Continuing my preview for ONLY Watch 2011 (see all the watches here) — here’s a first look at the Breguet Réveil Musical watch. This watch will be similar to the original Breguet Reveil Musical watch except for a couple of unique features, namely the music-box style tune it plays — “Castle in the Sky” — and the specially decorated dial which depicts a child whose hand is reaching out to an adult hand, a symbolic gesture of the “inter-generational solidarity and support for research on Duchenne muscular dystrophy”, according to Breguet. The interesting thing to me is the patented music-box mechanism on this watch. Basically, the dial is connected to a disc carrying pins (thus replacing the traditional music-box cylinder) which act upon the 15 metal teeth of the comb, resulting in the beautiful sound of music box music. Further, the dial itself rotates one full rotation while the music box tune is being played, about 20-25 seconds.
Breguet Réveil Musical Watch for ONLY WATCH 2011
Unique Piece
48mm white gold case (16.3mm thick), automatic mechanical movement, caseband finely engraved with a musical stave, caseback personalised for Only Watch 2011 and engraved with the inscription “pièce unique”
Castle In the Sky Music Box Tune
Ed’s note: I am fairly confident, but not 100%, that this is the tune the watch plays:
Also, and I believe this is a little known fact, but the Breguet Reveil Musical watch also incorporates a Liquidmetal® membrane which serves to amplify the frequencies required to emit the tune. Liquidmetal is a exclusively licensed for use in watches by the Swatch Group, but is much more broadly recognized for its use in Omega watches such as the original Liquidmetal Seamaster Planet Ocean and the more recent Titanium Liquidmetal Seamaster Planet Ocean.
