atomic_doug

Has this ever happened to anyone else? I have a never ending Pre-V 201/A project going and in doing a test-fitting, I had to button everything up. The case is an older 111, the crown tube is DSN. The crown is currently one of DSN's newer spring-loaded crowns. The stem is straight and squarely installed in the crown. The movement is well-secured and lined-up in the case. Yet, when I wind the watch, it's obvious that the crown appears "tilted". It looks like it's wobbling on the axis of the stem. When the crown guard is in the closed position, the crown sits perfectly flush. Moreover, when I get near the end of the winding, the crown feels noticeably harder to wind at a certain point in its rotation; additionally, when I completely un-wind the movement and let the crown spin freely backwards, it doesn't unwind smoothly, hesitating at a certain point in the crown's rotation. If, while winding the watch, I let go of the crown when it's in that certain stiff position, it will turn itself back a few degrees, as if it's been left under tension. Could this be a function of the crown tube being crooked? The crown itself is defective? Is it something really obvious that I'm missing? I'm puzzled by this one. Any help, fellows?

Here's my completed rep-turned-Frankenstein of one of my favorite Omegas, reference 2538.20 Seamaster 300M GMT, a.k.a. the Great White. The repro case is actually quite nice and quite close to gen, though the dial and handset are pretty bad in comparison to gen. The gen hands, in particular have a domed-black lacquer at the edges. The whole piece has great wrist-presence without being too ostentatious; always a risk with a gleaming white dial. It started over a year ago as a basic OTB rep, when I found the gen dial and handset available on Ofrei. So I got those. Then I bought an ETA 2893 to ft it...and a gen crown...and a gen bracelet. A little bit of casework got the case up to snuff and nicely brushed. It's been pressure tested it to 100m and got the crystal AR'd colorless. It's as accurate as anything else with an ETA2893, but it doesn't have the Rolex GMT-style functionality, since that is an exclusive-to-Omega modification of the 2893, so the GMT hand is slaved to the hour hand and not the other way around. I can live with that. Sorry for the miserable pictures.

Your wife needs to get some sun, dude.

DSN is really great for parts, but complete watches, not so much. Some things will be great, like his crystals (but not his AR) or crown guards, and others will be maddeningly inaccurate. I understand his Ti cases are quite good. I don't like his most recent dials. The lettering is far too rounded and the indices have these odd channels cut around them in what I can only assume is an attempt to mimic the sunken look of the older sausage dials' lume.

An invisible watch?! Egad! There's no way to tell it's not gen except the price!

Even the Paneristi wouldn't spot it 99% of the time unless they personally had the model on them and could compare. Without a point of reference, it's incredibly difficult to tell unless they're super-nitpicky...and if they know ahead of time it's a rep, then they'll be on the lookout, even going so far as to spot flaws that aren't there. (And what are the odds of running into one of the 300 people on this earth who have one of these watches on the day that they're wearing them?) The same goes doubly for the Pre-V models. They are so rare and they were all hand-made that the variance between them is absurd. Fat numbers, skinny numbers, varying degrees of patination, some dials were shipped without having been varnished, some movements were left unfinished. They used three different companies to PVD their cases so there's tremendous variance there too, from pencil-gray to glossy black. Get past the obvious tells and you've got a pretty convincing piece. I'm sure we all have stories of someone being fascinated by one of our watches, thinking it's a gen and all you can see is the glaring flaws. "Oh geez, I hope they don't notice that the crown spacing is totally off and that the crystal is sitting too high above the bezel."

The difference in price isn't that big, especially considering what an out-of-the-box ETA movement costs. Any watchmaker can work on ETA parts and the parts are much easier to come by. To wit, asking for a balance wheel for an ETA 2824 is easy and specific, asking for a part for an "Asian 21-Jewel automatic movement" is pretty vague. Sellita may not have the big-name recognition of ETA, but they are still Swiss and they do take their Swiss-made bonafides seriously. With ETA scaling back their sales of movements, Sellita will become much bigger maker of movements, whereas in years previous, they've been more of a modification house (for companies like B&R and Oris). It's not really about reliability or accuracy, as anything well-made is reliable and accurate; it's about reliability when it needs service. I know a lot of watch repairmen don't want to touch a rep, but a lot of them feel more inclined to service a movement they know rather than an unknown Chinese movement. (Then again, there are dozens of highly qualified watch repairmen who need the work.) If you really like the rep and want to keep it long-term, you'll start thinking about swapping in a Swiss movement anyway, and the conversion isn't always trivial, in parts or in cost. (To that end, I really do wish the rep makers would at least say Hangzhou 9312 or whatever they use instead of "Asian Unitas". )

Thanks. It's always nice to feel welcome. I'll post some pics in the Omega area.

Yep, we're on the same page now. Apologies if I was unclear. Either way, though. It's a great OTB piece.

The 360 is a beautiful watch, to be sure and the rep is quite good...except for the hands. The gen uses the pre-V style hands where the lume-strip extends into the triangle. It's an easy fix, DSN sells them. More important, though, is the pencil-lead shade of the PVD coating, which I believe they've got right. It's an excellent rep, overall. BBQ, by the way, was Bob Quapaw, who was one of the earliest and most influential members of the Paneristi community. He died in '09. The 360 also precipitated a huge series of flame wars on Paneristi because the distribution wasn't truly as random as members were led to believe. The more influential members were guaranteed theirs and many old-time members figured they were in this "inner circle" and were humiliated when it turned out that they weren't. Several long-term members left because of this, or left because of the subsequent bickering. Panerai haven't confirmed it, but the Paneristi suspect that not all 300 pieces have been distributed yet.

I believe you misunderstand me on the functioning of the 2836 or we're talking past each other. On a 2983, the hour hand is slaved to the GMT hand. It is, in effect, a 24-hour watch. The GMT module on the 2836 effectively has two independent hour hands, one of which is a 24 hour hand. It works perfectly well, just differently from the gold standard for GMT movements (i.e. Rolex-style). As for its reliability, I agree that the design is inherently flawed but not to the point where it would decrease service intervals. LeSchot has been making GMT modules for the 2836 for years and it's considered reliable enough for production and long-term use. I've serviced a few, myself.

I just got mine in the mail from Angus. I can second that the quality is outstanding. The case is very evenly forged, the crystal is evenly installed, the crownguard snaps nicely into place, smoothly and tightly. The build was also very well done. All the fasteners and the caseback were tightened to spec and the whole thing was surgically clean. No fingerprints, no stray dust, nothing. I can comment on the lume color being correct. The 29's from the A and B series had a goofy too-green look, so the gen. 29M has it too. The rep's lume strength is not what a gen's is, but the color is right. I got mine with the Swiss movement, since swapping out a gen-correct ETA 2893 would not be trivial (or inexpensive.) The ETA 2836-2 with the GMT module is well-known and reliable (there are some "real" companies that use it.) It does "snap" from hour to hour when changing the GMT hand. The only thing that makes it not a true GMT is that the hands aren't linked, I suppose. As long as it's reliable, though, it doesn't bother me. The little issues: the cyclops doesn't seem to be quiiiite in the right position, the AR is an ugly yellowish tint (though I have seen that on plenty of gens), and the rehaut is quite deep, but I can't comment on the accuracy to that. I should go grab my friend's gen again to take a look. It's the first rep I've ever bought where I haven't thought to myself, "what a great starting point, it only needs..."

Hi all, My name's Doug, I'm from Boston. I've been in the rep hobby a couple of years now and in the last year I've decided to step up my game and start putting together some more quality pieces. I started simply enough by filing a crown guard pin on a Panerai rep and it just spiralled out of control from there. My interests are all over the map from vintage to modern and pretty much every brand. I just finished an Omega Great White GMT Franken-watch and I have a never-ending Pre-V Panerai 5218-201/A project going. I'm currently in between projects, but I'm leaning towards an AP classic RO...or maybe a vintage Rolex Milgauss... I'm looking forward to learning a lot and contributing where I can what I know. Cheers!