It’s a good thing Roger Dubuis makes its own hairsprings: its new Excalibur Quatuor, equipped with Caliber RD 101, requires a whopping four of them. The watch has four balances arranged concentrically around the movement and placed at an incline. They are intended to perform the same function as a tourbillon – eliminating timing errors caused by the effects of gravity on the balance – but to do it better. The four balances give the watch an amazingly high frequency of 16 Hz, or 115,200 vph. If that’s not enough, it’s also the first watch with a case made of silicon.
The biggest news from tourbillon maestros Robert Greubel and Stephen Forsey was not a tourbillon, but a watch with two inclined fixed balances with escapements, one visible through an aperture at 9 o’clock and the other between 4 and 6 o’clock. The watch is called the Double Balancier 35°. It averages out the rates of the two balances, thus providing more precise timing than would be possible with a single oscillator, the company says. Greubel Forsey is only making six pieces.
Want to learn more details about these timepieces, including their prices? Check out the current issue of WatchTime, on sale now, or download the issue for your iPad, Nook, or Kindle.
now you talking about the top shelf time pieces in the world very expensive for me my dream is to own a patek Philip watch or top of my list.zenith elprimero thanks again George from Sydney Australia
Sorry I must be missing something. While a admire the engineering of all of these watches. They are five of the ugliest watches I have seen in a long time at any cost. I do have several high end watches in my collection a Greubel Forsey double Tourbillon in gold is one of them, aesthetically stunning and far nicer to look at than the example shown here. The Roger Dubuis silicon or not is as ugly as sin, I have Invicta watches that look better than that and that is saying something. The watches in the related part of the article in my eyes are the better looking watches.
Fantastic watches! Unfortunately, prices are ultra-high! So, ordinary watch lovers do not have any chance of buying one of these great watches!