Dudemeister

What you have is what is commonly known as a "Faux Chrono" watch with a 21J asian movement most likely. In other words, the chrono sub-dials do not function as a read stop watch, rather they can be manually set to show the day/date and 24 hour time. On a real chrono watch (usually one that has a A7750 or similar movement), the large seconds hand is normally stopped at 12:00, and it goes in motion only when you start the stop watch with the pusher at 2:00, and can be rest with the pusher at 4:00. The small seconds sub-dial at 9:00 is the one that is constantly running (hence the running seconds @ 9).

Well, I forgot to check the watch last night at 10:00PM, but this morning at 11:30 AM, I checked it and the watch is 16 seconds fast. Therefore over a 181.5 hour period, it gained 16 seconds, so the hourly deviation is 0.089 seconds, daily deviation is 2.13 seconds! So what do you think, should I apply for a COSC certificate. ? I'm happy with it the way it is. I also took some long exposure pictures, which show this watch has a very smooth sweep, more than likely 8 ticks per second. Is it a 28,800 bph ? I don't know, but I'm not planning on replacing it anytime soon.

First let me say that I love the idea of the long time exposure to capture the ticks, I don't know why I didn't thin of that. I don't have a high end SLR digital camera, but I tried different settings with my little Kodak and I think I managed to get the proof. I'm not convinced that the movement I got is not a DG4813, it sure looks like it, and I doubt that Ofrei would pull off a switch, they are far too reputable a company to stoop to this kind of thing. But I also know this watch only ticks 6 times per second which would indicate it's not a 28,800 bph movement. I also took pics of my "cheap" SOSF, which is supposed to have a Asian 21J in it. This always looked to my untrained eye as a very smooth sweep. The pictures show a nice continuous blur, I can't make out any individual ticks, so I assume that it's because it has more ticks per second (8 perhaps ?? ) I will definitely go back to Ofrei and have them test the movements right there. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'll be able to convince them to take it back. They never claim the DG4813 is a 28,800 movement. In fact I didn't see one single claim about the beat of this movement anywhere on any vendor's web site. The only specifications given are the diameter, the height, the hands size, and the number of jewels (22). All the talk about it being 28,800 has come from various postings on this and other forums. Anyway, that's about it for me, I'm done with this movement. If I ever decide to improve on something I bought, I'll go for a real ETA movement.

So are we the only ones that are recognizing this problem? Is everyone else under the false impression their 4813 movements are better than their 2813 (21,600), when in fact it's probably the same thing? Has anyone actually put one on an electronic timer to verify the beat? Here are the possibilities as I see them: DG4813 is a 21,600 BPH movement which could account for the 6 tick per second. DG4813 is a 28,800 BPH movement but what we got is not a DG4813, in which case Ofrei needs to fix the problem DG4813 is indeed a 28,800 BPH, but due to different gearing it only ticks 6 times per sec. instead of 8. In which case, what's the point of using it, considering all the other "shortcomings". There really are more than one version of the DG4813, and we have the wrong one. I plan on going back to Ofrei one of these days and asking them to test the movement. The problem is that they're only open 'till 5:00PM, so I have to take time off work to go there. I'll keep everyone posted once I find out more info.

I don't have a Photobucket account, I usually host my own stuff. Anyway, after talking to the tech at Ofrei, and seeing the catalog of chinese movements, there doesn't appear to be a different 4813, just one. The version with taller stems and cannon are just modes made to accommodate the use of this movement on more than one watch type, but ultimately, that doesn't change the movement's beat. So I somehow doubt that the movement I'd get from ETZ would have a different sweep than the one I have. Perhaps there are movements which vibrate at 28,800, but do not sweep smoothly, just the same that there are 21,600 movements that look much smoother than the regular asian 21J. Here are some pics of the movement, as well as the video. The video is in Quicktime format, and was slowed down to about 20% the original speed (about 4fps). DG4813 Movie I fthe video doesn't stream properly, just right click on the link and save it.

Before you go and get another DG4813, read my thread on the DG4813. The ones I bought from OFREI do not appear to be ticking at 8 ticks per second. They only manage 6 ticks per second like a 21,600BPH movement. DG4813 - 6 or 8 ticks per second? I'm not sure why that is, but the movement is a DG4813. AS for what other option there are, I would suggest an ETA 2824-2 or 2836-2. They do not require you to change the stems or canons. The only problem you may have is the diameter of the minute and seconds hand shaft holes. The DG2813/4813 are listed as 100/150/17, the ETA are 90/150/25. What I THINK that means is the hour hand fits fine, the minute hand is too loose, the seconds hand will be too tight. Someone who know please correct me if I'm wrong

Well guys, your hearing must be real good. Me on the other hand after 50 years or so of auditory abuse (loud rock concerts, swimmers ear and so on), I can't hear a damn thing. Much as I tried I cannot hear the movement at all. I have a pocket watch that I can hear just fine, but not these watch movements. But that is why I did the video test I talked about. That shows the second hand clearly ticking only 6 times per second. I'm trying to figure out how to post that video, so that you can see what I'm talking about.

I know that the DG4813 is listed as a 28,800 BPH movement, but is it? Has anyone actually put one on a timer to see what it vibrates at? I recently purchased 2 DG4813 movements from Otto Frei. I know that the stem/cannon are too short for most uses, but I wanted to see if I can make one work in my submariner anyway. Before taking the sub apart, I wanted to check the sweep on the new movement, so I attached a dial and a seconds hand I had around from a donor watch. To my surprise, the sweep is no different than the existing Asian 21J (which I assume is a DG2813). I looked at it from every angle , compared it to other watches, and I could see it's not as smooth as the other watches that have a 28,800 movement like and A7750. I then decided on a test to make sure my eyes don't deceive me. I video taped the movement, then opened the video in a editor (Adobe Premiere). Using the frame advance I moved through the video one frame at the time while counting the second hand ticks. I first counted the ticks over a period of 5 seconds, then 15 seconds. I got 30 and 90 ticks respectively. That is exactly 6 ticks per second, NOT 8 like a 28,800 BPH movement is supposed to do. The question is does a 28,800 BPH movement ALWAYS tick 8 times per second, or can you have one that only has 6 ticks/second? Needless to say I'm very disappointed, and I don't plan to bother opening the Submariner until I get a real ETA. Comments from the watch Gurus please ?!

I live in San Francisco, which is just across the bay from Oakland, where Otto Frei is located. When I went there a couple of weeks back and bought the DG4813, I started talking to one of their guys about the long version stem/cannon of the 4813. He showed me the catalog and the specs of the DG4813. There seems to be only one "official" DG4813. According to the Ofrei guy, if someone is selling a version with a longer cannon, it's a home grown modification, it's not the standard off the shelf version. He also said that many times the Chinese factories that churn out the replicas will use an existing movement and make slight modifications to match it to a particular replica. So more than likely the long cannon versions were specially modified to fit a particular case/replica, and a few bare movements found their way in the channel, but if you're going to try and source a "official" DG4813 from regular channels/dealers, it will come with the short cannon.

So here you go vlydog, the confirmation you needed. THis is almost surely an attempt to hijack you PayPal account. COntact them immediately and get this taken care of. Remember your PP account is tied to your bank account or credit cards, etc. They (the hackers) can clean you and you bank account in mere seconds if left unattended. Let us know how this turns out. We wish you the best of luck.

Looks exactly like the ones I bought from Ofrei, except mine came in the plastic round yellow half shell boxes.

This sounds very much like what happened to me a couple of years ago. Someone managed to somehow get a hold of my PayPal account and used to buy pre-paid domain hosting. I was able to get PayPal to reverse the charges, but it took almost a month for my account to be unfrozen and returned to normal. It's not usually the hosting company that is doing tthis but some individual that managed to crack into your account. My suggestion is to immediately call PayPal, and have them dispute the charge with the hosting company. at the same time, you'll need to put a temp on any transactions on your account and change all the passowrds. Good luck to you, I know what this is like. The got me for nearly $600 when it happened to me, but I was lucky and got my money back.

Oh Man, I nearly peed myslef laughing at this. This is absolutely hilarious !!

Well, if they ever do actually fix that, you guys will probably have to thank me. I'm the one who sent Tony Feng the photos you saw earlier and the enlargement of what the logo font is supposed to look like. Before that he insisted the factory had it right and the dial was "perfect". Hell... Tony should send me the first watch for free for doing their job... (and further inspection and QC)

Unfortunately, I don't have this movement in my hands, I'm looking to buy it, but I'm not sure it's a copy or the real thing. The vendor wants $80 each, which would be worth it if it's the real mcCoy, but not if it's a clone. They only have one other picture posted, but you can only see a partial image of one of the gears you'tre talking about. Here it is:

Can anyone tell me if this is a real ETA movement, or is it a clone. Does the PH next to the ETA logo represent a specific factory (like in the Phillipines)? If this were a true chinese clone, I would doubt they would put something like this PH on it, they'd make sure it's exactly like the Swiss one. So what do you guys think ? real or fake, and what does the PH mean? Thanks

How did you get a SMP dial with Superlume? The one I have is anything but. I mean it has lume, but it's not even close to Superlume. The hands seem to have better lume than the dial, which starts to fade within seconds of turning out the light. BTW, it's the Omega logo font they used that is wrong. The original has the letters tied together through the center, whereas the rep has the letters tied at the bottom. Take a look at the pics below, and you'll see what I mean. If I ever come across a correct replacement dial or maybe just the logo, I'll probably do the swap, but until then I'm not going to sweat it.

Well, I don't have any means to test this as the COSC would, but in my informal "long" test which began this past Saturday at 10PM, I set the watch to the second using the US Time web page.. I then proceeded to wear the watch during the day, and setting it down before going to bed every evening. So the watch is getting an approximate "usage model" of 2/3 on the wrist, 1/3 on the table resting face up. I would say that this is typical use that most of us adhere to (unless you like sleeping with your watch on). I plan on using it this way for a week, and posting the final results, but as of tonight at 9:00PM (almost 4 days), the total deviation is about 7 seconds. So I think I'll take that. It looks very consistent at the moment. I was planning on replacing the movement with a ETA 2836-2 I just bought, but seeing how well this one works, I'll wait for now. BTW, does anyone know if the hands from the DG2813 will fit the ETA? Also, where can I find a movement "fitting" ring for the ETA? The original movement has a plastic ring, but I don't think that will fit the ETA all that well, besides I'd rather have a metal ring.

OMG... NO DUDE... you got this wrong, while we may sit here and nit pick at this or that, this is still a fantastic watch, and a joy to own. I have the new SMP, the one with the wrong font, yet I'm still happy with it. 99.5% of the population will never know this is a rep, they're just not as informed as the people here. While no rep is ever "perfect", these are great watches. We're only pointing out these flaws so that we can give you an informed starting point as to which one you might want to buy, not to scare you away from buying it. While we may be talking about this and that being a glaring flaw, they're so small, they're microscopic. Without the real thing to compare it to, and without a magnifier, and without prior knowledge of where to look, you wouldn't see or know the difference. Let's face it, most of us here are just "anal" about our hobby. Edit: Regarding the HE valve, it's exactly at 10 o'clcok on the new SMP. The only thing I'm curious about (and someone who know for sure please chime in), is the valve stem supposed to be embossed with "He" or the Omega logo?

There are a few differences to be sure. The old watch had a very accurate dial, but the bracelet had screws instead of pins, (the original uses pins). The new watch has fixed some previous oversights, It uses pins on the bracelet instead of screws, it has better AR, it also has the new Anti-counterfeit logo on the case, BUT, and this a major bug, the Omega font is completely wrong. On the original watch, the letters are interconnected through the middle, the rep font has the letters interconnecting from the bottom. Unfortunately, it's now nearly impossible to find the older rep. I tried ordering it from 3 different deals that still show it on their web sites, but neither of them actually had it and all offered the new version instead.

So what you're saying is that there probably is no simple way of adjusting the watch any further, and that in its current state is more than acceptable. I'll buy that (for now). I need to start doing some similar testing on the other watches I have. Here is something interesting. I have a cheap, PVD Daytona with faux chronos which is probably powered by something similar to the DG2813. I never opened that watch and I only wore it maybe less than a week before I put it in my watch winder, where it's been sitting for the last 2 months. As a habit I set my watches to the second prior to putting them in winder. I just checked it, and it's 45 seconds slow. That puts the accuracy of this watch to less then 1 second per day !! Not bad for a $80 watch. Some of the other watches I looked at are near right on (10-15 seconds) but they have only been in the winder for less than a week. I'll have to check them.

I have a lot of hobbies, many of which seem to collect items which take up a lot of space (RC helicopters and cars, guitars, guns, DVDs, laserdiscs and others), so when I got into watch collecting she thought it would be a better choice since watches don't take up as much space as the other stuff. The fact that she also ended up with a couple of nice watches didn't hurt either. But, if she knew how much I spent on these watches she might reconsider...

Yes, I'm aware that a mechanical watch will probably never be as accurate as a quartz, but it still has the potential for good accuracy. I mean what did we do before the advent of the quartz watch. Were we condemned to loosing seconds here and minutes there and never knowing what the correct time was? A watch that is 5 seconds per day too slow will loose nearly 1/2 hour in a year, while the guy next to you who's watch is running 5 seconds too fast, could be an hour ahead of yours, yet you'd both be wrong. What if you didn't have a means to re-sync your watch? Like the song says: "Does anybody really know what time it is?"... ...Anyway I'm digressing... You're right, I don't expect a cheap mass manufactured movement like the 2813 or whatever that is inside my watch to be able to achieve Gen like accuracy, I'm just trying to learn "what make it tick" if you'll pardon the pun. If I was able to adjust it to within 2-3 seconds for one position, how can I adjusted for another position without screwing up the first adjustment. That's what I'm after. If I was after quartz like accuracy, I'd still be wearing my Seikos (which I still do occasionally), but I can also appreciate a miniature mechanical wonder, which is why I'm here.

OK, but if I adjust it so that it's more accurate while I'm wearing it, it will then start loosing time while it's just sitting there. So is adjustment going to be an exercise in compromise? Or is there a way to reduce the discrepancy. I've heard people talking about watches being "out of beat" referencing the watch not beating properly at it's native BPS (21,600 or 28,800). Could this discrepancy be the result of that?

I recently purchased a low cost Breitling SFSO from one our members, and I really like the watch. After setting it , I noticed that it was running quite fast. It would gain about 10-12 seconds per day, so I thought that I would give it a try at adjusting the regulator. While the movement doesn't have a proper regulator system, it can still be adjusted by simply moving the balance spring lever. Here is what I did (Picture courtesy Cousins UK): After going at it it for a couple of days, I was able to get the adjustment almost dead on. The watch is still fast, but it gains about 3 seconds per 48 hours. Happy the results I started wearing the watch, only to notice that it started gaining again. Not as bad as before, but it still gains about 10 seconds every 48 hours. I put the watch on the bench and synchronized it again to US Time. After 48 hours it about 3 seconds. So obviously the the movement behaves differently depending whether it's being worn or not. So here is the question, why would it run faster while it's being worn (to me it's counter intuitive), and is there a way to minimize that difference. Thanks