I’m doing a black/red TKL build for the Milkyway Half-Blade keycap GB that should be delivering by the end of the year. I’ve never done a full aesthetic match on a build before - I’ve got a custom red ano aluminum plate on order and I’d like the switches to match too, at least for initial build+photos. I’m mill-maxing the board so I’ll probably put these switches in something else since my wife is the main TKL user and prefers clickies.
Here is the pantone swatch of the keycaps. I’m already going to have a lot of black in the case and red in the PCB+plate so if the switches adopted some of the grey-blue I think that’d be neat, but any other mix of red and black could work too. Worst case I will probably just find the closest weight, highest rated all-black linear I can find.
So any good recommendations? Ones I’m aware of that seem well reviewed and close in weight but don’t match color-wise are:
- Gateron Oil Kings (~55g) I have these in a DM Austin on alu and know I love them
- Gateron Ink Box Pink (~50g) I don’t know much about these except the ink blacks are very highly recommended
- Durock Linear L1/Yellow (~55g)
- Cherry MX Black (~55g) the OG
- NK_ Cream, Cream Pro & Dream (all ~55g) I hear good things, especially the pre-broken-in Dreams sound nice
- Everglide Aqua King Linear (~55g) Don’t know much about it but saw at the top of a few recommendation lists for linears
- Alpacas (~62g) popular mostly for BCPs I think?
- Divinikey Oni (~43g) I’ve heard these in one build and they sounded incredible but they seem to be perpetually out of stock, and wrong color
I would say if you care about this go for a light/white/clear color stem and dye them yourself. I’ve seen in some keycap dying guides on geekhack that say clothing dyes meant for polyester clothes will give good results.
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How about KTT switches. They have too many colors for you to choose. Quality is pretty good (light linear)
my cherry MX Blacks will come in the mail today. i’ll try to remember to udate you on how they feel.