Amanda sent in her Nomos, and as my regular readers know, I’m quite fond of Nomos watches. It’s the design and simplicity that I like. Very Bauhaus, not only in looks, but also in spirit.
The back is a bit unusual, as this is a special edition made for the jeweler Wempe in Berlin, one of the biggest German jeweler chains. This one is the 9th out of a 125 watches made, celebrating their 125th anniversary. The movement has not the usual plating and decoration, but has a sandblasted brass finish, with the Berlin bear engraved and blackened. Very nice indeed.
The movement looks exactly like the Nomos in-house alpha, as it has a single bridge for barrel and gear train, and the typical click, but it’s stamped as “ETA 7001”. The 7001 has two separate bridges, and a different click construction, so I wonder what happened there 😉
Considering that Wempe had their 125th anniversary in May 2003, and that the Nomos alpha calibre was released in April 2005, my guess here is that this is a pre-release alpha. As the alpha is based on the Peseux/ETA 7001, it looks like Nomos didn’t stamp these movements as alphas, but left the original stamping on the plate. Interesting!
Not bad, but a service won’t hurt, as the jewels are dry.
Yes, that’s definitely an alpha. Lovely case ring as well. Not like TAG who uses cheap plastic case rings.
The bottom plate has the usual perlage decoration.
The sandblasted finish looks nice indeed.
You can see the hacking lever, which only the alpha and not the 7001 has.
All parts cleaned and ready for reassembly.
I put in the usual new mainspring.
Enlarge the photo, and you can see the ETA 7001 stamp!
You have to love the performance!
The bottom plate is back together, and I’ve put in a new dial washer, as that was missing.
The case ring is on, and I can case the movement.
One of the best looking manual wrist watches (in my humble opinion).
I’m fairly new to watchmaking as a hobby, and I found this blog recently. I’ve been working my way through the old posts. A great resource for learning how the professionals work. Thanks for taking the time!
I have a question, if you still read comments on these old posts. Why did you set the lift-angle on the Timegrapher to 52 degrees? According to the sources I’ve found, ETA 7001 is 50 degrees, (Peseux 7001 is 52 degrees).
I’m not sure that the ETA 7001 and the Peseux 7001 really have different lift angles …
Well, I’d understood that they were identical, but the Lepsi list and yours list different values. The ETA data sheet says 50 degrees, so I guess that’s right then. Does 2 deg. matter that much on the tester? Can you measure lift-angle in any practical way, or do you need the movement drawings?
It’s not anything that I lose sleep over at night; let’s put it that way …
very interesting, thank you for such a useful documentation. The watch has an appealing vintage look from the inside out
I agreed with you Brian, I also using one more than 3 year’s and it’s still looking great service well too.
Thanks, Christian!
Have you noticed any wear/rubbing by the balance hacking lever in the groove of the main plate, or on the clutch/castle wheel?
It always makes me a little nervous when I see design modifications, even in such a simple watch.
The Tangente is one of my favourite watches and I’ve been dying to see the inside of this one for a while. Thanks for the great images and documentation Christian.
Apparently Nomos modified the 7001 so much that ETA asked them to change the name. So these ‘bridge’ movements between the Peseux and Alpha were called TSP (T = Triovis precision adjustment, S = hacking seconds, P = Glashütte three-quarter plate). More info here — http://www.watch-wiki.net/index.php?title=Nomos_1_TSP
That’s the story in a nutshell.
Agreed, Mitka!
Christian, thanks so much for the beautiful work and documentation of your work on my beloved Nomos. Very interesting indeed about the stamp and pre-release alpha! Amazing to have the opportunity to see the simple beauty of the inside of the Nomos – so much more to be appreciated than meets the eye!
The beauty is in the way it tells you the time straight away without any distractions! Not often you have hacking lever in a watch with sub seconds hand:)