Zenith

rdenney
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Are you sure that bezel is white gold?

If it was, the technical reference should be 1134901. Ebel used the same technical referencing scheme from their beginnings until just a couple of years ago. The first 1 is "gold and steel", digits two to four ("134") are the caliber number, and "901" is a model code that I have never decoded, but all Zenith-powered chronographs were 901's and all Ebel 137-powered chronographs in otherwise similar cases (but not quite identical) were 240's.

That first digit in yours is what interests me. 1 is mixed, 2 may be silver (and thus very old indeed), 3 is white gold, 4 is platinum, 5 is rose gold, 6 is gold highlights (such as screws on a steel bezel, or brushed gold-capped steel bezel), 7 is rolled gold plate (not used since the 60's), 8 is yellow gold, 9 is stainless steel, and B is titanium. The "9" on yours suggests to me that the bezel is, in fact, steel. But there should be a notice lightly engraved on the case back--lightly because they would have engraved that notice after pairing the steel parts with the gold parts. Mine, for example, faintly says, "Stainless Steel Case / 18K Bezel" on the back, above the deeply engraved serial and technical reference numbers. Yours seems to lack that engraving, unless they are too faint to see in the photographs. By the way, the steel bezel in my 9080241 1911 Senior looks exactly like the bezel on yours, in terms of profile and polish.

The 701 on yours is where the serial number usually goes. I've never figured out any pattern with Ebel serial numbers, even with our sample of 25.
Fully agree about the hexagonal crown, which I believe was used with all the wave-bracelet versions, including later quartz models that retained the wave bracelet. I believed that the fluted crown came with the 1911 bracelet in 1986, but that is just an impression.

All of the pre-1911 chronographs should have movements that Zenith made before stopping production in the 70's, from the stock of finished ebauches that Blum purchased in 1982, when Charly Vermot revealed his famous subterfuge. According to Manfred Rossler, Zenith did not restart actual production until 1986, with the transitional caliber 40.0, to be replaced a year later by the caliber 400, as it is currently designated. That was the same year that Blum introduced the 1911 line, in celebration of Ebel's 75th anniversary.

The details of the hands are all new for me--fun to learn new stuff. The rings around the sub-dials are a bit different (and wider) than on my later model.
This message has been edited by rdenney on 2016-02-02 13:13:07 This message has been edited by rdenney on 2016-02-02 13:13:34

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