fohat wrote: ↑There are ways to nearly functionally re-create "faux-blue" Alps to achieve the best attributes of each component.
Truly "new" blue Alps in conventional configurations are probably so rare as to truly qualify as near "unobtainium" ....
What makes them special? If you can get clean fresh switch bodies and transplant the appropriate moving components into them, you could probably re-create "Franken-blues" that give you what you want at (somewhat) less cost in time and money than chasing the originals in their original state. Some components (plastic) wear out, but others (metal) do not (assuming that they are protected from rusting).
Chassis? Forget it and buy a Northgate Omnikey 101. Springs? Orange Alps are similar to blue. Sliders? mostly the same.
Or, to paraphrase Graham Chapman in "The Life of Brian": "You've got to work it out for yourself."
XMIT wrote: ↑An Omnikey 101 (great case and NKRO), and Orange switches (correct spring weight and switch plate) with pine white click leaves, will get you a really nice board that is mostly indistinguishable from Alps Blues if it is clean. You could combine an AEK I and an Omnikey to get this.
What a coincidence! I did exactly this yesterday and I came to the same conclusion: these sound and feel almost exactly like blue alps! I hybridized some switches in a NIB OmniKey 102
My combination for the switches are:
Bottom housing: bamboo white alps
Switchplate: short white (really wish they were tall, but I didn't want to desolder)
click leaf: white alps click-leaf
slider: orange alps slider
spring: orange alps spring
top housing: Pine housing from the orange alps
The only way I could think to improve it would be if it had tall switchplates - but it is still amazing. The original switches in the omnikey 102 were bamboo whites (the model number 2052469), which is why I decided to modify it in the first place - had the switches been pine I probably would have left them alone.