Citizen Exceed

EBA74-2731

cal. 0330

Factory Spec. 10 SPY

Thermocompensated: Thermistor

User Adjustable: No

I bought this watch to accompany my Grosvenor pocket watch. When I inherited my grandfather's watch, it came with a double chain. With much older pocket watches, the other end of the chain held the key needed to wind the watch. This has never been necessary with my grandfather's Grosvenor, and until now I have been keeping an old war medal of his on the other end, both as a reminder of him and to give the chain a much-needed anchor. In buying a 10 SPY gold, Citizen pocket watch, I had hoped to restore my grandfather's medal to a place of safe-keeping and provide an accurate time reference that would better enable me to wear the old pocket watch without worrying about its time-keeping abilities.

I really wasn't expecting the Citizen Exceed pocket watch to be quite so small! It's positively tiny. It is also rather lighter than I had expected and, seen up close, the finish doesn't rock my world. I managed to cause some minor damage to the case-opening notch (and to my incredibly sturdy case-opening tool!) within an hour of receiving this watch, even though I had taken great care in opening it up. The watch is extraordinarily difficult to open, despite the presence of the notch. In truth, though, I wasn't overly concerned about the damage. It was the sort of very minor damage that is eventually destined to befall pretty much all watches with press-type case-backs. I had already decided that I didn't particularly 'love' this watch and its existence in my collection was to be solely functional.

I have put this watch down (along with the Exceed E510 and AQ1000-58B) as having a thermistor and count adjustment, but I am beginning to doubt that theory. Citizen and Seiko are both rather more reluctant than ETA to share the details of how their watches achieve their SPY values. It had commonly been assumed that Citizen used digital count adjustment (and this may still turn out to be the case), but an investigation with a Witschi QT-6000 by a WUS forum member suggests that the 0330 and E510 (and, by extension, possibly all high-end Citizen movements) actually vary the frequency of the oscillator.

Some details for this watch may be missing as it is yet to undergo comprehensive testing.