The Lady Gaga of Chronographs

Unless you were living in a cave for the past month you know one of the most popular "new" watches presented at Basel this year was the Tudor Heritage Chronograph.  It's as flashy and just about as popular as Lady Gaga the singer...maybe.

The Heritage chronograph is basically a revamped version of the 1970s Tudor chronograph collector's have dubbed the "Homeplate" due to the shape of the hour markers.

What I find really interesting, is that this is the first time Tudor (and/or its parent Rolex) have offered a fabric strap as OEM on a watch since the milsubs of the 1970s.  If I were to get one, I would choose the grey dial with the fabric strap.

 Photo copyright © 2010 Jocke

Basel 2010

Jocke and Tony made their annual pilgrimage to the Basel Watch Fair in Switzerland and brought back great photos of this year's offerings.  

One of the new novelties I really like is the new, larger 39 mm Explorer (ref. 214270) from Rolex.  The dial is matte black and the 3, 6, 9 quarter arabics are totally devoid of luminous making this model a new "Blackout" Explorer.

According to the specs the updated watch also uses a new movement; the cal. 3132 which is supposedly larger in diameter than the cal. 3130 used in the current Explorer.  The cal. 3132 also uses the Parachrom amagnetic balance spring and Paraflex shock protection, both of which are proprietary to Rolex.  The luminous on the dial and hands is Chromalight which Rolex is now using to replace Super Luminova.  Oddly, the hands used on the new Explorer appear to be the same hands used on the 36 mm ref. 114270.  That makes them a little too short to be used on this watch.  I hope Rolex makes the hands on the production models a little longer to better fit the increased dial size.

 Photo copyright © 2010 Jocke

You can view Jocke's and Tony's Basel trip here.