Have you guys ever noticed this?

I was window shopping at Raketa's website the other day when I noticed that they have a 10-minute sound clip of one of their in house calibers ticking (here: https://raketa.com/w/en/movement/ ). Raketa claims their calibers have a distinct sound; while I didn't buy it at the time, upon further investigation I found they weren't lying.

After I listened to it, I started listening to some of my mechanical watches tick to see if there was any acoustic differences. Just to clarify, I'm not a professional sound engineer, so I apologize if I use the incorrect terms when discussing these's movements' sounds.

Here's what I found:

Tissot Powermatic 80: Pretty clicky/twangy. Has the same wet, acoustic effect as pulling a high-strung guitar cord.

Seagull ST-21: Similar to the Powermatic, only louder and with slightly more bass. I'm not sure if this is because the sound dampening on 1963s isn't great or because both the ST and the Powermatic are 21,600bph movements.

Miyota 821D: A bit hard to discern due to the infamously loud rotor, the 821D sounds way deeper in tone than the first two movements, and didn't sound as clicky as thr Powermatic.

Seiko 4R36: A midpoint between the 821D and the Powermatic, the 4R36 has some bass but isn't as deep as the 821D.

Vostok 2416b: My personal favorite of the bunch, the 2416 sounds a lot like Raketa's movements (which makes sense because they both are former Soviet watchmakers and Russian watch designs/movements had a lot in common before the fall of the USSR). It has a very smooth, bassy tick that lends itself to Vostok's reputation as an old-fashioned yet very reliable watchmaker. When you think of the prototypical sound mechanical timepieces make, the 2416b is pretty close to what you imagine.

HMT 0231: Similar to the 2416b, but far more clicky and slower--the 0231 only beats at 18,000bph. I'm not sure if you can tell if a watch needs a service purely through sound, but my HMT definitely sounds unwell; there’s a weird lack of confidence in its tick.

Have you guys ever listened to and compared your watches' ticks?

Reply
·

Very interesting, thanks for rhe detailed breakdown. Definitely going to take a listen to mine now 

·

One of my old mechanical Timex watches seems to have the right frequency that resonates through my desk. Quite impressive for a tiny little watch.