Yesterday, I published an article on MotoringExposure about buying watches under 1000 USD. There are a lot of offers, but which one satisfies the watchfreak?

Browsing the internet and going through several annual catalogues, I came up with the Glycine Incursore ‘Black Jack’, the Sinn 656 and the Tissot PRS516 Automatic Chronograph. All three very different watches, but are all ’serious’ timepieces under 1000 USD and follow my own 5 defined rules for this quest:

1. It should be a (respected) Swiss or German brand
2. A mechanical movement (Swiss/German origin), ETA2824 or ETA6498 for example
3. No plastic parts on the outside (excludes Swatch for example)
4. Stainless steel casing
5. Sapphire crystal

Of course, there are numerous great alternatives, but I had to make choices

Please read the article by clicking here

Today, WorldTempus put my latest Chronicle on-line. This article (or Chronicle, as WorldTempus calls them) is about Bremont watches. I wrote about Bremont before (here and here), but in this Chronicle I wonder whether people are going to choose for a Bremont over a watch of one of the established brands. So, is this Bremont ALT1-P for example the new Flieger Chronograph in town?

Bear Grylls, wearing his Bremont chronograph!

Click here to read ‘Bremont – a new Flieger’ over at WorldTempus.com

Last week, I was browsing through the monthly stash of watch magazines that enters my house. I don’t know about you, but unlike the advertizements in other type of magazines, I actually like looking at watch advertizements. One of the advertizements that stopped me from quickly flipping pages was this Audemars Piguet advertizement. Since I own one of their watches, I am extra vulnerable for their ads in magazines

I was immediately catched by the great combination of the cream dial, brown subregisters and blue hands, hour markers and (internal) bezel. The brown croco strap with blue stitching completes the watch. Although I wonder if I will still like the blue accents in 5 years from now, I think they are great looking now! If I could spend 20.500 USD (and probably more if you can find one of the 300 pieces) on a watch anyway, I probably couldn’t care less.

Anyway, I wondered what the Montauk Highway was, since I never had heard of it. After I looked it up on wikipedia, I kept wondering what on earth is so special about this 100 miles highway. The official press release has the following to say about the Montauk Highway:

“For New Yorkers, the Montauk Highway represents an escape from the rigors of the daily grind, a passage to an oasis where water laps lazily at the docks and boats dot the horizon. In this atmosphere, time extends and contracts in dreamlike proportions. Audemars Piguet set out to capture this spirit of weekend getaways and clambakes on the beach, succeeding with characteristic polish and flair.”

Whatever. Just another lame excuse to create a great looking watch in only a limited production number. The watch is (or was..) only available through London Jewelers in East Hampton and South Hampton and at the Audemars Piguet boutiques in both New York and Bal Harbour.

One of the things that do make me wonder, is why Audemars Piguet is using this ‘basement’-construction for their date window. It seems that their inhouse chronograph movement caliber 3216/3840 (based on base caliber 3120) is constructed in such a way, that the date wheel is somewhere down in the movement (hence ‘Basement’-construction). No wonder a cyclops is needed to show the date. Besides that, the inhouse movement is being respected a lot amongst watch collectors. The gold rotor has both family weapons engraved, which is very nice to look at. However, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Montauk Highway (APROOSMH in short) has a stainless steel case back, so you’ll have to do it with this picture below:

Again, too bad that they saved this version of the Royal Oak Offshore for a very limited production to honor a highway somewhere because I am really liking it and chances are little that I actually can see one up close.

Looking at this watch makes me want to wear my AP RO even more, but I guess I’ll have to wait another few weeks until it returns from the Audemars Piguet dealer, since it needed a bit of regulation (and AP needs 6-8 weeks for this… ).

When I started ‘collecting’ wrist watches, I never considered Oris as a serious option. They made nice mechanical watches, had nice designs, but brands that ‘do’ doublé or plaque gold cases were off-limit. I also wasn’t very convinced about the quality of the watches.

Perhaps I didn’t do Oris any justice, because afterall, this brand exists since 1904 and have this ‘only mechanical movements’ philosophy. Anyway, I skipped Oris and rather went with brands like Omega (when they were still very affordable).

Since a few years, you can’t deny the fact that Oris upscaled in terms of quality and image. Their collection became a bit more ‘of this time’ and became a serious ‘entry-level’ watch, where – perhaps a bold statement – Omega stood before with their 1500 Euro Seamaster or Speedmaster Automatics (Reduced), there is now Oris. Omega up scaled, ruling out some of their previous clientèle, and now they can go Oris if they want. At least, that’s how I see it in a nutshell.

Oris gained a lot of respect amongst watch collectors and aficionados that are looking for a decent sports watch, for a fair price. Popular Oris watches are their divers watches and chronograph watches. Oris connected their name to the F1 Williams team since a few years and this partnership really bumped their chronograph collection to a new level. The Oris TT3 Chronograph is the watch I selected over at Ace Jewelers to have a closer look at.

This Oris TT3 Chronograph is massive! The watch measures 42.5mm in diameter, which is as big as the IWC Ingenieur 3227-01 or the IWC Portuguese Automatic. The case is made out of titanium and is black plated, which gives it this ’stealth but still aggressive’-look. The pushers and crown are stainless steel and rose gold plated. I wonder why they still use the plated gold stuff, it looks good, but I wonder if it keeps looking that way. Time will tell and I assume that Oris has thought this over.

The dial of the watch is simply stunning, this is very hard to capture in a picture (as always). Through its sapphire AR coated crystal, you’ll see the black carbon fibre dial with its rose gold Arabic numerals and Super Luminova dots and filled hands for luming up in the dark. The date window on a chronograph to me is almost a no go, but Oris managed it to have it placed in such away, that it isn’t disturbing when reading the time or chronograph hands. It doesn’t bother at all.

Having Oris compared to the former Omega Speedmaster Automatic Reduced, I need to give you some more arguments I guess Oris uses a Oris caliber 674 movement, which is based on the famous ETA (Valjoux) 7750 movement. This movement, in contrast to the movement used by the Speedmaster Reduced, is a true chronograph movement. The movement used by the Speedmaster Reduced was a piggy backing movement. This means that it was a regular (ETA) movement, that could display hours, minutes and seconds, but was completed with a Dubois-Depraz module on top for the chronograph functionality. You can easily identify the use of such modular constructions by the position of the pushers and the winding crown.

When all operating devices are aligned perfectly, it is a true chronograph movement. When they are not, as with the Speedy Reduced, it is a piggy backing movement. The pushers are aligned a bit higher than the crown, when seen from the side (laying on the caseback). I don’t have to tell you that I am in favour of true chronograph movements, even if it was only for the location of the pushers and crown. Not only Omega, but a lot of brands used (and some of them still use) the piggy backing construction. However, Oris don’t.

The rotor of Oris’s mechanical watches are red, this is even a registered trademark by Oris. Although I don’t fancy a display back myself anymore (I got a bit tired of them), I can imagine that a lot of people do like them.

The Oris TT3 Chronograph comes on a rubber strap and a folding buckle. The stainless steel rose gold PVD plated folding clasp works perfectly, no parts sticking into the backside of your wrist (as some do) and the rubber strap makes it a very comfortable watch to wear. Despite the size!

My verdict on this watch is that Oris makes a great, original and modern looking chronograph for a decent price. The list price of this watch is 2.200 Euro. With a bit of bargaining, you will own a fancy looking sports watch that doesn’t make you look funny on a GetToGether for serious watch freaks. The only big con I can come up with is the use of plated gold, perhaps it isn’t even justified saying so, because it is just gut feeling, but I really prefer either stainless steel (PVD’ed or not) or solid gold/platinum. I am also no fan of display backs on fairly common movements, but I can imagine I am in the minority here.

Thanks to AceJewelers for providing the Oris watch and Dimer for making the photos of the TT3.

For 8 long years (2001-2009), Thierry Nataf (ex-CEO of Zenith) did a great job in destroying a brand that was one of the few well respected chronograph manufacturers. With flamboyant designs, parties and ditto prices, Nataf knew how to step on the toes of watch lovers and collectors. Zenith wasn’t Zenith anymore. Although the use of certain high-tech materials were welcome, he succeeded in ruining designs. The Zenith Defy and Defy Xtreme watches really make me wonder what people are thinking when buying this watch. Terrible. Ariel Adams of aBlogToRead once did a nice article on the resemblence between Nataf and that other ‘Precious’ Lover.

Anyway, since I started using Twitter recently, I stumbled upon the website of Honolulu Time Services, a watch dealer based on Hawaii. After browsing the inventory for a while, I clicked ‘Zenith‘ in the hope that at least it wasn’t one of Nataf’s creations. I was happily surprised to see this vintage Zenith El Primero Chronograph!

This vintage beauty is a 18kt gold early Zenith chronograph with the well known El Primero movement. The hour markers and large chronograph second hand give away something about the era of the watch. I suspect that a caliber 3019 PHC movement ticks inside, which later on became the famous caliber 400 El Primero movement. I found a picture of caliber 3019 PHC movement of a similar Zenith chronograph from that era (1969/early 1970s) on Nick Hacko’s website (photo credits go to him):

This fast ticking (36000 beats per hour, instead of the regular 21600 or 18000 bph in those days) movement has a column wheel for the operation of the chronograph. This movement was also base caliber for the El Primero Moonphase, with its caliber 410. The El Primero movement was also sold to other watch brands, like Movado (Datron), Ebel (1911 Chronograph) and ofcourse the famous Rolex Daytona Chronograph that used the Zenith movement in the 1990s. Rolex did downtune the number of beats per hour to 28800. There is no official statement for this, but I suspect it has something to do with their own quality policies.

Anyhows, if you are looking for one of the ‘cult chronographs’ in precious gold, take this vintage Zenith Automatic El Primero Chronograph into consideration. You can do a price inquiry at Honolulu Time Services company for this particular stunner.

Aloha!