Or, everything else should cost less. Here is my glashutte original panoreserve. I love it. I have known about GO for awhile but hadn’t really looked at it as an option. Last year I went to Watch Time NYC and they had a booth there.
First, quality was nuts. Seeing it person they’re so much nicer than what pics portray. Most impressive watches there for price I saw.
Second, everyone was so friendly and non judgmental. By comparison the guy at Breguet booth was such a pretentious douche bag it’s put me off the brand a bit.
Anyway, went and bought my own shortly after. I put a sickly mint strap that gets dirtier and more moody looking everyday, just the way I like. It’s manual wind and I like that I get to spend 15 seconds winding it everyday I wear it.
From a machining perspective it is very difficult to make a 3/4 plate. If something is slightly off the whole bridge is scrapped. Being able to attain perfect alignment across all the wheels under one bridge with tolerances under .001mm is a huge accomplishment. Making individual bridges for every wheel is much easier and why you see it a lot in older pocket watches. The drawback to this is you lose a degree of robustness and accuracy across the whole movement. German movements done in this way are tough af
This reminds me of something I’ve been thinking about: Orient movements are a lot more conservative than Seiko one in what they show off. Would you say that this makes them a little more robust?
https://preview.redd.it/irgjjm5b6evb1.jpeg?width=3456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec59a63292a4bfcef126e8862409f564ceb414a0