A. Lange & Söhne

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Langematik Perpetual Winders: Old and New Styles

I posted this on "the other" Lange forum and figured I'd put it up here as well.

Lange has a new-style winder that accompanies the Perpetual. The new-style winder, like the old-style winder, comes in yellow for the YG Perpetual and silver for the PT Perpetual. I had the opportunity to photograph both the new-style and old-style winders in the same sitting. In the pics below, the old-style winder is silver and the new-style winder is yellow.

The outer boxes that house the old and new winders are configured differently:




Here are side-by-side views of the front and back of the two winders:

Here are several views of the new-style winder (note the on/off button on the right, with green LED just above it that blinks when the winder is on):

And here are some views of the old-style winder (note the word "Langem atik" engraved on the switch housing, and an unfortunate bit of factory-installed pitting/corrosion just above and to the right of it):









Here's the battery compartment (2 "D" batteries) and 10-program control switch, which are located on the right side of the base of the new winder:



Here's a comparable view of the old-style winder's innards, which are located at the rear of the base:



Here's the old-style winder with a Perpetual inside it:



And here's what happened when  I tried to photograph the new-style winder with a Perpetual inside it:



I was able to fit the Perpetual in the old-style winder because I used a non-standard, extra-small watch carrier. I couldn't use that same small carrier in the new-style winder because the carriers are not interchangeable. For reference, my wrist circumference is about 155mm.

Here's a summary of my observations:

• The new-style winder is narrower and deeper than the old-style winder.
  
• The new-style winder is symmetric, whereas the old-style winder is asymmetric.
  
• The new-style winder's watch carrier has spring-loaded brass clips (which can easily scratch the watch if you're not very careful), whereas the old-style winder's watch carrier has plastic clips with rubber tips.
• The new-style winder has a blinking green LED (which can be annoying, but perhaps there's a way to disable it in the instruction manual, which I haven't seen), whereas the old-style winder has no visual "on" indicator.
  
• The new-style winder has a button that you hold down to reverse the winder's direction, whereas the old-style winder has a 3-position switch (1 position for each direction, with "off" in the middle).
  
• Both winders have 10 programs, look very nice, and run quietly!