006 - Seiko 5625-7000 KING SEIKO

 006 Seiko 5625-7000 KING SEIKO

Royalty in the house, yes no less than a King Seiko.

You have probably heard of Grand Seiko, the top of the line Seiko watch currently which had its roots back in the 60s but there was also the King Seiko of which you can read a brief history of King Seiko in this website. 

I am not a fan of gold plated watches as the plating usually wears off and leaves the underlying base metal visible but in this particular case (no pun intended) the watch doesn't look too bad. The only worn areas are the top surface of the bezel at around the 2 and 6 o'clock position. There is also some wear on the case edge visible in the photo below But it's not discernible when the watch is worn. 

One nice touch is the KS marked crown.

In keeping with the high levels of accuracy expected of this watch, there is a small screw between the bottom lugs. This screw is used to adjust the rate, ie to increase or reduce the rate of the watch. Pretty neat touch but why go to this trouble when it's much easier to just remove the back and move the regulator?

Well the reason is this watch has a fixed caseback and to get to the regulator you would need to remove the whole movement. The caseback helpfully tells you to 'OPEN THRU GLASS, PUSH SET LEVER, PULL STEM'. 

The caseback also has a gold medallion, just like the Grand Seiko. In my example someone has had a go at getting the medallion off but they didn't get very far, most of it is still on the watch. Wonder what glue Seiko used.

It is powered by a Seiko 5625 which is a pretty decent movement running at 28,800 beats per hour (hence the Hi-Beat on the dial) but is has one well known weakness. The date corrector (for the quickset) is made of plastic and prone to crack when the plastic shrinks. Even brand new unused (NOS) parts are cracked. It is possible to repair this part with a homemade part and there was someone selling replacement correctors but you will need to dismantle the actual component to fit it. 

On my watch the quickset is broken. The date will still changeover at midnight but you have to wind it forward (or backwards) to get to the correct date. On some watches you can wind it back to around 8pm and wind it forwards as a short-cut but on this movement the date just goes back and forth.

Picture of the  movement below from Ranfft's excellent website.

You can read more about the 56xx movement in this blog.

Overall it is a nice elegant watch and even though I haven't serviced it, it is running at a consistent +7secs/day. I will eventually get around to it but parts for this model are quite hard to come by so it may be a while!