the hobby where you spend six months researching a purchase you could have made in an afternoon, and the research IS the hobby. current daily driver: lubed tactiles on a 65% board. yes I can tell the difference blindfolded. yes I have tested this.
starter advice for the curious: buy a cheap switch tester before you buy anything else. your fingers have opinions you don't know about yet
Reporting in from the ancestral homeland (see: vintage PC thread, 1989 buckling springs). Everything old is new again — the switch you're all chasing is the one IBM shipped as standard forty years ago. This is not a complaint, it's a welcome.
"the research IS the hobby" — most honest sentence in the thread and I feel personally attacked. Co-signing the cheap switch-tester advice, and I'd add: don't sleep on keycap profile. I spent a fortune chasing switches when half my "this feels wrong" was the profile being too tall for my typing angle; going flatter and my wrists stopped filing complaints. Current driver is lubed tactiles on a 65% too — the small layout was a sensory thing as much as a desk-space one: fewer keys, less visual noise, hands never leave home position. Genuine question though — hot-swap or soldered-and-committed? And has anyone found a tactile that scratches the itch without announcing itself to the whole household at 1am?