Why The Grand Seiko Spring Drive Is The Greatest Watch Movement & How It Works 

Wow, thanks for posting this. No way I would know how smooth that second hand motion is without your video. Do you know how much maintenance is needed on a watch like that? Every 3 years or every decade? Or longer?

No problem! And it looks like they recommend 3 years but like any company I think much of those expectations are made as precautionary measures. Also they are pretty transparent on service prices given that it will go back to the company and not through a third party. Thanks for watching!

Really enjoyed it, thanknyou. Easy to understand material and beautiful shots of the Grand Seikos. Now I must just find the money...

Fantastic breakdown Teddy! Grand Seiko is truly a marvelous watch! Thanks for the hard work put into the video.

Now how many takes did that explanation take? Impressed by the simple diagrams for something not necessarily simple.

My father bought a Seiko in the 70s or 80s, it's a gold one, squared face and even though it's not an expensive watch, die to sentimental value it's my favourite of all time.

That is Japanese culture. Most large Japanese corporations have a 25 year, a 50 year and a 100 year plan. Americans have a 90 day, and a 1 year plan. Some companies possibly have a 5 year plan. I used to work for Fujitsu.

I remember another video about the knife industry where the CEO of one of Japan's best cutlery companies said his dream before retirement was to finish the several decades of work done on a single next generation steel alloy, like one the company had achieved back in the 80s.

@@philipboug that's so scary with the Chinese as well. America needs to take these cultural values into account and come up with a firm strategy to counter the world take over of these evil empires..

America is an evil empire too...read up on its history and who really runs the show

I was literally going to write the same thing. Sssshhh!!! I think they’re underpriced if anything and I want them to stay that way. I want the masses to keep dismissing them simply because they’re not Swiss.

nkonig1 nice.

Hahahaha LOL dude i am literally laughing my ass off!

@@LockheedMonster don't laugh too much. It'll be hard to sit down once your ass is off.

@Sixkiller2121 let's hear some more about the Rolex Submariner and other timepieces I don't care about!

As an engineer, you'd fail

@@vishensivparsad aw that’s so nice of you. Thanks man !

@@omarmansour1108 No problem

was just thinking the same thing

@@vishensivparsad hater.

outstanding

It's just a shit copy like everything from japan

Exactly

Meh, just looks like a shortcut to me.

@@bobbygetsbanned6049 yeah so is sending texts when you can send letters

Thanks Jonathan! Keep up the great work on your channel!

and I have your dovetail guide JKM, there is a certain amount of incredibleness to that as well.

@@TheWoodStroker thank you my friend!

@@TeddyBaldassarre thanks Teddy! We're just trying to keep up with you! Just picked up the probe lens for even more cinematic 4k goodness

Teddy Baldassarre I was amazed at your explanation of the amount of power used to drive the watch. I bought a Snowflake and it’s my best watch. Most accurate. Best case. Your interview with Mr. Wonderful and his view of Grand Seiko also was a big factor in buying the brand.

@notfiveo Great point, its already difficult to find a good service center for Swiss made watches with movements which are not even rare. GS Spring Drive must be a pain to maintain.

@notfiveo try impressing a girl by explaining how your knife has a steel that is the hardest and longest cutting steel available. How it’s a transition carbide material, impervious to becoming soft while red hot, and a fine enough carbide size and grain structure to take a hair whittling edge... they’re usually not impressed 😉

@notfiveo most swiss watches have to be mailed in for service anyway.

@@anthonyb2990there is no gliding because that’s just pixels…

@@anthonyb2990 I seem to remember the second hand in my Dad's Bulova Accutron gliding like that.

@@anthonyb2990 No, just no. If thats your opinion then sure it's yours I have no issue but I dont want people to feel stupid for liking swiss watches over GS, and I also hate pretentiousness that comes from GS warriors when talking about their watches. There are many better swiss watches than GS. Pretty much the entire collection of Vacheron Constantin, for example. Why? Before I get into the fundamental reason, I just want to give some other reasons first: Vacheron (whom I will use as swiss watch representative) have much better designs. The designs of their watches are much more aesthetically pleasing in my and most peoples opinions, and this leads into my second point, they know how to brand a watch. I dont want S23089FOJ3-G2N4 ref number:32450895094385093485 watch, I want the cornes de vache or the American 1921. I honestly think marketing holds GS back the most in a significant way. Now, onto the real stuff. The most common argument I see for why spring drive is perfection is because it mixes the mechanical beauty of a mechanical watch with the accuracy of a quartz watch. It gets the best of both worlds, right? No it doesn't. If u want an accurate watch, get a fucking casio. Casio will ALWAYS outperform spring drive, that is a guarantee cos well made quartz is the king of accuracy. If u want a beautiful watch which slowly releases mechanical energy out in an orderly fashion to create an illusion of time, something which took craftsman, artists, months and years to design and make, spring drive does work in a way. The history of how long it took to develop and also the fact that it is a pretty cool design is interesting and I personally could see myself buying one to appreciate this. Does it fulfil the requirements better than a vacheron? No. Mechanical watchmaking has much deeper and more significant history, for one. As well as this, Spring drive cheats. Spring drive does not use purely mechanical energy released in the most efficient way possible to create a time keeper. It does hold the same beauty of that tradition. Horology has always been about this. For a long time at least. Not about advancement, but about appreciation and perfection. Horological enthusiasts NEED to know this. The whole industry is a novelty. Sure the spring drive seems perfect on paper but when its comes down to, it doesnt satisify either ends of the horological 'divide' with quartz and mechanical entirely at all. By trying to achieve both, it is and always was destined to achieve neither. Thats not to say I dislike GS or spring drive, just the ridiculousness of saying it better than ALL swiss watches. Its frankly disrespectful

@@anthonyb2990I think his point is that with the advent of technology, most of not all of the internal workings of mechanical watches can be virtualised.

​@anthonyb2990 I've had two Apple watches... their batteries degrade, and software support is cut off after several years. Apple is one of the most greedy companies. I'm never going back

Totally agree. Well presented in the time frame. Much appreciated Teddy.

Seriously? Fundamentally, this is just a quartz watch. Electrical power is being provided by a mechanical generator rather than a battery. Sure. Fine jewelry. Laughably a marketing achievement but hardly an engineering one.

@@RobertLeeAtYT Go check out a watch repair video for one of these watches or even a less complicated rolex. Now, go buy all the equipment, lubricant, and tiny tools to achieve the MINIMUM required to restart a dead watch. You won't and even if you had the equipment to do it . . . you can't. Better yet, design one of your own . . . keeping in mind the number of years it took them to make it perfect. The ball is in your court, can you achieve anything? Probably not. The tolerances for the collective piece takes TEAMS of people to finish a single new design AND tweak the machines to produce the components for each watch. ALL watches are a waste of time? We have smart phones now. Does it matter that ALL OF THESE VIDEOS are a living, breathing advertisement? No. It is fascinating seeing how silly and curious of a pursuit companies will go through just to make "progress."

@@WhatWillYouFind The spring drive is about the most obtuse, round about way to power a quartz movement. Alternatively, if rather you like Seiko's description better, it's a lousy mechanical movement disciplined by a quartz oscillator. An engineering accomplishment would be innovation on real mechanical movements that significantly improves on the accuracy of current best. Instead, the spring drive is mechanical obfuscations over the core of a digitally controlled, quartz oscillator disciplined watch. It's this purposeful, intentional untruth that rubs wrong. By the way, the accuracy of this movement is good, but nothing special. It's in line with what's typical of common temperature compensated crystal oscillators (TCXO). The TCXO is a 70's era high tech marvel. It is now a $5 part widely used in comms gear, in position, nav and timing (PNT) applications - also apparently spring drive movements. And yes, a TCXO does make a rather nice core of a timepiece. It'd be a decent capstone project for a EE or ME undergrad.

@@RobertLeeAtYT He's probably not an engineer, this type of comment is on every video. The expalantion wasa little innacurate & could have actually been simplified.

Oh I forgot to mention that after paying full retail price for the Snowflake tax free, they gave me 5% back to spend on Wako department store. I got myself a fancy wallet too.

It turned out to 620,000 JPY tax free. At that time USD was more or less 110 JPY for 1 USD. Retail price lets say for the New York boutique would be 5800 USD excluding tax. So it turned out cheaper and the experience is so much better.

I didnt have an issue at all. I just wore it on my wrist while travelling. I'm not sure how it is in EU but I wish you the best in your watch buying. 😁

@RedJoker that just sounds ridiculous. How do they even identify what should be declared and what shouldn't? Do i need to have receipt for the clothes on my back that i bought years ago as well? Seems highly arbitrary.

@RedJoker maybe. But at the same time people don't travel around with a receipt. Also what if someone was wearing a 5000 euro suit but has no receipt. And another guy was wearing the exact same suit but bought from out of the country. They both don't have receipt with them how is custom going to be able to tell when they re-enter the country?

I want one!!!!

Exactly same :)

Can I join the club?

@@st2rseeker me too!!

And the second hand of most full quartz watches, you may have noticed, just click once per second, and aren't smooth sweeping. Because of their high frequency, a quartz watch could have a smooth sweeping second hand, but don't, because that take a lot of energy and would run down the battery quickly - a problem the Spring Drive doesn''t have since it relies on mechanical energy, not a battery, for power.

davidc5191 I was wondering why this was myself. Thank you for the explanation.

It is indeed wonderful when you think about that what sweeping motion suggests. The time isn't divided by the ticks of seconds, but a continuous entity which moves on effortlessly, like the second hand.

It’s the BOMB!!!!

Like my kitchen clock

Meh. I rather see mechanics to stay single forever

Sacrilege. lol

Mechatronics.

Wait till they become vintage and need fixed 🤪

@@andyweb7779 This is an issue with obscure mechanical calibers too...

Jealous!!! But hoping to get myself a GS Snowflake this year 😁

Pewpew

It is less likely to happen because actually the knowledge base of rolex is much smaller than seiko. Besides rolex makes no attempt to do so because they are fine with the luxury business model now.

Rolex fanboys would declare that it's the greatest invention since sliced bread.

First of all, it wouldn't have a relevant name like Spring Drive. It would probably be something more pretentious like "Glorious Expedition".

rolex is extremely lazy and slow to even push out models. Just compare them to Omega, the latter seemingly has a new man on the moon watch every other month.

They aren’t even trying, because they know they will still sell like hotcakes with the brand name alone

AMAZING power conversion from mechanical to electrical energy to get the accuracy of a quartz watch with digital circuit using a micro-processor!

Having a GS with Spring Drive and also the Moonwatch are two of the most iconic pieces you can have right now, in my opinion! That's a great collection!

Kenneth Amador thanks for the props!

@@kennetha.1937 and the Sinn 104 is one awesome beater.

Jairo Batista My Sinn 104 keeps going and going .

My Sinn 104 is a Tank i Go Cliff Diving with it, shower with it daily, jo jogging daily and all sorts of other activities with it on my wrist

As far as I can tell, the Accutron stores electrical energy in a capacitor. If so, this component will be the one to fail.@@notfiveo

Agreed would love to see a video on the 9F Teddy! Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

The spring drive is my grail watch

Congrats! I actually just got the snowflake 2 weeks ago. Sgbe249

Hey mate how is the watch going 4 months on?

you are blessed 1/1/2021

😂

if its investment, then go for the rolex. Its got more brand recognition and is more easier to sell. But if its a watch you plan to keep for yourself, for your enjoyment, the spring drive it is.

To me a watch is a personal extension of me that transcends "markups", "value" and "high price", heck when talking about value, a $5 sweatshop watch will give you the biggest bang for buck. I would recommend going to a watch not from feature, value, historical horological history, etc, but from one simple question (or two): Does it bring you joy? Do you love it? It's that simple, doesn't matter if it's a seiko, breitling, rolex, or zenith. The rest is just noise, or at best a bonus. My opinion only of course. FYI, I do have a spring drive, but not a rolex, among other watches

You contradicted yourself. If you want to go for an investment the top shelves overhyped stuff is sadly what you want

You're knocking other companies for "extremely high prices and perceived markup" but do you not realize Grand Seiko is the exact same?

Thank you, my friend! Always tune in for your videos too!

@@TeddyBaldassarre Appreciate it! 🙏🙏

The best 2 watch reviewers in one 😀👍👍

@@peterspaepen2861 🙏🙏

@@TeddyBaldassarre Grand Seiko finally pumped up their prices. Limited edition Grand Seikos are quite high priced. Take for example the SBGA387.. $6800! BTW, Grand Seiko still has to learn to make their watches a few MMs thinner.

The only reason why the price makes sense is aesthetics and exclusivity. Seiko developed a proprietary movement and rather than mass-producing as they easily could have, it decided to keep it as a halo product where only a few can afford the privilege. I have a Bulova Precisionist. It does use a battery but it uses a quartz crystal oscillating at 8 times the frequency of a standard quartz watch.. making for a very accurate movement and also a continuously sweeping second hand. But it’s still consumer level priced. $350-$600. Citizen Skyhawks have used solar power and external timing signals to make a watch that also doesn’t require a battery and is as accurate as an atomic clock for the last 20 years or more. And any phone or cellular connected smartwatch is running off of GPS time which is also synchronized with on-board atomic clocks.

@@calvinnickel9995the price isn’t because of aesthetics and exclusivity but the GS watches were put together only by certified Japanese craftsmen in Japan and all of the parts are truly made in Japan. They’re very particular about this. That’s why it says “Made in Japan”. They literally make everything in Japan like good and old days as if China as a country doesn’t exist in the world since literally none of the parts are made in some developing countries, all made and supplied in Japan by craftsmen. It’s a very unique watch that took time to develop, the parts are truly authentic and not even single screw is made in China like some cheap knockoffs we see in day in and day out these days or some euro trash overpriced watch that’s not even worth $50. Btw aesthetic part is mere preference. Nothing to do with quality or related to authenticity or how well a watch is made of. There are cheap $20 watch made in China stuff on Am*zon that may look nice and look good for 30 min then falls apart. Seiko also makes decent everyday watches in $200 range that doesn’t fall apart and eye pleasing and accurate for several years.

Solar quartz is a thing, they never need a battery change

@Marc Girard they do have fancy quartz movements called 9F I believe. They are said to be the best standard quartz movement in the world.

Seiko is near nowhere the top. Their watches are ugly exept the GS

@@kapitnono Ugly? The Seiko presage line is far from ugly. And the divers are great also.

Japanese watches are kings in general. Citizen, Seiko, and Casio are the big 3 of Japanese watchmaking. But Grand Seiko and Credor have to be the haute horology of Japan

@@kapitnono Please read my comment again nano, my Knute

@@edhammond6911 I read again, and seiko is still far from top

Technically there's nothing stopping them from putting in the complex operations as well. The main difference here is the "heart" of the watch, but the rest of it functions fairly similarly.

@@mrkikylol the heart is called movement. But that’s how watches are differentiated.

@@KittenBowl1 As far as metaphors go, the movement would be the heart and all the other internal organs.

Wrist watches are jewelry accessory for me. My phone tells me the time. Whh do folks have a box full of rolex and patek? U need only one watch if it's not a jewelry. We want a functional jewelry with deep horological history

That's because the main part of the spring drive is incredibly cheap to produce and highly overpriced already.

@@ivanlagrossemoule Not sure what part of the Spring Drive is "cheap to produce", but there's a lot more hand finishing, and over all quite high quality components; GS speak to the quartz aging and selection process. The movement is unique and there was over 20 years R&D into Spring Drive, so I'm not surprised that Teddy has praised the achievement so highly.

@@ivanlagrossemoule As opposed to Rolex? A company that barely innovates its own movements, bought their movement supplier in 2004 so they can call it "in house", and has in recent years created artificial shortages in a mass market watch and have inflated their prices? Even Frederico is slamming Rolex these days for being staid, unexciting, and overpriced.

@@altbinhax the Quarz and the IC are dirtcheap. I am taking about cents per piece in large quantities.

Agreed. So many of their beautiful spring drive models look like ideal dress watches, but are sized like sport or dive watches. I really hope they start making smaller (and perhaps more affordable) spring drive pieces.

Same for me right now.

High-end Swiss watches have variable inertia balance wheels for regulation rather than adjusting the effective hairspring length. More accurate, stays in adjustment longer.

@Nikioko Absolute best explanation of. “Spring Drive” mechanism period! Very well done and thank you!

@@chrisrussell63 thanks for the variable inertia balance wheel rabbit hole. fascinating. Nivachron anti-magnetic springs, not much use in a glide wheel watch though but the vibw might be,, with magnets.