OPPOSITE of dead beat seconds...?

Some manufactures have managed to make an automatic watch TICK otherwise know as "dead beat second..."

Has any watch company produced a quartz watch with a SWEEPING second hand?

According to what I have head, this high end quartz is claimed to have an accuracy of +/- 10 secs a year and a SMOOTH SWEEPING HAND!!!

I found this information and photos at http://www.bestofwatch.com/?p=3

a. Precisionist family at launch :

b. Close up 1

b2. Close up 2

c. Champlain Titanium (46.5mm/14.4mm – 96B131)

d. Diamond studded Tanglewood model (32mm/9.2mm – 98R141)


a. There are two Precisionist movements at this time : P102.12 (12.5 ligne) for men’s watches and the P112.10 (10 ligne) for women’s watches. No chronographs at launch but they said they were working on the next generation that would include multi-function models.

b. As seen in the video above the “sweeping” is quite “smooth” so I was surprised to find it only moves 16 times per second, i.e. 16hz, not that much more than the 10hz of a 36000bph movement. They said they felt it was a good compromise between achieving smoothness and battery life. About battery life, it’s rated at a decent 3 years.

c. Apparently the Precisionist came about after Citizen bought Bulova in 2008 from Lowes who had owned the company since 1979 and Bulova became a subsidiary of Citizen Japan not of Citizen USA. The idea was to bring some innovation back to Bulova using their history with accuracy and the tuning fork’s breakthrough in the early 60s. The Precisionist was specced out in the US with high accuracy in mind and a sweeping seconds hand and the engineering part was done by Citizen in Japan. I asked if they were using an existing design but apparently not and there are no plans to use that movement in Citizen watches. Citizen focuses on Ecodrive watches and that doesn’t fit in well with high frequency quartz.

d. Quartz frequency is 262144Hz (versus 32768 Hz on a standard quartz, i.e. 8x more here) and there is no thermal compensation. When I mentioned that the 196khz Seiko in the 8Fxx caliber didn’t have the stability of thermocompensated watches like the Breitling Superquartz (ETA Thermoline) or Citizen Exceed (E510), they said that frequency wasn’t everything and seem to be confident that the “third prong that creates a torsional resonator” helped a lot with stability…That’s what their testing tells them, so I guess we’ll have to do ours

e. I asked about the presence of a “trimmer” but apparently there will be no way to perform adjustments directly on the watch. If a watch is out of specs it will have to be sent back.

f. The Mens models are rather large, with the Champlain Titanium 96B131 clocking in at 46.5mm (14.4mm thickness) but the 96B128 from the Claremont collection (bottom right of close up 1) is a more reasonable 44mm (12.2mm thickness) and the 96B130 Longwood (left in close up 2) is 43.5mm (11.6mm thickness)

g. Availability is set for September in the US and the pricing will range for from $299 to $1000 (for the model with diamonds) so that seems pretty reasonable given the features on offer.

Yes, they are called Spring Drive movements.

Docrwm wrote:

Yes, they are called Spring Drive movements.

Great reply Mark, that black one looks kinda cool. Wanna find a better pic...

DOC, so SPRING DRIVE is actually quartz with a sweep second hand, do they have a battery?

Doesn't ISA do a fairly good job of sweeping a quartz?
Isn't that their claim to fame?

Have always wondered why there haven't been more quartz
watches that had a smooth sweeping second hand. These
Bulovas look like the real deal though ! Would be great if
this is something we get to see more of from Bulova, as well
as other watch companies too. Not that they would replace
automatic movements, but it would still be nice to see a different
type of quartz movement like this !

isa's chronogragh hand sweeps when resetting it, not that big of a deal! still ticks when your using it! Another one of JS little fibs, they will show a close up of the chrono hand resetting and it does, nice and slow with a sweeping movement when most movements chrono hands snaps back when you hit the pusher so fast you dont even see it!