A Hand Wound Grand Seiko Elegance Collection SBGW301
Over twenty years since the first version of this watch was launched, it remains one of the most compelling manual wind time only watches in the world.
Grand Seiko’s been on a roll in recent years in the world of complications, culminating in the release of one of the most complicated watches it has ever made: the constant force Kodo Tourbillon, which is a unique design featuring the constant force mechanism known as a remontoir, which rotates on the same axis as the tourbillon cage, a first in watchmaking. While Grand Seiko continues to widen its technical capabilities, it remains nonetheless true that it continues to excel at what originally made the company an insider’s secret when Grand Seiko was relaunched in 1988 and on the occasion of its re-entry into the mechanical watch market in 1998. Grand Seiko watches are characterized, typically, by a high level of finish in the dial and hands, and by the use of sturdy, precisely machined movements, and one of its best known and best loved watches was a time-only watch with no date, which was originally introduced in 2001 as the SGBW001. This model has remained in production essentially ever since, with a couple of minor updates – in 2017, when Grand Seiko became a separate brand, the SEIKO logo was removed, making the dial even more straightforward and clean, and in 2023, the SBGW301 was released, with an adjustment to the lug size to make it compatible with the steel bracelet created for the SBGW305. Other than that, it’s largely the same watch as the 2001 release, with all the simplicity, clarity and utility that earned it the nickname, “the Japanese Calatrava.”
The SBGW301 is a 37mm x 11.7mm steel-cased watch, with an ivory dial, applied indexes, and running the caliber 9S64, which has a 3 day power reserve, running at 28,800 vph in 24 jewels. Introduced in 2011, the 9S64 has a skeletonized escape wheel and lever created using MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) fabrication, which is a type of electroforming lithography (akin to LIGA, which is widely used in the watch industry for forming components which would be difficult or impossible to make using traditional machining methods).
The SBGW301 is the simplest of Grand Seiko watches – but like every Grand Seiko, it lives in the details, which are handled with the devotion to perfection in the details which has always characterized Grand Seiko watches. Grand Seiko has in recent years, introduced some very extroverted models – the Tokyo Lion models are a good example – but the SBGW301 is not at first glance, an obviously eye-catching watch. As is often the case with simple but high quality watches, it rewards closer inspection and longer experience – the diamond cut hands and indexes have extremely crisp architecture to go along with their mirror finish, and the minutes hand and seconds hand are gently radiused (bent) by hand at their tips, to eliminate parallax error and improve legibility. The ivory dial is gently curved at its edge as well and these little details give the SBGW301 an almost subliminal but definite visual richness and depth it would not otherwise have.
Caliber 9S64 is classic Grand Seiko: machine finished, but with great precision and with many refinements showing an orientation in its design towards longevity, serviceability, and reliability. The MEMS fabricated escape whee, for instance, is skeletonized in order to reduce inertia during unlocking, and the mainspring and balance spring are both in-house alloys; SPRON 10 and SPRON 16 respectively. The usual antishock assembly is present on the balance pivots, but the escape wheel has antishock protection as well, with the jewel set in a chaton, and the click for the rachet wheel is prevented from rubbing against the mainplate by a ruby plate beneath it. This plate, as well as the extra cap jewels on the upper and lower escape wheel pivots, are partly responsible for the jewel count, which is higher than normal for a hand-wound watch (which typically have 17 jewels). The movement is also adjusted in six positions and temperature adjusted.
There are certainly many choices in time-only or time-and-date watches at roughly the price point occupied by the SBGW but there are few that can really compete in either aesthetics or other features. The entire watch is of course, produced in-house, including components which are often sourced by other brands, from suppliers – Grand Seiko produces everything; the movement, the hand-polished case, the hands, indexes, and even lubricants are all produced in-house. Complexity gets a lot of headlines, but you can tell a lot about how a watch company sees itself and about its commitment to its standards, from its simplest watches, where there’s nothing to hide behind – and in the case of the SBGW301, not only is there nothing to hide, there’s everything to be proud of, for GS and owner alike.
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