Pre-A base dial in titanium?

[thumpr]

Does anyone know if the pre-a base dial ever appeared in a ti case?

ie. like wolf's 040 but without the seconds.

I think it would look great but not sure I want to create a fantasy watch.

Cheers

[Watchmeister]

Hopefully Wolf will weigh in as he would know. What I know about the 40 is that it was the twin sister to the 36 but with black versus brown dial. It also was made in very few numbers. I would guess it is highly unlikely that there was a Pre-A version. As far as I know Panerai did not use titanium in any watches until the B series other than the PAM 25 (Submersible) so unless someone randomly inserted an old dial into a ti case as does sometimes happen I would guess it is unlikely.

[babola]

No, not as a pre-A. I wish it were, though.

I believe the first Ti Base was PAM55 that came a little later, in C-series.

[Watchmeister]

Panerai actually tried PVD first on the luminors but had a lot of complaints about the scratching. Once they got their feet wet with ti on the 25 in the A series (and had enough money to buy some ti ) they moved onto the 36 and 40 in the B series. The rest is history.

[thumpr]

So would putting an FGD 002 dial in a ti case be genius, or sacrilege..?

[w0lf]

Actually, there is at least one PreA PAM55C on record. Could be a very fortunate PASC mistake but the fact that it's a brown dial makes me doubt that. I guess we'll never know. It belongs to a very lucky gentleman by the name Covac on 'Risti. FGD dials are black so in the end it still won't be accurate. However, if that's what you'd like to build than that's all that matters in my mind.

[mir36]

Wolf, That's an interesting oddity, thanks for sharing the link. I have an FGD v3 201a dial which I sprayed over with a matt finish (Tamiya Clear Flat spray), and it actually has a chocolate hue now. You can see a pic in my sig link. I'm gonna look into this again and see If I can get the same chocolate finish on my 002/009 FGD.

[babola]

Actually, there is at least one PreA PAM55C on record.

Interesting piece, definitely custom-made and not a production watch though. Would love to see the caseback and the CG profile on that one. Could be also one of those prototypes OP was trying in pre-V era, hard to tell without seeing more info from the back.

Remember the infamous 'Japanese' PAM55 in Ti with white base dial...it turned out to be a case/dial swap between the PAM55 and PAM10.

Have any more info on that pre-V Ti base, by any chance?

cheers,

b

[babola]

I have an FGD v3 201a dial

FGD V3 201/A dial? Wow! I thought there were only two versions made by FGD's dial maker so far.

Do tell us more please if you don't mind, I for one would'd love to know the diffs between the V2 and V3 if they exist.

thanks,

b

[mir36]

B, I'll leave it to the experts to chime in on differences between V2 and V3 FGD's. I just know by the time I joined RWG, I had already missed two runs, but Simon was kind enough to get me into the summer/fall 2009 production run (V3).