Can You Build a Mechanical Keyboard With Mixed Switches?

When first starting out in the mechanical keyboard hobby, there's a large number of questions that beginners have about everything, and especially switches. What type of switch is the best for me? Why are these specific switches so much more expensive than those over there? Do I have to modify my switches after buying them? The list of these questions might as well be a mile long.

Further down on that list, though, is a particularly fun question that I don't feel like gets the kind of appreciation that it deserves: Can I use multiple different kinds/types of switches in my keyboard build? Despite the vast majority of the people in the hobby not doing so, the answer is of course yes!

However there is a longer answer to this question which not only prompts a whole lot of interesting thoughts and ideas when it comes to builds, but also points to some historical precedent that shows this isn't as silly of a question as it may seem on the surface.

The first and most important thing to keep in mind when building your first mechanical keyboard is that at the end of the day it all comes down to preference – you're going to be the one who types on your keyboard so whatever you will enjoy is the right choice for you. If you think that best fit for you might include you using two or more types of switches in one keyboard, you should absolutely do it. There's no rule that says you can't.

Just make sure before you do it that all of your switches are MX- or HE-types and match the correct PCB type of the keyboard you're building. While I myself am someone who prefers to have all of their switches be exactly the same in their keyboards, I've seen quite the variety of ways people have enjoyed mixed switches over the years.

One of the more common ways is to have all of your alpha and numerical keys be linears of one spring weight and the modifier and arrow keys be linears of a slightly heavier weight. Similar things have also been done using linears for one group of keys and tactiles for the other as well, only further making it clear without looking at your keyboard where you are typing.

I've also heard of people being a bit more selective in which keys have different switches, choosing only keys like 'CAPS LOCK', 'NUM LOCK', or the spacebar to have a different switch than the rest of the board instead. You'd actually be surprised to find out, though, that this taste for a keyboard with mixed switches actually has some historical precedent that predates the hobby as we know it today!

A vast number of vintage keyboards that were produced in the days before rubber dome keyboards took over (read: 1970's to early 1990's), many manufactures employed mixed switches in their keyboards for practical reasons. The most common type of stand alone different switch that we remember today are those of locking switches, such as Alps locks or Cherry MX Locks.

Unlike the linears or tactiles that came with the rest of the board, these switches had internal latching mechanisms that would physically hold keycaps down in a 'locked' position when they were activated. Much less remembered but also much more commonplace in vintage keyboards were spacebars and enter keys that had heavier spring weights than the rest of the keyboard.

As seen in Cherry, Alps, and even rare "Space Invader" keyboards, spring weights of spacebar switches were often juiced up in order to balance out the weight of the larger, heavier spacebar that was resting squarely on top of them. The thought was that this extra spring weight would help compensate for the heft of the spacebars and their poorly supporting stabilizers and make the board feel slightly more uniform with every sentence.

Some builders of the very first Korean custom keyboards from 2008-2010 even mimicked these decisions in their own builds too for the exact same reasons. While practical, these manufacturing choices have also made for some of the most famous vintage switches sought after by collectors today including Cherry MX Nixie Whites and brightly colored Hi-Tek Space Invader switches in red, purple, and even bright green.

If you're considering going the route of building your next keyboard with a mixed set of switches, I imagine there's a lot of different options or combinations you are considering. You could be building a board that has more hefty WASD keys to primarily use for gaming instead of typing. You could be just wanting a board with a mixed set of switches so that its clear when you're explicitly hitting some important keys instead of others.

And while this decision is completely up to you to make, I do want to inform you of one… very radical… option that you could choose if you're indecisive – a mechanical keyboard with every single key being a different switch. Turning the concept of an ordinary switch tester into a fully functional keyboard, every now and then I'll see someone on a keyboard forum fully commit to this idea and it almost never seems to disappoint.

Sure, it may be a bit weird to type on, but mixing switches in this fashion makes for a truly unique experience unlike any other or could also serve as a functional demo piece to your friends not in the hobby. Or, at the extreme least, it allows people like me that hoard switches an outlet to try and make use of these random bags of switches scattered around my house.

All things considered, I hope this more light-hearted article is one that makes your journey into keyboards a little bit less daunting than I'm sure it feels like right now. I still recall myself being overwhelmed with all of the options there were, decisions to be made, and sheer number of parts out there to learn about.

Do keep in mind though that all of those options just mean that you have infinite ability to customize a keyboard exactly how you want, and there's really no rules you have to follow in what you choose to do at all. If you're wanting to learn a bit more about keyboard switches, as I personally think they're the most important part of any mechanical keyboard, consider stopping by some of my other articles here on Kinetic Labs such as Linear Switches Aren't All The Same! or Keyboard Switch Testers Are Underrated.