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Quartz can be interesting !

200 views 16 replies 10 participants last post by  Always"watching"  
#1 ·
 
#2 ·
Thanks @Charlie the collector for that video. Although the watches shown are way above my price range, it did give me a few ideas for certain cheaper watches that share some of the features. For example, the rectangular case on the G-shock shown in the video is really nice, and fortunately appears on a number of much cheaper but still very good Casio watches watches. :)
 
#7 ·
And I always thought you were a die-hard mechanical man, dear @artistmike.:giggle:

Actually, you do raise a point that I was thinking about, and that is the question of batteries for these high-end quartz movements. I would ask just how available are they and what is the cost. Also, do the watches have to go back to the manufacturer to be fitted with a new battery. And finally, how often do the batteries have to be replaced.?
 
#8 ·
And I always thought you were a die-hard mechanical man, dear @artistmike.:giggle:

Actually, you do raise a point that I was thinking about, and that is the question of batteries for these high-end quartz movements. I would ask just how available are they and what is the cost. Also, do the watches have to go back to the manufacturer to be fitted with a new battery. And finally, how often do the batteries have to be replaced.?
I can answer your questions for Grand Seiko quartz. The 9F movements use a standard SR920SW (371) silver oxide battery that is used in many quartz movements including the Seiko vh31. Cousins sell 5 Seizaiken for about a £1 👍

The battery lasts about 3 years.

If you buy your GS quartz from the London boutique, they don't charge for battery charges. The salesman said to me that they are only invoiced for the wholesale cost of the parts (two o-rings and the battery) so the cost to them is negligible.
 
#9 · (Edited)
Mine is a JDM model but I sent it back to Seiko service centre about a week ago and it's due back to me on Tuesday, costing £90 plus the £20 it cost for insured postage to get there but for 3 years piece of mind, I'll live with that.
Excellent service too BTW, touch wood!
 
#10 ·
That was an interesting view. I've already got the Casio, and being honest, it's probably all the watch I need, yet it never hardly gets worn. It's purpose is a control timepiece used for setting all the other things around the house, and setting whatever watch I'm wearing for the day. Out of the rest I'd be most tempted by The Citizen, because I like it, it's not fussy, and it's well under the radar. Mind you I also like the Hamilton. 🤔
 
#12 ·
Yes, the new movement makes it a totally different watch, to be honest, and elevates it to a new level. I'm very fond of the watch and despite its battery idiosyncrasy.

If you do the battery exchange yourself, just make sure that you get one that has the best use by date that you can. The new movement really doesn't like anything less than optimum voltage. The last decent battery installed did last three years on mine, so that's something! ...
 
#13 ·
Once upon an o'clock I was quite anti-quartz. They have no soul.

Obviously, no watch has a soul. Arguably people don't either, what I mean is that quartz watches have no personality. They are the John Majors of wrist worn horology. They just do the job they are given in an utterly unexciting manner. They woudn't for example, hold an illicit party, or give away the Chagos islands (then agree to pay a small fortune to rent them back) whilst you back was turned.

Quartz is dull. Quartz's idea of living dangerously would be to seduce Edwina Currie.
<<shudder>>

So I concentrated my collecting on the mechanical.

And then I came across the combination of Richard Arbib's cases and the Hamilton 500 series.

For those that don't know Richard Arbib's designs were a sublime slice 50's futuristic folly and the 500 was the worlds first electric watch. Electric, not electronic. The latter uses transistors, the former is just switches and electro-magnets.

If the inaccuracies of a mechanical watch give that watch a soul. Then Hamilton collected souls and poured them into the 500. Positional variations, iso-chronism, temperature variations and, let's face it, the fact the 500 is so unreliable give these watches more charactor than you'd want. The 500 is more unpredicatble than the bastard child of Trump and Truss.

From a rather lovely, but reliably unreliable Sealectric, I quickly graduated to a ESA9162 Omega. These watches use a tuning fork as their mechanical delay. But vibrating at 300Hz, a mechanical switch was no longer sufficient to control the electro-magnet that wibbles the tuning fork. A transistor replaces the 500's switch and the movement is now electronic.

I still had a thing against soul-less quartz.

More tuning fork watches were acquired. Mostly 916x base Omegas, but I couldn't resist a Bulova with a 214. It's inferior to the 916x in many ways. The 916x's tuning fork has counter weights to cancel out the 7-ish seconds per day of positional error that you can get with the 214. The only quantifiable way that the 214 is better is that you can see the gubbins through it's Spaceview case.

And then I had a bit of an "Oh my!" moment. I came across the Omega Electroquartz. Part tuning fork, part quartz, part eye-watering repair bill waiting to happen. The second hand of this movment has the characteristic super smooth sweep of a tuing fork watch, as the drive motor is pure tuning fork technology. Except that the vibrating element is just a torsion bar, not a tuned fork designed to ring at 300hz. Instead a quartz crystal and primitive I.C. drive the torsion bar at 256Hz.

It was my first special and cherished vintage quartz watch.

Next came a Omega Seamaster Mariner (196.0054) with a Omega 1310 inside. This watch has the jerky second hand of quratz watches that grates against the nerves. But in it's defence the 1310 is bonkers. See here for the user manual: http://www.old-omegas.com/1310-2en.html , I've never come across another movement like it. How they could make the setting of a simple three hander so complicated I will never understand. I love that 70's madness.

So then I had two vintage quartz watches. In a separate search for something a bit different to by I was looking at Grand Seikos. They were out of my price range. "I know, I'll try buying direct from Japan."

And then I had three vintage quartz. GS was still more than I wanted to spend. But I'd discovered the Seiko Grand Quartz. In their day, GQ were more expensive than GS. My 1978 GQ has a 9943 movement. Thermally compensated to be accurate to +/-10 seconds per year. 10s per year in 1978! Yes, it's got the grating jumpy second hand, but that movement is a seriously impressive piece of horology and I love it for that. Well OK, that and the way it looks.

Not sure what's next for me. I don't have another quartz watch in my sights, but who knows...
 
#14 ·
Great story 😎
Those 1970s quartz watches were amazing, they were so expensive they were made without compromise to be the best movement possible at the time.
Of course some of them still run very well, and they are serviceable.

In a way it is a shame most quartz movements became so cheap, but they did make inexpensive accurate watches available to the masses.

Like many others the single tick used to annoy me, but knowing my GS actually moves twice per second, but so fast I can't see it and with no visible wobble makes me appreciate it now. Also it hits every marker every time round the dial, I think that in a way is more impressive than the sweep. It's like the days before quartz when Rolex and others charged extra for a tru-beat(?) movement that had an extra complication to move once per second 🤔