I Think My Switch Is Stuck! - The Tale of Cherry MX Locks
Over the years of collecting mechanical keyboard switches, I’ve been lucky enough to have encountered dozens upon dozens of rare and unique ones that have stuck in my mind to this day. Prototypes, factory errors, and even a few switches so rare that there is literally zero documentation about them anywhere in the world all fill that personal list from top to bottom. However, I realize that talking about switches so far outside of most people’s reaches, and even sometimes my own grasp, doesn’t make for the most exciting of articles about switches. To this newest generation of keyboard enthusiasts, though, there is one pretty rare MX-style switch which has made its way to the top of everyone’s “must try” lists – Cherry MX Locks. These often undiscussed and even more rarely seen switches are something that few people have seen and even fewer have had the chance to try at a meetup before. However, the list of people who really know how these unique Cherry switches work is even shorter...
Jul 23, 2024
While I could probably go on for pages and pages more about all of the particular minutiae that help separate a single linear switch from the next one, this will have to stand as a pretty reasonable starting point for you to jump into your own explorations about linear switches. Regardless of what I tell you on paper, the best way to see all of these things for yourself (and to figure out if I’m actually crazy or not) is to test out a bunch of linear switches and see for yourself if you can see these differences. Can you tell linear switches apart based on their bottoming out feeling? What about their steepness and how their force changes under your fingers? Well, if you need any help looking into some switches of your own to test this out for yourself, consider some of my other articles here on Drop such as ‘Switch Marketing Terms: What to Know and What to Ignore’ or ‘Switch Myths That Aren’t Actually True!’.