This model was released for Baselworld 2017 and we shared our first impressions here. Here, we will go hands-on together with the Arnold & Son DBG Skeleton and explore what makes this watch, besides, you know… the dual balances.When it has to do with evaluating the importance of this view, I consider it crucial to look at the brand’s history. Arnold & Son was founded in 1764 by John Arnold at London’s Strand. Arnold named that this watch the “No. 1,” beginning a naming convention he would use for his important timepieces going forward.By 1772, an Arnold “No. 3” chronometer was aboard Captain Cook’s boat when he put out for his next trip across the Pacific, and Arnold chronometers goes on to accompany many other vital voyages over the following decades. His son, John Roger Arnold, began studying watchmaking under Abraham-Louis Breguet at 1792 and joined his father’s company four decades later. Breguet became a great friend of John Arnold and both collaborated on equilibrium layouts, the overcoil balance spring, along with the tourbillon, though Arnold died in 1799 earlier this notion could be realized. To mourn his passing, Breguet introduced his son with the very first tourbillon escapement mounted within an Arnold pocket chronometer, which also conveys a personal inscription and is today exhibited in the British Museum at London.
Arnold & Son continues its string of pre-Baselworld 2014 releases with the Dial Side True Beat (DSTB). Developed in-house – its sister company is movement specialist La Joux-Perret – the DSTB movement is self-winding with a dead beat seconds. What makes it unusual is the exposed dead seconds mechanism, comprised of three rose-gold plate bridges, gears, a long spring and an anchor-shaped lever. The lever locks and unlocks, giving the seconds hand its step by step motion, while the spring maintains tension.
An oversized, clear sapphire ring sits above the dead seconds mechanism, forming the sub-dial for the seconds. The time is at four o’clock, on a white lacquered dial. Visually, the DSTB appears to be a combination of the Grönefeld One Hertz and MB&F’s Legacy Machines.
The rose gold case is 43.5 mm in diameter. The DSTB is limited to 50 pieces with a retail price of 44,928 Swiss francs, equivalent to US$51,500.