Domes! I'm assuming that either Silver Reed switched from SKFF to domes on their big machines to save money or possibly in response to SKFF being end of life.
Silver Reed branding on the PCB. Still not sure if Silver Reed made these switches or if someone else did. If silver reed didn't make the switches then the leading theory is that ALPS made both the switches and the caps. Would be kinda weird to get only caps and nothing else from ALPS honestly. If Silver Reed made these switches in house then it would make sense for them to get caps and SKFF from ALPS and to fill in the rest of what they need w/ in house stuff. Not really enough info to tell either way honestly.
as you can see here, these are a non-discrete variation of the other (presumably older) DWS design and the slider on these switches solves the major weakness of this design. You see on the discrete switches the slider doesn't bottom out on anything, the cap bottoms out against the top housing. So when the cap is removed the slider is able to travel farther and when it actually bottoms out against the dome the mount is inside the switch. This prevents the cap from being reinstalled unless you remove the switch from the assembly and hold the slider from the back as you put the cap on. With the 2 extra legs on these sliders the cap doesn't quite touch the housing when the switch bottoms out because these legs are bottoming out against the dome mat. This makes these a dampened version of the switch but also allows for caps to easily be removed and reinstalled without disassembly of any parts of the keyboard. Huge improvement.
caps are really nice, no complaints there.
So this was an interesting machine but apart from the switches it's largely the same as other Silver Reed machines of the same size. The fact that it doesn't use SKFF means I was wrong to assume that all of the larger Silver Reed machines would have SKFF. Since that assumption didn't hold any water it has me rethinking my assumptions about Silver Reed using SKCC. Previously I had assumed that they didn't, but the caps are compat w/ SKCC and the switches used by SR has more variety than I previously thought to so who knows. Maybe I'll get lucky and something will either have a company logo on the dome switches or I'll find SKCC or something else interesting. Regardless I'm sure it'll be nice.
