The Grey NATO - Ep 115 - Challenge: Seiko

Published on Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:00:22 -0400

Synopsis

This episode is a discussion between Jason Heaton and James Stacey, hosts of the podcast "The Gray Nado". They introduce a new segment called "Challenge" where they select a brand and an arbitrary budget, in this case $1,500 for Seiko watches, and discuss what models they would buy to build a well-rounded collection within that budget using the brand's MSRP prices. Jason selects the new Prospex SNJ031 "Safarni", the SRP777J "Turtle", the SRPD59 Seiko 5, and the SNZ-G09 field watch. James picks the Prospex SPB143 diver, and the SCXP158 gold-toned quartz field watch. They also discuss some car-related topics recommended by listeners.

Transcript

Speaker
Jason Heaton Hello and welcome to another episode of The Gray Nado, a Hodinkee podcast. It's a loose discussion of travel, diving, driving, gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode number 115, and we thank you for listening. Well, how goes it north and east of me here?
James Stacey Yeah, you know, things are okay. You know, not largely different than our last convo. It's another warm day in Toronto. We're actually recording this a little bit later. There's some fairly loud construction going on directly next to where I live. And my guess is it'll be going on for some time. If you notice, the vibe of the show kind of changes, maybe a little bit lower energy or weirder energy. Or if you're just if you can just in the background hear me cracking several Diet Cokes throughout an episode, it's because we're recording these after 3 p.m. And our usual is definitely more like 9, 10 o'clock, 9, 10, 11.
Jason Heaton Yeah, we're fresh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking this will be it'll have more of a laid back vibe before I have a cup of tea here. But yeah, I think it'll go fine. Yeah, and you've been even living in a tent, sleeping in a tent the past few days.
James Stacey Yeah, my girls want to do the tent thing again. I can't really say no to them, which means I'm in the tent because it's not really a backyard. It's kind of something that's our front yard. Yeah. So I'm actually, you know, tonight we're going to we're going to sleep indoors. And as much as it may belie the extent to which I say I like a tent, I am looking forward to sleeping just kind of in my own bed and for a whole night. Yeah. Yeah. We had a couple of really noisy nights, the coyotes, there were some sirens not too far from me, like not super loud nearby, but close enough that the coyotes picked up on the sound and were howling with, uh, with the sirens. So that can be fun. And then, um, you know, it's also, it's summertime. So every kid in this neighborhood is out until 10 30. Yeah. They make an unbelievable amount of noise. I'm sure I made that much noise when I was like seven or eight years old. I didn't have a razor scooter to smash into every piece of, you know, curb and street around, but, uh, Yeah. It's just kind of a noisy neighborhood is what I'm learning, especially now that, you know, I'm spending this much time here with the windows open or even in this case, sleeping directly on my front lawn.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I'm sure. Geez. Yeah. I think, I think this time being at home, you're right. It's, uh, and then with the weather, nice, you open the windows, you suddenly realize the sounds of a neighborhood, you know, when you're, you're traveling or busy or working in an office or something, you don't, you don't pick up on that stuff. And suddenly you realize who your neighbors are and what birds live in the backyard. Who's got the noisy Noisy pickup truck around the corner and that sort of stuff.
James Stacey This is also like the first time in a really long time that I've lived on ground level. Oh. Uh, you know, in Vancouver, I was a couple of stories up, which makes a huge difference. I mean, the noise, the noise, the noise in Vancouver, my spot in Vancouver, which is just downtown adjacent, literally. Yeah. Um, was, was a, a 10th of what it is here. And we had the door open all year. It didn't have AC in Vancouver. Oh, sure. Uh, just, just much, much noisier. kind of existence here. What I can do on a more positive note in an attempt to be positive rather than complain about the noise in my neighborhood, I can tell you that, and I can get a more exact list if this matters to people, but I have now spent several nights and have set up and taken down several times this Alps Mountaineering Taurus 4 is what it's called. It's a four-man tent. It's a lovely tent. I can confirm that. I've now used it a bunch. It sits through the rain without issue. Nobody gets wet. The airflow is lovely. It's a really simple thing to set up. It's a really simple thing to take down. It dries in the sun like almost instantly. It doesn't weigh that much. So I can definitely support this for kind of an entry-level cheap tent that's also like tough enough for camping with kids and the rest of it. And then I'd have to look at what the brands are, but I've been using these like Amazon brand air mattresses. You know, they're packable and they're small. They're actually to their credit, they're maybe like $40 Canadian even. And they pack down smaller than my Therm-a-Rest. Now, that said, the Therm-a-Rest is $200 or $300 and has an R rating and is like proper for camping and the rest of it. But these are, you know, if you're going to sleep via car camping or in your backyard or something, serious value. You can blow them up by, you know, mouth and lungs. You don't need some compressor or anything. You easily get four in this tent. So they're the correct size. Obviously, if you deal with a temperature swing, which we had one last night, I woke up with my hip bone firmly in the dirt. You can go a long way on these off-brand camping equipment. Unless you're really doing backcountry stuff or looking to dial in a gear that doesn't weigh that much and will last a really long time, there's some huge value in some of these just simple Amazon brands. Sierra Wind or something like that made these. three of the air mattresses I use. And then one of my daughters wanted the orange one, so they got my $300 Therm-a-Rest. The color makes a big difference. That's what I've learned. You should just buy everything the same color. Then there's no telling the difference between them.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I like this idea of, might be a nice topic for the future, is sort of frugal alternatives to certain things and where not to be frugal. I think you're right. I think for 90% of the type of camping that most people do, you know, less expensive, even the sleeping bags, tents, and that sort of thing are fine. And I guess the flip side of that is the one time that you get caught in a high wind storm or something with your your cheap tent is when you get soaked or it gets blown over or something.
James Stacey But yeah, I mean, I've I've guide the the Alps twice. Again, this is a tent that I think I spent one hundred and fifty Canadian dollars on. So this is not an expensive tent. It's it's the second Alps tent that I own. It's not to be confused with Alps and meters. This is a different brand than Alps Mountaineering. You gave me the first Alps tent that I have, which is a two man non freestanding tent, which I think is called the Ghost or the Ghost 2, I think. I don't. And then this is the Taurus four, which is a simple two pole. Like if you attempted to draw a tent, you would draw this tent door, a door on each side. It has a really nice rain fly and the rain fly can be fully guidance and spiked. Yeah. And we had some pretty serious wind, not like not like bad enough to come inside despite being five feet from my home. But I'm really impressed by this tent for the money. You know, you look at MSR stuff, which is going to be three, four, five times the cost, um, or, or North face stuff, which again, gets quite expensive. It really, you just have to tune it to your expectations. It's a, it's really nicely made. It's good quality stuff. It's a nice place to sit on a hot day. It's a fine place to sleep. Um, as for the things like sleeping bags and all that, I mean, I, I'm very much a fan of if it's for you and you plan on doing this in kind of. Sometimes you're alone. Sometimes you're with these friends. Sometimes you're like, if you're just a camping, person in their 20s that lives in Squamish or something like that. Spend the money on the bag and spend the money on a proper sleeping pad, especially one that's not too loud for your tent mates. The material that the pad is made of can be quite loud, which is something to consider, but spend the money on that because a lot of them are buy one and buy once, cry once scenarios. But if you're just outfitting it for like your kids to do a weekend in the grass in the backyard or something, don't go crazy. I mean, for the cost of my, certainly for the cost of my personal, like three and a half season sleeping bag, I bought the entire setup I sleep in now. The tent, four pads, four sleeping bags, a light, like the whole thing was less than the cost of the sleeping bag that I would use most of the time.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got an REI Basecamp 4, which is their their four person dome tent, uh, gosh, we got it as a wedding gift 15, 16 years ago. And we've used that a lot and we've never had to replace it. Don't even think about it. It sits in the basement most of the year. And then the few times we go, we take it. And the big secret is, you know, we used to deal with thermal rests and little inflatable air mattresses. And then we were like, you know, let's, let's live it up a bit. I mean, we're car camping and there's no weight limit. We're not hauling this stuff in. So we, we have a, uh, a queen sized air mattress that we like put down for guests. Like if we have a full house, we got to put it up in the room. It fits perfectly like in that four person tent with like room to spare on each side. And we just pump it up with a foot pump, takes five minutes and it's, it's luxury. I mean it's like, it's great. And the tent is gigantic so you can sit up in it. You can, I can almost stand full up, you know, at six foot two. I can, Oh wow, that's way bigger than a Taurus.
James Stacey Yeah. It's I don't think I definitely can't stand in the Taurus. I can kneel in the center, but that even that might hit the roof.
Unknown It's a very compact for a person.
James Stacey Yeah. But I have looked into there's some, you know, double wide, four inch thick air mattresses that are like maybe a hundred again, Canadians, maybe 65 bucks, 70 bucks on Amazon. And I was just trying to do the measurement to see if two of those would fit. Yeah, because, you know, I don't know if you've like obviously, Jason, you probably haven't, but with camping with little, little, little kids, like three years old, they move around so much at night, they don't stay on the narrow sleeping pad. So they end up mostly on mine or mostly on their sister's or something like that. So I didn't know if maybe, maybe this would help mitigate some of that. So there's, there's a little bit of fine tuning of the setup. Um, but largely, uh, yeah, I, I would say that, um, it w it's probably something where I could build like a little list or, um, or something to try and suggest that you could do your own camping in backyard or grandma and grandpa's backyard or a nearby state park or something for X number of dollars and probably never really be let down by the gear.
Jason Heaton Yeah, maybe we should do a camping episode now that summer's here. People are getting out, especially this year when parks are opening up here and there and people aren't flying much. It's a good summer for for road trips. And speaking of that, we're, we're, um, we're booked into a cabin, uh, in gosh, what did they say? 12 days from now, we're going to get up, we'll get away up to the Gunflint trail, which is way up at the Northern end of Minnesota in the Boundary Waters canoe area. So we, we booked, uh, just a little 1930s era cabin. That's on a, on a nice little Lake with a private dock and a canoe to use. And that's about all we're going to do is just paddle around, swim a little bit, do some hiking. Fantastic. I, I, I, now that we've booked it, I, I can't believe how antsy I am to do that. I just, um, we went kayaking last night on, on this Creek that we do a couple of times a year near here. And there's something about being on water that has, uh, it was very rejuvenating to do that last night. Like there's a lake near that we walked down and see, but I don't know something about this, these months of kind of being homebound. Um, And I don't think it has to do with missing diving or anything like that. It's just being around water is very therapeutic, I think. And so being on a lake and going swimming will be a real nice change of pace for us. Can't wait.
James Stacey We'd mentioned that on the last episode either. I think it was me, but it might've been you said that, you know, we were really looking forward to that first jump off of a dock into a cold lake. And we got a couple of people look, whether it be in DMS or email saying basically like finishing an email and saying like, I also can't wait for, uh, for this. So yeah, I think that's good. And yeah, you were, you were mentioning that the, it looks like the, a lot of the camping will reopen and a quick note, if you can hear banging, that's the construction nearby. I would promise they would have stopped about 40 minutes ago and they're still making some noise. So my, distinct and anger-laced apology to anyone listening who can hear the banging behind me. But yeah, apparently a lot of the campsites in Ontario should open in the next few days to the next week or so. So I assume the booking for that scenario will be horrendous, actually trying to get a spot, but I'm hoping to get the chance to actually go out and do some proper camping and remote cooking and the rest of it. That could be... that could be a really fun time oh yeah yeah that'll be great what i would like now is let's talk about the um the auctions so this is one that we kind of launched with the last episode uh jason by the time the episode actually went live had been running an auction with a a really great unimatic dive watch and with all of the proceeds going towards big brothers big sisters of america jason how did that auction turn out
Jason Heaton Yeah so it ended last Friday at noon and the high bid was $2,000 so really amazing amount. I think we were at about $1,200 when we recorded last week which was last Tuesday or Wednesday and just had a great response and the winning bidder was a guy named Mani Ahmed who's based in the Maldives of all things. So this watch is going to one of the most remote and spectacular places that I've been and just I couldn't have imagined that that that's where it would be headed. But, uh, yeah, he, he stepped up and, and he bid and he apologized for scaring off any other bidders, which was kind of funny. He said, Oh, he said, I would have gone higher if anyone had bid. And I was like, wow, that's, that's fantastic. So, um, thanks to him that I sent the watch off, uh, yesterday, uh, that being Monday morning via DHL. And I think it'll take a couple of weeks to get there, but, um, I look forward to hopefully seeing some photos from him. of that watch in a very tropical and lovely place. It was such a great cause and such a great response to the auction and just thrilled to be able to donate the money. I noticed that the wire transfer from Monty came through and I'll be turning around and submitting that to Big Brothers Big Sisters in the next day or two. So just fantastic. Thanks to everybody who who bid and especially to Mani in the Maldives. Just really, really tremendous.
James Stacey And for everyone who shared it and, you know, got the word out, even if they weren't in a position to make a bid on a watch like that or, you know, operate at that level, I think what a great outcome. Yeah. And as promised, I have news on my front as far as an auction. So this episode will come out on the 18th of June and on Friday, the 19th of June at about noon ET. I will be auctioning my Halio Seaforth, the pastel one. It's a watch that I mean, even up to this moment, I was kind of like, should I just pick something else? Because it's a watch I love and that I think I will miss, but let's be honest, I also have another very important Seaforth, the Vancouver LE with Rolldorf, and that's one that has a lot of sentimental value to me. The Halio Seaforth, the pastel, so this is a first-gen, date-free, It's the one that you see on the review on Hodinkee. It'll be coming as a full kit, and there'll probably even be a couple of extras coming from Hallios Central in Vancouver. I spoke with Jason Lim, who of course runs the brand, and he's excited about this. I'm excited about it. I'm going to miss the watch absolutely, and it's one that I absolutely cannot rebuy. They're not going to make more of them, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but I hope it earned some really excellent money for worthy cause. But at this point, the cause, uh, I haven't quite decided. So that'll be announced either on Friday or we might give a list to the person making the donation. Uh, and they could pick the one that feels the most right to them. Um, big brothers, big sisters sounds like a great idea to me. Uh, but there's certainly some flexibility there as far as. where the money will go. But either way, if you've always wanted a chance at a first-gen, you know, date-free C4 with a 12-hour bezel, this is going to be a run for it. You see them pop up occasionally. But, you know, this is a fun watch and a watch I really like, and I'm excited. So that'll be, again, Friday the 19th at 12 noon. It's the day after this episode comes out. And I think I'll probably end the auction, like, on Monday. Yeah, sure. So give people the weekend to bid, and Only people listening to this episode on Thursday will know in advance. Everyone else will find out Friday at noon. So maybe you get your bidding fingers ready or however you want to protect your chance at the watch. Digging the sofa cushions. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'm excited and looking forward to not only having that watch go to a new home, but a new home via what I think will be a pretty great charitable act.
Jason Heaton Wow, that's amazing. I think it's fun to do these auctions with watches that were limited and sold out, like the Unimatic and now the Helios. Helios, I mean, people are always asking, you know, where can I get one? And, you know, cursing that they missed out on the first run. So I think that, I think it's going to be a huge, huge turnout for that one. I can't wait to see it.
James Stacey Friday the 19th, tune in. It'll be all over Instagram. We'll certainly do our best to get the word out. It'll be a good time. Just looking at our list here. Oh, another one that's worth mentioning. Probably one of the most mentioned, if not the most mentioned brands on the gray NATO is Toxic NATOs. Out of Colorado, Terry runs the shop that would produce some of our favorite NATOs. Of course, Terry was kind enough to make the original TGN NATO, which was a gray NATO with a TGN signed buckle, of which there are no more than 200 somewhere else in the world in 20 and 22 millimeter. Uh, I just a heads up for anyone listening in and just because I'm sure we'll continue to reference his products. The, his business name has changed to utewatchco.com. Uh, so that's utewatchco. I don't necessarily know the story behind why he changed it. Uh, I would love to have Terry on to talk NATOs and everything else at some point. So maybe that'd be a fun, a fun thing to do in the next little while, but just, just in case I mentioned, Oh, you should get a UTE. We're saying the same thing as toxic. That's all that means. And in the event that you don't follow them on Instagram, where the name changed and that kind of thing, it's the same business. It's Terry. It's all that. But it's no longer called Toxic Natos.
Jason Heaton Yeah, good, good note because, um, you know, if people are searching for that, I don't know if there's going to be a redirect, uh, or for how long there will be, but, uh, it, it currently redirects.
James Stacey If you could try and go to toxic NATO's website, it'll take you to UTE watchco.com, which is great. And of course, super smart. Um, but as what I think are unofficial, you know, we are unofficial, you know, self named ambassadors for, for toxic NATO's, uh, and now UTE's as I'm I'll call them, uh, the, the straps are incredible and, uh, Terry, you know, this is a veteran owned business. Terry's a really great guy and has supported us in the past. So I want to make sure people knew he changed his business name and that's what it is now. UTE WatchCo. Cool. Uh, finally, uh, this came out. So again, this comes out on the 18th and on the 16th. So, uh, today, today as we're recording this, it's always fun to do the math. Um, my, uh, interview episode on Standard H podcast, uh, came out today. So that's episode 37. Uh, Standard H is this excellent podcast run by this guy named Wesley, uh, from, you know, kind of the Southern California area. I believe he's based in San Diego. And, uh, and yeah, he does, uh, he does these great kind of interviews with people who have either started or helped grow businesses. And, uh, and I had a really nice chat with him. I didn't think he would use all of it. It was a really long kind of rambly chat and he ended up using almost all of it. So if, if for some reason. You feel you're at a deficit for my voice. You can get another like hour and 20 minutes of it with Wesley, but he's really good at what he does. He's also been, you know, kind enough to include me in episode 37, but in the past had on guys like Hodinkee COO, Ennery Acosta. And he had on Nick Roberts, who also does a bunch of promotional work with like promotional and image work with Hodinkee among several other brands. Lots of really good stuff there, and I highly recommend Standard H just as a subscription. Whether or not you listen to my episode is, of course, up to you. There's a lot of really good characters on there.
Jason Heaton Nice. And he's kind of a car guy, right? That's the reference to the name? Absolutely, yeah. H pattern, shift pattern.
James Stacey Yeah, so we get into cars. We certainly get into watches. We get into some of my roots in how I developed in photography and the rest of it, candy, bands, that sort of thing. There's a lot in there.
Unknown Nice.
James Stacey Yeah, I think it came out pretty well and a big thank you to Wesley for having me on the show. It was sweet of him to make that possible.
Jason Heaton Awesome. Well, before we get into the main topic, let's do a quick wrist check. What are you wearing today?
James Stacey You know, I took off the garment a few days ago. I was one of those things where I kind of switched to bothering me the notifications. I wanted a break from that. So I switched over to the I switched over to my Explorer 2 on the stock bracelet, which is kind of perfect for summer. The other thing I do for the summer, and I haven't really decided if it makes sense or not, but I usually bump the micro adjust one point. It makes it a little bit floppy, which I feel like it just kind of looks a little bit more casual that way. And it certainly wears nicely for the sweat and the rest of it. And the white face, I'm not using the two time zones. I'm not tracking any other time zones these days. This watch just makes me smile whenever I wear it. It's one of my absolute favorites. And yeah, that's what I've had on. And I may put it on the fake Jubilee that I've got, but right now the Oyster just looks and feels great. I've been sleeping with it on in the tent.
Jason Heaton Oh, that's perfect. It's such a great watch, for sure. In the glow of the sun coming through a nylon tent, if you squint a little bit, you can probably pretend you're on Everest Base Camp or something.
James Stacey Yeah, there you go. A little warm for base camp, I assume.
Jason Heaton Maybe not. Well, apropos to today's episode, I chose a Seiko. Today's episode is all about Seiko. And I dug out this Seiko 7002. It must be from the late 80s that I bought a few years back. I got it at a thrift store. We're not usually antiquing types, but I think we were passing through a small town and there was like an antique shop and we were poking around in there. And in one of the cases they had this Seiko dive watch. really beat up, scratched, and everything else. I pulled it out and looked, and they were selling it for $60. It has the previous owner's initials engraved kind of very crudely on one of the lugs on the inside. I barely wear it, but it's one of the shake-and-bakes. I picked it up, and I thought, put me in the Seiko mood. I threw it on a NATO strap, and so that's what I'm wearing. I will note that last we spoke, I mentioned that I wanted to try kind of a smartwatch experiment. I did for, I think, three days straight last week, I just wore my Garmin and I set it up to receive notifications and that sort of thing. I could really see where you were coming from. I actually quite enjoyed, you know, just watching a movie in bed or cooking or something where I didn't always have to be referencing my phone, but I was able to kind of see, you know, your messages pop up on Slack or, you know, some sort of notification come through. And, uh, uh, you know, I didn't continue on with that past about three days, but, uh, you know, I, I can see the appeal. So I'll, I'll try that from time to time. It was, it was nice to, nice to do it.
James Stacey Yeah. When it feels right, it just kind of feels right. But also when you don't want those notifications or you are trying to unplug, uh, it's time to switch over to an analog watch for that, uh, for that time period. I think, uh, you know, speaking of kind of having multiple watch options and switching around, I think now makes just about as good a time as any to switch over to our main topic, which is one of these kind of subtopics or frameworks, or I'm not really sure what you would call them. It's a type of show. We have, we have a few of these, you know, uh, the film clubs, the collection inspections, the perfect products. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, because this seems to be something that we, uh, that we like to do. Um, but we're announcing something that we're just going to call challenge and then a brand. So in this case, it's challenge Seiko. And the idea is we will, identify some sort of an entirely arbitrary budget, in this case $1,500, and then talk about what we would buy from the brand for that money with the hopes of making what we feel is a well-rounded collection. I think that will vary, brands and prices, in kind of an extreme way. I think with Seiko, it would be tempting to say, well, how many could you do for $1,000 or even for $500 or Could you, could you kind of do the whole collection for this much money? So I think 1500 is pretty good. It gives you enough to dip into some of their higher end stuff, but nothing, nothing that would be the like de facto option, you know, Lux Seiko move. Uh, cause there isn't one at $1,500. So, uh, yeah, I, I say we, uh, we kick this off. So this is a challenge Seiko. And we hope you like it. You know, it's something that I think we could do with almost any brand. And it's just kind of a highlight of what we think are kind of standout models and how they blend with other models from the same brand.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I think, uh, I think it's a nice way to ease into this new ongoing series, uh, as opposed to another brand, because I think for $1,500, you have, uh, some, a lot of choices and a lot of options with Seiko. Whereas I think if we were to do something similar with, I don't know, Omega, you know, you'd probably have to say, Okay, you have $10,000 to spend or $8,000 or something like that, whereas Seiko, like $1,500 can be spent in radically different ways. And I think you and I have tried to demonstrate, whether consciously or unwittingly so, kind of the two main ways of going about this. I chose to kind of pile up a handful of watches and get close to that $1,500 and you went for kind of a I don't want to say less is more, but fewer watches with kind of one biggie.
James Stacey And the one thing I would bring up before we start, I think Jason will start with one of your watches, because like you said, you have more picks than I do. Sure. But before we start, I would say that what we've gone with with Seiko is their MSRP. Yeah. So this is not street price. Street price for Seiko actually fluctuates pretty insanely, especially if you're talking about brand new Seikos versus Seikos that have hit on the market long enough to become bought by all the people who wanted them when they were new. Yeah. So the pricing can really move around. So when some of these watches will be quoting prices and you'll roll your eyes and say, like, well, that's not what that costs. It's actually two hundred dollars less on the street. And we don't disagree, but we're going with MSRP because this is the worst case scenario or the most money that you could spend on the model. And it's also representative of what the watch cost when it was brand new. You know, if you a lot of these watches for the first six months or a year that they sit on the market, they do actually go for MSRP. And then there's this kind of overall adjustment once they start to hit true gray market dealers. Currently, we're ignoring that. Obviously, lots of times in the past, we've talked about Seiko dive watches and what they actually sell for. Today, we're just going with MSRP for simplicity and hopefully to make it more translatable to different markets.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Well, I'll jump in. Yeah, please. So great year for Seiko. I mean, I think this was a... Already has been fantastic. Yeah. You know, Seiko kind of ebbs and flows for me. I, I kind of jump in with, with both feet and get really excited about some of their stuff some years and other years I, I sort of, they lie dormant a little bit. And this is one of those years when they've just been crushing it with, um, the one you're going to talk about for your kind of biggie, but then also the, the Captain Willard reissue that's coming. And, um, this one, my first one, which is the, the Prospex SNJ031, uh, which has been nicknamed already. The Safarni. So this is the Arnie Arnold Schwarzenegger Predator analog digital reissue in kind of a smaller tuna style case. In particular this is the one with the khaki coloring. So they've got a few. They've got like a black case and strap with a Pepsi bezel. They've got kind of a more of a darker green version of this one. The one I like is this beautiful khaki version, which has this sort of khaki strap, a bit of a fade on the bezel, and sort of faux-tina coloration to the markers in the hands, and a bit of a minute track on the dial. And this watch, MSRP, when it will be available, which is I think later this summer, goes for $550. And this is my first choice. I got to be I gotta be upfront and honest. I literally, before this episode, put down a deposit for this watch. I'm going to buy this watch. It's funny because the Arnie Seiko has not been one that I have even looked at in the past. I don't know. The original didn't quite do it for me. The dial always seemed a little small and, I don't know, just didn't appeal to me, even though I do have a bit of a love for analog digital divers. But in this colorway, kind of this new release that they came out with, I'm just smitten. It's got these screw-down pushers. The khaki colorway is just kind of fun and summery. I just think it's going to be a fun watch. This is one of those watches that fits in with kind of where I started with watches, which is just something that's fun to look down on your wrist. I think with the solar charging with this new edition, so the original was just battery-powered analog digital quartz. This one is solar charging, so conceivably, You know, you'll never have to change the battery. Just wear it anywhere. Take it off, leave it in the sunlight, and then you can pick it up and go. Multifunction. I love, you know, I mean, this is certainly not a Garmin smartwatch, but, you know, you get second time zone alarm chronograph. It's just quirky. It's got huge pushers. It's probably not incredibly comfortable on the wrist. It'll probably get snagged on sleeves and that sort of thing, but I'm looking forward to it. And at $550, it's most of the $1,500, which should say something about the other ones that I picked.
James Stacey Right. Yeah. I reviewed the SNJ 025, the 2019 Arnie, which is the closest aesthetically to the original. Technically, I believe they're actually a bit larger than the one that Arnie wore. It was closer to 44, 45 millimeters. These are 47.8, something like that. It's definitely not not comfortable because it has tiny lugs. It doesn't weigh that much. I think it's a great watch. Super fun. I wouldn't say it's a $500 Seiko, so it doesn't feel like a $10,000 watch. It doesn't feel like analog digital from Breitling. It, you know, it, it, it's just, you know, you get great loom, you get a great style. I think these Sifanis are really cool. You're looking at the 029, which is that like the tan coloring. I really dig the 031, which is the kind of green coloring, the olive drab sort of case and strap along with like a gun metal, metal bits. I think both of them look killer. I also really like with these ones, you know, the 025, the actual, the quote unquote, the 2019 Arnie, It had like SKX007 hands and markers. And the 031 and the 029, the Safarneys, have block markers and like Marine Master hands.
Jason Heaton Yes, that's what I like about this better. You've pointed it out. I've now realized that.
James Stacey And I dig it because the way that, of course, It's a smart solution because the minute hand can't reach all the way because you have a screen. So it's an asymmetrical dial layout with this chop at the top. And to treat that by putting bigger hands on you, you can almost just telepath the minutes because they're just kind of these big chunky hands. And I think while the 025 looks more like a dive launch, which I get the appeal there, and more like the original Arnie if you're like a Predator fan and all that. I think that the overall design of these new ones feels a lot more modern. And I dig it. I like the coloring quite a bit. The tan on tan on tan is cool. And I think the green one is dope. And for 550, that's a good way to spend about a third of the budget for the challenge.
Jason Heaton And I think, you know, before I... pass it over to you. I think just kind of to preface where I'm headed with my choices is, I mean, I think personally that what Seiko does best, and I think what most people know it for, is sub $500 dive watches. They're watches that everybody knows. Everybody's got one. You can wear them anywhere. They look great on NATO. They're just bold. They're very distinctive. And they've got a history that really rivals Rolex in terms of people wearing them, doing cool stuff, and appearing in movies, and et cetera, et cetera. You know, it was arguably what got me into watches way back in the 80s with my first dive watch. And I think I just want to play to their strengths. So you'll see that I guess I picked one, two, three, four watches for the $1,500 and three of them are dive watches or dive style watches. So that was kind of my logic with it. I feel like, you know, Seiko certainly does some great stuff at a higher level, one of which you'll you'll point out right now, but, uh, for me, it's that sub $500 dive watch territory. They just, they just own it and they always have.
James Stacey Yeah. I think, I think for me that I totally agree. I think that that's a really smart way to build a $1,500 Seiko only collection. Um, my only, my only thing is I, you know, I'm building on having owned 20 sub $500 Seikos and, and wanting and knowing kind of being, being more careful in terms of what I want, because, you know, you look at something like a seven set, like a turtle, which is a fantastic choice. I would like something a little bit smaller, even if it meant that my three watch collection became a two watch collection. So for my first, I'm picking one that I will be buying as soon as I get the opportunity. I actually just haven't picked a retailer that I believe will get it to me very quickly. And that's the new Prospex SPB 143, which on an international market, I believe is called an SBDC 101. Wow. And it's the, uh, 40.5 millimeters steel kind of more true to form 62 mass, uh, reissue prospects, you know, tribute to peace. You know, it's not an SLA 017, which would be more like four grand, probably 3,700 bucks, something like that. Um, but you're getting most of that. Uh, you know, I've, it's my understanding that the lug to lug is around 48 millimeters, a little less, it's about 13 millimeters thick. All of that is basically perfect, and I'm looking at the piece that I wrote for Hodinkee, introducing the four versions. My preference would be a 143 on a rubber strap, because I'm not going to use the rubber or the bracelet at all. This will live on a NATO or on a mesh, like a shark mesh. But at 40.5, I think that I'm gonna get all the charm that I want from a 007 or a 777. but in a science that's going to feel a little bit more considered a little bit more higher level. You get a great movement if you want and you care, you get the bracelet. You know, I would love to have been able to say that this was going to cost me a thousand dollars of the $1,500 budget and get the kind of Brown dial guilt version. But let's face it. I would not buy nor wear that version. I don't like it. Yeah. I like the standard gray, black dial, the one, four, three. Uh, and yeah, that's going to cost me 1200 bucks in my $1,500. But if you gave me 1200 bucks today, and said I had to spend it on a watch this is what I would turn around and buy. There's a few places running pre-orders right now and like I said I'm just trying to identify what would be the smartest option whether I can find someone in Canada selling one or order it right out of Japan.
Jason Heaton Yeah that's a good pick. I mean I think I'll be curious to see once we get our respective watches here and you've certainly had SKXs and SRPs what a $1,200 Seiko feels like. And maybe you've handled a $1,200 Seiko, but $1,200 is a tricky number. It's a weird price point. It is a weird price point. The $500 Seiko is everybody's SRP. It's $475. Two to three times that value, is it a significant tick up as opposed to going from a $500 watch to a $3,000 watch, $5,000 watch, you can really tell what's changed, what's better about it. But I'll be curious to see how it goes with this one. I think it's a beautiful watch. I think it's tremendous. Yeah. And I think, you know, because Seiko swings so high above their weight, I mean, you know, a $1,200 watch from Seiko probably does feel like a $4,000 watch from somebody else or a $3,000 watch or something.
James Stacey Yeah, I think it's one of those things where you have to decide exactly. And the nice thing about Seiko, and this is why I think we went with this as the challenge, you know, the inaugural challenge brand. What with Seiko you have, you can really pick and choose what you want. They typically make a lot of everything. And what I've always wanted was that SKX, SRP sort of appeal, but in a case size that was more like that of a Rolex.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey Something in the 40 millimeter, you know, as close to, and that SLA was really, really interesting that, you know, this is the, the actual 62 mass re-edition with the thinner bezel. It's 39 millimeters would be great, but I'm, you know, Do you want to spend four grand on a Seiko? I kind of don't.
Unknown Right.
James Stacey Right. I don't have four grand to spend on any watch, if I'm honest.
Jason Heaton Yeah.
James Stacey So yeah, the fact that this one comes in at twelve is appealing rather than being kind of scary. And I, too, am just genuinely interested in what you get when you commit to spending, you know, it's got to be what, three, three point five, the street price of a 777. Yeah. You know, pushing up on two point five, the MSRP of a 777, which is like arguably a perfect Sporty everyday dive watch.
Jason Heaton Yeah Yeah, I think I think Seiko maybe maybe $1,200 is what a Seiko should be priced at I think we talked about this in a past episode where they've probably been vastly underpriced for years and and they're able to hold those lower prices because of the sheer volume that they're able to produce and always have been or at least since you know 70s and 80s and so I think you know they can just make so many watches and they're just ubiquitous that they can sell them for a great watch for sub $500, whereas, you know, you get like a micro brand that uses a Seiko movement and they're selling it for, you know, a thousand and it's like, okay, well, how does that work? But, um, so maybe 1200 is exactly the right price that it should be.
James Stacey We'll see. And the only risk that I can think of in my mind is we, this is Seiko, right? So there's four versions at launch. Yeah. The 143, 145, 147 and 149, which is an LE, the blue yellow one.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey How many will there be in two years? And will there be one of those that I want more? Yeah, that's true. Which is why I feel it's the safe move to just lean on the gray black. Yeah. Uh, the gray black dial, which in photos, uh, looks really good and, and, and that kind of thing. So I'm excited, but that being said, $1,500 budget is slashed down to 300 bucks left. Yeah. Yeah. So let's hear your, uh, let's hear your next two.
Jason Heaton Okay. So next one for me is one I just mentioned, which is the, the turtle, the SRP 777. I'm putting a twist on this. in that there's a J version, which Seiko people know that usually if there's a, yeah, there's a, and this is one of those little Easter egg nuggets for Seiko nerds is the presence of a J in the name usually indicates that it's a Japan market or Japan made version of a watch that is made elsewhere to be sold to the rest of the world. And so if you look around, I found a SRP 777J on Amazon, Amazon for $4.95. So it's it comes in And again, we talked about MSRP. I'm not exactly sure of the MSRP for these But a standard SRP 777 sells for $4.75. So we're not talking a huge amount of difference But I have a 777 and I've had one for many years since they first came out and I love it I mean I wear it quite a bit So I'm actually not going to rebuy that watch. I'm quite happy with the one I have. But if I were to do it, I would probably seek out the 777J just to be a bit more of a purist, I guess, to make it slightly more collectible. It's a good pick. And I'd still come in under my total.
James Stacey I wonder what's left for us to say about the 777.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I'm not going to dwell on it. I'm not going to go into it. What a great watch. Yeah, and I guess I will add that, you know, when the... I don't know the code name off the top of my head here, but the Captain Willard reissue from just earlier this year. Another great watch that's coming out in 2020.
James Stacey It's the SPB 151 and SPB 153.
Jason Heaton Yeah, so cool watch and I remember you and I discussed this on a previous episode. Comes with that kind of textured rubber strap or on a bracelet and I said, oh I'm getting one. Well, I'm not getting one. I've decided I like the Sepharni better. The Willard is, it's close. It's very close for me but I think I think between that and the Turtle, I think they're close enough that I'm still happy with the SRP 777. And from what I've heard, just anecdotally, some people don't seem to feel that the new version quite has the elegant case lines of the original 6105. And having owned a vintage 6105, I think I would probably go that route and just buy another one if I really felt that urge.
James Stacey Well, maybe one of those will end up being one of those watch recon buys at 2 in the morning. for whatever the second-hand price of a Willard becomes, because I think the green one on a gray NATO would look real sweet.
Unknown Or a tan NATO. Good stuff.
James Stacey So now you have a Sepharni, which is this really funky, anti-digi, super fun, mega summer, but also you could take a diving in the rest of it, and a 777 from Japan.
Jason Heaton Yeah, so kind of the classic Seiko formula. The third one is going to be the SRPD 59. So this is one that you actually reviewed among a quiver of colorful Seiko 5s. This is their kind of replacement for the SKX. SKX is the watch that everybody knows as a Seiko dive watch. Well, they've discontinued that and this version of the Seiko 5 kind of keeps the same aesthetic, the same case shape. But I guess they get rid of the screw-in crown and so the water resistance is cut to 100 meters instead of 200 meters. But the one in particular that I chose sells for $295, direct from Seiko's website. Or that's how it's priced on Seiko's website. Yeah, so the one I chose comes on kind of a three-link, sort of oyster-style bracelet with an orange dial. I've never had an orange-dialed Seiko. I've seen them. I kind of think they're cool. But I just think this kind of has that sort of retro SKX watch but with the orange dial twist that would be a little new for me because I haven't had an orange Seiko. I'd ditch the bracelet probably immediately or put it on like a Jubilee or something or just move it on to a NATO or something like that. But you know for 295 it's, I mean you can't go wrong. It's the classic shape, durable, fun, summery, travelable. You know, a hundred meters is nothing to sniff at, so you could use it for pretty much anything. Jumping off of docks whenever you get the chance.
James Stacey So yeah, that's choice number three. Those are killer watches. Really nice size. They wear like an SKX, but they feel a little bit elevated. The dials are a little bit fancier, a little bit nicer made. The orange is like iridescent, bright, kind of almost metallic versus some of the flat oranges that we've seen on Seikos of the past.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey And it's funny because for very similar reasons, I almost optioned as my second watch, the SKX781, the original orange monster. Oh, OK. Yeah. Which you can still pick up. Joma's got them, et cetera, et cetera. So this one, the only reason I didn't pick it was I couldn't really find an agreed upon MSRP because they don't make those ones anymore. Yeah. They make many new versions of the quote unquote monster. But if I wanted it, I mean, I want a 781. Yeah. I've owned an original black monster and I think an original orange monster would have made a really fun like dual dive watch pairing with the SPB, which is a very stoic, simple, straightforward sort of dive watch. And then you have the monster, which is weird in almost every way they could make it weird. And that would be a fun one too. And they're like around 300 bucks or a little less than that actually. But again, I think that's a great market price for a watch that might even be several years old. So I didn't think it really fit here, but I'm glad that you picked something with an orange dial because it's something that Seiko does pretty well, but I don't think people give them a lot of credit for.
Jason Heaton Alright, so how are you going to spend your remaining $300?
James Stacey Alright, so I attempted to bend the rules, as I want to do of course, and I searched around on eBay for gold-plated Seiko Lord Marvels. Okay, wow. And while I think it's fair to say that you can find them for under $300, I didn't find one that I would personally buy. Okay. I found some that needed some work, some that looked like they had been polished to the extent that the gold plating would allow. the rest of it. I really like these watches, and you can even get some Lord Marvels or some other gold-plated Seikos that are vintagey that really pick up on the original 3180 styling, that first grand Seiko with the gorgeous mountain hands. And they really took that aesthetic that they established with the 3180 and extended it into a lot of other watches in the resulting decades. And one of those would be a great choice. But again, I felt like this was an unfair way to treat the challenge. I needed to find something that had a real price and not, you know, happen to find one that maybe had a bit of a bump crystal or, you know, maybe didn't keep time that well and thus was under the $300. So I did want something in gold, which was still kind of casual. Something dressy would have been nice, but then you realize, I don't like, I don't currently own something dressy and I don't really miss it. something gold that was casual, but also kind of flexible. And I went with the Seiko S.U.S. S.C. X.P. 158. This is one that was it was a little bit difficult to establish what the list price is because it's not an American model, but you can easily find them all day long for the same price. So I did my best with this one because I think this is a cool watch. But yeah, it's these S.U.S. quartz ones. And it's like Seiko's military sort of field watch style, but in a, so it was made only for the Japanese domestic market. It has a white dial. It has a kind of like a gold PVD case and they're 35 millimeters wide. They come on like a matching NATO. I think they made like eight or nine different color ways. So if you didn't want the gold, whatever, but these can be found without a sweat for about 270 bucks.
Jason Heaton Wow. That's a funky looking watch. It almost looks, It looks vintage. I mean, it looks like a toy almost. It's just such a simple watch.
James Stacey Yeah. Yeah. So it's a really straightforward like field design. The lugs, if you kind of look at it weird, it has this weird kind of squared off stance because the lugs are quite wide for a 35 millimeter case. Um, I I've seen a couple of them. They make a cool loom dial one. They make a cool one with some green accents like that. They're, they're really neat watches. I like the idea of having a quartz. Um, you know, if I wanted to use this as my anything watch, it would still work. Um, I think it makes it really good kind of, summer watch but these are these kind of call back to a this weird thing from the 90s that Seiko did where SUS was a combination of the word simple and strong apparently and it's just kind of these it's like if you asked a kid to draw a watch they'd probably draw something that's not too far away from this and but yeah so that's the SCXP158 And I don't, you know, from what I could tell, list price appears to be $3.03. So I may have busted budget by $3, but everywhere seems to be carrying them for $268. Sure. Cool. So, yeah.
Jason Heaton All right. So I'm going to cheat on my last one too, because I know we were going to stick to MSRP, but I had a hard time finding this one for MSRP.
James Stacey Yeah, I mean, this watch doesn't have an MSRP anymore.
Jason Heaton I found it on Jomashop, which is, you know, however you feel about that. But this is the SNZ-G09. So it's a field watch, one that people have probably seen. It's kind of a, they call it khaki green canvas men's watch. It's part of the Seiko 5 collection. And it's just a classic sort of field watch style piece. The case size actually says it's 42 millimeters. It seems, I didn't think they were that big, but you know, I could pull it off. Day-date. It looks like it should have an internal rotating bezel, but it doesn't. It's got that sort of exaggerated wide sloping minute track. It comes on a green canvas strap, which looks cool, or it would look really awesome on a NATO strap. 100 meter water resistant, so do anything you want with it. Jomashop lists it, they say it originally goes for $300. I don't think I've ever seen one of these for that much. But then they're having a Father's Day sale, so they're saying 58% off, $124.99. And there you go. Yeah. So it still meets the $1,500 budget. It keeps me under that. But you know, if we, if we throw this one out, I'm, I'm still coming in at like $1,380 or something like that. So we can, you know, you can spend that on straps if you want, but I'm going to go with this one. I think this is a great sort of field watch style. It's very different from my other picks, which are all, you know, classic sort of Seiko dive watches. This one's the kind of watch I would, for this price, I'd, you know, keep it as a, as a backup in my travel kit. It's an automatic, so you just give it a couple shakes and set the day and date and off you go. And, uh, or it'd be a great gift for, for a teenager or a kid. Um, anybody that's kind of just getting into getting into watches, um, don't really have to worry about it. So yeah, that's kind of the way I round things out. I like having kind of three solid picks and then, and then this kind of sort of fun, more, uh, more of a beater, so to speak.
James Stacey Yeah, I've recommended the SNZG to other people in my past, family members that I knew, you know, maybe they were interested enough to know to ask about an automatic watch versus just a watch. And this was always a great option. I mean, I bought them from Creation Watches in the past, which is, of course, a similar scenario to something like a Jomashop. With these ones, obviously, MSRP would be difficult to establish and respect because Seiko 5 as of last year was entirely canceled aside from the new stuff. Yeah. Uh, so it, you know, I think while, yeah, we both broke our rules, maybe what we'll say isn't so much that we have to have because this is the first one. Um, we can, we can kind of, we can kind of refine it as we go, but maybe it's not so much that it has to be MSRP as much as it has to be the most reliable true price. Um, so MSRP or somewhere where someone could just literally as they're listening to this, go buy it. And Yeah, Joma Shop has this watch on for a really good sale. Yeah. So that's a sweet watch for 125 bucks, no question at all. To go back over yours, do you have the new kind of tan code Sepharni SNJ029 at 550 and SRP777J at 495 and SRPD59, which is the new Seiko 5SKX pseudo replacement. And then finally, to really creep you up on 1500 bones, We're at an SNZG09, which is their kind of dope green field watch with a really simple but super reliable movement and a great case size is what I really like about those ones. And for mine, I spent basically all of it on an SPB143, which is something I'm excited to spend my own money on in the next little while. And that one is also known, like I said, if you're really searching around the internet to find it at the SBDC 101 is what it'll be known as outside of Seiko US territories, I believe. Maybe when we start calling those ROW watches, I'm not sure. And then with the other one you choose, the 300 bucks could go towards something like a Seiko Lord Marvel. In my case, I really like these Seiko SUS-SCXP. I can't say that quickly. The Seiko SUS-SCXP158, which is the kind of gold tone field watch, kind of has a street style to it. It's on a NATO already, and they're available all day long for about 270 bucks.
Jason Heaton Yeah, I like the idea of throwing a vintage one in here, actually. I thought about that, and a few episodes back, I mentioned Hub City Vintage, and if you sign up for his weekly newsletters, they're not quite weekly, but he always gives you a little heads up on sales that he's got coming up of vintage Seikos that he's refurbished. He's a good guy and that seems to be a good resource for for vintage stuff if you don't want to kind of wade into the forums. Absolutely. And then another site that that I used to visit more often, I've never bought anything from them, was Seiya Japan. S-E-I-Y-A Japan dot com. And this is a guy based out of Japan and he sells kind of a lot of the dash J derivatives, a lot of the Japan only stuff as well as kind of the hard to find stuff. So it's always a good good place to visit if you're looking for a more obscure Seiko, Grand Seiko, Orient, I think he does some Citizens as well and Casio, so just a couple of resources.
James Stacey The nice thing about Seiko is they've been around for a really long time. Yeah. They were one of the first Seiko sellers that I found online outside of like, you know, Rito and Poor Man's Watch Forum, that sort of scenario. Yeah. And they carry a pretty wide range of stuff and certainly they definitely have a taste for dive watches. Yeah. And they have that SBDC, the 101 listed as a sort of not so much pre-order, but that they will have it. And you can kind of email them to register your interest in the watch. So that's a decent way of going. And certainly from my experience and from their reputation, a pretty trustworthy source for interesting watches out of Japan. So that is the Seiko Challenge. It was $1,500. We picked a handful of watches and we'd love to know what you think of it. So let us know at thegraynado at gmail.com. And of course, we say it every time and we'll continue to say it. Keep sending in your voice memo questions. We have a ton for the June episode, which is a couple of weeks out, and I'm really looking forward to getting to those questions and answering some of them. But if you have a thought on the challenge series moving forward, maybe brands you would like to hear enter the challenge or even brand and amounts that you think would lead to something interesting. That's why we went with $1,500 for Seiko. We thought it would lead to both constraints and freedom, depending on which direction you came from. Let us know by sending us an email and keep the voice memos coming. Jason, what are you feeling for some final notes?
Jason Heaton Yeah, we've got two, looks like automotive related ones. We do. I'll go first here. This is one that I've been following for several months, but came as a reminder from a listener, Brian, who wrote into our Graynado email box. And it's both a website, kind of a brand, and their YouTube channel. And it's a company called Jaunt, like Jaunt Motors. They're based in Australia. And close to my heart is it's Land Rover related. And what's interesting about what they're doing is it's a small company that has taken on this pretty monumental challenge of taking old series Land Rovers, so we're talking pre-1980s like the one I've got and older and converting them over to electric. So, um, they're not just kind of doing an easy, not easy, but a motor swap to just kind of throw an electric motor in there. They're, they're basically rethinking the entire build of the vehicle from, you know, kind of keeping vintage looking gauges and switches and even, uh, a manual gearbox that you can shift if you want or not, um, to adding electrical, uh, power steering, where to put all the batteries, the range, the tire choices, you know, how they're going to do some sound deadening on the inside of those very loud aluminum body panels. It's just interesting. And I think what's fun about this is that, you know, their website has some interesting information on it, but I think their YouTube channel is particularly good because the guy who runs the company kind of founded it. He leads you through their thought processes and kind of starts out if you go back a ways to taking you for a drive in their kind of inaugural prototype vehicle as it existed as a gas powered Land Rover and kind of points out the quirks, the charm and the flaws of it. And then they proceed to disassemble it and rethink everything. And I think it's, I love, you know, nowadays it's kind of hard to find car companies that are starting from scratch. And this is one that's not only doing that, but they're doing it based on, an existing very old vehicle and converting it to something extremely modern. And, um, so I'm curious to see where they go. I certainly wish jaunt success. I think it's definitely an uphill battle. Um, but, uh, fun, fun to observe, fun to watch them. So yeah, check that out.
James Stacey Absolutely. Yeah. I think you've sent me a couple of their videos before of them, you know, kind of just starting one up and, and yeah, it's a, it's a neat thing. And, and I, you know, it'll be interesting to go down the line where you think right now, There are these kind of go-to engines in the world that people use for swaps when they want to change it. You know, if you want performance, you go to a, you know, a Chevy LS engine. If you want this, you go to that. Like there's, there's these engines that people kind of move from different platforms and try and bend to their will. And it'll be interesting to see when the idea of a, of an electric motor and a paired up battery pack and a controller, and maybe a few hard points that we could, that everyone could kind of agree on. uh, for a flexible use, we'll start to become a kind of crate option. So you could have a Land Rover or even a Miata or like list any sorts of car that like, could you imagine having like a, a TR six that you want to drive once, once every two weeks? Um, but would still, you know, maybe have a two speed or a three speed gearbox be electric. You could plug it in, in your garage on the mains. Cause you don't drive it every day. Yeah. And you'd get significantly more torque than it had originally. You're not putting any fuel in it. And theoretically, at least, your maintenance goes way down. Obviously, it would take a genius, compared to me certainly, to translate a modern electric motor and controller and battery packs with those old Lucas electronics. I think that would take Certainly take some work and maybe, I don't know if you'd want to be driving it in the rain, but that's kind of the case with some TR6s anyways. You know, just be able to take something that maybe wasn't known for its reliability or its easy running charm and make it something that is a little bit more plug and play. Yeah, it doesn't require fuel. Maybe it doesn't require oil changes, that kind of thing.
Jason Heaton Yeah. I think it's really a noble cause. I think, you know, kind of their ethos is, hey, you know, these are vehicles that allow you to go deep into nature. Do you want to be hearing explosions from an internal combustion engine or do you want to be listening to the wind and the birds and everything else? Now the flip side of that is how far can you go before you need to charge the battery? As they say, you can't be crossing the Simpson Desert or anything like that in something like this, but they have short-term goals and long-term goals and it's fun to see them grow. I think yours is a great final note as well. And you helped me out in this regard as well. And I think it's, it's also kind of a way to take an older vehicle and kind of modernize it a little bit.
James Stacey Yeah. So mine actually fits a problem that I had, which was, uh, you know, the Jeep is a 2011, which is new enough to have a kind of a GPS head unit and various other technologies, but not so new that it interfaces with higher end current technology. Right.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey Uh, so my issue was that while the Jeep, while my Jeep has a somewhat complicated, um, kind of optional sound system from infinity, which means changing the stereo, it becomes a little bit more complicated. I also just don't want to get into that so much anymore. I, that was something that I loved when I was a teen and into my twenties was like putting a new stereo in a car. Now I kind of just want that Bluetooth experience. And, um, and the truth is, is, the head unit in my Jeep has Bluetooth, but it's Bluetooth 2.0. Oh, sure. And it sounds like it like whatever you're doing sounds like a phone call where somebody else is in a convertible. Yeah. Whether it's actually a phone call or you're listening to music from your phone or whatever. So I was using the aux cable, which is just kind of you're constantly moving the cable. The plug is directly on the face of the of the panel. So you have this kind of ugly cable that bounces around on the dash and all this kind of stuff. So What I found, uh, actually part of when I was helping you search out some options for the Miata, um, was this, uh, it's called an MPOW Bluetooth hands-free adapter. It's a really simple little, it looks like a little tiny pager almost, or like a little video game. Like it's about maybe not even two inches by one inch, uh, give or take, it was about $25 Canadians. So it's going to be even less than the States. I didn't look up the.com price on Amazon. It has a little screen, which makes it easier to pair. You can get a slightly cheaper one without a screen, but I read several pretty compelling reasons why you don't want to do that. Uh, the screen makes it a lot easier to pair it and to tell how much battery it has, but it's this little tiny thing that kind of looks like if you imagine a tiny black iPod. Yeah. Uh, so it has this little tiny digital screen. The front has a play pause button. It has an ox out on one side. like an auxiliary connection, and you can just plug it directly into any headphone jack. So this could be on an older set of speakers that has a headphone jack, a powered set of speakers. It could be on an amplifier that doesn't have Bluetooth and you'd like to add Bluetooth. Where this one is a little bit more interesting is it has a 10-hour battery life, so you're not also connecting something down to your cigarette lighter and the rest of it. It's this very simple thing where One, I think I've driven the Jeep for 10 hours, never. I mean, I drove it to New York once, it didn't take that long. And you could charge this thing, the Jeep has a plug and the rest of it. But just for this kind of simple, small, inexpensive thing that does Bluetooth 5, and all of a sudden the music from my phone sounds great, sounds as good as anything else, as good as the aux cable. It's something like 10 to 12 hours of call or use. It has the ability to trigger Google assistant so I can press and hold the button, it'll pause my music. I can then say, Hey, wrote me to wherever I want to go. And then it'll do that right on my phone. It's all, it's all kind of integrated and you don't have to set any of this up. You just pair it to Bluetooth.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey And then because it's a Bluetooth five device, this is another interesting thing is it pairs to multiple devices. So if you have two people in the phone in the car, you don't have to pick which phone is serving the music. Your friend could have the album that they want on their phone and quickly pair up and run it. And you can have two active connections, which is pretty clever. So far, it's basically worked flawlessly. It took maybe 30 seconds to set up, and then you charge it over a standard USB-A connection. So occasionally, I guess I'll have to remember to bring it in from the car and charge it overnight. But most of my drives are 30 minutes, 40 minutes. And in that case, you've got Bluetooth with really kind of no sweat. I'll probably get a proper cable and find a way to kind of tuck it in somewhere because it is this little tiny thing. Put a little bit of that 3M Velcro on one side and stick it to something where I don't have to quite see it. Uh, but so far I'm really impressed for $25. You just can't get that much in the way of tech for $25. Um, and I'm surprised that something this simple, you know, I've bought the, I've bought the more complicated ones before that have the, the USB plug and the one that goes to the cigarette lighter for power and then the little controller to play, pause, or change tracks that you stick somewhere kind of ugly on your dash.
Unknown Yeah.
James Stacey I don't need any of that. I just wanted something that was like whatever the most simple thing is. And if I have to charge it every now and then, that's fine. I already charge like 200 other things a month. And yeah, I'm impressed so far. I've used maybe two or three short trips and it sounds great. It works really well. And suddenly the other thing is, of course, whenever you do any of this stuff, you typically now your phone becomes the main controller. There's a weird thing where like if one of my kids are in the back of the Jeep, the top is off, you can't really hear them with the music on. Now I have a hard button. I can reach over and tap the button. It pauses the music every time, 100% of the time. No waking the phone, finding where the play pause button is because the orientation didn't flip and title correctly or something like that. I just reach over, tap it, clarify what's going on in the back seat and then tap it again, which that alone might be worth the 25 bucks just in terms of simplicity, you know, especially with my, you know, my trouble hearing in, in really loud environment or noisy environment. So that's the MPOW Bluetooth receiver. I'll put it in the show notes. It'll be a link to .ca, but I'm sure you can find something similar or the same, uh, from, from many other sources. And it's, uh, if you have a car that already has the aux jack and you just kind of want to either stop using the auxiliary cable every time you get in or out, or you'd like something a little bit more, just kind of plug and play and simple. I think this is a good route.
Jason Heaton Yeah, that's a good one. I mean, you really helped me out by finding the even the simpler version of this for the Mazda. We have a Miata that has a media button or an aux button, but actually the stereo didn't even come with the aux cable or the jack rather. So you had found a couple of things for me on Amazon and sent a link. And so we got one of the simpler version of this Bluetooth. And then there was actually a little aux cable that I was able to just take four screws out, pull the radio out and plug it into the back and kind of fish the cable through underneath. And boy, that works so well. I mean, for $30 investment. Incredible. Love it.
James Stacey Yeah, for sure. Well, there we go. We got a whole show. Some car stuff. Yeah. Some cool watch auctions. Definitely keep an eye out tomorrow or whenever it is you're listening to this. Hopefully the auction is still going for that. Pastel C4th. And, uh, and yeah, I mean, as always, thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes via hoodinkee.com or the feed for more details. You can follow us on Instagram at Jason Heaton, at J.E. Stacey, and of course the shows at The Graynado. Should you have any questions for us, please write thegraynado at gmail.com and be sure to keep sending in those voice memos. Please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts and music throughout, of course, is Siesta by Jazzar via the free music archive.
Jason Heaton And we leave you with this quote from Robert Brault who said,