A Small Plea Against "Switch Harvesting"
First and foremost, I think that it should be said right out of the gate that you are entitled to do whatever you want to do on your own behalf and this article is not a provocation to fight with you about your decisions. However, in my pursuit of wanting to cover as many topics about switches as I possibly can, I realize I have not yet covered ‘switch harvesting’, one of the practices that I’m becoming less favorable towards as the years go on. Rather than trying to cover the history of this in a not so unbiased fashion, I figure I might as well try and convince you all as to why I feel this way about this process. After all, you’ve read my opinions more than once before on this website… In the earliest days of the custom mechanical keyboard hobby, years which start around 2008 and span to 2012, the vast majority of custom keyboards were built using switches had already had previous lives in other keyboards. Given that there were few if any switch manufacturers selling switches...
Mar 26, 2025
With the Ergodox, I seem to have more comfort and accuracy after tenting. Things just feel more natural and easier to reach. Before tenting, I found the Ergodox to be less ergonomically friendly for me because it was just too hard to hit the combination of keys that I need to hit, even after many adjustments to the keyboard layout to try different setups.
The pinky keys were my nemesis before tenting. I have this same problem on the Kinesis Advantage too, which is why mine spends most of its time in a box. Tenting really changes the experience of the Ergodox for me in a good way and I don't have small hands either.