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Yes, it happened. I fell in love with one of my most unloved G-Shocks. I bought a DW-6600 many years ago, and quickly sent it to the “briefly and never again used cardboard box of watch doom”. It saw a grand total of about one single day on my wrist. I felt the module to be very odd and the display to be boring looking. To make matters worse, the watch gained about 30 seconds per month. Far too much gain for my liking. Heck, I even found the strap to be uncomfortable.
After a thread a while back, with Bruce proclaiming his love for the DW-6600, I decided to give it another try. I’d been on a big chunky watch kick, and wanted something other than my Frogman to wear. The 6600 was certainly big and chunky, so it fit the bill perfectly. I also had an excuse to wear the watch. I’d recalibrate the timekeeping, to bring the watch back into spec.
The first thing I did was to start recalibration, change the case back gasket, and toss in a fresh battery. I also added some strap adapters, attached a 24mm Zulu strap, and popped on a face protector. The watch wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was functional. The crystal had accidentally been scratched and the face protector was bent and had chipped paint. The bezel had been stealthed at one point, and there rub marks imbedded into the resin by a stiff toothbrush. If you haven’t noticed, I wasn’t about to go all out on this watch. It was merely a test run.
So I wore the watch almost every day for 2 or 3 weeks. Let me tell you, the DW-6600 really grew on me. The module certainly isn’t perfect, but I do consider it to be the functional equal of the DW-6900. You lose some features, but you also gain some. The display digits are obviously very large on the DW-6600. You also get to scroll both upward and downward through all digits, which you cannot do on the DW-6900. You can also switch between 12 and 24 hour timekeeping on the fly, which the DW-6900 cannot do. My guess is that this last feature is what makes the DW-6600 so appealing to the US military. The US is a country with 24 hour time used by the military, but with 12 hour time used by most civilians. The DW-6600 also has an auto-start on the stopwatch, which the DW-6900 cannot do.
The big draw of this module is the target time feature. Not many G-Shocks have it, and I believe the DW-6600 to be the only current model in production to have this feature. Target time is kind of like a countdown timer, but it counts upward instead, and is incorporated into the stopwatch feature. Target time definitely has its uses, and works great for cooking. Say that I’m timing the cooking of some new pasta, and the box says to cook it for 10 minutes. Ordinarily, I’d set a countdown timer for ten minutes, test the pasta after ten minutes, and then keep cooking until done. With the target time feature, I set the target time for ten minutes, and test the pasta when the target time alarm goes off. Now here’s the cool part. If the pasta is not done yet after ten minutes, I can just let the stopwatch keep on running. When the pasta is finally done, I can see the exact amount of time that was needed to fully cook the pasta, and record that value in my cookbook for the next time that I cook this pasta. Pretty cool. I’ve found a huge number of cool uses for the target time feature.
And heck, if you do need a real countdown timer at some point, the DW-6600 does have a very simple 60 minute CDT to boot. It’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.
Like I mentioned earlier, there are downsides to this module. No auto-repeat on the CDT, which is limited to 60 minutes. No change in operation tone when you scroll back to the timekeeping function. The alarm is more basic than most G-Shocks. The DW-6600 also cannot show the current time in stopwatch mode, but does show the current time in alarm mode. And unlike the DW-6900, if you use a function of the watch, the next press of the mode button does not automatically return you to timekeeping mode. Basically, the DW-6600 gives you a big extra feature, with real world uses, but neglects some of the finesse of the DW-6900. Not a bad trade-off, if the finesse is not a big issue to you.
The DW-6600 does not have the auto-calendar that almost every other G-shock possesses. This really bothered me at first, until someone on this board explained it to me. Basically, the only downside is that you have to manually change the day whenever a leap year occurs. One adjustment every 4 years. Certainly not a big deal by any stretch of the imagination.
I’ll add in one more odd thing. It appears that the DW-6600-1V does not have a large “G” that shows as a backlight image, while the DW-6600C-1V does have the backlight image. My DW-6600, as well as a replacement I just purchased, both have the backlight image. The backlight image certainly doesn’t bother me, as it is too light in color to interfere with the timekeeping display. But I could understand somebody wanting the model without the image. It’s fun, but maybe a little hokey looking.
As far as looks, I do not consider the DW-6600 to be especially good looking. There are no intricate three eye graphics of the DW-6900. You get these funky looking red and green bars instead, which are frankly a bit goofy looking. Where the DW-6900 can look very fashionable, the DW-6600 merely attempts to look functional and competent. The DW-6600 is kind of like that girl you dated back in high school. She certainly wasn’t the prettiest girl in school, or even the prettiest girl you dated. She wasn’t the girl that you wanted to show off to your friends. But she was a great companion, and she did things that the other girls would never do.She’s the girl that, twenty years later, you wished that you’d never let go of.
That’s the DW-6600 in a nutshell.
This is a watch that has been proven over and over for more than ten years, in the areas of military, law enforcement, and emergency personnel. This watch is big, chunky, and muscular looking. It might be a little rough around the edges, but if you’re currently wearing this watch, a more refined look might probably be a waste of effort.
As of right this moment, I’m absolutely in love with the DW-6600. I think it’s time to go to the next level, and make up a pristine DW-6600, with all of the fixings. I’ll dress it up the best I can, and make it as comfortable and functional as possible. It may not exactly be pretty when I’m done, but it will be a lot of fun to wear.
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Originally Posted by smittythepig
