Tudor Releases MilSub Inspired Pelagos FXD, New TAG Monaco Is All About The Lume Dial, IWC Unveils Advanced Materials On Big Pilot's, Seiko Pays Tribute To Bruce Lee, New Watches From Grand Seiko And Glashütte Original

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. You know it will be a good day when you have a new Tudor, a new TAG, a new IWC, a new Grand Seiko and a new Seiko. And in that group, still the best looking might be the Glashütte Original

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In this issue:

• Tudor Releases MilSub Inspired Pelagos FXD With A Black Dial And Regular Diving Bezel

• The New TAG Heuer Monaco Night Driver Is All About The Lume Dial

• IWC Unveils Mercedes G63 Themed Watches With Advanced Materials - Hardened Gold And Silicon-Carbon Composite

• Grand Seiko Introduces 44GS ‘Mount Iwate Autumn Dusk’ European Exclusive Limited Edition

• Seiko Celebrates 55 Years Of Seiko 5 Sports With A Tribute To Bruce Lee

• Glashütte Original Updates The Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2023 With A Beautiful Stone Grey Dial

Today’s reading time: 10 minutes and 18 seconds

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1/

Tudor Releases MilSub Inspired Pelagos FXD With A Black Dial And Regular Diving Bezel

For years I have believed that the Black Bay line from Tudor is the superior one, with it’s vintage looks and many different variants. I may have been wrong. Or my tastes are changing. The more professional and tool-like Pelagos collection is becoming more and more attractive. Just a bit over a month ago, Tudor introduced a spectacular looking Pelagos FXD in the colors of the Alinghi Red Bull Racing team in the America’s Cup. Now they’re releasing a new FXD, a followup to the suprprise watch they introduced in 2021 as a tribute to past watches used by Combat divers with fixed lugs and a special inverted diving scale on the bidirectional bezel. It’s the Pelagos FXD with a black face, regular bezel and inspiration from the legendary MilSub.

It’s the familiar FXD case, meaning you get a solid piece of titanium that measures 42mm wide and 12.75mm thick and a lug-to-lug of 52mm. The titanium case gets a titanium unidirectional rotating bezel with a black ceramic insert with a regular 60-minute diving scale. Since it’s a diver, it makes sense that it can withstand dives of 200 meters. The new FXD retains the fixed lugs and this is a carryover from the design element for the Marine Nationale when the Pelagos FXD was in development. With a fixed lug, a diver doesn’t have to fear failure of pins and losing a watch.

Instead of a blue dial you get a black one with the line Pelagos printed in red instead of the white in the previous versions. That’s pretty much the only change, as you still get applied square, rectangular and triangular hour markers, as well as Snowflake hands, all with Super-LumiNova that have a very characteristic blue glow at night.

Inside the watch is Tudor’s MT5602 manufacture movement, made with Kenissi, of course. It runs at a rate of 28,800vph and gets very good power reserve at 70 hours. It’s a COSC-certified chronometer and has a silicon hairspring and a variable inertia balance wheel. The Tudor Pelagos FXD Black comes on a very cool green fabric strap with a red centre stripe and a black rubber single-pass strap.

There will be no limitation of numbers with this watch and it should be available in boutiques pretty soon if not already. The retail price is €4,120. See more of the watch on the Tudor website. No, actually, go see it, it’s a great website.

2/

The New TAG Heuer Monaco Night Driver Is All About The Lume Dial

TAG is really coming back in style. For years they struggled with their identity, having incredible cult pieces like the Carrera and the Monaco, but drowning in a lack of creativity. And then something started changing this year, with them reaching back into their super-rich heritage and mixing it with some modern techniques. It started with the wonderful Glassbox Carrera, continued with the skeletonized Monaco and most recently it was the Regatta Carrera and the Porsche Carrera with the very weird movement. Now TAG is releasing a brand new Monaco called the Night Driver and boy is it something else.

Starting with the case, it’s the same Monaco you know, meaning that it’s 39mm wide and bit chunky at 14.7mm, with the same circle in a square look. But this is where similarities stop. The case is made out of grade 5 titanium, polished and fine-brushed, and black DLC coated. And this is one of the very few cases where a black case is completely warranted, as it completely disappears to show off the luminous dial. It looks amazing:

Inside, the Monaco uses the brand’s in-house Calibre Heuer 02 automatic chronograph movement. It has 80 hours of power reserve, a quick-set date, running seconds at six, a 30-minute counter at three, and a 12-hour counter at nine o’clock. It comes on a black perforated calfskin rally-style strap.

This watch will be limited to 600 pieces and will retail for CHF 9,300. Now, it’s a cool watch, but that is CHF 2,000 more than a normal Calibre 02 Monaco in stainless on a strap. Is a new dial and a black coating worth 2k? That’s up to you. See more on the TAG Heuer website.

3/

IWC Unveils Mercedes G63 Themed Watches With Advanced Materials - Hardened Gold And Silicon-Carbon Composite

Watch partnerships with car companies are almost always mid at best. Just think back to the work Panerai did with Ferrari and the monstrosities Breitling made with Bentley. It just never works out, but I would love for someone to convince me otherwise. IWC has had a long standing relationship with Mercedes-Benz, and while their collaboration have often been very subtly cross-signed, they were still a bit cringey. But their latest collaboration, while completely ridiculous, is interesting for several reasons - IWS is taking their most ostentatious watch, the Big Pilot’s Watch, and taking inspiration from the most ostentatious Mercedes you can buy, the AMG G63. It’s so intense you can’t look away, and while you’re staring, you see that there are a couple of very small redeeming qualities.

The watch comes in two variants and both are experiments in new materials - a hardened gold alloy known as Armor Gold and ceramic matrix composite (CMC), a carbon fibre composite containing silicon carbide ceramic for added hardness. The Armor Gold measures exactly the same as the standard steel Big Pilot at 46mm wide and 14.4mm thick. The CMC is a bit bigger - 46.5 mm by 14.6 mm - as the carbon composite case requires a metal inner case to hold the screw-down case back.

The two materials are interesting. According to IWC, Armor Gold is an alloy that’s “significantly harder and more wear-resistant than conventional 5N gold”. They, of course, do not reveal what it is made wiht, but it is likely gold mixed with ceramic like the gold alloy Hublot uses. CMC, on the other hand, begins as typical carbon-fibre reinforced polymer that is heat treated to induce porosity in the material. They then infuse silicon into those pores, creating a silicon carbide ceramic matrix inside the material. The result is a composite that is more durable than average carbon fibre.

The textured dials and sub-seconds are both novel features for a Big Pilot. They set the new pair part from other models in the line, but don’t stray too far from the traditional Big Pilot look. Both versions have Super-Luminova matched with the case material, beige for the gold model and grey for CMC. I would have preferred a neutral white Super-Luminova.

Inside both watches is the cal. 52010, the brand’s second-generation seven-day movement with automatic winding. It features the trademark Pellaton winding mechanism and twin barrels. You can see it through a transparent caseback that has a Mercedes-Benz emblem and modelled on the spare tyre cover on the back of the G-Wagen.

The prices are high, as you would expect, but in line with what you would pay for an IWC of this caliber. The Armor Gold version costs CHF 35,000, which is very similar to other gold Big Pilot’s watches, while the CMC version is substantially more expensive. It’s CHF 44,000, making it more expensive than the Big Pilot’s perpetual calendar in ceramic. However, the biggest issue with the two watches is not the price (which is meh), or the looks (which are an acquired taste), or the materials used (which are actually great). It’s the connection with the Mercedes G63. Sure, watch and car collabs often make no sense at all, but the only way I could link the watches with the car is it ruggedness aspect, and that’s a stretch. Anyway, see more on the IWC website.

4/

Grand Seiko Introduces 44GS ‘Mount Iwate Autumn Dusk’ European Exclusive Limited Edition

Just two weeks ago Grand Seiko presented two new releases (fice, actually), that are somewhat relevant for what they are releasing today. First up, they released three watches as an exclusive to the U.S. which were inspired by katanas and the ancient art of forging swords. Then, a couple of days later, they introduced two watches to mark the 25th anniversary of the 9s movement which were inspired by Mount Iwate, the mountain under which Grand Seiko is made. Now, Grand Seiko is introducing the 44GS SBGW303 Mount Iwate Autumn Dusk limited edition.

You see the link to the two releases I mentioned. This release will be exclusive for Europe, just like the Katana collection for the U.S., and it’s also inspired by Mount Iwate, but now at dusk. Before I go on, I’ll just come out and say it: this sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it? The U.S. gets watches inspired by freaking katanas! And Europe gets a variation of a watch that came out two weeks ago, just hit by inspiration later in the day, around dusk. Meh.

But let’s see what we get. The watch comes in the 44GS style, part of Grand Seiko’s heritage collection with curvy lines. The stainless steel case measures a very nice 36.5mm wide. But this is GS, so who cares about the case, it’s all about the dial. The signature Mount Iwate pattern comes in olive green and the dial is “designed to evoke images of a yellow sunset over a verdant landscape such as the forests that surround Mount Iwate, giving the green landscape a gentle sepia glow”.

The watch is powered by the Calibre 9S64, an in-house, manual winding piece with a 72-hour power reserve and accuracy of +5/-3 seconds per day.

With only 400 examples made, the “Mount Iwate Autumn Dusk” SBGW303 watch will retail for about €6,400. It will be officially released in November as an European exclusive. See more on the Grand Seiko website.

5/

Seiko Celebrates 55 Years Of Seiko 5 Sports With A Tribute To Bruce Lee

When famous people wear a watch, the watch company will usually jump on that opportunity and market the hell out of it, regardless of the fact if the celebrity was paid to wear it or not. Look at, for example, what Omega has done with James Bond and George Clooney, or the impact that Steve McQueen has had on the TAG Heuer Monaco. One such link is between Seiko and the immortal Bruce Lee, who famously wore a number of their watches, including the Seiko 6139. To celebrate their association with Lee and the 55th birthday of the Seiko 5 Sports line which he liked to wear, Seiko is introducing the Seiko 5 Sports Bruce Lee limited edition.

The Seiko Sportsmatic 5 was introduced in 1963, as a line of affordable sports watches. Five years later Seiko released the Seiko 5 Sports to appeal to a younger audience with low prices and rugged construction. Over the years the line went away, but it came back in 2019 with the 5KX or as it is formally known, the new Seiko 5 Sports line.

And this revamped line is the basis for the Bruce Lee special edition. That means you get a 42.5mm wide stainless steel case with a black coatin, Hardlex glass and water resistance of 100 meters. The dial is engraved with a dragon that was drawn by Bruce Lee, while the hands and indices are gold-toned and filled with black lume. Sorrounding the dial is a black bezel with characters that represent the spirit of Lee’s martial art Jeet Kune Do with a phrase that translates to, “Using no way as way; having no limitation as limitation.”

Inside the Seiko 5 Sports Bruce Lee is the Caliber 4R36 automatic movement, which offers an approximate power reserve of 41 hours. You barely get to see the movement through a heavily smoked transparent caseback that features the Jeet Kune Do logo. The watch comes with two straps. One is made of black leather with silver stitching, inspired by traditional Kung Fu clothing. The other is a bright yellow nylon strap with a black stripe, styled after Lee’s famous tracksuit.

Seiko says this will be a limited edition, but keep in mind it’s limited to 15,000 pieces. So not really limited, is it? The watch will show up in Seiko boutiques in October and will set you back €520. See more on the Seiko website.

6/

Glashütte Original Updates The Sixties Chronograph Annual Edition 2023 With A Beautiful Stone Grey Dial

While every single watch company out there is banking in on the love customers have for retro styling, it’s hard to argue against the claim that Glashütte Original is doing retro the best. Instead of riding the edge between tacky and cool with fauxtina, in 2015 they introduced a very funky new collection known as the Sixties, filled with amazing 60s designs and groovy colors. Now they’re updating their Sixties Chronograph with a much more subdued color, but equally as fantastic looking with a stone-grey textured dial with red golden accents.

This new watch is an update to the Sixties Chronographs, which means it keeps the same case that measures 42mm wide and 12.4mm thick made out of polished steel and piston-style pushers. What is different is the dial, and this is where Glashütte Original shines. They have had some amazing colors, as well as a gradient grey, but this master of dials is mostly thanks to the fact that they are one of the few watchmakers to own their own dial manufacture in Pforzheim.

To create the rippled texture of the dial, the bronze blank is embossed using a 60-tonne press, followed by a second press to create the signature domed profile of this collection. After being galvanised, coats of grey lacquer are applied; the gradient/degradé effect is achieved by hand-spraying darker paint, making the colour lighter in the centre and more intense as it reaches the perimeter.

The indices are milled into the dial, meaning you get to see the underlying bronze which gives fantastic contrast to the grey. A very retro font is used for the 12 and 6 o’clock numerals, and the dial layout is a bicompax with snailed dials with running seconds at 3 o’clock and 30-minute elapsed times at 9 o’clock. The baton hour and minute hands have luminescent inlays, and the minutes track is punctuated with Super-LumiNova dots

Inside the watch is the brand’s 39-34 automatic modular chronograph movement. Beating at 28,000 vibrations/hour, it delivers a 40-hour power reserve. Signature decorative features include the classic three-quarter plate with Glashütte stripes, a swan-neck fine adjustment, a skeletonised rotor with a double-G logo and 21k gold oscillating mass, bevelled edges and polished steel parts. The watch comes on a dark blue textile strap with a steel pin buckle

While it looks briliant, it is a very expensive watch. It will set you back €9,200. The watch is still not on their website, but I assume it will be soon.

🫳On hand

Our selection of the best reviews we stumble upon

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Hands-On With The Gerald Charles Maestro 8.0 Squelette In Stainless Steel

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A review of the Edox Neptunian Grande Réserve

⚙️Watch Worthy

A look at an off beat, less known watch you might actually like

The Reservoir Kanister Jump-Hour is inspired by the Porsche 356 Speedster

Due to the separation of the hour and minute displays, readability on the Kanister is excellent. The lack of lume on a sporty watch might be a dealbreaker for some. Still, with only one hour on the disc seeing the light at any time, there isn’t a sufficient opportunity to charge up luminescent material and make any lume application anywhere on the watch worthwhile. On a positive note, the AR coating is excellent, with a slight blue tint present. The minutes are easily readable at the most acute of angles. Furthermore, the proximity of the dial to the crystal and the gently sloping chapter ring offer a real sense of flatness. Read the whole review on Fratello watches.

⏲️Wait a minute

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• With a big serve and an even bigger stage presence, the 20-year-old American tennis player Ben Shelton stole hearts and more than a few matches at the US Open. This is Shelton on his electric US Open run and Djokovic stealing his signature celebration.

• Danny Garcia hoped to flee the life of poverty and crime that led him to poach wood from national park land. But the circle of violence was inescapable. This is how the illegal harvesting of giant trees in California shines a light on rural poverty.

• I know I said I don’t like pieces on 9/11 because they are… well, they are what they are. But this one is a bit different. Structural engineers make buildings stand up, but the public doesn’t pay much attention to what they do until a building falls down. John Seabrook explains why the World Trade Center buildings fell down when they did.

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