An unusual item popped up on my eBay search yesterday : http://r.ebay.com/bspdyv



Like that other auction by abouttime-ch mentioned here recently (sorry, can't remember the watch) they says it's a prototype and in this case it might well be as the 32Khz and Date/Day windows probably point to the 1310 movement. Since it came after the EQ/Beta 21 and was in fact Omega's first fully in-house Quartz calibre (codename : fourmi) they maybe toyed with reusing the EQ name that had cost them an arm to develop ;-)

Thoughts anyone ?

 

Its a 32Khz 1310 prototype dial, I have two original series 0 prototypes both with this printing, one in a F300 style case and one in a brass TV case

 

Ok, I wonder if someone at Omega remembers why the name was changed from EQ to MQ, the fact that Abouttime still have spare dials probably means that they'd decided to got with that name and that it was a late decision to go with MQ. I'll check Lucien Trueb's book but I don't remember any specific mentions.

 

IMHO omega originally intended to continue to the electroquartz line for the 32Khz and reserve the Megaquartz title for the 1509 series.

Must have simply been a marketing thing

I would add that the 1310 prototypes I have all have prototype movements, the motor units are completely different to the production unit, the timekeep on the prototypes is poor, I guess a flaw in the motor, which is why the production watch had a different motor