Reply With QuoteIn a word, lovely.
Longines of this age in particular are great, well made pieces.
Evening all
I just bagged this little gem and felt it would be good to share the love, as those of you who know me know I collect predominantly Omega and love the period between 1969 and 1979 but am occasionally led astray by rare and eccentric early quartz and electronic watches and this one has eluded me for quite sometime.
Way back when when the revolution first started Longines bought in to the first ever quartz watch, the beta 21 and made a tiny number of quartz-chron models, of which I have only ever seen one for sale. Shortly after they brought to the market to ultra quartz (in 1970), the world first (and last) cybernetic watch
I won't go in to the details of how it works but leave this to far more capable and wiser folk than I:
http://electric-watches.co.uk/makers...-ultra-quartz/
http://www.crazywatches.pl/longines-...ra-quartz-1970
Needless to say the movement is a work of art and looks like something a mad watch maker has put together as their homework, in my eyes it's just a thing of beauty! Yeah yeah I hear you automatic/ manual wind monkeys say, quartz blah blah blah, but check this concoction out:
Anyway, got home from a trip today to find the postman had left me a big humming parcel, thats right you can hear it humming even in bubble wrap, in a box surrounded by more bubble wrap! I unpacked it and what I was presented with was one of the nicest non Omegas I have ever seen, build quality is out of this world, cosmetically it near close to NOS and man is it a noisy beast, it hums like an Electroquartz and has a sweep second hand but you can actually feel it vibrating on your wrist!
So without further ado I give you the stunning Longines Ultraquartz:
Size wise it's definitely a chunk but will make a great dress watch as although wide and deep its not too high! The eagle eyes amongst you will also notice the lack of crown! Thats because its on the back, which is really very cool:
Anyway, I think the pics speak for themselves and I'm chuffed to bits with it
Last edited by dickstar1977; 17th April 2014 at 20:10.
In a word, lovely.
Longines of this age in particular are great, well made pieces.
Wow, that looks great! Especially the movement which looks like a school science project.
I know they aren't for everyone but there's something seriously cool about 60's/70's TV screen watches, and that one looks great on the wrist, much bigger than I was expecting.
Edit: Do you know the significance of the numbers around the battery hatch? I'm guessing they represent the months, and you line the arrow up to when the battery was fitted?
Rich.
Last edited by Richie_101; 17th April 2014 at 20:27.
Super cool, although seeing that movement I can see why they didn't catch on. Looks terribly complicated and fragile compared to other quartz and hummer movements of the time.
I thought that but apparently not, although I hear they are an utter B*STARD to trim and correct as they use 4 tiny screws to adjust timekeeping, nothing as simple as a nice trimmer like an electroquartz! I think it is testament to the watch they she is still going strong 40+ years onOriginally Posted by Meinessex
I was thinking more of all those metal bars making up the circuit board, you only need one of those to get metal fatigue, or a careless slip with the screwdriver while you are trimming it, and you have a very fiddly soldering job indeed.
Thank god for the modern style printed circuit boards I say!
Agreed completely but the new stuff doesn't look nearly as cool as the old school versions ;-)
That movement looks fantastic!!!, thanks for the write up.
Very nice piece indeed, back in the 70s I wasn't a fan of this kind of watch, these days I find them so cool.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
The 70s is definitely my spiritual home ;-) absolutely loving the longines, it's such a chunk of a piece! I've even got an original box on route which is nearly as cool as the watch itself!
The word "cool" keeps cropping up on this thread, but I have to agree - that movement is so whacky and disorganised in the way it looks that it comes out looking really cool and quite, for lack of a better word, loveable.
Yes, this is pure bliss! A awesome piece of a watch 👍
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Yes, this is pure bliss! A awesome piece of a watch 👍
Oh yeah... am loving that :)
Yep definitely going to get some serious wrist time this BH weekend
Just what I was thinking.
Chris.
one of those unsong pioneers of early quartz technology.
The Heath-Robinson look of the caliber must be seen in perspective of it basically being laboratory stage tech dropped onto the market. Longines walked this particular road to divide the quartz frequency totally alone at very high speed forced upon then by the competition and their product is amazingly reliable.
What a find!!!
In all aspects quite a welcome change from the myriad of high end bling with window dressed the same stuff inside.
Very interesesting watch, I quite like it.
Thanks for sharing
Wow D, that is a real beauty. Being a major Longines fan these have been a grail of mine for years. I never found a good one, or when I did the price was off the scale. They are rare in the wild and a working one in a condition like yours makes unicorns look as common as mice. Jealous. :)
I love those movements. Talk about handmade electronics. I'd also agree on the overall quality too. IMH Longines are at least on a par with Omega's of the time and frequently surpass them, especially in dial design and build. There's a version of this watch with a circle of raised indices that is well cool.
Great find.
A really interesting watch and just in amazing condition for its age.
How is the accuracy?
Mitch
The accuracy is pretty good but it will need trimming, it's about 4 SPD out at the moment which, I think Keitht managed to trim his to about 0.36SPD but apparently they are a nightmare to correct
Cheers tom
That really is quite stunning. If I had seen one for sale I might have skimmed over it, so thanks for bringing this to my attention!
That really is amazing. I love that sort of construction as components can be seen and recognised.
Oh yes, that is very cool indeed.The eagle eyes amongst you will also notice the lack of crown! Thats because its on the back, which is really very cool:
However, at least you can repair a device like this using soldering. Soldering or bypassing a cracked track in a miniature PCB is more difficult (and near impossible with modern surface mount components).
I presume that the surface mount components in this movement were actually manually soldered!
Thanks chaps.
From what I can gather all of the work discussed was done by hand! I guess it was a different world back then! Timekeeping on the watch at the moment is a bit sporadic although consistent, I would hope for accuracy of about 1/2 second per day so looks like she will shortly be going off to one of our resident experts for a spa treatment!
Wow. I've seen the article on Electric Watches some time ago but it's the first time I see one in such fantastic condition.
Congrats, you've got a real beauty.
Mine was pretty consistent regarding accuracy....the variance from wearing to on the bench was slight.
Not sure how the numbers work as an battery life indicator, but must be one.
Interesting method for the case assemble, the bar you can see inside the lug, is hinged. Pop either side out and the inner case is released.
A solid re-assembly is determined by the integrity of the gaskets.
Very unusual!
Thanks Keith
Yep these are amazingly well constructed watches and just superb pieces, IMHO every bit as good as the MQ2.4Mhz from Omega and whilst not quite as accurate certainly as innovative
Loving it and still wearing it, have been all weekend
Cheers Tom
Now, that's something really unusual!
Never seen such a movement before, an evolutionary dead end so to say.
Thanks for sharing, and reminding me there's still a lot of "mad" stuff out there.
Daddel.
Got a new watch, divers watch it is, had to drown the bastard to get it!
Very well put. That is exactly what it is.
On Piotr ´Piglet´ crazywatch site linked above you can see several more of those from horoloy´s most prolific engineering period.
The odd thing is that the realy cool contructions of the case did not get repeated. Junghans too has some very interesting engineering designs and those too went unnoticed.
I lóve the crownless solutions but I suppose it is like clean dials; we have become accustomed to the clutter by exposure.
As to the passing over; there was a mint one repeatedly on ebay.de for well over a year.
Very nice watch, Tom an wooow, what a beautiful movement - also rather fragile I suppose ?
I also like the shape of the watch.
A real eyecatcher !
Nice to see something so rare. I'm not totally clear how these work - is it basically like one half of a tuning fork?
Thanks all
In terms of the movement I know they look fragile and I wouldn't want to work on one (if I could) but is testament to them that they are still going strong over 40 years on
I have one for sale on Ebay at present, in case anyone is interested. Needs a bit of a tweak on the regulation, otherwise very nice condition.
BOB
These early quartz watches are fascinating.
So cool it would benefit from a glass back
And a few months after this post I got lucky. I mean real lucky and scored one for just over 200 quid in sterling at the time. Yep. It helped the Bay description was Lomgines Turning Fork. Even then I had competition from two other cheap arsed bidders like myself. Again luckily they were just as cheap/broke as me and they chickened out before I did.
Mine. On one of the last sunny days last year.
Pretty much NOS. When it came in the post, like Ds's it was humming through the parcel. It was also losing about ten minutes per hour. I dropped our own KeithT a line and he had a look at it and I was able to source a running spare(white dialled one, in nearly NOS condition) from the same seller for a song, around 100 quid IIRC? A very nice man, even when I told him what they usually went for up front, after he heard that this was a personal "grail" for me and I wasn't a dealer/flipper he was at pains to help me get mine running again regardless. A really nice thing to encounter these days. KeithT worked his magic(and stuck pins in my effigy) and got it running and running very well. KT reckoned 0.7 seconds per day on his timing gear. Bit of a step up from ten mins per hour. :) In reality… Unreal accuracy. EG:
Many apologies for the truly awful phone pics in near darkness, but it's running about half a second slow per month. Omega Marine Chronometer level. KeithT, the force is strong in him. :D There is a caveat mind you...
"Delicate" sums it up IMH Marc. These are as flaky as a leper in a Head & Shoulders advert and about as robust as a fresh egg in a tumble drier after a passing knight threw his chainmail in to take out the damp. My one is scary accurate on a stand, but in wearing it tends to drift with even the slightest knock. Though in a very cool way you can then observe the cybernetic master quartz circuit dragging the slave tuning fork back to true over time.
Those that show up in the market and working tend to look very new/NOS. Few working ones show up with any real wear on them. I suspect because they were just as delicate from new. I have a contact in Longines who was able to do some digging and found out that the only spare part for these watches was the entire movement itself. If it went bang, dealers swapped out the lot(and later on, even put in a newer "ticking" quartz movement). It's near impossible to find out any original maintenance stuff from source.
They were and from what passes from my research(there's a little more info in French) the components came from the hearing aid industry. Makes sense as bot watches and hearing aids tend to have a size limitation forced on them by biology.
To quote the emo Danish lad, by way of Liam Shakespeare, late of Stratford, "there's the rub". I got very lucky with mine that the original regulation seems to have been spot on, but without technical details and someone with the skills to utilise them any buyer will have to live with the timekeeping. And the near surety that the movement will fail. Sooner or later.
And when it does, you've not a lot of choices. If the quartz can fails, good luck in finding a 9Khz quartz crystal to replace it(hand cut and tuned with gold leaf from natural Brazilian quartz in the originals). If the circuit fails, again good luck. The most vulnerable part seems to be the coil on the "tuning fork" arrangement. It's much less robust than the Beta21 setup. The slightest shock can kill them stone dead and again good luck in finding a replacement. The chap on the crazy watch site notes he had one die after a simple battery change. TBH I really regret selling on my "spare", because with all my early quartz I have spare working movements/watches, save for this one And I know my Ultraquartz will kick the bucket one day. And even though it's a big old daft thing from the decade that style got confused in it was a "grail" for me and I will be very sad. :( I'll still not sell it mind.
TL;DR(with me, it's best to go right to the TL;DR bit) Caveat Emptor. V cool watches. V delicate. Working ones are rare for a reason. Spares are a must, like all early quartz. Not a daily wearer. Oh and KeithT is a living saint. :D
That's an interesting little factlet. Thanks!
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