I’m a shameless keyboard nerd. Whether it was the old typewriter in my grandparents’ spare room or the first Toshiba computer keyboard my father brought home from work, I loved to write. .
But I’ve never felt more geeky than sitting at home with a small paint brush in one hand, a pot of lube in the other, and a $250 keyboard bit on my desk. Polishing One Side Of Him On Halo True Mechanical Keyswitches (opens in new tab) A little grease made me wonder what had brought me to this point in my life.
Actually it was Asus ROG Azoth (opens in new tab) gaming keyboard. It’s a nice one, all pretending to be heavy metal and enthusiast kieves, and in the name of delightfully smooth actuation, it bundles everything you need to start lubricating your mechanical switches.
To be honest, I never really considered lubricating the keyswitches myself. I didn’t want to go split up deepHowever, I had a full set of beautiful Halo True switches embedded in another keyboard that I no longer use and wanted to take advantage of Azoth’s hot-swappable board design. And I’m personally no longer a fan of straight linear switches, so no matter how good the ROG NX switches are, a change was needed.
To begin with the switch was not pre-lubricated and sat on my old Mountain Everest Max. (opens in new tab) A keyboard that has been in storage for the better part of a year. So, with all the tools in the Azoth package, why not see if lubricating the Halo True switch really makes a difference?
The ROG Azoth comes with one of the best switch pullers I’ve used, but a brush for applying lube, that little tab, a little rack to put the open switch housing on, and most importantly A plastic specifically designed to open either a standard Cherry MX or Kailh Box switch with a little bit of force.
The ROG NX switches are made by Kailh, and so are my Halo Trues, so I had no trouble opening one of the salmon pink beauties. It’s a daunting task, but Games grew up painting miniatures in his workshop, so these fat fingers are equally adept at pulling stems and springs apart.
The next thing is to dip the brush into a pot of lube and give both sides of the housing a little greasy love. Then just put all the internals back into the housing and you have just one lubricated key switch. 100 more times…
I won’t go alone. Indeed, the inaudible but inevitable disapproval radiating from my wife, who sat behind me, had as much to do with it as the idea of going through a pile of switches and lubricating them all individually. – Especially the whole conundrum of pulling them all out of another keyboard as I’ve already experienced, and ripping the existing ones out of Azoth.
If my efforts had shown any improvement, I would have really hated myself.
But that’s because it doesn’t really make sense.Honestly, the lubricated and non-lubricated Halo True switches felt exactly the sameI’m obsessed with the subtly different feel of each key switch, but I didn’t notice any change in press smoothness or debounce speed at all.
I was happy. I’m glad. I knew I had to actually lubricate all the switches before I shoved them into my new Asus board, so I think I would have really hated myself if I saw any improvement from my efforts. Instead, there was a brief moment of micro-self-loathing, familiar to tech geeks from needlessly experienced overt geeks.
But at least now I know I don’t have to go down that particular rabbit hole. I was always worried that someone might be there.
I wasn’t and neither are you.