There used to be "trimmers" to regulate quartz watches, but I think they have gone the way of the buggy whip. I've never serviced a citizen eco drive so I don't know what the issues are, but 4 seconds a week sounds OK to me. You are not buying an atomic clock when you buy a quartz watch. You are buying a more accurate time keeping instrument that has its' own issues, to name just one thermal drift of the quartz itself. There are a number of other issues. Look at what Citizen sets as the specs of the watch and it will give you a better idea of what the watch can actually do at the temperature/work conditions you are using it at.

The average quartz wall clocks can drift two or three minutes a month depending on the season. In our office we keep a radio controlled clock and regularly reset all of our other clocks to it as our control clock.

 

Personally i don't consider 4 seconds a week is pretty bad time keeping, we are not talking about super quartz with temperature compensation here. i don't think you can regulate your Eco drive.

 

I guess I'm just used to wearing my Seiko Flighmaster that seems to only gain around 4 seconds a month. Is it a possibility that the kind of battery used in the watch could affect the time keeping?

 

The only kind of a battery that affects the time of your watch is an empty battery. As long as it within a certain range of voltage, it makes absolutely no difference. The watch runs or it doesn't.

What concerns the possibilty to regulate a quartz watch, there is nothing much toi do except changing the quartz unit.

The quartz watch (as it has already been said before) is a step forward in precision over the mechanical watches, keeping better time at $ 9.99 than most of the $ 75,000 watches. If it's seconds a week, that's the limit.

You can buy one of the atomic watches now also available as wrist watches for $ 12,000 and you have the time kept within 1 second +/- in 1000 years.

On a larger scale, the atomic clocks are within +/- 1 second in 40 million years, and that is already in conflict with the changing rotation of the earth which creates the needs for adjustments once in a while.

If you really worry about a few seconds a month, you will not get this settled with a quartz watch. You need a radio-controlled watch, which is a regular quartz watch taking a time signal from a big atomic clock at certain intervals, which frequently regulate the time - the perfect time. That's the end of time keeping on your wrist. Do not go for a cheap radio-controlled watch which is as accurate execpt that the hands are falling off sooner or later. Junghans had invented that thing and is somewhat on the top of the price scale. You can go down to a Citizen watch, and then to Casio, which is at the lower pricing end in the quality segment. There are others which someone might recommend.

I have a Casio radio-contolled with solar power. No more batteries and always the perfect time. Display analog and digital, date of course, other gimmicks I don't use. It goes to sleep if put in a drawer and can live without light for several months. And last night, it switched to summertime automatically. With that thing on my wrist, I now enjoy my watch collection much better than before. I see that the watches are running well and don't worry about minor deviations. Before that, I had all of them (mechanical) on the time-scale with endless attempts to get them better regulated, which was good for one stable position only at a certain temperature. And yes, I also wanted to 'regulate' my quartz watches before, now it's more keeping them nice and need.

 

I forgot to put in some images: Left - verge watch, original condition, made between 1750 and 1760, 1 minute slow per day. Middle - quartz watch, still synchronically with the radio-controlled watch since one week, but I am afraid it will be 1 or 2 seconds off sooner or later. But in exchange it has a compass, gives me the altitude, temperate, the barometric pressure at sea level and locally, the tendency and an enless list of other gimmicks (you can spend the full day checking the accuracy on everything, not just the time). Right: Radio-controlled watch, absolute time to +/1 seconds in 40 million years, solar powered.

 

This will likely duplicate some of the previous answers:

• 4 sec per week is within older Citizen specs (eg caliber 0875...+/-20 s/m). Marginal with newer specs (eg E101...+/- 15 s/m) @ ambient temperatures.
• Older watches had trimmers that could be used in a small adjustment range. I don't think any of the EcoDrives have trimmers.
• Some circuits (mainly high end quartz) provide for adjustment via contacts on the circuit...this adjusts the trimming in the circuit chip.

While today's quartz units are designed for 32,768 hz, no "perfect" quartz can be fabricated...all deviate from this target frequency. Frequency is affected by temperature, but also for capacitance of the circuit (most are designed for 12.5 pF) as well as other parameters. All quartz units are selected for an average close, but higher than 32.768 kHz and the error "trimmed" out in the circuit...some are temperature compensated, as well.

What is the caliber in your watch (ie. Citizen/Miyota movement number)? You said "newer"...if so you might check against atomic reference and verify temperature conditions and if out of spec and in warranty, I'd contact Citizen USA.

Regards, BG

 

I have old Omega movement (1342) with trimmer as described before. The rate that can be adjusted with the screw can only get the movement to run -8s/s at best.
This has puzzled me for some time.
Which is the trimmer? Capacitor or resistor. Obviously we have RC-constant and something has drifted but what is it (normally in these cases)?

 

How are you determining rate loss...with a timing machine or by measurement against a reference datum?
Drift: can be the quartz unit itself (these are affected by age), or capacitance in the circuit. Screw type trimmers are often provided with discrete increments (don't remember how the 1342 is set up)...if so, once you go through max fast, you go back to max slow. Regards, BG