The Grey Nato - Ep 36 - Quartz Crisis?
Published on Tue, 13 Jun 2017 09:05:32 -0400
Synopsis
This episode of The Greynado podcast discusses quartz watches. The hosts Jason and James talk about their experiences with and appreciation for quartz watches, highlighting specific models like the Breitling Emergency, Citizen Aqualand, CWC dive watch, Marathon TSAR, and Omega X-33 Regatta Timer. They explore the advantages of quartz like accuracy, durability, and grab-and-go convenience while acknowledging the allure of mechanical watches. The discussion covers quartz watches across different styles and price points, from affordable field watches to high-end Grand Seiko quartz pieces.
Links
Transcript
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| James | Welcome to episode 36 of the Graynado, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, gear, and most certainly watches. Thanks so much for listening. Right off the top of the show, we have a pretty exciting announcement, something we've been working on for a little while was kind of amping up the giveaways. And I'm going to pass it directly to Jason. So we don't kind of tease it any further. We've got a great giveaway. |
| Jason | Yeah, well, I think it's a it's a It's arguably the best one we've had and we're really excited about it. Uh, I'm sitting here looking at, uh, at a really cool dive watch. It is the Oris Diver 65, a 42 millimeter version. Uh, this one, it has the, uh, the silver dial, which, uh, is probably my favorite of the bunch. I don't know. Some people like the blue or the green, but I think the silver has a really cool vintagey vibe and, and everybody just seems to love the Diver 65. So Oris was kind enough to, send one of these over for us to give away. And I think it's a good follow-up to our episode last time, episode 35, which was about James's trip to the Clipperton Atoll with Oris and a good diving episode. Hopefully we've got people's diving juices kind of amped up and ready to maybe take home this cool Diver 65. |
| James | Yeah, for sure. |
| Jason | Why don't you spell out the details for how people can get this watch? |
| James | Yeah, so I think a lot of you have heard the way that we do giveaways before. So they're through Instagram. We haven't really found a better way to do it. If you don't have Instagram, this is a pretty good way to kind of kick it off. But basically we'll need everyone to follow the GreyNado. So that's at the GreyNado and at OrisWatch on Instagram. You'll need to find the giveaway post. This will be a specific post within the GreyNado feed. It will have a picture of the watch and it's the only post where you can enter. So if you go to the specific post for episode 36 and put your answer in there, I'm not picking from it. We're only picking from the ones that are placed under the Auris 65 with the silver dial. It'll be very obvious. In the description will be another kind of layout of these conditions or rules or whatever you want to call them. So find that post. It'll have a photo of the watch and the rules in the description. There will only be one place to enter. If you pick the wrong one, you'll miss it. Then we just need you to make a comment that includes hashtag ORIS65TGN. So that's ORIS, O-R-I-S, the number 65 and the letters T-G-N. And then, like always, we want you to tag your dive buddy, tag a friend that you think might enjoy the show, tag a friend who you think doesn't know anything about ORIS watches, like just try and get the word out about what we're doing with the giveaway. And that's pretty much it. We're actually going to run this for a month, so it's going to stretch for two episodes. So we will end this giveaway when we get to the release date of episode 38. I will remind you and give you specific dates and such in episode 37, but we're going to offer a full month of availability for this. So the post will of course remain on Instagram. You can find it that way and enter. We're really excited about this giveaway because it's a legit watch. It's the sort of watch that Jason and I would definitely spend our own money on. And Auris was really proactive. They were interested in giving a watch away. So it was just kind of a natural thing that came together. It was actually parallel to my Clipperton trip. They both came through kind of different avenues. The watch giveaway came through Granado and the Clipperton trip sort of came through a blog to watch. So it just kind of worked out luckily, but we've been setting this up kind of since Baselworld and I'm excited that it's kicked off. So you have a month from when this episode comes out to, uh, to, uh, essentially throw your hat in the ring for a free Oris dive watch, which is just, just awesome. Thanks very much Oris. And, uh, I'm thrilled that we can, uh, we can kind of do this sort of thing for the listeners. You know, we don't have a huge audience. You guys are really engaged and I think this is awesome that we can bring some, uh, some kind of perks to listening. |
| Jason | We're not allowed to enter for this. Are we, James? |
| James | I love this watch. It's so cool. I don't think so. It might be tough if you've got like a distant relative. |
| Unknown | Yeah, right. |
| James | Maybe, maybe we can proxy it through them. I'll cut this out of the recording. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. One more quick note up top. Uh, We'll move on from the giveaway, but please enter. Keep an eye on Instagram for when that post arrives and enter when it shows up. It'll be a few days after this episode goes live. |
| Unknown | Awesome. |
| James | The next thing I'd like to say is just a quick note of thanks to everyone who's written in about supporting the GreyNado, whether through donation or Patreon or otherwise. We've received kind of a crazy amount of emails just asking like, hey, when are you guys going to figure this out? You mentioned it a long time ago and then never again. Jason, I've been working surprisingly hard for a number of months to arrange a scenario in which we feel comfortable accepting money for something that we're technically going to do for free anyways, which are these two shows a month. So we've been arranging various things and we're right on the edge of having that ready. So if you feel so inclined to want to support the show, just sit tight and stay tuned. We'll have more news in the future. Thanks so much for the generosity. and the willingness to support TGN and obviously to everybody who's listening just for listening. But we'll have more on that sort of stuff pretty soon. Jason, you want to slide right into kind of new business? What have you got going on? |
| Jason | Yeah, well, by the time this episode goes live next Tuesday, I guess it is, I will be, I'll actually be back from another trip. I'm headed out to Vail, Colorado for the GoPro Mountain Games. which I'm pretty excited about. I'm going as a guest of Tudor Watch, who they've sponsored, they've been a co-sponsor of the games for, I think this is their second year doing it. And they're also co-sponsoring it with Outside Magazine, which is a publication that I'm currently helping out with or helping them with watches, writing for them a little bit. So it'll be kind of a fun sort of double dip. I'll be covering the GoPro games for both Hodinkee and for Outside Magazine. Really excited to get out to Vail. I fly out on Thursday, get in there in the evening, and then I've got kind of a free day on Friday to, you know, kind of explore and get acclimated to the altitude. Vail sits at about 8,000 feet. So, you know, that's a lot higher than where I'm sitting at about 800 feet here. Yeah, you'll feel it. I'm going to be feeling it. Yeah, I'm hoping to kind of get out for kind of a light hike or something on Friday and check out the grounds of the games. I think they're going to have some, you know, kind of practice sessions for the competitions. They have everything from, you know, I got the press kit today and they've got, uh, everything from slackline competitions to like dog competitions, you know, dogs fetching things in pools of water, agility contests. And then they've got, uh, you know, steep Creek kayaking and, uh, bouldering rock climbing. Uh, there's like yoga and mud runs and, you know, just all sorts of, uh, kind of mountain sports kind of activities. And, um, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna have a blast. So, uh, one of the things I'm doing out there as well as, uh, interviewing kind of a hero of ours, Jimmy Chin, who I think we've probably talked about on the show, uh, more than once. He's of course the well-known, uh, photographer and filmmaker who was, was one of the, the, the people behind the great movie Meru that we've, we've recommended a couple of times. Um, And you know, he's just done such epic stuff. You know, he's skied down Mount Everest and he's climbed to the top of the World Trade Center tower. And, um, you know, he, he recently just did the, took the photos of Alex Honnold's free solo of El Capitan. And, you know, he's just, he's, he's just done so much and he's just kind of a hero of both of ours. And I'm really excited to meet him out there and, and hang out with the guys from Tudor. And so that should be fun. That's, that's kind of my first, first bit of, uh, of new business, all it's kind of upcoming. So I'll report back on it when, when we do episode 37, but, uh, that's where I'm headed this week. |
| James | Oh man. I'm just so, uh, so, so jealous. Not only like the go for a game sound like a really, really fun event. I, when the first time I did Baker, one of my kind of teammates, uh, going up the mountain, that was like something he took time out of his schedule every year. It was like his guaranteed vacation. He was a firefighter and he would go from Arizona to veil for the games every year and said it was absolutely the best. You know, he had a t-shirt from every year and saw friends every year at this event. It sounded like a kind of like a just a great kind of mountain inspired meetup where you could do all sorts of stuff. Yeah. And then to have a chance to sit down with with Jimmy Chin is bonkers. I have so so many questions and I'm sure that every one of them he's answered at some stage before but Just some really good stuff that I'm jealous. That's really cool. |
| Jason | Yeah, well, one of the things I'll certainly ask him about is his camera gear. And I know that that's something you've been sort of on the hunt. You recently got your new, your a6500. How's that working out for you? |
| James | I think I even said it on the show that I was going to be okay with just having the kit lens. How's that going? For the 6500? Well, the problem is, is every now and then I can see where the camera is drastically better than the kit lens. Yeah. Like I'll take a photo and you can find even when it's like a photo just for Instagram, when you get into, you know, I, you know, I edit photos on a great big 4k monitor and you can really see those 24 megapixels quite clearly. And the, the, especially with the stuff that I'm going over very carefully for Clipperton, there's really like, I can see a big deficit in, in kind of the way the light hits the lens versus something like what I'm used to with L glass on the 5D. Oh, yeah. So I'm running the like, like, I think that this is I think this has become like my number one illness, retail illness is camera gear. And I think it's reflected like in the YouTube videos I watch, there are always some amazing camera equipment and about camera equipment and that sort of thing. And So I'm right on the edge of digging up the Zeiss 24mm f1.8, which would give me 36mm on the 6500 and that's roughly the view that I had on the X100T. Oh yeah. So I really like that prime. If you want it closer, walk closer. If you want it smaller, walk backwards. I've never been a big fan of zoom. typically on the 17-40 that I have for the Mark IV, I either use 17 or 40, or just leave it right at 35 and walk around. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | I just like 35. It feels photography, for lack of a better term. It just feels right for a lot of images, especially for things like cars and, you know, multiple scenes, you know, scenes with multiple people and kind of that kind of thing. And so I've been eyeing this lens. Unfortunately, it seems like a fairly hard lens to find in Canada. Huh. Almost everybody has a kind of special order and it's a huge premium because of the currency over the U.S. Oh, yeah. So I'm hoping one will pop up on Craigslist or something like that. And I can be a little bit patient. Of course, I have some great glass with the Canon, but I found that recently I have like since getting the 6500, I'm carrying it every day. Oh, really? So I just have it in a bag or over my shoulder no matter where I go. And I walk a lot around Vancouver. Yeah. And, uh, and I find that, you know, whether it's the, I like to post a lot of cars, uh, to Instagram, just like cars I see on the street and that kind of thing. It's fun to have a nicer camera to deal with, but even then I can start to see just the way that the lens kind of handles various things. You can find kind of sweet spots. It's a little bit better above F5.6 and, you know, closer to 30 or 34 millimeters. So wide, it's very soft in the corners and there's quite a bit of a vignetting and Just some stuff that I think the Zeiss would clean up, but I mean, the Zeiss will essentially cost as much as the camera. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. So if I can get one on Craigslist, then I kind of protect myself from the depreciation. Right. Right. And the taxes and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, this is just the ongoing thing. If it wasn't a watch, then it'd be a bag. And if it's not a bag or a watch, then it's a camera or lens. Yeah. It's a big merry-go-round. Yeah. |
| Jason | Well, speaking of bags, You were on the hunt, I think last episode you were talking about kind of a hunt for the perfect bag. Have you found that yet? |
| James | You know, I would like to thank everyone who wrote in and after spending a truly disturbing amount of time looking at all the links that were sent in, I actually did the maybe responsible thing and I've just settled with a bag I already had. So do you remember at SIHH, not this past year, but the year before, Audemars Piguet gave out like a black leather backpack, like a small one? |
| Unknown | Yeah, I do. Yeah. |
| James | It had like a, that's what I've decided to use, but it has like, it had like a very rigid box inside for a laptop. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But it only just barely fit a 15 inch laptop. Not so much because of the size of the box, but the shape of the bag. It's not a huge bag. |
| Jason | Yeah. It's kind of rounded at the top. |
| James | Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, um, I took a knife and just cut all that excess bulk from the inside of the bag out. Yeah. And thanks to the way that it was constructed, it's a nicely constructed interior. So it could actually be removed fairly simply. And, and, and now I just have kind of a simple black shell. You know, it has a logo on it, but it's very discreet. It's like an, uh, an embossed logo for AP. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But in that I can fit one of those little gorilla, uh, cases to hold the camera. And, uh, there's room for a small umbrella and then kind of various odds and sods, a knife, a little flashlight, things like that. So that's been my day to day so far. It, I have, you know, today it was quite warm in Vancouver and sunny and it gets sweaty quickly. |
| Unknown | Oh, sure. |
| James | Yeah. But I think I would get that with just about any bag. So I can always hold it by the handle, but I think that's roughly where I, where I've landed on the day in day out sort of bag is all I'll use this one until it needs to be replaced. And then I will find a replacement from there. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And for anyone who's listening and they're like, Oh, I like the idea of that, but where did you get it? I actually, I don't know where AP got the bag or how you could buy another one. And it's like black leather. So I'm sure it would be more expensive than I would want to spend on a day to day sort of bag that I would beat up. Yeah. But just recently, one of my favorite brands for bags out of Seattle, Tom Bin, launched a new small backpack. So this is called their Daylight Backpack, 16.5 liters, comes in a ton of different colors. All the Tom Bin stuff is super well made and uses very high quality nylon in the construction. And this is a very basic shape. It's one large pocket and one kind of back pocket. Very simple. It is compatible with a few of their other systems. It doesn't have, you know, bulky straps. It's all very kind of streamlined and simple. It's not meant to carry a ton of stuff, but certainly along the same lines as what I have here. A camera, a jacket, a little umbrella, your lunch, a water bottle, that sort of thing. Yeah. Uh, that's great. And it's $80. And if I didn't have this, or if I had decided I didn't like this black AP bag, then this is, I would be buying the, uh, the Tompin one. I think it looks great. There's a really nice, um, Navy blue. that they call navy slash steel, which I think looks awesome. It's just basically a book bag. |
| Jason | Yeah. I remember you sent me the link to it and I looked at it and it looks like it's really, um, I guess, discreet or understated, like it doesn't draw attention to itself. And yet it, when like the closeup photos, you can tell it's really well made. It has that kind of ripstop nylon and, uh, some, some nice sort of gusseting on the pockets and whatever else. So it looked, it looked like a really cool little bag. And not very expensive. |
| James | Yeah, it's not super expensive. They have two external materials, so you can go with a 1000 denier Cordura, which is the premium sort of Cordura that you would expect in something like a backpack. And then they have this ultralight 400D Halcyon, which is like a full ripstop. So like you would expect in a technical bag. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | I don't really like the way I would go with the thick, the heavy, thick nylon. But I think it's just a matter of preference in the Halcyon stuff has a pattern, almost like a carbon fibery sort of pattern in it, little squares like graph paper. But if you're in the market for a small bag or even if you've got a kid heading off to school and they don't necessarily have to carry a laptop and like university textbooks, I think that this would be great for anything leading up to the sort of bags that I had to have for university because I had huge textbooks. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah. But anything short of that, like if you're carrying a MacBook Air and your lunch and a jacket, I think you're golden with something like this. And the Tom Bihn stuff, like I said, it's kind of discreet and it's really nicely made and it's U.S. So if you're Canadian, you're not paying taxes on it the same way. So there's some pluses there. I like trying to buy some of that stuff. And Tom Bihn makes like a dizzying amount of cool stuff. So just be careful when you go on the site. You may end up kind of extending your order into Other bags and little bags that go inside bags to organize things. They've got a ton of stuff. It's a really cool brand. I've seen a few of their backpacks and a couple of their kind of larger travel bags. Really impressively well made and all really thought out. They're very like a design forward, how are you actually going to use it sort of bag company. |
| Jason | Nice. |
| James | And no military pretense. A lot of the bags that we talk about or suggest are either hiking or military, and this is kind of neither. It kind of has a city vibe. |
| Unknown | Oh, yeah. |
| James | Yeah, that's nice. Which is nice. And how about you? You've got something new in, not a bag or a camera, right? Yeah, imagine that. It's a watch. Whoa, there you go. |
| Jason | Yeah, right. |
| James | Back on target. |
| Jason | Yeah, and actually, it's a great segue into our main topic today, which is quartz watches, because it's actually a quartz watch. If anyone saw my recent article on Hodinkee about the history of Cabot Watch Company, and it's this British brand that goes back to the early 70s, They were made, the company was founded with the sole intention of producing watches or selling watches to the Ministry of Defense in the UK for military use. And they've got kind of a cult following and I've always been sort of keen on their history of these like really sort of bare bones, like purpose-built dive watches and pilot's watches. And recently I managed to pick up two of their watches. I've got the hand-wound pilot's chronograph. And then the one I'm really excited about is the quartz dive watch that was provided to the Royal Navy and I had one of these a few years ago and at the time it just didn't grab me. I think it was it was one of the newer ones that had the Luminova lume and I just couldn't get used to kind of the shiny you know dial ring the Rehaut and I ended up selling it but it's kind of always haunted me. I love that case shape that they've got and I love the history of the brand so I managed to pick up a 1995 issued piece that was actually belonged to a guy who, um, I was kind of sworn to not talk about him too much. And this is, that's in all reality, he asked me not to divulge too much, uh, in public, but, uh, anyway, it's, uh, it's, uh, he, he got it through military channels, British military channels. And, uh, it's kind of perfect. I, I I've, I got it about two weeks ago and. I really haven't taken it off. It kind of, I think, you know, lately I've kind of been, maybe it's backlash after SIHH and Basel season, but I've kind of been dialing back my, I guess my watch nerdery and I've sort of gone back to my roots and kind of started really looking back at kind of the fun grab and go, you know, really less pretentious, if you want to say that, largely quartz watches. I think you and I have talked about the aerospace and the aqualand, and we'll get into that a little bit more when we get into Quartz watches. But this is a watch that it really doesn't even have a name. I mean, it's not called a Submariner or a Seamaster. It's just a CWC dive watch. |
| James | It says Quartz. It says Quartz right on the dial in all capital letters. Yeah. It might as well be called the CWC Quartz. |
| Jason | Yeah. And the case has not changed since 1980, and they're still making these. They're still supplying them to the Royal Marines, I believe. It's got fixed spring bars. They're welded on so, you know, you can only use a NATO strap with it I'm just kind of liking a watch that you know, you sort of put on and don't have to think about and You know, I I don't want to I guess we've already kind of segued into the main topic but it's it's just turned out to kind of along with with the citizen aqualand that I tend to wear a lot of it's it's become a real go-to piece and and and has kind of helped rekindle my strong interest in quartz watches. |
| James | So I have a question for you. At any point did you have this sort of snobbery towards quartz watches? Or have you always been largely like, if the case is, if it's still a great watch, it can be, quartz can work to its favor? |
| Jason | Yeah, I've never, I don't think I've ever had a snobbery. Although when I kind of discovered, you know, the story I've always told is that my first watch was a mechanical Seiko that I got you know, back in high school, but I didn't care at the time. I didn't know what mechanical watches were. In fact, at the time it kept really miserable time and I was kind of annoyed by that. But, um, you know, my, my, my very good friend at the time had just gotten the Aqualand, this was back in the eighties and they were new. And I thought that was just the coolest watch. And then as time went on, I got into, you know, Sunto, you know, vectors and the X six and some of these kind of ABC watches and Swiss army and that sort of thing. And it wasn't until I, discovered or got my first quote-unquote nice watch my Planet Ocean was was kind of my first quote-unquote luxury watch and and that I think then I kind of went down this path that I think a lot of us follow that you get so you know mechanical watches luxury mechanical watches have this allure to them and they're sort of novel and you sort of go all in and I think I it wasn't that I was snobby snobby about quartz watches I think I just sort of set them aside for a while But, you know, quartz was, it wasn't, I wouldn't say it was my first love, but I've had a lot of great quartz watches and I've kind of, I like both fairly equally. How about you? |
| James | Um, I definitely had, had, uh, uh, like a longstanding dislike of quartz pretty early on. Like once I got in, once I learned what, what mechanical watches were in general, I was pretty much done with the idea of a quartz watch. And then I would only allow a quartz watch into ownership if it serves such a specific purpose. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | that it so like you know i would have a g-shock or a timex running watch or something for running or for hiking or for situations where like there was no chance i was going to take one of my mechanicals because you would legitimately just either rattle them apart or hit them on something and then you don't even know what time it is yeah um so you know situations like like you know i had and loved a casio rangeman it's a fantastic watch if you don't mind something that big and in this scenario where i would wear it |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | It wasn't too big. I don't really care if I'm hiking. I've got a backpack on, I'm wearing giant shoes anyways. What's the difference with the... Right. The watch doesn't weigh that much. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And I kind of like the military aesthetic of the Rangeman and most of the G-Shocks. But it took me a long time where the only kind of ones I would allow in would be something like a Suunto or a G-Shock or a dive computer. Other than that, it was just, why would you like mechanical, just kind of like a purity. But I don't know I don't know what it was, maybe it was getting to know you better. Kind of expanded where I sat because I can still kind of remember when you told me you were buying that emergency and I was kind of like, oh, the emergency is like a dumb watch. Yeah. And I wouldn't just say that outright to you. You're excited. You're getting an emergency. It's just like, there's a bunch of very cool things about the watch, but in my mind, I'm like, oh, it's like, you know, it's something that guys who talk more about adventures than actually adventuring. Yeah, right. buy and then are worried they're going to scratch on the handle of their car door or something like that and yeah but then it kind of like wormed into my brain and you start it you know it's not just uh not just g-shocks or just this or just that and then in some cases you're i've even had it where like i have watches that have a mechanical movement where i'm kind of like this watch would be just as good if it was quartz oh yeah Yeah. And I would probably wear it more if it was quartz because it would become my go to my like grab and go. I've got two minutes to get out the door. Sure. And I don't want to pick up wind and set a watch. Yeah. And sometimes I'll grab a watch and just put it on my wrist and set it two hours later. Yeah. I don't know if anyone else does that. But yeah. And then and then I think for me like it really kicked off this year with the with the aerospace. |
| Jason | Oh yeah. You love that watch. |
| James | I love it. I really do. Like I find I find myself like essentially making excuses to wear something else. |
| Unknown | Oh yeah. |
| James | Yeah. And I, I love, I have like, I've never in, in, in my time buying and selling, if you will, collecting watches, I don't really consider myself a collector cause there's no focus to what I do really. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But in my time of kind of liking and spending my money on watches, I've never been more happy with my collection, but I find I wear this aerospace probably like three days a week and now I've popped it off the titanium bracelet and I'll just change the NATO. From one day to another I posted an Instagram with it on the this like inky blue toxic. Yeah And that's just a fun combo and the watch like it I find that as soon as I have a chronograph and I have an alarm I start using them. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah, you know I have an important phone call tomorrow and just kind of almost for fun because I my phone will tell me when it is and I'll also I'm not gonna forget like I'm a very It'll sit on my brain until that phone call comes along. I'm not the type to forget about a phone call, but I still like was having a coffee and took the aerospace off and just set the alarm to 15 minutes before the call tomorrow. |
| Jason | That's great. I mean, chances are you silence your phone or something, or you leave your phone on your desk and you're in the talking to a colleague in the hallway or something, and you don't have your phone handy and your watch goes off and lo and behold, you forgot your call, you know? |
| James | It could certainly happen. And I found almost all of the functionality that I loved in The G-Shocks can be replicated in a watch that is a little bit more watchy. Yeah. Like not so much a G-Shock, like G-Shocks are just kind of their own thing. Yeah. It's like, it's kind of hard to compare a Jeep Wrangler to other vehicles. |
| Unknown | Right. |
| James | Right. Like a G-Shock's just a G-Shock and you could compare it to other G-Shocks, but I don't really see why you would compare it to other, like compare or contrast it with other watches. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. Whereas the Aerospace feels more like something from the same world that mechanical watches came from. Whereas G-Shocks feel like they came from a different planet. Right. Which is awesome. I don't mean that in any sort of derisive way, but rather, I just think that there's a lot here. And when you start to think back on some of the quartz watches that I had that I reviewed, and I dinged them because you couldn't get them mechanical. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And now I'm looking back saying, like, that's probably a better watch for the average buyer. |
| Unknown | Yeah, yeah. |
| James | And maybe even in some cases for me, an unfortunate enthusiast who's gotten way over his head with most of these sorts of things. But like, you know, uh, many, many years ago, I reviewed the Swiss Army Divemaster 500. |
| Jason | Oh yeah. In quartz, right? |
| James | In quartz, titanium. |
| Jason | Yeah. Fantastic. |
| James | Essentially, uh, it was, it was almost like, um, like Victorinox looked at, uh, older Breitlings, early Steelfish, things like that and said like, well, we can do that. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Right. We can kind of capture some of, some of what makes that what it is. Yeah. And they put out this watch with a loomed bezel, like one through 20 was loomed. It was all titanium, had a big crown. |
| Jason | I love that. |
| James | Yeah. It had a cool date display where the magnifier was in the window. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. Not on the crystal. |
| Unknown | Right. |
| James | Which is kind of cool. I guess when you have, if the movement's that thin and the case was kind of thick, not on like a bright, like not crazy thick, but it was a 500 meter water resistant watch with a fantastic loom. It weighed nothing. It didn't rattle. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And that was a really good watch. And at the time, I remember just kind of thinking like, Oh, this is, I like this watch a lot. It's really nice to wear. And it's, you know, it has all the features of a great dive watch, but I wish it was mechanical. And now I don't know, five, six, seven, eight years later, I'd have to go back and find that review to know the date, but it was probably seven years ago. And now I'm thinking like, no, that's like, they can provide it for less money and make a watch that's really tuned for like everyday wear with no fuss. |
| Jason | Yeah, I find that I often, I, you know, I'm sure like you do as well, but I get a lot of people that come to me and say, Oh, you're the watch guy. Like what, what watch should I get my boyfriend? Or what, what watch should I get? I've got a $500 budget. And, you know, aside from quartz watches tend to be more affordable, you know, as a rule, but, um, also a lot of the people that are kind of asking about a watch or just getting into watches, unless they are getting into them because they're truly fascinated by a watch. mechanical is a bit more hassle than they want to deal with. You know, they don't necessarily want to have to, you know, they don't, maybe they don't wear it every day or, um, you know, they don't want to fuss with, you know, winding it or setting it or not. Oh, don't drop it. Don't do this. Don't do that. And, and it just makes so much sense for a lot of people. And I think there are some, you know, other than these obvious advantages, I think, you know, whenever anyone brings up quartz, the obvious things are like grab and go, it's accurate, it's durable. But I think, they kind of represent this, uh, sort of the nature or, or the, not the aesthetic, but, but kind of the purpose, I guess, that was sort of a natural progression of watches as they moved from the seventies to the eighties. They've represented time in history that I don't think necessarily should be neglected. I think they should, it should, they should be celebrated. I think a good quartz watch can be, you know, just as compelling as, as in the case with this CWC, which I love because if I, if I ever do take it off my wrist, which I, I will, I guess, uh, At some point, someday, it'll still be running and still be telling time when I pick it up a week later. And I really liked that about it. And, you know, I had this episode, it was last summer. I committed the cardinal sin. I was going through airport security on a trip out to Glacier National Park. And I was at the Minneapolis airport here and I took off my, I was wearing my Seiko SRP 777 Turtle and it was on a NATO strap and I was going through security and I took off my watch, I usually put it in my bag and I dropped it. You know, I unstrapped my watch and it fell on the concrete floor or whatever it was at the airport and hit the ground. And I was like, oh, geez, you know, I picked it up, looked at it and it was running. I was like, okay, great, nothing wrong with it. Put it in my bag and went on this trip. And I got home and I found out that it was now keeping really miserable time. Like it had gained like 10 minutes over the course of the trip. And, you know, I had a friend who's kind of, uh, good tinkering sort of watchmaker, amateur watchmaker. He kind of put it on a machine and tweaked the regulator a little bit and it just didn't really help it much. And it was kind of after that trip, I thought, you know, Seiko is sort of renowned for being a watch that you just wear for, for anything, you know, like you grab it, you put it on, you can beat it up and whatever. But I dropped it three feet onto a hard floor. Yes, that maybe a quartz watch wouldn't do very well with that either. But yeah, I just think to myself, I don't, maybe I don't want to even have to worry about stuff like that. You know, like, I don't know if I'm traveling or something and I, you know, if I don't wear the quartz watch as my primary watch, I'll probably still tuck this into my bathroom kit, you know, just as kind of a backup or kind of a quote unquote beater to pull out if I'm doing something rough and tumble or whatever. And I like that about it. I mean, in essence, that's kind of why the kinds of watches I like anyway. |
| James | Yeah, for certain. It sounds like maybe you need a Swiss Army Inox. |
| Jason | Yeah, that's, I mean, here we, you know, here's another Swiss Army. I mean, this was kind of the one that replaced the Divemaster, right? Agreed. |
| James | Yeah. Especially because they offer the diver. |
| Jason | Yeah, exactly. Yeah. |
| James | Swiss Army's great. Cool watch. |
| Jason | I think they look great. Yeah. What other ones are kind of jumping out as we think about quartz? |
| James | I really like the, for whatever reason, I like kind of some older quartz, not just the Aerospace, but the Seiko SBCM023, the Prospex Perpetual. |
| Jason | Oh yeah. |
| James | Yeah. So it just looks like an SKX. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But then it has a, it's a high accuracy quartz with a perpetual calendar. And that's really great tech. That's super great. That would be like if you wanted, if you really didn't like quartz watches, so you definitely didn't want something with say a digital screen on it. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But you wanted one for your collection that you could set all your other watches against. And in a pinch, you could grab that if you didn't have anything kind of wound and running. when you had to zip out. Yeah. I think one of these SBCMs, and they're only going up in value. I should have bought one a couple of years ago when I first kind of clued into it. A guy in Vancouver was selling one with the orange dial and the kind of gold accents. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | For like in the range of 200 or 225 Canadian, and now I think they're in the 300s US, which is pushing into four Canadian. Yeah. That was only a couple of years ago. They're just a cool watch, and I don't think they... It's hard to say that any... um you know non gs seiko is actually rare but i don't you don't see them that often you pretty much have to go to ebay never see these yeah uh to to find them but i'll i'll see if i can find one or two on on ebay and put them in the show notes obviously the seller i'm not verifying i'm just giving you an example of the watch yeah but it is the sbcm 023 which is uh I mean, obviously we love a Seiko Diver. My SKX007 just got back from a full service and I'm thrilled to have it back. It's been trading wrist time with the aerospace since I got it back. This gives you a really interesting, and I, you know, I have a couple of friends who don't like the SKX so much because the movement is that rough. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | No hacking. And even at its best, even when it's fully tuned up, they're not known to keep great time. |
| Unknown | Right. |
| James | On wrist, they can be fairly reliable, but as soon as you set them down on a desk or your bedside table or whatever, they can swing pretty considerably. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Plus minus 20, I think, is their spec. And so for those types that enjoy the look or the overall kind of vibe of the SKX, something like these SPCMs, that's pretty appealing. And they're not like so expensive to be prohibitive. |
| Unknown | Right. |
| James | Yeah. Less than an Inox. I mean, if we're comparing one to the other, the Inox is a different thing. together, it's a beast of a watch. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | I always encourage people to go to their website because it's presented so well. All the things that that watch has to be able to withstand. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. |
| James | It's bonkers. I mean, they can't, they literally can't make a mechanical version of the Inox because there's no way for them to protect the mechanical movement enough to pass. Is it a 10 meter drop out a window? |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. |
| James | I think it's like, yeah, like 33 feet onto the ground. |
| Jason | I love that they tested that watch too for the one that stood out in my mind from Basel when I was talking to the guy was resistance to bug spray, which it's one of those real world. Now we're veering a little way from the quartz topic, but the watch itself, like that's true real world usefulness. I mean, I, you know, that's a watch you would want to wear camping or, you know, to the beach or whatever, and you use bug spray or sunscreen or whatever. And that just eats like rubber straps and gaskets. Gaskets and whatever and they tested it against that so cool. |
| James | And yeah, let alone that it can be driven They can drive a tank over it. Yeah, that's what that's not gonna happen to you But the bug spray will the extreme temperature swings will so like if you're if you're gonna write into a show like the grenade Oh and say like oh, I want to wear my watch in a hot tub, right? Yeah, look the answer typically when you ask brands the answer is like yeah, you can wear you're watching a hot tub But it's hard on the gaskets. |
| Unknown | Yeah |
| James | Yeah. And if you have a sort of watch that has an ever so slight ingress, uh, where you might get some fogging on the crystal. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Hot tub's going to give that watch a lot of trouble. Yeah. Maybe your hot tub watch is an Inox. Yeah. Maybe that's what it is, right? It could be your hiking and hot tub watch, which is perfect. It's your summer watch, right? Exactly. Right. I think they're great. And now they make a smaller one, which they position as a lady's watch, but change the strap. It's not so small that it couldn't be a guy's watch. Yeah. I saw it in person. I mean, the one on the white paracord is fairly feminine. Right. In its intention, whether it succeeds as a feminine watch is a different thing altogether. but they make a few different sizes. They make them with and without a bezel. They make a, is the one that you had a forged carbon? |
| Jason | Yeah. Forged carbon with the paracord strap. And it's like $800 or something. |
| James | That's pretty cool. Forged carbon is pretty cool. Like if you, if you're going to go techie with a quartz watch, go all the way and buy something that you could pretty much wear to like a formula one race and kind of fit in. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Cause all that is is a band change away from nobody having any idea what it is. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. Right. The paracord strap, you know, I I've, I've seen those use it from a, you know, like I had one in a survival context. Oh yeah. But I used to keep clipped on a bag. And then one day I was like, Oh, I'd like a piece of paracord for this little project. And I unwound it. And then of course that was the end of it. Yeah. Yeah. It was like, you gotta be a genius to put those things back or watch like all the, all the YouTube videos to be able to wrap one of those things back up. |
| Jason | I think another watch that, uh, that you put on the list, but I think it kind of hits the same, uh, marks that, that the CWC does. And to a certain degree that the Inox is the, the marathon, the TSAR. |
| Unknown | Oh yeah. |
| Jason | Which is a legend among, you know, kind of dive watch nerds. I think the whole Marathon SAR family gets high marks among guys that kind of are into these tool watches. But I think for many of the same reasons that I like the CWC, I like the T-SAR. And the T-SAR, I think the T stood for tritium because of the little vials of tritium lume that glow whether you charge it up or not. Yeah. But the T-SAR is the quartz version of that watch. Just such a rugged, just no-nonsense watch. Again, it's a watch that, like the CWC, really doesn't have a name. I think TSAR was just a nickname given to it, and has some military credibility behind it. |
| James | Yeah, most of them are government contract. |
| Jason | Have you owned one of those? You have, right? |
| James | I have, and it was many years ago, and I sold it on a whim, and I really have kind of regretted it ever since. And it's not a big regret, because you could go ahead and get another one. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But I already had had one, boxes, papers, all the government, it was like, you know, a government issue with the date and all that. So it wasn't the maple leaf one. |
| Unknown | Oh yeah. |
| James | That you see around. And, uh, I, I liked it a lot. I bought it off, uh, off a guy back East that I used to do some work for in the watch space. And, uh, it was a great, great watch and a great example of how courts can really work in to a watch's personality. Yeah. Because that watch is just great as an automatic, but for some reason it feels more common in the automatic version. It feels very similar to a Hallios or a Seiko or whatever. It's just an automatic watch of a certain aesthetic. Whereas as soon as it's quartz, and I genuinely can't fully explain what I'm thinking or feel about it, but quartz gives it some sort of different personality as far as a tool. |
| Jason | Oh, I totally agree. It feels like the watch that The search and rescue guys would wear, you know, because you know, you, you, you can bang it up and you can take it off and leave it in your locker while you're gone and pick it up and it's running again. And yeah, it's, it's great. I mean, Gashani, my wife has the smaller version of that. I guess it's the 36 millimeter, but it's a, it's a, it's a, it's just a great watch. One of the, one of the great dive bezels of any dive watch. |
| James | Oh, for sure. So vertical. Yeah. Yeah. It's all grip. Yeah. Across the top and down the bottom. There's plenty to hold on to. Yeah. So here's an interesting one for you that I've always kind of been on the fence about, but less so the newer they get, which is the opposite to most of my preference for these types of watches, is what do you think of the Omega Annie Digi quartz pieces, the Speedmasters, X33s, the Skywalkers? |
| Jason | I think I'm with you. The early X33s, which is what kind of the Speedmaster collector guys seemed to like, I just have never even looked twice at them. But the newer they get, like the What was it? The Skywalker, the Space Master, whatever they call these. They're getting more and more appealing. And then I think you're going to mention the regatta piece, but I like the newer ones a lot. |
| James | A lot. Yeah. |
| Unknown | A lot. Yeah. |
| James | I met with Chris, the Canadian rep for Omega, just earlier this week. Great guy. Chris, if you're listening, thanks for everything. It's always a blast to see when you're in Vancouver. I said, you know, he was, we were talking about new stuff that they had. And I was like, Hey, you know, if you happen to have one around that you could loan, I'd love to check out that new X 33 that was made the regatta one for a ENTZ. And, uh, I think it kind of like half took them off guard. Cause it's a very cool watch. And I think it was well received, but maybe to have a watch blogger writer pick that one out of whatever, you know, I'd like to see that. I'd like to see the new rail master. Uh, those are the two that kind of stick out for me, but certainly I just really like the way that watch looks. It looks really cool. Yeah. Yeah. The screen looks great on it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So we'll link to that because that's a relatively new watch as well. But the X33 has been around for a bit. They did the Z33, which is the really thick one with the red, the red display. |
| Unknown | Yes. |
| James | Right. Also a pretty, pretty interesting one. I've seen that one person is, in my opinion, too thick to wear. Yes, I agree. But a very cool design and kind of a really strange, combination of their analog digital designs, a kind of Mark II aesthetic, Speedmaster aesthetic with the kind of really chunky, curvy case. And then this kind of with the red display and the overall shape of the case is sort of 80s quartz, you know, those like Adidas watches. And yeah, there's hundreds of brands that offer these kind of digital display watches, and you see some of them are kind of popular now if you kick around on eBay, but I thought those were really cool, and I like that Omega's continuing that and connecting it with something where it does kind of land well, which would be the kind of regatta timer. And I like the layout of the display with the two screens and then the mode off on the left in its own little circle. That seems pretty useful. |
| Jason | Yeah. Yeah, I think it's probably the ultimate or the ultimate expression or the logical next evolution of a regatta timer, which for, you know, decades and decades has been kind of the, the one that we like, which is, you know, like the Bremont or, or, you know, I don't know, so many brands, Aquastar and Tag Heuer, great pieces, certainly the mechanicals, but, um, this, this is like a modern regatta piece that, you know, conceivably a racing skipper would, would probably find quite useful. I'm actually amazed at these analog digital watches that we seem to love. The Aerospace, the Emergency, the Omegas, the Breitling Pluton that I used to have, the Aqualand. It seems like those don't go away. And you'd think that that model of watch, and I'm guessing it's a pretty polarizing design. I bet a lot of people really don't like those, but you and I seem to be drawn to them. But it seems like those would go away with the advent of touchscreen watches, the smartwatch kind of revolution that we're seeing. You know, here's Omega coming out with yet another new version. Breitling has the exospace connected that ties in with a phone. But still with this kind of old-fashioned 80s style analog digital display. It's amazing to me that these still do fairly well. |
| James | Yeah, it could be an expression of how slow the Swiss watch industry moves. It could be that these are more popular among non-enthusiasts, so we just don't see the market in which they really exist. I'm sure the Omega would be somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000, maybe a little more. You had the B55, I want to say it's closer to $10,000? Is it $8,800 or like $11,800? That's probably US and Canadian. I always have to keep two numbers in my head. |
| Jason | I think it was $9,000 or something like that. |
| James | Yeah. Yeah. 88 cents. Yeah. I think so. I mean, that's very obviously hugely expensive, but you're buying into a very specific thing. Yeah. So I think Breitling obviously knows who they're selling that watch to. And the functionality is really cool because it does work like a, like a, an aerospace when you don't have a connection to the phone. And then when the phone is connected and everything, you have all this enhanced suite of data and G-Shock does that too with one of their one of their kind of aviation based models will do flight tracking and different things like that via the phone. I just saw that today, the Gravity Master. Yeah, Gravity Master. Thank you. I think it's Craniels has that. So he had Instagrammed a screenshot from his phone that showed his flight from Vegas. Maybe he was probably there for JCK. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And yeah, so I think that's probably really cool. I've not played with that. I actually wasn't fully aware that that existed. I knew that they had some connected stuff. I didn't realize that Gravity Master was kind of an app-based, had an app-based environment, which could be pretty neat for somebody buying a watch that techie. I think you would find an audience that wanted that app ability. |
| Jason | Yeah. Well, maybe we should look at a few kind of more refined quartz watches. I mean, one that kind of pops to my mind that sort of uh... straddles i guess or or sort of appeals to the mechanical crowd but but is actually courts is is the uh... the autodromo prototipo which is a watch that i have that's that's kind of a you know it's that hybrid movement that i think it's a seiko uh... it's got kind of a sweeping mechanical stop start for the chronograph sweep hand but then it's actually quartz timing which is a it's an interesting model and i think uh... there are a lot of brands that are kind of starting to adopt that but it's it's a classically styled watch but it's quartz You know, if people kind of like the no nonsense or no fuss aspect of quartz, but they kind of want a mechanical style watch, I think that's a really good option. |
| James | And it keeps the price down, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. Because there isn't just an inherent bump in price when you're talking mechanical chronograph. Yeah. Even if you're just talking about the more or less ubiquitous 7750, they're just not cheap. Right. And even if you can get one for a price you're happy with, they're not cheap to service. No chronograph is. You're talking about a ton of parts and a lot of complexity. So I think there is a benefit to these mecha quartz where you can keep a watch at a lesser price point while still offering a very similar functionality. |
| Jason | Yeah. No, I totally agree. |
| James | I mean, it's, uh, yeah. And then of course you can take it in a completely different direction, even within quartz and go to something like the GS. |
| Jason | Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, Grand Seiko, you know, now it's a great example of kind of where quartz can be can be truly high-end. And I think I was such a huge fan of that 9F movement that they came out with, I think it was two years ago, that they debuted that had a clear case back. So you could actually see the quartz movement. I thought, boy, that's bold to do that. I love that they did that. Yeah, so cool. |
| James | I agree. And you've been there. They make their own crystals. |
| Jason | Oh, they take such pride in those movements. I mean, they grow the crystals. They've designed like a little sort of gear train that keeps the seconds hand from backlash, any backlash when it ticks. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| Jason | They've set the date so that it flips over within, you know, I don't know what it was, some absurd fraction of a minute, you know, at midnight so that you don't get that sort of lag that you get with date changes with other quartz watches. Right. Yeah, Grand Seiko quartz, I could see myself owning one of those one day. |
| James | Yeah, for sure. And certainly, if not the quartz, then something Kind of in the middle of the spring drive. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. Uh, which, uh, is, is insanely clever technology. Uh, that still gives you a huge amount of mechanical prowess, but I, I like that Seiko approaches, you know, obviously Seiko makes a lot of entry level courts and a lot of entry level mechanical. So I think for Seiko, it's a watch is a watch. Like, I don't think they necessarily have a statement where they have to be mechanical or courts. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And a good watch is a good watch and a Seiko is a Seiko. And I think what they're looking at, it's cool to see them apply the same general GS vibe to the entire manufacturing of a quartz movement. Yeah. Because they could do everything but the movement and then just put a quartz movement and it would be fine. Right. But I think they know that there's a value to GS on the dial. Yeah. And there's a value that people expect them to respect. if they're going to offer a quartz, a GS quartz. So not unlike with Breitling, you know, pushing towards having the thermal compensated higher end quartz movements. If you're going to offer an expensive quartz watch, you should be able to do something better than the citizen and a digi that I see on all the pilots whenever I fly anywhere. They all have the same one. It's that black and orange Navihawk. And it's the kind of watch like my grandpa bought one on a cruise ship. They're not expensive. They're seemingly indestructible. Yeah. Maybe these guys do or don't use those features, but I'm assuming there are times in their life where a chronograph is really handy. |
| Jason | Yeah. And then they have, you know, like the world time is obviously that I'm guessing that gets used quite a bit. And then most of them are like 200 meter water resistance. So these guys, you know, they, they have a layover somewhere and they can go swimming or go diving even with it. |
| James | Yep. |
| Jason | Yeah. Super versatile watches. |
| James | I think those are really cool. And then obviously Citizen has some, really cool quartz technology within EcoDrive. It seems very common now. Yeah. But the functionality is very high in that it's even less fuss than your average movement. Obviously, earlier generations had issues with the capacitors where they eventually didn't hold a charge anymore and then the watch would need to be replaced. Oh, yeah. It's my understanding a lot of that's kind of been phased out with different capacitors and technologies. I don't know if that's true because I think it takes a long time to get to the point where you're not holding a charge. Oh, yeah. And I've never kept a watch. Like, I don't think, like if you're talking about 10 years, I don't have any watches I've had for 10 years, let alone a Quartz Citizen. Yeah. But, you know, they offer that stuff in everything from your Anadigi Pilot's watches all the way to things like the SST, which has an ultra high resolution chronograph with a little digital display. It's a pretty cool movement. They have a ton of really neat stuff. And then, of course, Seiko and Citizen have pushed into GPS. Right. Which is a big further step in that quartz technology because you can see the miniaturization over the last four or five years. |
| Jason | Yeah, that Astron has gotten smaller and better looking I think every generation. |
| James | Yeah, and I remember seeing the original F series from Citizen was a huge watch that took X amount of minutes to get its signal and now they're down to seconds. Yeah. And I think it's the F100 was the last one I saw, which would have been last year at Basel. I didn't get to the citizen meeting this year, but that was a fully wearable. It was just a normal sized watch that had like a really clever, uh, eco drive system. So it would be able to charge, even though it was doing the GPS. It was still solar powered, which is fun, but it did time accurately and anywhere where you could essentially pull a GPS, they divided. Like Astron, I think they were doing the same thing where the world had been divided into a number of tiny squares. Sure. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And then they assigned a square into a time zone. So they would place you on the square and then update the time zone to that square, which is kind of fun. Huh. It's not the kind of thing that I'm going to buy. Yeah. Um, I do like, this is where I fall back on my love of mechanical is I'm totally fine with a mechanical GMT. Yeah. Or something like the, uh, aerospace is, you know, second time zone, which is nowhere near say as technologically advanced, but it's certainly just as elegant and simple to use. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And, uh, and then the, the Rangeman, the Casio system works really well too, cause you can just jump through time zones. Oh, sure. Gives you a huge spread of options as far as price from, uh, two ish, two to $300 Rangeman all the way up to say, uh, several thousand dollars with a GS or Breitling. |
| Jason | I think, um, they're kind of two sides, the sort of two ends of the spectrum where I think quartz are, make a lot of sense are kind of what we talked about earlier, this, uh, rough and tumble, you know, tool watch that you can kind of put on and bash around. Um, the other end, I think that, that I used to think would be kind of the only way I would get into courts again would be on more of a dress watch side or a dressier watch side, because it's something I wouldn't wear very often and I don't want to have to deal with setting it. So other than buying like a, a kind of a cool old vintage Omega dress watch or something, um, mechanical, um, you know, get like a, Something new that that's quartz that's kind of sleek and good-looking that you know, maybe you wear You know twice a month or something and you don't want to spend a ton on it You know, so I mean you put a couple options here on the list the brawn and the mundane But I think you know, those are kind of watches that kind of fall into that Sort of sleek dressier category, I guess. |
| James | Yeah, I think the mundane and to my mind the mundane and the brawn are very Kind of just casual you could certainly wear them every day. Yeah, I think Both of them, I like both of those watches because they have a very defined aesthetic. The Braun being born of Dieter Rams designs for Braun, which of course would later inspire now two generations of Apple products and all sorts of other household products that people know and love. They don't realize they attribute the shape and form and that sort of thing to Rams designs. And Braun has kind of kept that alive and you can get like there's tons of different Braun watches. Yeah. And then on top of that with a Mondain, you know, if you like, I think that's, it's just that watch that would cut a line in the sand. You'd either really like the railway watch or you really wouldn't. And I think they're cool. And I think on the right person with the sort of right aesthetic, they work really well. Um, they have kind of an architectural design-y sort of vibe, not unlike the Braun ones. And neither are very expensive and both seemingly wearable, long-term, nicely made watches. I've not owned either. But I've always kind of looked at them fondly and thought like, yeah, that's the great example of what you can get in a quartz watch that were it made as a mechanical, it would just be more expensive. It wouldn't be more watch. |
| Jason | I remember I reviewed a Mondain railway watch, uh, I don't know, five years ago for gear patrol. It was the, uh, it was a railway watch, like looked like most of the others, but it was, it was the one that had the alarm. So, you know, again, just sort of a handy little complication, little gadget. Um, but I enjoyed wearing it. I can't say I would, you know, buy one now. It just doesn't fit my aesthetic, but well made. Yeah, me neither. Cool looking watch. Yeah. |
| James | You know, whenever you end up at like a MoMA. Yeah. You always kind of see these sorts of watches that have a bit more of a design background to the aesthetic, like from known designers. Yeah. And I always like seeing them, but I've never felt like, oh, I need to wear that. I actually kind of feel like it's one of those veins that I couldn't pull off. Right. Yeah. If I put it on my wrist, it would just look weird. It wouldn't suit maybe the clothes I wear or those sorts of things. But I think in the right on the right wrist, they're perfect. Yeah, they're great. Yeah. Another one that I really like, and there's been a few brands that have done this technology and the technology itself requires quartz, are the oil filled divers. |
| Jason | Oh, yeah. Yeah. Bell & Ross. |
| James | Yeah, exactly. Bell & Ross. Was theirs called the Hydro Max? |
| Jason | Hydro Max. Yes. |
| James | Yeah. And then Zinn has the Hydro UX. |
| Unknown | Yep. |
| James | And obviously, sorry, I shouldn't say obviously, I don't believe Bell and Ross still makes that watch. I've never seen a modern one. No. I remember seeing the older one. Yeah, 1997. Which is kind of a cool aesthetic. |
| Jason | I think it was their first one, yeah. Because I think they probably partnered, SYN built a lot of their early watches. I'm guessing it was kind of the same watch, just rebranded. |
| James | So I guess if you wanted to kind of experience that today, you'd likely be looking at something like the ZIN. And with the ZIN, so it's an oil-filled case. The entire case is full of oil, which means that it can withstand much greater pressure, external pressure, but it also means that the viewing angle against the crystal is unlimited. Yeah. Which is very strange when you see it in person the first time. Yeah. It looks like there's no crystal or it looks like there's no air at all between the crystal and any part of the dial. Yeah. Like no space. Yeah. And so they have the EZM2B is the UX diving watch and it uses a high precision quartz movement. It's temperature compensated. and it's shock and anti-magnet. I mean, it's all the stuff that you expect from Zen. It looks kind of like... I think it actually looks like a nicer expression of the normal U1. Yeah, yeah. Because it has kind of sword style hands and a really nice use of red accents on the bezel and the seconds hand and some of the text on the dial. It's 44 millimeters wide. It's 13.3 millimeters thick. And I think these are just mega, mega, mega cool watches. Dagbert on Instagram has one that he had on. his feed a little while ago, so I'll try and dig up. I'm not sure if it was a story or a photo. If it was a photo, I'll link it in the show notes. You can go to greynado.com. Really cool watch, and I think if you wanted to take a Zinn or, you know, like a higher-end tool watch approach to quartz that wasn't something with the anti-digi sort of layout, I think these are just so cool. |
| Jason | Yeah, my only, you know, qualm with that watch was the serviceability of it. I mean, you can't just change the battery. You've got to have it drained and refilled, isn't that right? |
| James | Uh, yep. That would make sense to me. Yeah. So I, I have no idea what that costs. That's a great point to bring up after I wax poetic about how much I like them. I don't know what that costs. I'm assuming it's not cheap. Um, and it's probably not something that just anyone could do. Right. Yeah. I can check, I can check with, uh, the, you know, with a roldorf and ask if that's the kind of thing that they could do if they got one out of warranty or whatever. But my guess is it would have to go to go to Zen and just, uh, well, Cool things have a certain amount of servicing. I don't really know what's involved. Do you know, like when you get into higher end courts, is there service outside of battery? I think so. Like with a 9F or a really high end Breitling? Yeah. |
| Jason | Yeah. I think there's, there's still a drivetrain that has to be, you know, probably parts have to get replaced and some lubrication. |
| James | That's a good question. I should, uh, I'm going to make a note of that and we'll loop back on this at some point. We know enough people to ask about this. Outside of something like the service, I do think these oil-filled watches are cool. Maybe that's why they didn't catch on. Maybe the lifestyle of the watch is a huge pain. |
| Jason | And with a longer life battery, like a four or five year battery, that would be just fine. It wouldn't be any different than sending in your mechanical watch in five years for a service. I'm sure it doesn't take any longer. If you just had to send it to SYN, or I think in the US, I think SYN gets their service done by RGM in Pennsylvania. So it wouldn't be Probably wouldn't be too horrible or too cost prohibitive compared to like a mechanical watch. |
| James | But yeah, I think that's probably quartz from, at least from the kind of Grenado perspective covered. I'm going to take a few of those questions away and take a look. It's funny because you talk about quartz and you know, I think even just the title of this episode will turn some people away. But it's, and that's okay. That's fine. It is what it is. And maybe like me, you'll come around at a later date, or maybe you'll go even deeper into mechanical and it has to be hand wound, or it has to be fully handmade. And you'll be signing up for the next Roger Smith that you can get. And all of that's fine. I think it's great. Like Jason, I adore mechanical watches, but not in any sort of way that would exclude quartz, right? Right. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Cool is cool. And there's something about, Maybe the roots of watch appreciation come from quartz for some of us. And for me, I put on something like the aerospace and it kind of reminds me of the Timex, the first Timex I got when I was six. And you get just a, you know, a little tiny buzz of being six again. And I kind of get that from all watches. I think it's one of the things that kind of led me to it. I like these little, these little machines. And even if that machine is electronic. Yeah. It doesn't necessarily diminish it. It did for me for some time, but for whatever reason, like I said, probably your enabler spirit, as we'll call it when people write in and tell me that they bought something because we talked about it. Sorry. But yeah, I think I would say that if you're listening to this and you're hardcore mechanical, you're not wrong, but you might not be seeing all of it. Pick up a cool quartz and maybe something that has a feature that you don't get in mechanical. or has a usability that you wouldn't place against your mechanical watches and give it a try for the summer, hiking, swimming, traveling, whatever. |
| Jason | Yeah, I'll be curious to see the response to this episode. I have a feeling we're going to get some cool folks coming out of the woodwork and posting some great photos and making some great comments about the quartz watches that they've had. Maybe it's just a matter of kind of we all need to sort of support each other and come out of the quartz closet, so to speak, and support each other with our are quartz watches, because I think, you know, like you said, it's kind of like coming home. You know, it feels to me like after years of being in the mechanical wilderness, it sort of feels like, ah, you know, you put a quartz watch on and it feels a little, you take it a little less seriously, but you kind of enjoy it for that reason, you know? |
| James | Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. How are you feeling about Final Notes? You want to wrap this up? |
| Jason | Yeah, let's do it. I can, I can kick it off with, music recommendation. We've done a few music recommendations over our history of episodes. Not many, but we have our favorites and I want to give a shout out to a local band here in Minneapolis that a good friend of mine who happens to be one of the local watch nerds was one of the co-founders of a band called Lady Lark and I kind of just discovered them in the last six months. They're kind of rising pretty quickly on the Minneapolis music scene, which is a pretty robust scene. One of the local sort of alternative music stations picked them up and is playing their songs and they're just kind of putting the final touches on an album that's coming out. They're going to press vinyl, actually, for this record, which I think is really cool. |
| James | Oh, cool. |
| Jason | But yeah, Lady Dark, I think it's a four or five person band, some backup singers, some drums and bass and guitar, and then they've got a a female lead singer, and she's got this really great, strong voice. It kind of has this, I guess, befitting our quartz topic. It's kind of music that you don't have to take too seriously. It's really danceable. It kind of harkens back to sort of 80s, 70s, 80s R&B, maybe a little bit of disco. It's real sort of infectious, catchy tunes, and I'm really liking them. So they've got a SoundCloud page with some free downloads, free listens. So go check out Ladylark. |
| James | Yeah, I didn't get a chance to hit that link, but I am always on the hunt for some new tunes. So that's great. Ladylark. Very cool. Soundcloud.com slash the Ladylark or thegreatnator.com and hit the show notes. |
| Unknown | What have you got? |
| James | I actually have a few for tonight, but I'll go with music. I'll keep the music theme going. One of my absolutely most favorite bands is Fleet Foxes. And they have a new album coming out on the 16th of June, so pretty close to when this episode launches. It's called Crack Up, and they've released two tracks so far. Both will be in the show notes, but specifically I would say check out Fool's Errand. I didn't think I would ever get to see them live. They kind of broke up, and their drummer, Josh Tillman, his father John Misty, who I think I've spoken about on The Great NATO at least once in the past, have some fantastic albums to check out. But the band, I'm assuming not including Tillman, are back with a tour and a new album and I have tickets to see them September. I'm really excited, right in Vancouver. Yeah, but by all means check that out. I can't really say enough great things about Fleet Foxes or what they've done in the past. You know, Helplessness Blues is an unbelievably great album from not too long ago, so that would be one to check as well. If you're looking to build out a kind of summer playlist, maybe some Lady Larks, And then as the fire gets a little lower and the sun goes down, switch over to Fleet Foxes. |
| Jason | Good idea. I checked out that Fool's Errand video. In fact, I've watched it a couple of times. |
| James | The video is really cool. |
| Jason | It is really cool. And the sound, I can't get it out of my head. It has this really, it's this nice sort of West Coast folksy, you know, I don't know if listeners or if you're familiar with the Mamas and the Papas, but they were sort of a 60s folk band. It has that really nice vibe to it. Really pleasant listening. I really enjoyed that. So good one. |
| James | Yeah, yeah. You've got another there? |
| Jason | I do, yeah. The New York Times has been doing kind of, I guess they've been doing it for a while, they're doing these sort of multimedia articles on different topics and they've got a series going called the Antarctica series and it's like a series of pieces about different expeditions or different things that are going on in terms of science that's happening in Antarctica. They've got, you know, someone exploring glaciers and volcanoes and how they sort of keep the settlement, sort of the science settlements there kind of running all year round. But the one that kind of grabbed me for obvious reasons was titled Under a Cracked Sky. And it's this, I don't know if you call it an article, I guess it's an article or a piece about diving under the ice in Antarctica. And, you know, aside from just the interest of what they're doing there, it's all filmed with 360 degree shooting so you can actually manipulate the video on the screen. You can sort of interact with it. And as the guys are going from the heated ice house that they have over the hole in the ice, you can actually follow them down the ladder. And as they're swimming, you can sort of manipulate or swing the camera around yourself and look 360 degrees. So when they're talking about a seal, you can sort of swing the camera around until you see the seal and it's sort of swimming You know, right above you, you can look up at the ice, you can look down at the bottom. |
| James | Well, I'm playing with it now. This is crazy. It is. It is really fun. It actually works. It doesn't look like it doesn't look hugely distorted. |
| Unknown | No. Yeah. |
| James | And there's a narration that goes with it. And it kind of feels like you're just being dropped into various dioramas. |
| Unknown | Yeah. Yeah. |
| James | So, oh, look, yeah, they're getting. Oh, wow. So this is like what they die from. I'm looking at like a room and their little names pop up if you hover over the people. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Oh, this is really cool. |
| Jason | It is really cool. |
| James | They also solved the thing where you could see like the feet of the operator of the camera. |
| Jason | Oh, yeah. |
| James | That's not there. That's really neat. Yeah. This is. Yeah. This would be really cool with in like a headset. |
| Jason | Oh, yeah. You're right. |
| James | Yeah. You could turn your head to. Oh, yeah. They just drop. They just drop into this like. Yeah. Light green hole in the floor. |
| Jason | And it's super deep. I mean, that's hardcore diving. Yeah. I mean, I've done some ice diving and the stuff I've done has been you know, you're tethered to a safety guy back at the hole. They aren't tethered. They're under their free swimming under the ice. So presumably they know how to get their way back. But it just, you know, that aside that the footage is just spectacular. It's just fun. It's just a really fun thing to do. So. |
| James | Oh, I'm underwater now. It's so deep. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Yeah. That guy's way down the line. I was looking for the other diver and like you think that you're looking at the ground, but not at all. |
| Jason | Yeah. And they've got like an observation tube that sticks below the ice that Like people that want to go and look, they can climb down into this, like stay dry and like look around and they swim up to that and look in the window and. |
| James | Oh, everybody's got to check this out. This is really cool. Yeah. |
| Jason | Yeah. I haven't looked at the other videos. They've got, you know, flying a plane. They've got, um, I don't know. I think there was something probably going down inside of a crevasse or something, but, uh. |
| James | Yeah. I'm in like a trench now. And if you rotate it, there's just a diver right behind you. Yeah. And the resolution's really good. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, this is so cool. Great, great pick. |
| Jason | Yeah. Yeah. So what have you got? You've got another kind of outdoor adventure-y one. |
| James | I do. Yeah. So we have, um, uh, just a quick shout out to an amazing feat by Alex Honnold. He climbed El Cap, the free rider route on El Cap, uh, free solo. I'm assuming like I got three or four emails this week from listeners just telling us that they saw how cool this was or how scary it was. So thanks everybody who wrote in. So my guess is the, Majority of the TGN listeners are aware of who Alex Honnold is, this very talented, now could make claim to being the best climber of his generation, who's made kind of a name for himself by free soloing, which is climbing, uh, not necessarily the hardest routes in the world, but climbing challenging routes with no ropes, no protection. Yeah, it's, it's a completely insane. So the free rider route is more than 3000 feet of exposure. It took him just under, uh, four hours. And like you had mentioned at the top of the show, Jimmy Chin was there for National Geographic to shoot a documentary about it and photos and all sorts of other stuff. So they basically came down from the top of the route to about the halfway point and met Alex as he came up. And I mean, some very big names in the climbing world have spoken out about just what this means. And it's now been compared to essentially the moon landing of sport climbing. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And, uh, it's, it's almost unbelievable that somebody was capable of doing this. It's not so much that a top tier climber couldn't climb this route sport style. It's to have the mental position and the mental game, so to speak, to be able to do it with no protection where you have no, no chance of a, um, of an error, right? Even, even something like a falling rock or, uh, was it, uh, Tommy Caldwell wrote a piece about being really scared about the the whole project. |
| Unknown | Yeah, and he's no slouch. |
| James | Not at all. I mean, now World has the record and is a very talented climber. And he said, you know, even something like a bird coming out of the crack. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | Like there's some things that aren't just your ability to hold on to the rock or be strong enough to do it. It's just like, it's really hard to express just how difficult, you know, I read one thing that compared it to the four minute mile, previously thought impossible. created kind of a sea change in running. And this may create a sort of sea change in climbing, which of course has been, it's fun that it was done at, at El Capitan, which is, you know, a nexus for the birth of American sport climbing and, and for, uh, kind of the dirt bag culture surrounding climbing and Honnold lives out of his van and has, you know, purposefully done this despite having the ability to live anywhere he wants. for some time. He did a really great interview with Tim Ferriss a while back. So you can go back into the Tim Ferriss podcast and listen to Alex Honnold on that. He's not at all what you would expect for a top tier athlete, kind of reserved and a little bit quiet and very thoughtful. Great interview and a couple of things that he said really stuck with me. And now to see him do something that was this just completely bonkers is just very impressive and exciting. |
| Jason | Yeah, it's always amazing when an obscure sport like rock climbing and even further, even deeper, free soloing, makes it into the national news. I mean, it's blown up. I mean, it was, I think it was last year or the year before when Tommy Caldwell, they finally climbed the Don Wall of El Capitan. That was like on the front page of the New York Times. And this has been everywhere. Every news outlet's been covering it. I think this is one of those, the Don Wall was kind of more of a, you kind of have to understand the nuance of what they did. Anybody can look at what Hanul did and just be utterly flabbergasted. People will say he's stupid, he's crazy, whatever, but you have to admire this guy, his mental fortitude. I just can't, I see those photos and I just think, I, you know, I'm going to see Jimmy Chin this weekend. I'm like, I want to ask him like, what did you think? You know, hanging, you know, rappelling above him, watching him and think, what would you think if he slipped? I mean, it's just frightening. It's just utterly frightening. |
| James | Yeah, I mean, like you're basically looking at somebody who's like one body motion away from death. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | For four hours. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | And apparently, of course, you know, Chin put out a very kind of a small blurb about it on Instagram. And he said that Honnold did the last pitch almost flat out, like in a run. |
| Unknown | Oh, yeah. |
| James | Yeah. And then got to the top and kind of said, like, oh, I feel like I could do that again. Crazy. Yeah. Like, imagine just being that chill, like it's A lot of people could spend, what does he spend? 20 plus years climbing? Yeah. I think he's, I think he's only in his early thirties. So we'll say he's been climbing hard for 20 plus years. Yeah. A lot of people could spend that kind of time, a lifetime and get unbelievably strong. You know, maybe he's inclined towards this, but he is obviously crazy strong. And now the question is simply the rest is the mental game. Right. And that is on a whole different level. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | It's always cool to find out that there is kind of a new thing. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | The next level. Yeah. And yeah, just really cool. And especially after what happened with Uli Stek. I mean, there was some news that came out in the last little while with Uli Stek dying in the Himalayas and that sort of thing. And it's nice to have a sort of positive story. Yeah, I agree. Come out. It's, you know, it's just good. And I think it ties in nicely, obviously, with Greynado. |
| Unknown | Yeah, definitely. |
| James | And I got one more to wrap up the show. I got greedy and did three final notes tonight. So this is a small $15 gadget called the fire beaner. And it's kind of a strangely shaped carabiner with a spark wheel in the edge. So I kind of on a whim saw the design and liked it and thought like, I don't really have anything that you could use in a camping scenario to start a fire. I would normally carry like a match, matches or a lighter or something like that. And I thought, oh, the kind of the strike wheels are neat. It works kind of like a lighter, but you don't have, you know, it pops the flint, but then doesn't ignite anything. You have to use some tinder of some sort. Yeah. And then built in, it also has a bottle opener and a line cutter and a flathead. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, it's a neat little design and they're not expensive. And, you know, it was maybe six or seven months ago, I backed the Kickstarter and they were about 15 bucks a piece at the time then. And that's what they're selling for now. They're doing kind of a post Kickstarter preorder. You can get them in more colors now. I just got the silver one. And with this backpack that I talked about previously, you know, the handle at the top of the bag, I've just kind of clipped this onto the handle to have it with me. And it turns out the little cutter is really handy for like a tag on clothes or zip ties. It'll pop right through a zip tie pretty easily. And I haven't used kind of the rest of it, certainly haven't needed to start a fire. Um, but you know, at $15, it's only like, uh, maybe double the cost of what I paid for a really nice climbing carabiner. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | But this I found really handy. And the one plus that it has is, uh, those of you who walk a lot will occasionally find that you'll end up having to use a public restroom. So I walk around Vancouver a lot. So occasionally I'm in a public restroom and I find that you have a backpack and you don't want to put that down anywhere in the restroom. And some of them don't have a hook. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | This, uh, fire beater is so thin in it, in its profile, it's only rated to 50 pounds. It's not for climbing. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | It's so thin in its profile, it can actually hang the bag on the hinge to the door. Oh, wow. So that, that paid for itself immediately. I was in a bathroom and did not, you know, wanted to hang the bag and then didn't have any sort of a hang in the room. Yeah. So this was able to sit on the top of the hinge, the bolt on the hinge and, uh, and hold the bag. So that's, uh, That's part of my daily kit now. I'll put a picture on Instagram and obviously thegranator.com. You can check out the show notes and link to them, but currently it's only $15. And I would think that, I mean, maybe if you never use any of the other features, it's, it's not crazy expensive. I kind of think they look kind of clever and I like the, the firewheel could be pretty handy if you do get yourself into a situation where you want to start even a barbecue at a friend's house. Right. Yeah. Cause you could put this up to a port on a barbecue where the, the piezo lighters failed. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James | and it shoots a nice spark and they have little kits for a couple dollars more that have some tinder and more ferro rods they've all got it kind of figured out so I didn't know what I would think of it but I've had it for about a week now and to leave clip to a bag even just for things like the flathead the little cutter yeah and to have a clip to you know pop a camera on or a hat or whatever loop your sunglasses through them pretty handy. Obviously you can get most of that functionality from any carabiner, but I'm surprisingly impressed by this. I like it. They're nicely made. |
| Jason | Yeah. You can start the barbecue and open the bottles of beer for people. |
| James | So yeah, it'll do a beer. And I didn't, uh, I, I paid for it so that the fire beater has no connection to the gray NATO. Obviously if they'd like to sponsor us, drop me a line, no problem there. But, uh, yeah, so that's a fully, uh, kind of one, one way relationship. I like the product and I could definitely see buying, a few more and keeping them kind of around for little gifts. Occasionally you want to send somebody something as a thank you. And this is kind of a clever little thank you that somebody could keep even in a purse or, uh, the bottom of a backpack and might get some use of at some point. |
| Unknown | Huh. |
| James | Cool. And I, uh, I think that's about it. |
| Jason | Yeah. Well, as always, thanks so much for listening. Hit the show notes for more details. You can follow us on Instagram. I'm at Jason Heaton. James is at J E Stacey and follow the show at The Graynado. If you have any questions for us, please write TheGreyNado at gmail.com. Please subscribe and review wherever you find your podcasts or grab the feed from TheGreyNado.com. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the Free Music Archive. |
| James | And until next time, we leave you with this quote from John Muir, believed to have been written while he was in Yosemite Valley. He says, camp out among the grass and gentians of Glacier Meadows in craggy garden nooks full of nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. |