w0lf

Afaik, it's the same as contemporary crystal. 3.5mm center, ~2.95mm at the edge, 35.5mm diameter.

OP 6617 G0616/1000 is the one you're looking for.

There were 2 EL 005 casebacks. the 1st one was the infamous 0348 serial for 201/a that he mistakenly put on 005's then there was one that he replaced it with for people that complained. I think it was a G serial.

My 2c - I wouldn't try to emulate aged and worn in AlN look, I would just attempt the best heaviest coat from the OEM factory. I think the most authentic patina can only be acquired by natural wear and tear, and I know Rolex folks will agree with me on that. Put this 203/a on your off hand and wear it everywhere, get it broken in and beat up doing yard work or whatever other manual labor you're into. In my opinion no creative use of capecod, brillo and oxiclean can ever match the natural unforced randomness of a well worn, well traveled piece.

Yep, sure as hell beats your sterile one that you had on it

I'm not jealous, W, - the icon is "wub"

Allright, this one's officially finished now Speedy fixed the crystal for me so I added a few pics in the 1st post to show off the crystal and a few extra tidbits while I was at it.

Ohh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!

Looks great! Are you satisfied with the quality of Jakob's caseback?

Hahaha, R, you just picked up a shimmering hot 201/A from Spinmaster - enjoy that one for a bit Maybe we can swap when we both get tired of ours.

Great, please keep us posted, Serotonin. I'm still thinking about the shallow dish recess issue, I would really love to use this with JF CG but I understand the challenges and the compromise that needs to be made. If at all possible I would like to see a reissue of the traditional non-spring loaded deep recess T48 with correct bevel for JF or Gen CG owners.

Oncyte, There were oldschool cases that came with with an awesome CG body, good pin placement (slightly toward the top of CG instead of dead center), albeit the lever tip was a bit too thin on them. So I figured you either used a brushed SS CG or one of those good Ti CGs with and did a lever swap to brushed SS lever or some magic Ti lever I've not seen before. And yeah, there's no AR on C models. A/R starts with D series in manual winds.

That's Oncyte's trademark background Stunning watch, love the CG, did the lever come with this CG initially?

Thanks very much for this super-generous offer, S! It would be interesting to compare next to each other. P.S. I find that this page on Panerai Carpe Diem is the best page to showcase PreA dial texture. It's actually meant to show close ups of hands but as a welcome side effect you can observe dials close up.

Well, never say never, right But I'd like to enjoy it a bit. I pondered varnish coating the dial but from my past experiences it rarely is a worthwhile endeavor and The Zigmeister concurred when I asked him about it. The dial may acquire excess texture or change colors from rich black to charcoal grey or worse - dark brown. So I think I'm going to leave it stock especially since it looks like this in direct sun -

To add to Babola's statement above, the 209 & 210 preV models also come in a contemporary long-lug case set single screw design akin to OP6500. W's case is for 201/a,202/a,203/a,205a,207/a models.

I guess the price tag is reasonable but that's not the issue. I keep looking at the watch and noticing more stuff I don't like, for example the rehaut is deeper than a mineshaft, it's appears like 10mm tall in the lume shot and side profile. In the end this it what happened with my 27A. Even after modding the crown, CG, datewheel and shaping the case I couldn't get past all the other little things that were off on it that I couldn't fix. Overall for someone not as anal as I, the 27A it is a phenomenal value out the box and a watch that will last and last as I'm sure these daylights will. Mickey, you were the 1st to review DSN's 27A, care to be the guinnea pig once again?

$860 is the price.

Ohh yeah, it looks like everything is going to come in this case now. He'd been using the same case maker for automatic SS cases since last June or so. So far 27,28 and now 188, 196 come in it.

I dunno guys, I want a 196 but I'll wait to see the price. I think these are overall slightly better OTB than cartel's previous offering but not better than the best watch honpo in any respect other than the dial. To me the show stoppers are the the case, belezel egraving and L S M L font. Everything else is fixable to some extent.

B, RE: the destro dial, I thought so too, I guess we need to ask him. That picture was in the pool of newly uploaded pictures along with all the daylights so I'm not sure.

Ok, I had a little bit of time to look at DSN's model and it does appear that the bezel fonts and tachy #'s placement is off. In addition it looks like L S M L is once again an Arial or similar family font.. Why ohh why cant you get it right. BTW the CG is not all that bad.. Not sure if the daylight got affected in the G year by CG transition from cont. to historic so it might be OK. I'd like to hear what chrono experts have to say about these.

Can someone elaborate what's wrong with the bezel aside from slightly thicker font? I don't have access to photobucket at work.

Snrubb, The 6 o'clock subdial is lumed on the 250 not 196. I didn't have time to examine these before I ran off to work this morning but what I noticed was 188 had a extra 0 in the millesimation run # on the caseback but I wasn't going to get a 188 anyway so at least for me it's a non-issue The crown will get swapped immediately (Tourby we neeeeeeed your spring loaded T48!) so the CG cutout is not going to seem so large. The lume will be good enough not to worry about a re-lume, the dial & hands are excellent. The bezel profile is tall just like on gen and the old honpo case. The caseback will probably be thinner than the real deal and the A/R remains to be seen, however DSN has made some great advancements in his A/R so this one might be just right. The case has a rather pronounced strap notch but if I know anything about DSN cases, the strap will mount so close to the case - you might not even see it. All in all depending on the price point I think we may have a very nice offering. al, hold your horses mister, we'll get 2 and save on MG fees

Thought I'd share what I woke up to this morning: PAM188G PAM196G Both with ETA7753! I can see some flaws right away but all in all I'm very pleasantly surprised. Also, looks like a destro 'mellow yellow' T-S-T dial has been brought back! It'll need a re-lume and -,- removal but it's a treat like no other! It's exciting times! Update - the price is $860