Now that we got the basic information out of the way in THIS THREAD, let's get into a few specifics.

First up, the Valjoux 7750. It's the most common automatic chronograph on the market by a wide margin. Longines calls it the caliber L644, L674, or L678. Most of Oris' 67x and 68x series are based on some derivative of the 775x family. Omega dubs it the caliber 1154, 1164 or 3600. Breitling calls it the caliber B13 or B20, of which the B13 will be our example. Here's a picture of my Chrono Cockpit's movement:




Looks pretty good, huh? Who wouldn't like the perlage on the plates and Geneva stripes on the rotor? Breitling probably stripped that ebauché to the bone and refinished it, right? WRONG!!! Have a look at the options ETA offers on the 7750:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4...DBjY2U3ODQ0/view?usp=sharing&authkey=CM6x_44P

Did you notice the perlage and Geneva stripes are available directly from ETA on the 7750? All Breitling did was engrave their name on the rotor if that (ETA does this as an option now). Omega isn't much better when it comes to this movement - compare the options available with their caliber 1164 in this link from Ranfft's database: bidfun-db Omega_1164: Omega 1164 (Valjoux 7750). They engraved and reshaped the rotor - that's it.


Have a look at the Christopher Ward Speedhawk, which was a VERY popular watch when it was introduced:




Wow, blued screws and everything! They must have put quite an effort into spiffing that beauty up. Not so fast - go back and look at the 7750 .pdf file again. Yep, everything on that CW Speedhawk's movement is an option that can be ordered from ETA. Worse yet, the CW and Breitling are in very different price brackets so it makes it tough to justify the added expense for some 7750 based watches. There are manufacturers who used to do serious modification to the 7750. IWC did quite a bit of work to it for their watches, especially the calendar pieces.... but now ETA makes IWC's modifications for them. The majority of the drive train is replaced (mainspring and barrel, wheel train, balance wheel, escape lever, etc) as well as extensive refinishing to make a more efficient caliber.


How about the 2892? Again, many brands use this movement. Breitling has a number of calibers based on it with chronograph or calendar modules attached. Longines calls it the L614 or L619, Omega names it the 1120 and after retrofitting the co-axial escapement calls it the 2500, and Ulysse Nardin has several calibers based on it including the UN-13. Here's a picture of a Tiffany's Mark Coupe in stainless steel powered by a 2892-A2:




You would think a company that's got over a century of experience finishing high-end jewelry would work wonders on a watch movement. Nope! Most of the same options offered for the 7750 are available for the 289x series, plus a few fancier ones. Here's the .pdf file from ETA:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4...jhlOWUxYjg2/view?usp=sharing&authkey=CMKpg88G


Now take a look at the UN-26 and compare it to the ETA options in the above link:




If you didn't see the ETA .pdf, you'd think that was a labor intensive job to create a movement that gorgeous, wouldn't you? Not after seeing it can be ordered exactly like that from ETA amongst the options on page 4 and 5! The 7 extra jewels are in the power reserve module that's attached to the movement, not added to the actual 2892. UN claims that 58 extra parts are added, but doesn't say how many are actually added to improve the 2892 if any at all, nor how many are in the module that's attached. UN isn't the only high-end brand guilty of this either; they're just a typical example. Many companies who charge thousands of dollars for their watches still use a movement right out of the box (with a little regulation for timekeeping's sake).


Let's take a look at Omega now. The caliber 1120 used in the older Seamaster Professional series is an ETA 2892-A2 with 2 jewels added to the ends of the barrel arbor. Omega also reshaped the automatic winding system's bridge to increase the winding efficiency and decrease rotor wobble over their previous version called the 1109. The updated caliber 2500 version has George Daniel's co-axial escapement. There are 4 extra jewels in the escapement bringing the total to 27.




Omega took a proven commodity in the 1120 and modified it by reshaping some plates & bridges to squeeze the new escapement into it, and decreased the beats per hour from 28,800 to 25,200 after some initial trouble at the higher rate because the co-axial was engineered to run at slower speeds - Daniels designed the co-axial to work between 18,000 bph and 21,600 bph. Kudos to Omega for actually doing some improvements to the base ETA ebauché though, because they certainly don't to some - like the 1164 based on the Valjoux 7750. They also had to do some minor changes to the wheel train to change the ratios to slow the bph. You also have to like how Omega reshaped the rotor to resemble their classic calibers from the 60's on all the ETA movements they use. Omega has since engineered their new calibers (for instance, the 8000 series) around the co-axial escapement as it was originally designed, with a 3 level set-up instead of the 2 level modified version that they had stuffed into the 1120.

Of course the derivatives of the base 2892 are also subject to the same practices. Here's a Tag Heuer Carrera Twin Time with the ETA 2893 GMT movement inside, in this case called the Caliber 7:




The exception to the rule was again IWC. From an article in WatchTime dating to December of 2002 comes information that IWC did similar upgrades to the 2892-A2 as they did to the 7750 to abate friction, tighten tolerances, and increase efficiency. ETA makes these changes for IWC now.


And now for the 2824 - the rugged workhorse in ETA's stable; built with thicker plates & bridges to be sturdier than the rest of their movements. This caliber is employed in many dive/sport watches by hundreds of brands both large and small. It's dubbed the L633 or L635 when Longines installs it in their products. There are several clones of it too, the most popular being the Sellita SW-200 which Oris uses as the caliber 633, 637, and 654. Some companies, like Christopher Ward, often interchange the 2824 and SW-200 in the same model watches. As tough as it is, the 2824 is not immune from the horological equivalent to blush and eyeliner as you can see in the .pdf file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4...TQ3YmY1OTQ4/view?usp=sharing&authkey=CIGPzo0N


So to the original question of "what do companies do to upgrade / modify ETA ebauchés?" the answer in the majority of cases is "barely anything!". From what I've also been told, Swatch Group (owners of ETA) will even do some further customization to their movements for an extra charge. Or a company could simply buy out a smaller movement manufacturer, change their name, and have them produce "in-house" movements for the brand - like Carl F. Bucherer did in 2007 when they bought Techniques Horlogères Appliquées SA or like Vacheron Constantin did in 1998 with the acquisition of Haut de Gamme. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

While some veterans might already be aware of most of these bogus "upgrades", many newer members believe the renamed ETA movements are actually in-house calibers made by the offending brands. One interesting note: shortly after this article was originally posted, ETA / Swatch Group disabled the links to their movement PDF files, so the links now connect to scans of the documents that I had printed and saved on my Google Drive. Kind of suspicious as some members pointed out back then.

So let's here what you have to say - questions and comments are not only welcome, they're encouraged. Necessary updates on any of the information is also appreciated!

 

The Swiss do love pulling the wool over our eyes, don't they? At least they picked a decent movement to do it with. The one example of the Valjoux 7750 I own (Bremont) is one of my two most accurate mechanical watches at ~1sec/day (the other being a recently serviced Speedmaster).

 

Biggest smoke and mirrors in the industry, in my opinion, Rolex convincing consumers SS is a precious metal.

 

.... but .... but .... but 904L most certainly IS a precious metal!!!

 

Fascinating. Couple of questions:

1. What are the current highest-quality 100% in-house movement makers aside from Rolex, Seiko, and ETA?
2. What is Omega's current highest-quality 100% in-house movement?

 

Depends on what your definition of 100% in-house is. AFAIK, only Seiko is completely in-house, including screws and lubricant. I wouldn't call ETA an in-house manufacturer because they don't make complete watches. They're the movement makers for Swatch Group.

However, AP would be part of the discussion since they now own the rights and equipment to make the caliber 2003. JLC used to make it as the 903, then sold it to both AP (rebadged as the 2003) and VC (rebadged as the 1003). When Richemont bought JLC, they had to buy AP's 40-ish percent of JLC so AP got that caliber in the deal.

EDIT: IWC still makes a few in-house calibers using their Pellaton winding system. They do outsource for their simple calibers though.

If you want to talk REALLY high end, brands like R.W. Smith, DuFour, and other super-elite manufacturers would come into the mix.

There are no true 100% in-house Omega calibers unless something has changed since my sabbatical. Omega designs their calibers, and then ETA produces them to Omega's specs. I guess it's "in-group" since it's all done under Swatch Group's umbrella.

If I'm wrong on this and Omega is producing their own calibers now, somebody please correct me.

 

While I knew many brands had rebadged ETA movements, I didn't realize ETA did the mods for IWC now. Great info!

 

Thanks for that. I’ve ranted about the 7750 being ubiquitous for awhile. I’ll admit the costs for the dressier ones are higher, it still irks me to see it in 5k plus watches. Looks at Breitling and IWC.

Note while the SW is a “clone” it does not share parts. It can be swapped out with the eta and is basically the same internal layout. Ie the movements are interchangeable.

 

I wish I had read this before talking to a sales person in a local jewellers, I was in there trying to get a Daytona serviced and he tried to sell me a gold Breitling. I mentioned that it had a ETA movement whereupon he assured me it was a in house Breitling movement. I never checked this so maybe he was right, I just assumed he didn't know any better.
A little knowledge is sometimes dangerous eh ?

 

Thanks for this. great read

PP not in your shortlist ?

 

Breitling has been making their own B01 caliber for a few years now. You'd have to tell us which model you were looking at so we could check it out.

Besides, having an ETA caliber inside your watch is not a bad thing. Parts are relatively easy to find, servicing is a breeze for any decent watchmaker, and their accuracy / performance is excellent.

 

No, that's not all they do...I'm not saying that any of the companies redesigned these movements from the ground up, but this post only covers very superficial differences, and some of those are even missed.

The most obvious one for the 7750/1164 comparison is that the 1164 deletes the day wheel from the 7750, so only has the date. The automatic winding bridge is a completely different shape on the 1164, and you sort of gloss over the rotor a bit, missing the bigger change that was made, and only talk about the shape and engraving. The bigger change is that in the 7750 the bearing can be replaced by removing a locking ring, but on the Omega versions of the 7750, the bearing is burnished into the rotor. When the bearing fails the entire rotor is replaced - much more expensive.

The 1120 is given a similar review, but it's quite a different movement to the 2892. The automatic winding system is improved on the 1120, and all the bridges are much thicker than on a 2892, so there are many parts that can't be swapped between the 2892 and 1120. The rotor bearing comes into play again, but in this case both can be easily changed, but the 1120 bearing is a different size to the 2892 (part of making the winding more efficient).

Certainly you point about being able to custom order features on movements is true, so that is why you will see movements that don't always fit into the neat categories that you illustrated in your other post referring to ETA grades. The customer can pick and choose the features and finishes they want - I've done this myself when ordering movements...

Not sure this really is smoke and mirrors though, just the typical way products are ordered and manufactured to the customers requirements. It's no different than any other industry in that regard. There are shared parts across all kinds of industries...

Cheers, Al

 

Thanks Mr Squirrel and Archer.
It was about 5 years ago so the salesman may have been correct, just as well that I kept my mouth shut. I was more put out as I didn't want a gold Navitimer anyway. In the end I didn't let them service the Daytona when I found they were going to send it interstate, when I knew there was a Rolex guy in my city and they would not tell me where he was. I did find him.
Thank you both for the info on Breitling and ETA.