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Friday, February 17, 2012

SIHH 2012: Greubel Forsey GMT

SIHH 2012: Greubel Forsey's offering: The GMT

Greubel Forsey's continued exploration of the tourbillon is a fascinating one. Incline double tourbillons, quadruple tourbillons, inventions with tourbillons, secrets with tourbillon, and now a GMT with a 3 dimensional rotating globe with an incline double tourbillon.




So they take their wonderful 24 incline tourbillon, moved things around a bit, so as to create space, and poped in a 3 dimensional globe. The globe is mounted flying...meaning there is no anchor to a bridge or cock on the upper (dial) side, and makes it look as if the globe is floating in space. The globe makes one revolution every 24 hours.


Except it is not so simple...if ever adding a 3 dimensional flying globe and GMT funciton is simple...notice that the double tourbillon now is at the 4 o'clock position instead of the Incline 24's 8 o'clock position. This necessitates a change in the base movement...looks like a complete new movement to accomodate this change.

The tourbillon is as beautiful as ever...inclined at 24 degrees.


At the back of the watch, the GMT time setting system, showing the cities. The cities are printed on a glass disk which rotates as one adjusts the home time. Note the shadow cast by the print.


I love the frosted finish of the bridges, and the star pattern on the intermediate wheel. Note also the internal angles which are anglaged and polished on the bridge which holds the lower pivot of the tourbillon cage.

The finish of the case, dial and movement is typical Greubel Forsey, which means it is top class. One of the best finishes in the business. A closer look at the dial with the tourbillon. Click on image below for a 1920 wide wallpaper.


Quite an amazing watch. And a brilliant idea to use the large volume of space within Greubel Forsey's offerings. For me, I don't really cotton to the blue on the globe...true its representative of the oceans. True it is a nice, strong, bright hue. But for me, it screams a bit too loud. And takes away from the beauty of this exceptional piece.

Give me the Double Tourbillon 30 degree secret any day. But take away the printing on the dial which says "Double Tourbillon 30" and "Reserve de Marche 72 hours" and "Un tour 4 min"...Interestingly, reflecting the French English principals of the brand...the printing on the dial is a strange mix of French and English. I do not have photographs of the Secret, as they were not able to take the watch out of the display for me to photograph. But for me, this is the Greubel Forsey to get.

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