A Second Look, Hands On, With The Gérald Genta Minute Repeater

The extent to which it’s become possible to see watches of any kind and at any price point is astonishing relative to the experience of watches prior to the Internet – for most of the history of watchmaking, evaluating a watch meant seeing it in person, or trying to glean whatever impressions you could from editorial magazine photograph, or print advertising. In the early 2000s, the widespread adoption of digital photography made the production of high quality images democratic, and democratized the visual experience of luxury, including luxury watches. The first generation of image driven enthusiast websites (one of the best of which, SteveG’s Watch Launchpad, is, thank god, still with us) giving anyone with an internet connection the ability to pore over highly detailed images of watches which just a few years earlier, it would have been impossible to see in any detail, or in some cases to see at all.

The ubiquity of visually driven luxury content has its downsides of course – for one thing, it drives hype cycles which can repeatedly overvalue luxury goods; for another, it can cause visual impact to be disproportionately valued over other equally, or more important, qualities; we can see this in the food world, where Instagrammable food often looks a lot better than it actually tastes. The latter example does point out, however, that there are some experiences for which there’s no substitute for in-person experience – a picture of a bottle of wine might tell you something about how much somebody spent on it, but it won’t tell you anything about how it tastes. Although there is a great deal that high quality images of watches can tell you – including, in watch macro photography, details which it would be easy to overlook in person – there are things you can only appreciate if you have the watch in hand and one of the best examples is the minute repeater. The repeater I’ve handled most recently is from Gérald Genta, which is simply called the Gérald Genta Minute Repeater.

In the line of duty I have seen and handled a reasonably large number of repeaters, and there are several experiences which really stand out. One of them was of course the 2013 minute repeater exhibition organized in New York by Patek Philippe, at which visitors had a chance to listen to all nine of the repeaters then in Patek’s catalog, including the 2011 ref. 7000 Ladies First minute repeater. The ref. 7000 is 33.70mm x 9.50mm but despite its somewhat diminutive size it  struck the time with great clarity and beauty. I remember hearing JLC’s Master Minute Repeater Antoine LeCoultre, the first Jaeger-LeCoultre repeater to use JLC’s crystal gongs, which are attached directly to the front crystal; I remember the sheer volume and power of the Audemars Piguet Supersonnerie when it was first launched at the SIHH in 2015; and I remember vividly hearing a quite small platinum repeater made by AP in the 1920s, during a visit to the old Audemars Piguet museum in Le Brassus.

It was rectangular and I don’t think it was more than 30mm along its longest side, and it was platinum, and given the size and the case material, it shouldn’t have been anything like terrific in terms of sound quality but it chimed the time like an angel.

I saw the watch at The 1916 Company’s New York collector’s lounge last week, and in person and in the metal, it’s about as traditionally designed a repeater as you can imagine. The case shape, dial, design of the hands and dial markers, and overall dimensions make this a watch that seems to sit a bit apart from the trend in repeaters over the last twenty years, to go for more visually arresting designs and for technical innovations to the point of attachment of the gongs, gong materials, governor mechanisms – in fact, just about any and every aspect of a repeater that you can think of. There’s a little bit of a hint that you’re handling something special even by the standards of modern luxury minute repeaters in the general quality of the work, and the jet-black, light-absorbing onyx dial, but other than that the Gérald Genta Minute Repeater wouldn’t look out of place in a display case in a store in the Roaring Twenties. One man’s classicism is another’s conservatism but there is something appealing about seeing a traditional execution done with just enough personality to give it a life of its own; the shock of the new can become the schlock of the new awfully quickly and this is a design which, in terms of appeal and pleasing proportions, is obviously meant to last.

The movement is designed, both in terms of aesthetics and mechanics, in the same spirit as the case. There are subtle nods to some of Genta’s favorite design motifs – in particular, the octagonal frame around the repeater’s speed governor, which has the balance, movement center wheel, and cock for the hammers around it – but the mechanism is straight from the classical watchmaking playbook.

Movement finishing is excellent, but unlike some modern watches, you don’t get the impression that designing a movement primarily as a vehicle for showing off dramatically eye-catching finishing was really what LV La Fabrique du Temps was after. The philosophy behind movement finishing is instead, very much akin to what you see in the Daniel Roth watches from La Fabrique du Temps – obviously done to a high standard, but very much in line with the history of fine movement finishing in Switzerland, which was historically an extension of good workshop practices and intrinsic pride in combining technical excellence with high quality component finishing, rather than the pursuit of razzle-dazzle per se.

Hearing Is Believing

Inevitably, writing about a minute repeater brings up the question of how a repeater sounds and after writing about repeaters for many years, I’m still of two minds about whether or not to record, or attempt to record, a repeater in action. I’ve heard this particular repeater on two occasions now and the sound is excellent, partly thanks to what you can see – gongs, hammers, governor – but also, very much thanks to what you can’t see, which is how the case has been engineered internally to combine rigidity with lightness; some parts of the case are as thin as 0.6mm and the crystal is 0.8mm thick. The foot of the gongs looks like it’s attached to the movement mainplate in the usual way, but it is actually attached to the underside of the case itself, on the dial side of the movement, which allows the case and crystal to act as effective resonators.

My reluctance to record repeater chimes is partly technical, but not entirely. The technical question is a real one; getting clean sound recordings which accurately represent what you’d here if you were there, is difficult enough that the entire audiophile universe orbits around the problem and while you can get reasonably good clarity from hand-held recorders, what you’re going to hear is at best an approximation, and of course, the situation is worse, not better, when recording with a mobile phone. All audio recordings are approximations, of course, but my experience is that it’s next to impossible to judge a repeater from a recording as sound quality is so variable depending on gear and other uncontrollable external factors.

And every repeater has its own character, as well; unlike other complications, the minute repeater has never been successfully industrialized and it would be difficult – probably not impossible, but difficult – to do so. A repeater is a miniature musical instrument, and the hand-tuning necessary to make a good one also means that they’re probably the last horological complication where every iteration has its own personality.

The Gérald Genta Minute Repeater is beautiful to look at but the balance, harmony and clarity of the design is a reflection of the balance, harmony and clarity of its sound. I think in most cases, the circumstances under which repeaters are recorded gives you as high a chance of hearing a misrepresentation as a reproduction, and that’s part of the charm – repeaters are a genuinely personal and direct sensory experience.

The gérald gental Minute Repeater, ref. EBFE01A1: case, Yellow gold, 3N, 40mm x 9.6mm; black onyx dial; yellow gold hands and indexes. Movement, caliber GG-002, hand wound minute repeater, 32.4mm x 5.46mm, running at 3Hz/31,600 vph in 32 jewels; power reserve 80 hours. Limited series with production of 10 pieces per year. 

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