Horological Meandering

Three manual-wind nearly-identical GS watches, and why

 

Grand Seiko fans can be tedious as devotees of any brand, so rather than pontificate on the watches, I thought a photo session would be more interesting.

Grab a beer or a nice single malt whiskey or maybe a great glass of Cabernet.
Now while the thirsty ones are off chasing a drink, for the rest of us here are a few tid-bits of information.

Many of you saw the fine review of the Grand Seiko SBGW001 by Crescendo. Others have seen Dr. No's arm adorned with my '001 watch. And some of you commented favorably on the photos of its sibling, the arabic-numeraled, blue-handed SBGW003 which I posted back in the summertime.  But only a few people know (or care) that there is a third watch in GS's manual-wind, stainless steel, date-free line - the SBGW005 with blued second hand, on bracelet.

But as of this week, I have managed to collect them all at once. Why? Because I could, I suppose.

In theory they are alike mechanically, but the cases may differ slightly.
And in my investigation I discovered that there is one other quite noticeable tactile difference, though not so visible.
And much discussion has been wasted by myself and some other folks related to the quality and color of the dials.
I will let you all decide - are the dial colors and character the same? (barring hands, markers or numerals)

Anyway, off we go with a few comparison shots.  Here they are in order, so you can tell them apart ...

SBGW001 on black strap with pin buckle                        SBGW003 on brown heavily-grained strap                 SBGW005 on bracelet
Silver hands, silver markers                                              Blued hands, gold numerals                                  Blued second hand, silver hour/minute & markers
Solid caseback                                                                   See-thru caseback                                                 Solid caseback

All have high-domed sapphire crystal just like SJX's favorite GS chronograph, the SBGM.

The lugs looks subtly different here, but in reality I don't believe the cases differ. But wouldn't put it past Seiko to do it as they darn well please.

Straps are marked in the same place, but the keepers are different. Both float on the brown strap but one keeper is sewn in place on the black strap.
The movements are decorated nicely.

The bracelet is very complex and each link has a bushing that goes through the grain-of-rice links but not the outer links, a pin that goes 90% of the way,
and two screws that come in from each end to lock everything together. The holes in the grain-of-rice links are intentionally oval, not round so the bracelet
has a comfortable amount of lateral movement but doesn't feel sloppy. The pins fit very snugly into the outer links and through the bushings.

I know some of you have done table shots of watches and it's not that easy to get a good angle on all three of these at once. So I tried a few dozen times.
Here are some of the tolerably good images.

And yes, I did kind of try to get them on the exact same time, but got distracted by a phone call and forgot to go back and reset Mr. SBGW005 so his
second hand would be caught up with the other two.

I wonder what the criteria for the two straps was - give the special edition watch the obviously-nicer grain strap? These are both the original straps.

The applied GS, Grand Seiko and Seiko lettering are gold on SBGW003. The two blued second hands appear identical

The crowns are large and as you wind the watch feel buttery smooth until about 90% wind is achieved.
Then the click becomes much louder and the winding gets rapidly tighter - there is no tactile or audible doubt that full wind has arrived.
Here's the difference I noticed - the crown is substantial on the 001 and 005.
The special edition 003 has a smaller crown with possibly twice as many serrations as the other two.
It feels much smaller and more delicate.

Looking down a bracelet tunnel for some variety in composition...there's our GS lion

Whoops, on your heads now

Here's the family shot -  I need a few more dark-dialed GS watches!  We're almost finished. And yes, they are all running within a few seconds now.

Thanks for looking.  Mike

PS - here's what I've been doing while you were reading.
Fresh mozzarella topping some fig preserves on home-baked bread to accompany a 2000 Pine Ridge Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Yumm

This message has been edited by cazalea on 2008-11-11 18:28:23