A few days ago there was some (more!) discussion of the misalignment displayed by quartz watches and some-one asked for photos of it. I can't remember which thread it was in but I now have a couple of shots depicting examples from my two The Citizens, a CTQ57-0954 and an AQ1000-66E. In neither case is the offset huge but enough to exemplify the tendency.
When you look at the first one, notice also that the spacing of the hour marker between the hour hand and the second hand is asymmetrical between the minute markers. I don't know what this tells us about how the various markers were applied, whether this was done by hand in each case, using a template or what. And I don't know that this asymmetry has anything to do with the misalignment. The AQ model doesn't seem to suffer from the same disease.
These 2 Citizen models are beautifully crafted but since they cost a lot I also want a lot from them. And, honestly, I can't stand this misalignment. I could stand it if they cost 500$, not now they cost more than 2000$. This is one more justification for me not to aim to these high-end watches (also high-accuracy) because I could have a very satisfying watch (at least for me) spending a lot less.
That's not intended to despise those who spend a lot but only to make me feel better ! The day I'll find a watch with 5 seconds per year accuracy that needs no recalibration over time (in order to compensate quartz ageing), with solar charge, luminous markers and with excellent hands alinment, then I'll spend even 3000$.
I don't notice a misalignment on my AQ1030 but that may be because the gap between the end of the second hand and the tick mark is bigger so it isn't as obvious.
First, to dicioccio, I understand your rejection of expensive watches with seconds hand misalignment and agree that if one is paying that kind of money, one should get something very close to perfection, at least in areas where perfection appears to be attainable. And I also agree that perfection, at least as far as alignment is concerned, ought to be attainable. Gears can be machined to truly tiny tolerances, and in expensive watches, I'm sure they are. And so can the plates in which the bearings are set and the spacing from bearing to bearing.
None of the individual components would appear to be subject to the level of inaccuracy that would lead to the individual one second movements of the seconds hand varying enough to result in the discerned misalignment.
The placing of the hour and minute markers should also be capable of sufficient accuracy, whether they are placed by hand or by machine, to avoid the misalignment.
And while the meshing of the gears has to be loose enough to avoid any binding, the tightness of dimensional tolerances shouldn't lead to enough lash to result in the misalignment we're familiar with. Besides, the misalignment appears in the same circumferential places hour after hour, day after day, and that says the misalignment doesn't come from lash.
Personally, however, I like the attributes of The Citizen enough to accept the negative ones as being part of the package.
And thank you, dicioccio, for the kind words on the photographs....always welcome!
And to Ken Sturrock, I quite agree that the gap between the end of the seconds hand and the minute marker plays a part in how visible misalignment is. And I'm very surprised that this gap seems to vary from model to model of the AQs. While I haven't measured it on either of my watches, but from visual examination it appears to be only very slightly greater on the AQ.
If you're going to send everything back under warranty that doesn't give you perfect seconds hand alignment you condemn yourself to ten years (with The Citizens) of shipping watches back and waiting for them to turn up again, still with imperfect alignment. I believe some watches with the E510 movement are perfect in this respect but no other HAQs, either Swiss or Japanese, that I've seen.
I feel for you bro. After the movement accuracy, alignment is second on my list of priorities in a haq. I'd send it back and ask for another. The quality control in that watch seems poor.
I think this issue is inherent to how the movement has been engineered. So if the A660 / A010 / 9Fxx and so forth have misalignment issues maybe some of them could be perfect but nothing really guarantees a good performance in this area. On the other hand, a lot of Casio and Citizen never suffered that.
We are still struggling to find an explanation for this phenomenon and what puzzles us is the irregularity of how the misalignment appears. On top of that I am very surprised it affects watches that sells for more than 2000 $ while it is often absent on watches that sell for less than 200 $. That's why I think it's totally related to how the watch has been engineered rather to assembly imperfections.
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