crystalcranium

Except....it's not a Venus! As was pointed out to me earlier.....it's a Seagul copy of the Venus 175. I love Ziggy's review of this movement. It's like a high performance racing engine. Fine tune it and service it and it's an animal but should any of th 4 or 5 critical adjustments get out of tune,...you can have problems.

That's because silicone oil is not a polymerizing drying oil. It, in effect, is always wet. Silicone oil contaminated furniture can never be refinished with nitrocellulose lacquers without some pretty intense stripping and sealing protocols. It's not that they are particularily tough as far as abrasion resistance is concerned, just tenacious in remaining on the surface and giving the appearance of polish. Pure Carnuba wax is, in fact very hard and would afford more protection. I guess what I'm saying is that automotive lacquer and silicone do not mix. Very small amounts of silicone contamination can ruin a lacquer application and the amount of effort with chemicals and elbow grease needed to decontaminate a silicone treated surface does not necessarily translate to toughness of finish Lacquered brass is very tarnish and scratch resistant. I'm surprised no one has mentioned the old "clear nail polish" trick.

Customer review of the B&R special edition off PC website "In owers beatiful but unsafe World, to take decision about, if its or not a good idea, to go out with Your beloved and expensive Swiss Watch it's not easy. Now there is a good solution who make possible to use it all days... A Perfect Clone of It !!! Yes, an accurate clone sutch the BR01-92 Ld Ed make it possible and for an affordable cost. The idea is not new, for more them 100 years the finest Jellerys Houses make for there clients accurate clones of diamond rings, pearls necklers, gold jewels, etc. The real ones are in a safe place, at home or in a bank. Afther long years with very bad watch replicas in the market, a new and carefull generation of replacement watches was born - the Perfect Clones. His manager and owner is Joshua. Whit him, its possible to find the clone of Your beloved watch. Maybe is an IWC, an Panerai or an Bell and Ross, maybe is onother one... put the question to Joshua and Your problem about safe is no more a problem !!!" I wonder what he'll think if one of us email him this thread.

They're not dead....they're just restin'!

Nice job and much better and more sensible solution than spraying the inside of the watch with WD-40! I too love feeling my eccentric whirring about inside the watch. Its an automatic mechanical for God's sake.

Sounds like a sensible rep collector

Really not interested in another 7750 debate, ...but if your negative opinion of the movement is based in lousy experiences with the "11 gear modified" Daytona's and not in the unmodified versions, then I'd say you opinion is a bit biased by the worst offender in the Asian 7750 tribe. Ziggy has attested to the 28,000 unmodified Asian 7750 as being a servicable movement. He has also refered to them as being dirty and over oiled and having QC assembly problems...but not necessarily inherent quality problems. I think he's quoted NO returns with his warranty policy on serviced 7750s????? Like I said...I've been lucky perhaps. I've only bought one slightly altered 7750 (3,6,9). Three of the 5 I own run within COSC specs after I adjusted them. I'm not unhappy with my purchases.

The Daytona 6 is a totally different catagory. It is no doubt a piece of crap I would never buy. Ziggy has outlined ad nauseum, the problems with this movement. The OP was talking about unadulterated Asian 7750s

I know...like I said...it's risky..but I felt lucky! Ziggy 7750 overhaul is $175

Of course, our dealer friend Tourbi sells Swiss 7750s!!!!! Get one from a reputable dealer (whew...theres a mouthfull considering certain recent threads!!!) and he will usually have the drop shipper run it for 24 hours first to test function...and then if it's problematic...you have options. DOA watches are usually exchanged no problem. And don't forget to FULLY wind your 7750 on arrival before attempting any chrono functions. There are operational quirks in running the chrono's on less than a full power load that the copy shares with it's genuine cousin.

It's a crap shoot my friend. I've been lucky 4 times out of 5. Some arrive DOA. Quality of parts manufacture seems to be adequete...but assembly, oiling, cleanliness....seems to go in cycles. The good news is that they are, for the most part, serviceable. When you need to have one serviced....and all mechanical watches need to be serviced at some point..you will get a strong reliable runner according to our resident repair expert here. I can only attest to 9 months of trouble free running...but most of these movements that are destined to fail in short order, do so in the first few weeks or so.

Some gold plate would be helped along longevity lines by light cleaning of sweat....some just starts coming off faster if you rub it often. I had an extended phone conversation with the owner of Artisan plating a while back about the quality of import platings. Most are pretty poor. Even the best small scale outfits such as his can only reasonably plate to 5-7 microns which is enough for 10 years of wear for some.....2-4 years of wear for others. Special plate baths for heavier 20 micron platings get pretty prohibitive for watch replating work...upwards of $300+ ....and no guarantee of success. "An asian plated piece is likely to have anything as the base metal" he told me. Use them and throw them away.

I resorted to buying my wife a solid 18K Baume and Mercier for Xmas. She's now mad at me that her vast collection of fashion watches from Brighton, Anne Klein and all the other <$50 watches in her collection sit in her jewelry box. "Every watch I have now pales in comparison to this thing. What have you done to me????" HaHaHaHaHa....another convert in the making!!!! Seduction with forbidden fruit is soooooo sweet!

But it is starting to small a bit...thus my Watergate analogy. I would have no problem with an explaination like "I was told by my supplier this watch would have an ETA ebauche/Asian balance 2892...I've just become aware of negative feedback and have been too busy trying to deal with customer service issues to do website maintainance...we will clear up this discrepency ASAP to maintain the best level of reliability in the replica watch market....etc...etc...etc... As long as they make it right...pretty soon, in my mind not too much damage will have been done.

I would suggest not wearing one....but some have attested to brass base metal tarnishing showing through import gold plate with time and very limited wear. I bought a RG FA Jones and wear it about 10 hours a month and so far....so good.

With some exceptions, gold plate in replicas generally sucks. My genuines have run the gamut as well. I have a plated TT Bulova that's 15 years old and looks like solid gold still and several "President" automatic Seikos that looked like tarnished brass after a couple of years. PVD Titanium Nitride golding is the only way to go when "golding" watches. I have a new PVDed Tissot that's spectacular and I'm assured from manufacturer contacts the coating will last as long as a 100 micron gold plating.

I am dealing with a bad case of misplaced loyalties too. I have done very little dealer criticisim in my time here and have several posts that started with something like "Josh for President....". I'm more than a bit confused and frankly...sad for my dealer friend from whom I've purchased about $1200 worth of watches in the last 9 months with excellent results. This is like Watergate. Fess up now before the cover-up becomes bigger than the crime!!! We'll still love you.

I have an image of several dealers keeping their heads down waiting for the storm to blow over. This one wont until the false claims about this particular watch are corrected.

I'm not sure where this is going but you seem to be doing some backpedaling from your original post so...good. This is about paying $300 for a watch that is supposed to have an ETA movement in it and getting a watch that usually sells for $100. Nothing more.

All's quiet!!! I wouldn't take the risk personally. Moving a running second hand is a recipe for failure. This isnt the Daytona Shuffle but it is far more prone to breakdown than moving a minute subdial that clicks over once a minute and only in operational chrono mode. I don't think the few months this movement has been out there is nearly enough time to sift out the potential problems and failures.

You are condoning misrepresentation by saying ETAlike is close enough for dealers to claim genuine ETA. Like Pugwash said, having a movement that can be serviced is what I'm paying for. My Asian 21js are basically disposable watches and I wont pay more than the market rate for them.

Typical response from someone who's just "damn happy to be here" and doesn't have a clue as to what passion in this hobby means. Why not buy an Invicta and just keep everyone 15 feet away from it? It would save you the obligitory Submariner purchase.

I agree...impressive machines, but the size scale of the mechanical watch lends a "Fantastic Voyage" element to it. I'm not saying mechanical calculators are not cool....just big! I keep thinking of Von Braun and that damn rocket though. Mechanical feedback through a gyroscope moving directional vanes against constant input. Without electronics, how the hell did the German's get V2s to within a few miles of their intended targets from launching sites hundreds of miles away using purely mechanical inputs and reactions at the speed of sound? No wonder they make great watches!

Makes me think about the guys who rebuilt and sucessfully flew Langley's Aerodrome, the one that crashed prior to the Wright Brother's flight, and claimed he actually built the first sucessful flying machine, even though there was the annoying complication that he didn't fly first!!!!! Read somewhere that machine could do calculations to 30+ decimel places....but was operated by a crank and required thousands of revolutions for such a calculation!

I have several of the same quality. Sometimes they look like the little engine that could, struggling to get 400 grams of watch through a revolution. I fully expect them to be disposable. Any winder that is angled is not efficient. The best winders rotate in a plane that has the dial perpendicular to the floor. Another solution I found for this is to place my watches dial up laying on an orbital laboratory shaker. They have to be bidirectional movements since the rotator only moves counterclockwise.