The Sixties line was launched back in 2007 and continues today. While this reference is in the Senator collection, today the watch lives in the Vintage line-up. The dial design is heavily based on a 1960s Spezimatic, a model the company did back when it was known as GUB and operated in East Germany.
Diameter: 39.1mm
Lug-to-lug: 44.5mm
Thickness: 9.8mm
Lug width is: 19mm
The watch is listed as having 30 meters of water resistance.
The watch case is 18kt rose gold and is entirely polished, providing an extremely classic look. The dial is a matte black which I think compliments the rose gold well and is the main aspect that drew me to the watch. The 3, 6, 9, and 12 hour markings are a stylized Arabic numerals that appear as brush strokes. The other hours are indicated with applied baton markers. The overall approach is quite minimalist, that this is reflected in the text on the dial. Towards the 12 o’clock position is the brand name and towards the 6 o’clock is text referencing the city the watch was made. Beneath the 6 o’clock is the Made in Germany designation. The watch dial is protected by a domed sapphire crystal.
This is a time-only model and the hands are in the baton style. The watch does have lume, but it’s sparse. The hour and minute hands are lumed and there is a small dot of lume near each hour marker.
Here is some footage of the lume freshly charged.
The watch came on a small scale alligator strap with a simple pin buckle with the brand logo. The brand logo is also on the crown. This watch is entirely controlled by the crown which has two positions. In position zero the watch can be hand wound and in position one the watch can be set.
The watch does have a display caseback, which is very odd in that is has a notably boxed sapphire crystal. The It shows off the movement which is significantly smaller than the watch case. The watch is powered by the in-house caliber 39-52 movement. This is an automatic movement with 25 jewels, beating at 4 Hz and offering approximately 40 hours of power reserve. The rotor is skeletonized and weighted with 21 kt gold. The movement had the German three-quarter plate format with significant Glashütte striping, a double-spiral on the reduction wheel, black-polished screw heads, and a swan-neck regulator. It is very obvious how small the movement is. Rather than masking the edges to look more like the case, instead we see a visibly obvious movement ring labeled with “automatic”, “Senator”, and “Sixties”. You can even see the stem of the crown. I believe this was all done to accommodate the display crystal and its format. It’s a strange approach that I’m not really a fan of.
Putting this watch on my timegrapher, I get an average across all six positions of +5.7 seconds per day. The range of readings were -2 seconds per day to +14 seconds per day.
My overall thoughts:
The positives:
Matte black dial compliments the rose gold case well
Comfortable wearing experience
Domed sapphire gives solid vintage vibes
The negatives:
Movement power reserve is low
Not a fan of the display caseback approach highlighting how small the movement is
I don’t have much in the way of complaints. The display caseback having a domed crystal seems pointless to me and, while unique, I think the decision to show so much of the movement, including the stem, calls too much attention to how much smaller the movement is than the watch case. Likewise, the caliber 39-52 is pretty long in the tooth and you can find lots of in-house calibers with far better power reserve for the price.
But overall I really like this watch. It wears well on the wrist and while the domed sapphire really compliments the overall look of the watch it causes no issues sliding under shirt cuffs given how thin the overall watch is. This is my first dress watch with a black dial. I was curious if I would really like matte black versus something glossy but I think it looks very refined against the rose gold case.