Grand Seiko Spring Drive 9R

SPRING DRIVE

Spring Drive a New Kind of Watch

A completely new class of watch, born from the fusion between the best of traditional watchmaking and the best of high-tech watchmaking.

 

The quartz era began at Christmas 1969 when the Seiko Quartz Astron was launched, ushering in a wave of technological development and revolutionizing watchmaking in the years that followed.

 

They dreamed of a watch that would combine the best of the two excellent timekeeping technologies: mechanical and quartz. It took nearly three decades, but in the end, his dream was embodied in the Spring Drive, a watch in which an electronic regulator controls a mechanical movement.

 

Based on his ideas, Seiko Epson registered a patent for this technology in 1978, but he and his small team ran into enormous difficulty when trying to put it into practice.

 

They realized that while the idea was perfectly feasible, to make such a watch they would have to make great strides in all aspects of existing technologies.

 

Since the late 1990s, the pace of research and development progressed more rapidly, and the company put all its resources into the project. What had started as one man's dream was now a company-wide priority.

 

This new type of watch needed a name and the choice was Spring Drive.

 

They chose this name, which means "spring-powered" in English, to show that the watch was essentially the same as a mechanical watch, but with a new type of regulator. In fact, 80% of the components were exactly the same as a high-quality mechanical watch, and the name deliberately emphasized the traditional foundation of the movement and the team's respect for all it stood for. Only the regulator was different and it was given the name "Tri-synchro regulator", to highlight the unique way in which three forms of energy, mechanical, electrical and electromagnetic, were harnessed to power it. This remarkable watch was launched in 1999.

 

The design team always set the bar high, and to be worthy of the Grand Seiko name, they felt the Spring Drive had to have the ability to be both self-winding and manual.

 

The team set to work developing the caliber that would be called 9R and would power all Grand Seiko Spring Drive watches to this day.

 

The movement of the wrist winds the spring.

The energy of the spring is converted into electricity. The quartz circuit precisely controls the speed of rotation of the gears, which then move the needles. This mechanism is a fully self-contained, high-precision movement that bridges the gap that exists in watchmaking.

 

 Until the emergence of Spring Drive, the highly prized autonomy of mechanical watches came at the expense of precision, while quartz precision could only be possible in a battery-operated watch. Spring Drive solved this dilemma and finally succeeded in combining the best of both watchmaking worlds.

Grand Seiko Spring Drive 9R

The development of the 9R Spring Drive movement, perhaps the most precise mechanical movement in the world, was possible thanks to the fact that Grand Seiko is one of the few manufacturers with proficiency in both electronic and mechanical watchmaking.

The Spring Drive 9R movement and all its calibers are powered by a mainspring like any other mechanical watch, but unlike the latter it introduces a TRI-SYNCHRO electronic regulator system producing a level of precision that no other mechanical watch can match, reaching the +-1 seconds a day in the worst case.

Grand Seiko Spring Drive 9R movement and Watches Official Retailer in Europe

There is 1 product.

Showing 1-1 of 1 item(s)

Active filters

GRAND SEIKO HERITAGE Snowflake STGF359G

    GRAND SEIKO HERITAGE...

    Grand Seiko Heritage Spring Drive Watch, Caliber 4J52. Quartz clock, with calendar. Steel case with white dial, "snowflake" type. When the wind...
    Price $2,172.13