Alps Electric's SKCM/SKCL "complicated" switches were the serious rival to Cherry MX in the 1980s and early 1990s — and many enthusiasts still insist they were the better switch. They lost the market, but they never lost the fans.
Close-up of an Alps SKCM Blue switch. Photo by Sandy via the keyboard wiki.
What made "complicated" Alps switches different?
A complicated Alps switch has around nine parts: upper and lower housings, a contact module, a stem, a spring, and a click or tactile leaf spring. That is a lot more hardware than the four-piece Cherry MX. Enthusiasts describe the result as a sharper, crisper keystroke — a cleaner break on the click and a snappier tactile bump, with a deep, almost woody sound from the thick housings.
Unlike Cherry's family of color-coded stems, Alps used the stem color to tell you what kind of switch you had. SKCM Blue was the famous clicky one. Brown (sometimes called salmon in its later runs) was the prized tactile one. Early "pine" versions have slits in the top housing; later "bamboo" versions don't — a detail collectors argue about endlessly.
Why do enthusiasts still hunt blue and salmon Alps?
Because Alps never made the design a standard the way Cherry did. Blue Alps are crisp and musical in a way modern clickies rarely match, and salmon Alps are often called the best tactile switch ever made. Both only exist in old boards, so they became treasure-hunt switches: pulled from vintage keyboards and traded at real prices.
The obsession is visible in one place more than any other: the Alps Appreciation Thread on Geekhack, a single discussion about old Alps switches that has grown to 132 pages and roughly 3.18 million reads. That is not a thread. That is a small library.
How did Alps lose to Cherry?
Cost. In the 1990s Alps simplified the design — fewer parts, cheaper materials, the infamous "simplified" Alps generations — and the magic leaked out. At the same time, Cherry's simpler, cheaper switch became the default part for every board on the market. Better doesn't always win. Available wins.
Can you still type on Alps today?
Yes, if you're willing to hunt. Classic boards like the Acer KB-101A and Dell AT101W carry genuine complicated Alps and show up on the used market. On the new-parts side, Matias makes modern Alps-compatible switches in a simplified-but-faithful design, and there is a growing supply of new keycaps with the rectangular Alps mount.
And then there are franken-Alps: enthusiasts mix and match stems, springs, and leaves from different Alps variants to build hybrid switches that Alps never sold. It is part engineering, part cooking. The Alps Appreciation Thread is full of recipes.
Want to understand what makes switches feel different?
Start with our breakdown of linear vs. tactile vs. clicky switches — it explains the feel categories that Alps fans argue about. And if this rabbit hole is your thing, TypeTide is where we write about it.