The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I looked up the movement found in the Navitimer World, it's the ETA 7754, so I looked on ETA's website to see pictures of the movement. Then I decided to look for other watches with this movement.

It seems that watchmakers buy the movements then they design(?) how they want the subdials, hands, etc, to appear.

What happened with the watches below - they said it's the same movement, did they forget to punch a hole for the subdial that's missing?

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Glycine just decided not to use the 9 subdial on the movement that's all. Effectively they just don't attach hands (or the centre spindle) on that subdial and then obviously craft the dial to omit that subdial. It's nothing more complex than that.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Why dont they just use a different ETA movement, are there no others with a GMT?

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Not chronos.

Pretty interesting, so Glycine is charging for something (the movement) but you are not getting actually all the benefits of what is "under the hood"

Also, do different watchmakers modify the ETA movements they buy, or are you buying the "window dressing" of the bezel, the way the sub-dials look, etc?

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Well I guess you could say you aren't getting the total benefit of every bit of functionality that the movement offers, but some may argue the lack of the 9 subdial gives a cleaner look to the dial. It is also a way of distinguishing it from other 7754-powered watches out there.


There's quite a lot of information on this around the forum, but yes some watchmakers do (or rather I should say, DID) modify their ETA movements. Some "modification" is a little as changing the rotor for a company branded version, whereas others like IWC used to heavily modify the base movement by swapping out the hairspring, escapement (in some cases), various other critical parts, etc. I say DID, because ETA have since banned the modification of their movements by third parties. IWC now have their modifications done by ETA at source, so in many ways they can't claim to modify the base movement themselves ; rather they use a "pre-modified" ETA.

In the case of the Glycine and B&M you posted above, omitting a subdial isn't really a modification IMO : it's just not using all the functionality...... although I'm sure it'll be marketed as a "modified 7754".

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Very interesting - thank you for the info!

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