Sizzlin' Watches - Experience with Broken Watch

For reference, here's the original watch. Love that Seagull movement. Fingers crossed this one doesn't crap out.

Nice story. I, too, bought a watch from Rob/Sizzlin'; a 44mm Ticino Fleiger Type B. I could not be happier with it.

Dave0944 said:

I guess I'll weigh back in, I have purchased 4 different models from Rob and the ONLY one with any issues whatsoever has been that BF-109 Handwind chrono. As stated before I went through three different ones, none worked for more than a week. My experience with Sizzlin Watches CS has been flawless, Rob replaced the watch right away each time and then immediately refunded my money when I finally gave up.

Doc, in response to your question, my personal opinion is that the Movement(Seagull TY-2903) used in the BF-109 is faulty. All other Ticino's I've had worked and still run flawlessly.

Click to expand...

Somehow I missed this direct response, sorry about that, but belated thanks.

Regarding all of this, and responding to the entire thread in general...

Full disclosure, I've been planning to sell a new 2-register automatic chrono I designed using the Seagull ST1940 (TY2940), which is a variant of the ST19. This whole thread made me nervous, so I've been doing some digging.

What I've found so far is pretty much what has already been said, the whole range of ST19's are known for being very robust, reliable, and in many cases very accurate (especially after being regulated). However, there have been a few notable exceptions (more on that in a moment), and there are a number of different possibilities which may explain what's going on here. Without offering any theory about which of these may be correct (if any), here are some possible explanations:

1. Lower grade movements are being sourced by Ticino. Like most movement manufacturers Seagull grades their movements. Seagull's movements fall into one of three categories, but it's a bit unclear how much the quality varies between their top grade and the lowest grade, which should still be fairly reliable. There's also a bit of speculation that movements which "fail" to meet any of the three standards are sold for use in Mushroom brands. I'm not calling Ticino a "Mushroom", and furthermore, I'm skeptical that Seagull would let their defective movements be used at all, since it's not good for their brand reputation, but I obviously can't prove it. This is all speculation.

2. The problem is not that the movement is bad, but that the assembly is bad. I don't know very much about Ticino. As far as I know, they assemble their own watches using components they buy. However, I found some threads from a few years back about automatic chronos Ticino was selling, and it looks like they were basically re-branding watches from the Million Smart catalog. Maybe the assembly on these was outsourced? Maybe Ticino assembled the watches themselves, but made a mistake somewhere in the assembly or design? Most of the other threads I found reporting problems with the ST19 chrono were also stories where the movement was in a watch not assembled by Seagull. Can you guess which one? The Alpha Paul Newman/Panda. Alpha has a reputation for spotty QC, so this lends credence to the idea that the problem is in the assembly, not the movement.

3. Bad batch of movements. This is unlikely to be the cause, but I found a thread that made mention of a bad batch of ST19's in 2009. I'd think all of these would have been discovered by now. However, according to one post the defective movements were only recalled in the Chinese domestic market, not America. It's not inconceivable something similar could have happened again (but it's doubtful).

4. Additional stress on the movement. The ST19 was originally designed as a 2-register chrono. The 1902 and 1903 added a third register at 6 O'clock (12hr register for the 1902, 24hr register for the 1903, but both slaved off the main hour hand, not part of the chrono function). Like I said earlier, I'm a little suspicious that these problems are being reported almost exclusively in the 3 register layout (Alpha and Ticino), and I've been wondering if that 3rd register adds enough stress on the movement to cause problems. The reason I wonder is because this was almost the exact same explanation given about a similar problem with some watches using the Asian 7750. In that case an additional module was used to relocate the sub-dials from 6/9/12 to 3/6/9, and the additional stress on the movement caused havoc. As it happens I also found two separate threads about problems with the Seagull model M199S chrono. Anyone care to take a guess what it looks like?

View attachment 993218

Not just three registers, but also a moon phase dial.

To be fair, I'm not a watchmaker, and there are a lot of people on WUS, both here in f71, and especially over in f72 that know a ton more than I do. It's entirely possible that none of these are viable explanations. All I'm doing here is offering up what I've found here and elsewhere for consideration.

When I look at these as potential explanations, I still find it hard to believe Seagull would allow defective movements to be sold, or that a bad batch slipped through and weren't recalled, and we haven't heard about it. The idea that there may be something going on in assembly, or the idea that the additional stress from driving any more than two sub-dials is causing a problem? These both seem at least plausible.

All that said, there are plenty of people who report their Asian 7750's are very reliable, and that movement has a very spotty reputation. The ST19 on the other hand has a reputation for being rock-solid, so it's also entirely possible these are just a few isolated examples, and if someone got three bad chronos in a row, it's incredibly unfortunate.

FWIW.