would almost certainly have a snow day the next day. Needless to say, it seemed to work like actual magic every time our teacher reminded us about this trick in the dead of winter in the Midwest United States. Even to this day I still occasionally get an urge to flush an ice cube down the toilet when it starts getting cold out. Now while I’d like to think that I, and most other people I know, have grown out these tall tales, rumors, and tricks, I unfortunately know that that’s not always the case. This is especially true within the mechanical keyboard hobby as it is rife with rumors, false information, and “tips” that don’t actually help with your keyboard builds at all. (No, there are no ice cubes involved with any of these that I’m aware of.) While I don’t think people have been maliciously spreading these misconceptions around to confuse others since the old days of OTD, Ripster, and so on, I think we could all be a bit better about not passing these ideas along to the next generation of mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. So here’s a few misconceptions about switches that I see surprisingly often and what the real truth is behind them…
-#1. Cherry MX ‘Vintage’ Blacks are real!
Go take a moment quickly and log on to r/mechmarket or really any secondhand keyboard marketplace. Within seconds of finding your way to the ‘WTS’ page, I’m sure you see at least one or two people selling ‘Vint Black’ switches, aka vintage Cherry MX Blacks. While you may only think about this one interaction between you and this sale post today in this moment, I can promise you for a fact that this occurrence could have been replicated at nearly any moment in time during my nearly 7 year stint in the keyboard hobby at this point. Surely there can’t be that many vintage Cherry MX Blacks out there, right? Well, the reason that you probably will forever see postings for vintage Cherry MX Black switches is because there is no actual definition as what qualifies as “vintage” when it comes to mechanical keyboard switches. To even double down on this point further, there’s really no verifiable way to tell how old Cherry MX Blacks are when simply just looking at a loose pile of them in a sales post. While there are some niche situations when you can more reasonably approximate the age of Cherry MX Black switches, such as if they have the newest nameplates that Cherry introduced in 2020, or if they still have diodes stuck in the front of them, the only way to truly know how old Cherry MX Blacks are is to know the exact keyboard from which they were harvested! As time moves on, I’m sure the ‘window’ of what people will consider as ‘vintage’ for Cherry MX Blacks will only continue to move as well.
Figure 1: While these are obviously not Cherry MX Blacks, these are the 'new' Cherry nameplates introduced in 2020. No Vintage Black switches should ever have this nameplate!
-#2. There are some switches better for gaming or typing than others.
While the misconception that there are some switches that are better designed for gaming or typing purposes than others is much more common with individuals just starting out on their journey into mechanical keyboards, it’s still prevalent enough for me to want to include it on this list. In spite of how strange of a sentiment this might seem to us who have been around in the hobby for a while, I still see people to this day try and argue this as being true in some of the various help channels that I bounce around in on any given day. Put about as simply as I can – there is no switch, design, nor type of switch that is “better” for gaming or for typing. Back when I first joined the hobby in 2017, I remembered being fed the tip that ‘linear switches were better for typing and tactiles were better for gaming’, and yet when I ask my other friends in this keyboard hobby they also remember it the opposite way around. This, alone, should show just how inconsistent and inaccurate this tip is. While I have wrestled with various other ways to try and convince new enthusiasts that this claim doesn’t make sense other than pointing out the conflicting information all of us have been fed over the years, the single best way I’ve been able to do such is by pointing out the simple fact that if this were true, the working world would have adopted this instantaneously. If there was a keyboard or switch that improved an office worker’s output by 5 WPM, the amount of extra money that a company could generate would make it more than worth their while to adopt this technology for all of its workers!
#3. There are “faster” keyboard switches that make a difference when using them.
Figure 2: Kailh 'Super Speed' Silver, Gold, and Copper switches.
Another common misconception about switches that started out with newer enthusiasts and is slowly propagating inwards to the rest of the community is the idea that there are switches which ‘press faster’ than other switches. Rather than just being an unfortunate misunderstanding like the point above, this idea was spread because of poor marketing buzzwords used by some manufacturers when it came to naming their switches. Historically, ‘speed’ has been the adjective that has been used to describe switches with an actuation point that is earlier in their downstrokes than more conventional switches. Kailh’s Speed Silver, Bronze, and Gold switches are perfect examples of such. However, many people truly think that using these switches will make their gaming, typing, or other keyboard-related activities truly quicker because they don’t have to press as far to actuate their switches. Keeping in mind that the vast majority of users bottom out when they do type on keyboards, the reality is that while you may save some time in actuating speed switches versus normal ones, that time is effectively negligible at extreme best. A switch that registers at 2.30 mm into its downstroke does not signal appreciably faster than one that does at 2.50 mm. If you think that you’re one of the few people elite enough at gaming where that fraction of a millisecond that you’d save here on using speed switches would make a difference to you, I would bet a lot of money that there are pros out there that could still blow you way with a membrane keyboard and more sound in-game fundamentals.
-#4. All MX-style switches can be frankenswitched with one another.
New keyboard enthusiasts who are just getting a bit deeper into the hobby and have learned about the idea of frankenswitching switches probably have some amount of intuition as to what switches can be mixed and matched. While it’s pretty obvious that Kailh Box switch stems won’t work in Cherry MX housings, so long as the stems look the same from the outside it should work… right? Well, as the number of options for mechanical keyboard switches out there continues to expand steadily over the years, this idea is becoming less and less true with time. Weird housing designs with slider rails embedded in the top housings, Gateron’s CAP stems with massive center poles, and the increasing relevancy of Hall Effect (HE) style switches with MX-style keycap mounts have all made the idea of frankenswitching switches together that much more complicated. As well, the increasing number of manufacturers with different tolerances have made it even more likely that the stems of a switch from ‘Brand A’ might not quite fit right in with the housings from ‘Brand B’. The only way to truly know what switches have components which are compatible with one another is to try them out for yourself, but only once you make sure their general types are consistent with one another. As well, with the increasing number of options available to us day in and out, just because switches can be frankenswitched together doesn’t mean they really could or should be. While you may think this is going to round out with me railing against weirdly named frankenswitches that I can never remember the components of such as ‘Cuthulus’ or ‘Bykos’, I’m talking about more monstrous creations that I’ve come across in my time such as…
Figure 3: A force curve of what happens when you put a Gateron CAP Brown stem in a clicky-mode Zeal 3-in-1 Clickiez switch.
While this was hardly a comprehensive list of all the misconceptions and untrue statements I’ve heard uttered about switches in my time in the hobby, hopefully addressing just these few will make a difference in the future trajectory of the mechanical keyboard hobby. I can completely understand how these sorts of things start, but with our general knowledge of switches and their components continuing to expand over the past few years, we should all definitely strive to point future generations in some more correct directions than we were first pointed in. Maybe that will lead to even more interesting ideas about switches we’ve not even stopped to consider yet! Speaking of learning more about switches, consider swinging by some of my other articles here on Dangkeebs such as ‘Why Trying to Build for Keyboard Sound is Almost Impossible’ and ‘Dustproof, Boxes, and Confusing Naming Conventions’.