⚠ WARNING: I’ve had mixed results and heard mixed reports combining Gazzew stems and Ink housings. I made an entire batch of Black Ink U4s which all functioned perfectly, but a recent batch of Lemon Lush frankens had quite a few stems under too much friction. I don’t believe Gazzew has made any recent changes to the U4 (if ever at all), though I am aware that Ink housings have been revised a few times at this point. The issue is either related to the revisions from Gateron or simple inconsistency; proceed with that in mind. ⚠

A no-nonsense name for a no-nonsense, office-friendly switch for the heavy-handed user.

TL;DR: A very quiet switch with a modestly-strong bump that's wide and round.

*By everything, I mostly mean the usual, making sure to include the spring, tactile legs, and where they touch the leaf. I used 106 in a bag for the springs, and 205g0 for the rest.

Here's a quick sound-test:

Any switch you put a Gazzew U4 stem into is going to be pretty quiet and have a big bump, so no surprise those features are present here. The Black Ink housing lends some smoothness, and its leaf offers a more subdued bump compared to the Boba; while the spring gives a firm resistance from top to bottom.

When I say "soft" in reference to this switch, I'm mostly talking about the bottom-out, with maybe a little bit of the bump's round character. Here, "soft" means smushy silicone dampeners on the stem taking any and all edge off of the bottom-out.

Since these are generally destined for silent builds, I recommend lubing the spring - and everything else, including the tactile legs and leaf surface that contacts them. The trade-off doesn’t really sacrifice much - the switch retains a pretty strong bump, and gains that last bit of smoothness to make it feel truly premium.

Mix these with something like a gasket or burger mount with a soft (or no) plate and you’ll have quite the bouncy experience on your hands.

The Black Ink housing takes the edge off the U4's beefy bump just a bit, and helps a smooth stem be even more so.

In terms of the switch photographed above, I put these together for one of our resident programmers who hates noisy keyboards and also happens to be very heavy-handed when typing. These switches would wear me out pretty quickly, but I think they’ll suit his hammer-fingers just fine while saving a bit more of his office-mate’s sanity.

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