Alps Appreciation

[Muirium]

I like it because it reminds me a bit of the go-faster stripes so inherent to Apple’s 1980s Snow White Design Language. They were everywhere in the day. Looks quite boss on the original “platinum” beige shade, as intended. But yellowing wrecks the esthetic badly.

Speaking of which: yellowing is just the fate which awaits ABS. Darker shades of ABS still yellow, you just don’t notice it as much. Other plastics are immune from yellowing, so my beige IBMs are still their original colour. Even the plastic SSKs, let alone the painted zinc Kishsaver and Beamspring. I’ve heard Model M cases were PVC. Mine are all unmarked by telltale shadowing, and my reference NIB SSK is the same.

Interesting. This explains perfectly the two different colors used on the Northgate OmniMac keyboards, and why neither is the same as the beige used on all the other Northgates. For some reason neither of the OmniMac plastic colors seems to have the yellowing problem often seen on the beige ones.

Yellowing:



The underside tells the truth.



Even the banana yellow Hilfe key has yellowed… to a duller yellow. That’s ABS, in every colour.

[headphone_jack]

unknown.png (630.98 KiB) Viewed 9148 times

My baby

The product of many months of work and searching. NCR80, SKCM Amber, custom PCB and plate, 5140 and Dell PBT caps.

[amigastar23]

I need to find a Dell AT101W for a good price. Then i can mod those black switches into linear ones since SKCL Green Alps are hard to find.

[Polecat]

Even the banana yellow Hilfe key has yellowed… to a duller yellow. That’s ABS, in every colour.

Absolutely. My industrial gray Costar, which uses the same color scheme as the gray Monterey, has the gray keys unevenly yellowed, very much like the typical Northgate or Focus. I've never tried retrobriting anything, fearing irreversible damage, and because there seems to be no consensus on how or why or if it actually works, so I'm stuck on finding and using (up) non-yellowed survivors in the mean time.

Again the two colors of plastic used on the Northgate OmniMacs, presumably ABS with some dye added, seem to resist yellowing much better than the typical beige Northgates. The writeup above is the first time I've ever heard of the official Apple color schemes, which Northgate apparently copied with the OmniMac keyvboards. That explains why there were two different versions, but not why they would be more resistant to turning yellow. But at least I learned one something new today!

[darkcruix]

unknown.png

My baby

The product of many months of work and searching. NCR80, SKCM Amber, custom PCB and plate, 5140 and Dell PBT caps.

Wow - that is an awesome result. Especially the decision for Amber is great. I have a bunch of different switches that still search for a project. I wish it would be as easy as a few years ago, when you could just buy an Alps based keyboard kit and solder your TKL with the switches of your choice.
Very well done ...

[amigastar23]

Hello,
i have a question.
Can i use these Blue Alps to replace them and put them into my White Alps keyboard?
I mean can i just change the slider but not the housing?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295169284315?h ... R_aV4ZLlYA
thanks

[darkcruix]

Hello,
i have a question.
Can i use these Blue Alps to replace them and put them into my White Alps keyboard?
I mean can i just change the slider but not the housing?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295169284315?h ... R_aV4ZLlYA
thanks

It does work. As long as you also use the top housing from the originals, there shouldn't be any major issue. When I replaced everything except the soldered-in switch plate with the bottom housing it felt like a genuine Blue Alps board.

[Polecat]

Hello,
i have a question.
Can i use these Blue Alps to replace them and put them into my White Alps keyboard?
I mean can i just change the slider but not the housing?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295169284315?h ... R_aV4ZLlYA
thanks

They will fit and work if all you care about is the color of the sliders. So they'll look like blue Alps, but sound and feel not so much, unless you're subject to Placebo Effect that is.

[amigastar23]

Cool, thanks guys.

[thefarside]

My advice would be to ask about the condition of the switches if possible. Loose switches are hard to tell if there’s binding, but the wax mod seems to rectify most issues. To give you an idea the picture below is a super dirty blue Alps board I purchased and it will clean up very nice but it will still have binding and feel terrible without some kind of lubrication

My dirty blue alps:

Dirty Switch Closeup.jpeg (344.68 KiB) Viewed 8888 times

[SK-8K]

Tai-Hao has the new cubic ALPS keycaps for sale

[darkcruix]

Tai-Hao has the new cubic ALPS keycaps for sale
...

Thanks ... And I have them ordered The price is great.

[hellothere]

Tai-Hao has the new cubic ALPS keycaps for sale
...

Thanks ... And I have them ordered The price is great.

I have a few Tai-Hao modern Alps sets and I can definitely recommend them. Note that Tai-Hao is currently doing the 10% promotion.

Tai-Hao has given me a few cool freebies with my orders, like a sample switch or two and random MX keycaps,

What I want to do is to get some of their blue-stem 55g Alps clone switches. The one white switch I received was that nice, but the weighting is too high for me.

[amigastar23]

My advice would be to ask about the condition of the switches if possible. Loose switches are hard to tell if there’s binding, but the wax mod seems to rectify most issues. To give you an idea the picture below is a super dirty blue Alps board I purchased and it will clean up very nice but it will still have binding and feel terrible without some kind of lubrication

My dirty blue alps:
Dirty Switch Closeup.jpeg

You know, someone should really make another return of Blue/White Alps Keyboards and save us all the hassle to get old boards working.
I think the audience is there, make it real instead of doing the Nth revision of Cherry MX switches.
I mean make a Kickstarter or something and make it public, i think it would work.

[Muirium]

You know, someone should really make another return of Blue/White Alps Keyboards and save us all the hassle to get old boards working.
I think the audience is there, make it real instead of doing the Nth revision of Cherry MX switches.
I mean make a Kickstarter or something and make it public, i think it would work.

But… which lube?

Trolling aside, isn’t there some lingering doubt about what exactly Alps’s secret was in their best designs? The later, simpler stuff is uninteresting, as Matias has seen. The good stuff, meanwhile, always seemed to involve some kind of voodoo no one ever quite defined.

[hellothere]

You know, someone should really make another return of Blue/White Alps Keyboards and save us all the hassle to get old boards working.
I think the audience is there, make it real instead of doing the Nth revision of Cherry MX switches.
I mean make a Kickstarter or something and make it public, i think it would work.

But… which lube?

Trolling aside, isn’t there some lingering doubt about what exactly Alps’s secret was in their best designs? The later, simpler stuff is uninteresting, as Matias has seen. The good stuff, meanwhile, always seemed to involve some kind of voodoo no one ever quite defined.

It'd be fun seeing people chasing down the specific plastic combination, not to mention the exact angle of the click leaf (and of course, what it's made of), what the springs are made of and how many winds in the springs, etc.

I think the reason not to come out with a new Alps keyboard is because there are still an awful lot of them out there. There are currently about 150, in the US version of ebay, and the cheapest is $80, including shipping to me (Dell with black Alps).

I would like some brand new tactile brown Alps, though.

[darkcruix]

You know, someone should really make another return of Blue/White Alps Keyboards and save us all the hassle to get old boards working.
I think the audience is there, make it real instead of doing the Nth revision of Cherry MX switches.
I mean make a Kickstarter or something and make it public, i think it would work.

But… which lube?

Trolling aside, isn’t there some lingering doubt about what exactly Alps’s secret was in their best designs? The later, simpler stuff is uninteresting, as Matias has seen. The good stuff, meanwhile, always seemed to involve some kind of voodoo no one ever quite defined.

It'd be fun seeing people chasing down the specific plastic combination, not to mention the exact angle of the click leaf (and of course, what it's made of), what the springs are made of and how many winds in the springs, etc.

I think the reason not to come out with a new Alps keyboard is because there are still an awful lot of them out there. There are currently about 150, in the US version of ebay, and the cheapest is $80, including shipping to me (Dell with black Alps).

I would like some brand new tactile brown Alps, though.

Tactile brown Alps, even they are quite heavy to type on, have a nice feel - very unique and not even like other switches that call themselves tactile. There is no simple tactile bump - it is a rise and fall. What I think is very different apart from the feel, is the base sound of them and they are EXTREMELY smooth. I have a dead 5140 which I couldn't get working anymore, but typing on it is definitely something.

What I would really purchase is a TKL, 65%, 60% with the sound of the tactile Alps. I am one of those, who want the most tactility that is possible at a moderate sound level (yeah, I know). If people would not get crazy around me, I'd choose Amber, but the Brown candy is my next choice. With that being said, I can't deny that SKCL Greens are also quite satisfying...

[Polecat]

But… which lube[/url]?

Johnson's Paste Wax, of course! <ducking>

The part that's probably going to prevent a modern version of Alps from happening is the switchplate. There have been dozens of Alps clones over the years, and not one (with the possible exception of the unbranded switches briefly used by Datacomp and a few others) has had an SKCL/SKCM-style switchplate. Alps was making these switches by the million, literally, so they could afford the tooling. But every clone since has been a compromise, presumably to save cost. And it doesn't help, of course, that Alps made so many changes themselves.

White Alps are not all the same, nor are blue Alps. Blues are more predictable, because they weren't made for nearly as long, or with as many changes, but even so, *which* blue Alps do we copy? And what about brown, amber, neon green, and all the others? Does anybody really understand all the changes, and who gets to decide which is "best"?

[Hak Foo]

Trolling aside, isn’t there some lingering doubt about what exactly Alps’s secret was in their best designs? The later, simpler stuff is uninteresting, as Matias has seen. The good stuff, meanwhile, always seemed to involve some kind of voodoo no one ever quite defined.

Is it really, or is this meme power at its peak?

It would be interesting to build a few copies of the same board (using a modern PCB and fresh caps to avoid variables)-- using blue, pine complicated white, bamboo complicated white, and simplified white, and just for the hell of it, Matias clicky. Then do some ABX testing. It would be fun to do at a meetup-- you let people bang on the boards all day, ranking them, then at the end of the day, reveal which is which.

I suspect we may be in audiophile levels of pretentiousness as a community-- some of us probably have the "golden fingers" to tell them apart, but I'd probably be entirely happy with the more modern option-- especially when it comes with "yeah, it can be replaced if it breaks for less than a full day's salary."

[Polecat]

Is it really, or is this meme power at its peak?

It would be interesting to build a few copies of the same board (using a modern PCB and fresh caps to avoid variables)-- using blue, pine complicated white, bamboo complicated white, and simplified white, and just for the hell of it, Matias clicky. Then do some ABX testing. It would be fun to do at a meetup-- you let people bang on the boards all day, ranking them, then at the end of the day, reveal which is which.

I suspect we may be in audiophile levels of pretentiousness as a community-- some of us probably have the "golden fingers" to tell them apart, but I'd probably be entirely happy with the more modern option-- especially when it comes with "yeah, it can be replaced if it breaks for less than a full day's salary."

I've mentioned before that I have two Northgate gold label 102 keyboards dated three weeks apart, one with blues, the other with early whites with unbranded upper housings, presumably factory lubed. Both are original and pristine, and I would challenge anyone to tell which is which without pulling a keycap. The slightly later white switches, also pine complicated, sound and feel distinctly different. I haven't tried to match up the differences in sound and feel to specific changes, but just within pine complicated white Alps there are significant differences.

There *are* objective differences in Alps switches, and you're going to need more variations than you have listed to really test that. There were three different switchplates and at least two different springs used in blue SKCM switches, and two switchplates and at least three different springs in pine complicated whites, plus the early versions that were factory lubed like blues. Perhaps even more changes, like click leaves and slider material. Unfortunately there's no way to identify those changes without taking the switches apart.

There are definitely some audiophile-worthy misconceptions going on, but to me the worst ones are the assumptions that all blue Alps are the same, and that all pine complicated white Alps are the same. And that early pine complicated whites are metaphysically different than blues simply because of the slider color.

[hellothere]

Tactile brown Alps, even they are quite heavy to type on, have a nice feel - very unique and not even like other switches that call themselves tactile. There is no simple tactile bump - it is a rise and fall. What I think is very different apart from the feel, is the base sound of them and they are EXTREMELY smooth. I have a dead 5140 which I couldn't get working anymore, but typing on it is definitely something.

What I would really purchase is a TKL, 65%, 60% with the sound of the tactile Alps. I am one of those, who want the most tactility that is possible at a moderate sound level (yeah, I know). If people would not get crazy around me, I'd choose Amber, but the Brown candy is my next choice. With that being said, I can't deny that SKCL Greens are also quite satisfying...

If you've got the 5140, you're most of the way of making this come true. There are a few Alps TKL, etc. kits out there.

Again, my opinion is that amber Omrons have a lot of feel in common with brown tactile Alps.

[darkcruix]

Tactile brown Alps, even they are quite heavy to type on, have a nice feel - very unique and not even like other switches that call themselves tactile. There is no simple tactile bump - it is a rise and fall. What I think is very different apart from the feel, is the base sound of them and they are EXTREMELY smooth. I have a dead 5140 which I couldn't get working anymore, but typing on it is definitely something.

What I would really purchase is a TKL, 65%, 60% with the sound of the tactile Alps. I am one of those, who want the most tactility that is possible at a moderate sound level (yeah, I know). If people would not get crazy around me, I'd choose Amber, but the Brown candy is my next choice. With that being said, I can't deny that SKCL Greens are also quite satisfying...

If you've got the 5140, you're most of the way of making this come true. There are a few Alps TKL, etc. kits out there.

Again, my opinion is that amber Omrons have a lot of feel in common with brown tactile Alps.

I never tested Omrons, to be honest.
btw - I ordered already Hasu's ALPS64 PCB. I'll be posting a few pictures, once completed, but I think there have been already several build streams about it so I don't need a build doc/video.

[kshopper2084]

I recently tested a stock Matias Ergo Pro board I picked up with Quiet Click switches vs my modified Ergo Pro with Salmon ALPS installed and the difference was night and day (Salmon good, Matias bad). Of course the quiet click switches are dampened so not the same thing, but the tactility isn't as strong with the Matias.

[thefarside]

I recently tested a stock Matias Ergo Pro board I picked up with Quiet Click switches vs my modified Ergo Pro with Salmon ALPS installed and the difference was night and day (Salmon good, Matias bad). Of course the quiet click switches are dampened so not the same thing, but the tactility isn't as strong with the Matias.

Interesting I recently put Matias quiet click switches and an old focus keyboard and was also using oranges and an apple M0115 and I thought the Matias switches were more tactile but not as smooth. There was a much sharper drop after the tactile bump in the quiet clicks compared to the oranges.

[hellothere]

All righty, then:

Apple Extended Keyboard II + cream damped Alps + ultrasonic + ceramic wax + paper mod = Excellent
Old label Dell + salmon Alps + ultrasonic + boil/wax + paper mod = Pretty Awesome
OmniKey 102 + orange Alps + ultrasonic + boil/wax + paper mod = Extremely Awesome

I don't want to find out that boiling dampened sliders destroys them. I'm also not sold on boil/wax on whites or blues, but I have a couple projects in the future.

I have/had between three and five Matias keyboards and I absolutely love the ergo's key placement, even though I'm not a typist, but I'm not crazy about the switches. They're pretty OK. I'd recommend them to someone who has an Alps chassis lying about and wants to spend $50 to get 200 switches. Or someone who doesn't care for linearized blacks.

[kshopper2084]

...
I have/had between three and five Matias keyboards and I absolutely love the ergo's key placement, even though I'm not a typist, but I'm not crazy about the switches.

Then do what I did and replace the Matias switches with your choice of ALPS ones. Really makes the Ergo great.

[hellothere]

I like to repair Alps keyboards, but they're not my absolute favorite, so I end up selling them. That being said, if I ever obtain another tactile brown, I'm keeping it. I've not tried amber, so that might be fun. I'd like another Alps Plate Spring KB and maybe an Alps Buckling Spring.

[amigastar23]

Hello,

a question again. Can i use the Black Alps sliders in to the White Alps housing?
I have an old White Alps keyboard and i can get Black Alps for cheap. Can i replace the Black Alps on the White Alps keyboard?
thanks

[hellothere]

Oddly, I do not have any black switches lying around.

> I have an old White Alps keyboard and i can get Black Alps for cheap. Can i replace the Black Alps on the White Alps keyboard?
I'm not sure I understand. Any SKCL/SKCM/SKBL/SKBM (not compact), e.g. whites, blues, greens, yellows, blacks, oranges, etc. can be soldered into any keyboard that's designed for Alps SKCL, etc. switches. So, I can take a black Alps from my 1996 (I'm guessing a year) Dell keyboard and solder it into my 1986 OmniKey without a problem and vice-versa.

[amigastar23]

Oddly, I do not have any black switches lying around.

> I have an old White Alps keyboard and i can get Black Alps for cheap. Can i replace the Black Alps on the White Alps keyboard?
I'm not sure I understand. Any SKCL/SKCM/SKBL/SKBM (not compact), e.g. whites, blues, greens, yellows, blacks, oranges, etc. can be soldered into any keyboard that's designed for Alps SKCL, etc. switches. So, I can take a black Alps from my 1996 (I'm guessing a year) Dell keyboard and solder it into my 1986 OmniKey without a problem and vice-versa.

I don't mean soldering but only exchange the Black Alps sliders into the housing of my White Alps Keyboard.