Horological Meandering

Marcus Hanke
[PuristSPro Moderator]
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The movement is of well-known ancestry ...

Origin of the cal. L788 movement is the famous ETA/Valjoux 7750 chronograph movement. A rather recent variant of this is the cal. 7753, which features the symmetrical, more attractive "tri-compax" subdial layout (9-3-6). In order to relocate the counters, ETA had to delete the 7750's date quick-setting via the crown, and replaced this with a small pusher corrector at 10.

Following Swatch Group's platform strategy, the various SG brands receive exclusive sub-variants of this 7753 movement, permitting to each of them the advertising of a unique movement no other company has got: Hamilton gets one with increased power reserve, Longines received a version with column wheel to activate the chronograph functions (cal. L688) , and Omega has one with column wheel and co-axial escapement.

Another moficiation of the Longines version brought the monopusher presented in your post.

All this may sound simple, but it means a large development and engineering effort to modify the base movement in such a way. The result is nice and reliable. The movement finish is a bit flashy, showing off the column wheel with its blue colour (blueing a column wheel has no technical reason whatever), but I consider this nicer than sawing a hole in a bridge and print "column wheel" around it, as is done on Omega cal. 93xx series movements.

The quality of cases, hands and dials used by Longines is traditionally very good to excellent, there is no reason to be ashamed even when being compared with much higher priced timepieces.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Marcus

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