Did Spring Drive accuracy 'ruin' standard mechanical watches for you?

canonken said:

I'm sitting here 36 hours after setting it (my new Snowflake) and cannot see any drift, which is expected. Further, knowing the watch is insensitive to position, temperature, the tide being in or out, etc. means there is no 'luck' to just happening to keep it in the right position overnight or at the right level of wind (other than dead!). In a week, a month from now, I should start to understand what I have. I know it is rated at +/-15 seconds/month and interested to see how mine fits into that.

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Precise observations by a couple folks here have found that the Spring Drive tends to run quite a bit more accurately than the stated +/- 15 sec/mo - closer to 0.15 - 0.20 seconds per day - around 6 sec/mo or less.

canonken said:

I ask this question partly seriously, partly in jest, but still curious as to your take. Does using a Spring Drive, which you might need to set monthly, ruin regular mechanical watches in terms of their accuracy and potential fussiness (for example, having different deviations depending on the state of wind, what position they are left in, etc.)?

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I will answer you in somewhat the same vein as your question was asked - partly seriously and partly in jest. Owning and wearing a Grand Seiko Spring Drive has ruined wearing any other watch for me. Now here I say "ruined" somewhat in jest because I still very much love wearing my other watches. But I don't think the experience of wearing anything else compares to the experience of wearing a Grand Seiko Spring Drive. But not necessarily for the accuracy, though that is a nice bonus.

If you have a rather large collection of watches, and tend not to wear the same watch day in and day out, and therefore let your mech watches "run down" between wearings, then accuracy really doesn't matter so much as long as the "per day" +/- rate isn't insane. I abandoned my watch winders as a bad idea some time ago. If the watch isn't being worn it doesn't get wound. So the watches tend not to run long enough for the accumulated deviation to matter. They'll need to be re-set each time I wear them anyway.

Even though (somewhat ironically) they had to use electronics to help pull it off, for me it is an incomparable experience to wear the world's only current-production watch that is truly analog (no counts or beats or steps) with a flawlessly smooth seconds sweep that is actually continuous. The watch does not keep time like a marching soldier, step, step, step, but more like a spinning planet. For me there is something amazingly serene about that. Not just how it looks (because a couple other watches simulate the effect and have a seconds-sweep that looks similar) but in knowing what the glide wheel is doing, seeing that flawless sweep, and knowing that no matter how much you slow it down, there are no steps.


Add to that the fact that this wonderful little machine is installed in an exquisitely finished case, dial, hands, etc. And also add to that the fact that I'll probably never see another one on anybody else's wrist in my lifetime (unless perhaps I'm in a GS dealer's store - and I've not even seen anybody actually wearing one there either so far).

While I don't think I'd be nearly so enchanted if it was less accurate than a 100% mech, the fact that it's more accurate than a 100% mech is honestly the least wondrous thing about it for me - just another bonus.

All of that said, I still love my 100% mech watches, and I wear them more than the GS SD. I tend to wear the GS SD either when dressing up a bit, or on days when my mood could use a little pick-me-up and the reflexive smile I get from a brief stare at the marvel on left wrist makes a difference. The exquisitely polished case could easily be damaged and if that happened I know I wouldn't be happy until I sent it back to Japan to be re-polished, so it's not my daily driver. Some day maybe I'll own a "beater" Spring Drive for daily wear?

At heart I am a "100% mechanical" kind of guy, but the SD gets a pass for what they've achieved despite "polluting the mech with the tech".

Enjoy your new watch. Welcome to the Spring Drive club.

I'll preface this by saying that I am a Spring Drive fanboy. If I could only own one watch it would be my SBGA375. That said, aside from Spring Drive I'm pretty much a 100% mechanical sort of guy. I do have a few quartz watches in my box but they are for very specific situations and are not ever "in the rotation".

For me my appreciation of mechanical watches is very similar to my appreciation of an excellent bourbon or other whisky/whiskey. There are rules for making bourbon - one of which is you can't add anything to the distillate other than water and whatever it picks up from the charred barrel you aged it in. So the master distiller has the task of taking the "white dog" (raw distillate as it comes off the still - which generally is harsh and horrible) and turning it into something that has notes of vanilla, caramel, maple, stone fruit, whatever, without adding any coloring or flavoring to it.

When tasting an excellent bourbon sometimes I will think to myself "you could make something that tastes 100 times better than this if you cheated and added a little vanilla to it". But that's the point of bourbon - to somehow magically give rise to those flavors without "cheating" by adding things. How much do you char the barrel? What floor in the rick house did the barrel sit in? How close to a window was it? How long did it sit there? How much natural sugar was in the wood that the barrel was made of? How hot were the summers and how cold were the winters as the bourbon aged?

To me, mechanical watches are bourbon. Things done the hard way for the sake of doing it the hard way. Quartz watches are any of the various flavored whiskies that have cinnamon, vanilla, etc. added - e.g. Jim Beam Vanilla. Jim Beam Vanilla tastes amazing, but they cheated to get there, so it's not as big of an accomplishment as a bourbon that only tastes a fraction as good but didn't cheat.

I just spent a week and a half touring around Kentucky adding to my bourbon collection (lots of products never make it down here to Florida) and so I have bourbon on my mind. This analogy has occurred to me frequently but I've never posted it.

Any other fine whisky/whiskey fans identify with this?

heb said:

No, because Spring Drive does not have the "heirloomability" of a fine mechanical watch. No watch with electrical components has it. When you spend that kind of money on a watch, and lets face it, these SD prices are well within Rolex range, you at least consider about passing it down to the next few generations. Even if you assume Spring Drive will be around that long, your great great grand child will not be able to find the electrical parts for your model. Perhaps a full movement change may be possible. You can always turn another gear, but wind another coil or print another mini ancient electrical board, not so much.

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Joe Kirk was asked about serviceability into the future. His answer was:

heb said:

But then again, there is something to be said about enjoying an item for the moment. Let your progeny worry about their own watches.

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I have no progeny, so after I'm gone I guess it'll be my wife's problem. I have no concerns about my beloved Spring Drive watches being able to be serviced for the remainder of my life, and I couldn't care less if they can be serviced after that.

cheznous said:

Most of the next generation do not seem to have an interest in watches.
My daughter could care less.
My son has an interest but let him buy his own.
I want mine interred with me like a pharaoh and his possessions.

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I had thought similarly to the passage of yours that I bolded. Were I to be buried (versus cremated - I haven't decided yet) I think there would be something cool about having some of my favorite watches (including my most-favorite Grand Seikos) buried with me. Then someday, long after an asteroid has wiped us all out, some space faring alien archaeologists might be digging humans up and find them and be like, "what are these curious little machines"?