The FAME GOG3YLTH-5539 surprise

[Dra]

So as some of you already know there was a small auction for a couple of FAME boards, I got a little excited and hopped on it


As described, it's like new, I believe it's been used before but only a little, since the keycaps did show slight wear/dirt


What was kind of surprising is how the housing is slightly concave


...well this isn't what i expected at all


Some shitty alps clone, feels really bad since no switch feels or sounds the same


Well at least the keycaps are nice I guess

And with that I end my rather unenjoyable trip, I'm glad the seller allows returns since this probably isn't worth anything close to 70€.
What's worth noting is that the board also has a large amount of flex, which it shouldn't have in the first place.

[seebart]

Wow suprised to see yours does not have the Aruz switch!

IMG_20160324_170700.jpg (953.84 KiB) Viewed 22465 times

[Dra]

Yup, really disappointed, but I guess that's just my luck. Back to the seller it goes!

[scottc]

The keycaps are so nice... I would love those, but not for 70 euro.

[seebart]

No this Aruz switch is actually not too bad Scott, but the board itself is flimsy, a waste really. Yes the doubleshots are nice though.

[scottc]

The keycaps are what I really miss on Alps. My favourite are Cherry dyesubs but Cherry doubleshots are a close second, and these seem to approximate them quite closely. On Alps I'm stuck with flimsy thin Tai-Hao doubleshots which are no good.

Shame about the board not being great, though. No surprise that the Tai-Hao board is poor quality though, it really fits in with their MO.

[seebart]

Oh there are some nice Alps caps though, the Northgate style doubleshots are pretty nice. These aren't too shabby either, not quite up to par with Cherry doubleshots though. I'm pretty sure earlier Tai-Hao boards are better build quality.

[E3E]

The keycaps are what I really miss on Alps. My favourite are Cherry dyesubs but Cherry doubleshots are a close second, and these seem to approximate them quite closely. On Alps I'm stuck with flimsy thin Tai-Hao doubleshots which are no good.

Shame about the board not being great, though. No surprise that the Tai-Hao board is poor quality though, it really fits in with their MO.

Sir, it seems you have yet to be graced by the loveliness of proper Alps Electric-made key caps.

I prefer them to Cherry, but I'm just an Alps nut.

They aren't flimsy at all and are the best caps you can get for Alps, though they are pretty uncommon if you want ANSI sets of either of them unless you're cool with the slightly off layout of the AEK or the legends on the SGI Granite. ANSI doubleshots are rare in general as no commonly seen board has them, funny legends or not.

The FAME I had (and I know there are MANY MANY FAME variations) is actually really well built and one of the few boards I've seen with brass threaded inserts. The only downside to it was the puzzling lack of any stab inserts in the plate and the crappy pad-printed caps that are otherwise similar to these Cherry-like doubleshots.

Their caps aren't really that bad, especially not on blue Alps. They feel quite nice on those!

IMO, Acer made less pleasant caps than Tai Hao.

[seebart]

You're right E3E, I'd say Scott is less "into" Alps in general as you and me for example which is fine of course.

[E3E]

Yep, agreed. Nothin' wrong with that.

Also, excuse my blabbering, Scott, I'm just a fanatic.

[seebart]

I thought blabbering was what this place was all about? Oh yeah and the keyporn.

[scottc]

I don't know, E3E. I'm using a set of AEK caps on an Alps64 with Matias quiet clicks right now and honestly I'm just not as impressed as I expected! The texture, keyfeel and heaviness of Cherry PBTs is just far superior, in my opinion. I really did not get along with my Tai-Hao caps on my other Alps64 with blue Alps either. They just made the switch feel so hollow and plasticky, in my opinion. Not nice at all! Which is such a shame since I really enjoy the thunky tactility of blue Alps otherwise. I haven't given either boards a proper, extended try though, since I've been travelling a lot for the past weeks. I think that putting them in my aluminium 60% case will probably help immensely! I'm using a very crappy "wooden" (read: MDF) one I just had lying around and it's doing the board no favours.

It's funny you say that, Seebart! I actually have always been very fond of Alps switches, just never had a board in form factors that I really liked until recently. My first mechanical keyboard was a Dell AT102W and I loved it until I found the far superior Model M! One of my all-time favourite boards to use a couple of years ago was a rack-mount with Alps.tw Type OA2 clone switches. I actually have only gotten into Cherry stuff quite recently, in maybe the last year and a half or so, and mostly due to luck of finding nice boards. I was always a hardcore IBM and Alps man before that. The only reason I've gotten into Cherry is that they're easy to mod, easy to find nice keycaps for, and easy to build custom projects in comfortable form-factors for. Until very recently that was just a pipe dream for Alps switches!

Edit: no need to apologise, I think it's fairly clear that I'm a big fan of blabbering myself!

[seebart]

Alright I stand corrected then, good to hear. Of course Cherry MX is the mod-king, and that will not change either. My conclusion with Alps SKCM is that they need to be metal plate mounted for me to enjoy them. The better the construction of the Alps keyboard the better the experience with it for me. On the other hand look at a Model M and it's successor (I forgot the name now). Same story.

[scottc]

That's a good point that I had forgotten actually, my blue Alps keyboard has a thick acrylic plate which I might be confusing with a poor keycap feel. A metal case definitely helps with that too.

[E3E]

That's a good point that I had forgotten actually, my blue Alps keyboard has a thick acrylic plate which I might be confusing with a poor keycap feel. A metal case definitely helps with that too.

This is true! Though regardless, I think that you are a candidate for some of these Tai Hao Cherry-clone Doubleshots, so you can really compare.

It isn't always the case, but a lot of the time, if you hype something up enough in your mind, when you finally get that object of your fascination, it'll be that much better to you. I think it was like that for my Alps SKCM Green Alps and Xerox boards.

Though sometimes that hype can just lead to a big let down. You are right though, the plate is certainly a contributing factor to feel, and to be honest, with my custom Duck Eagle with Alps SKCL Green, I love it 10x more because I'm using a carbon fiber plate and it just feels soooo good in combination with linear switches.

I've used boards that natively come with green linears and the standard fare powder-coated steel plate, and well, they aren't as exciting to use on those boards. Mind you, this one also has a Hammer case, which is a heavy aluminum case, so that might be part of it.

The only caps I've used on Alps so far that I've absolutely disliked are the caps that typically come on Acer's ANSI Alps boards and the caps from a Dell AT101W. :S

[scottc]

Interesting point! I might swap my spare matias linears into the acrylic plate Alps64 and put the blue Alps into the AEK-style Alps64. I hope the bottom chassis are compatible... While we're off topic, have you tried Matias linears E3E? If so, how do they compare to the real deal?

The Dell AT10XW caps are such a let down. Easily the weakest part of the entire keyboard. If you get one in fairly good condition, it's a fairly passable board apart from the caps! One of my sets has gotten so rubbery and awful that I honestly considered just throwing it out!

[E3E]

Interesting point! I might swap my spare matias linears into the acrylic plate Alps64 and put the blue Alps into the AEK-style Alps64. I hope the bottom chassis are compatible... While we're off topic, have you tried Matias linears E3E? If so, how do they compare to the real deal?

The Dell AT10XW caps are such a let down. Easily the weakest part of the entire keyboard. If you get one in fairly good condition, it's a fairly passable board apart from the caps! One of my sets has gotten so rubbery and awful that I honestly considered just throwing it out!

Does Matias sell their switches individually, as in, without needing to buy a keyboard? If so, I might need to finally pick up the three varieties to do some tests.

The Duck Eagle I affectionately call my "Hammer Alps" keyboard was modded to be able to hotswap Alps switches, so I can definitely use it as a test bed to compare the linear varieties, tactiles, and clickies as well. I actually have two of these Alps Eagles modded the same way, haha.

Yes, you are so right with the AT10XW keyboards. I was comparing them with the bamboo SKCM Greens in one of my Xerox boards and decided to swap caps and put the fantastic PBT caps of the Xerox onto a few keys of the AT101W and the (also bamboo) SKCM Blacks actually felt quite nice.

I think a huge reason why people might have a negative view on SKCM Blacks is because the most commonly found board with them is indeed the AT10XW series.

I've never tried Alps with an acrylic plate, though I do have an horrendous Tai Hao APC TH-5539 which has clone switches and a plastic plate and it was just... interesting to say the least. I don't know if I can call it terrible feel-wise, but I call it horrendous because 1) it was misleading: the back was a matte black that looked very much metallic in photos--turns out it's just dual toned with a black bottom made out of plastic 2) it has a plastic plate with ugly mold marks and 3) it had iffy quality Alps clones in it. Because my FAME has a metal back, I was expecting this one to have the same as they are related, but all of my expectations were severely undershot, haha.

The only nice thing about it is that it had Tai Hao doubleshots with Hebrew legends which I find quite nice, but that's it.

[Dra]

Does Matias sell their switches individually, as in, without needing to buy a keyboard? If so, I might need to finally pick up the three varieties to do some tests.

Yeah, matias sells switch packs, they're stocked on various sites in different quantity, a 200 pack can also be ordered for $50 + $10 Worldwide shipping from matias directly

[scottc]

Yes they do! 7bit stocks them too, but you know how it is with 7bit. It's funny, I recently got my NOS NeXT non-ADB keyboard with SKCM blacks and they feel great! I suppose it's a mixture of the NIB-quality switches and very nice keycaps, but it's leagues apart from the Dells.

I had some Alps dome keyboard with Tai-Hao doubleshot keycaps and Arabic pad-printed second legends which look really nice and sound a lot like your Hebrew ones. Comparing them side-to-side with modern "Olivette" Tai-Hao doubleshots like the ones from Massdrop is very significant, the new ones honestly look like dyesubs in comparison to the older ones, they're just so much less clear! To make it clear, I was talking about the modern ones when I was complaining up above!

[terrycherry]

Nice quality photos. Shot some internal before return is a great idea.
I have the keybosrd with the rare Aruz switch if you need.
see the post
f-o-r-s-a-l-e-f58/very-rare-tai-hao-aru ... 12764.html

[jacobolus]

Wow, these keycaps really look like Cherry doubleshots. (Are we sure they aren’t?!?)

Would love to see a side-by-side with the keycaps all pulled of the board, each FAME cap next to the equivalent Cherry MX cap.

Can someone take a side-shot to show the profile?

[E3E]

I really doubt they are Cherry-made, to be honest. It wouldn't make any sense as it seems that Cherry has never made any Alps boards themselves, unless these caps come from whatever obscurity bred the Alps slider variants of the Cherry MX switches.

I mean... These are later model FAME boards too after my variant (and whatever came before it) which has a 14420 serial number as well as genuine blue Alps and did not use these doubleshot caps. Like, if they were supplied from Cherry, that'd just seem counter intuitive against Tai Hao's movement toward using clone switches and an overall cheaper build quality.

Seems dubious to me though. I've seen other Alps caps that are very similar to Cherry profile but have a different font. Seen them on my NTC 6151N and Monterey K101 103.

[jacobolus]

Yeah, but these are also totally different legends and keycap shapes than typical Tai Hao doubleshots. I haven’t seen this particular design anywhere but Cherry doubleshots. The NTC 6151Ns and all the Monterey boards I can find pictures of have substantially different keycap shape, as well as substantially different legends. If your keycaps have different looking legends, they’re almost certainly not made using the same shape keycap molds.

I’m guessing these are made by some OEM who tried to make a close clone of Cherry doubleshots (and got pretty close!). There are definitely some subtle differences between the legends.

[E3E]

I agree that they are most likely clones. I have indeed noticed the uncanny legend similarities as well.

I think something interesting to see would be 1) the kind of mount used for space bar stabilization and 2) if it uses Cherry cruciform stab mounts, then is the spacing Cherry 7u or Signature Plastics/Tai Hao 7u? The spacing is not the same between Cherry and most Alps boards with cruciform mounts.

Since my earlier FAME uses cruciform, I would be surprised if these did not use cruciform. The stab spacing is also, as previously mentioned, not compatible with typical 7u spacing from Cherry.

[E3E]

Here's my FAME before I modded and personalized it (and restored it). Oh wait, looks like I had ANSI-modded it at this point.



Here are some pictures of the caps that I just took:




They are -almost- (noticed this Pa g e Down key and the 0 key from the number pad) exactly the same as these later FAMEs except they are pad printed.

It's also worth noting that the Keytrack trackball keyboards with blue Alps also had this kind of key cap as well, doubleshot.

Wonder if TaiHao had a hand in those. What a mystery!

[jacobolus]

These seem like a somewhat different shape. Would need to see a side-by-side close-up comparison from a few angles to get a good idea of exactly how different. The legends are indeed pretty similar though.

[Dra]

Nice quality photos. Shot some internal before return is a great idea.

I would, but as someone mentioned the back is really flimsy plastic and already cracked at 2 points, so I'd rather not risk ruining it any further

Serial number is 212828, so I'm assuming that boards which are close to that are also going to have alps clones

[Chyros]

Wow, these keycaps really look like Cherry doubleshots. (Are we sure they aren’t?!?)

Yeah, that's what I immediately thought as well. The bold, thick standard letters, rounded lowercase legends, the angles of the caps, and especially their thickness, just all scream Cherry to me. For sure they were inspired by them at least? =o

[Mattr567]

Wow, these keycaps really look like Cherry doubleshots. (Are we sure they aren’t?!?)

Yeah, that's what I immediately thought as well. The bold, thick standard letters, rounded lowercase legends, the angles of the caps, and especially their thickness, just all scream Cherry to me. For sure they were inspired by them at least? =o

Likely.

I want those caps

[Khronokrator]

Those are really really nice caps. If I ever came across a FAME, I'd snatch it up in a second just to have the keycaps. Wonder how'd they do on my Omnikey...