Lorde
- Silent Box Brown stem & upper housing
- Box Royal spring & lower housing
- Sharp, strong tactility
- Dampened top & bottom-out
- Subtle “click” synced with actuation / tactility
- North-facing / GMK compatibility
The name was an obvious choice, because after this mod, they will never be Royals. eyyy
Flavor-text:
Anyway. The idea for these came from two different places. More generally, I’ve seen conversations musing about dampened clicky switches, and more specifically a friend of mine totally new to mechanicals has been trying switches and mentioned how much he loved the crisp kind of tactility that clicky switches had, but that the noise would drive him nuts.
While I’ve seen plenty of lamentation about the Box tactiles’ propensity for producing clicking sounds depending on their age / use / other factors, this switch brings it out as much as possible and relies on it as a less loud but still plenty audible alternative to discrete, purposeful noise-making mechanisms. Since the click itself is caused by overcoming the negative-style tactile bump of the slider, it’s naturally synced with both tactility and actuation.
The sound isn’t too different from that of a normal Box Royal, except there’s only the click of the leaf / pusher / slider-cam interaction - no bottom-out clack or top-out rattle. The click itself is a bit more sharp with the SBB stem vs the original Royal, as well.
These are some weird bois, but if you’ve been curious about dampened clickies, Lordes are an easy to reproduce take on the theme.
A side note - I’d originally intended to use Crystal Royal bottoms for this switch because they look great and have 5 pins, but found that those are closer to the more subtle Hako Royals than the bombastic Box Royals. While the combination was still a pleasant one, it was pretty unremarkable - basically a slightly heavier and more tactile Silent Box Brown.