Zenith

Rickr25
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My slightly frustrated thoughts

I would imagine that these aren't the only 2012 releases. More should be on the way for Baselworld. The ChronoMaster 1969 is nice, except of course for their weird overlap. It looks like, not sure though it could be perspective, the seconds ring overlaps the hour subdial a bit which in turn overlaps the minute subdial. Strange. While overlaps are part of Zeniths history, they used to be handled more intelligently: the hours subdial, the less significant one, was the overlapped one. Nataf managed to design his models without overlap. It is doable. Dufour is being awfully stubborn here. He has to know that his overlap is nonsensical.

The Sun & Moonphase I expected at some point. They are putting all their movements in the 36kvph design line, which I personally don't find all that compelling to begin with. It doesn't look all that bad for a Dufour design. I don't know if anyone had the same reaction but it looks strange to me not to see "El Primero" beneath "Zenith". I love the movement and functions and it does look better than the model they had last year/two years ago, which was a closed version of Nataf's design. But Nataf's design of the Sun&Moonphase remains superior to both of Dufour's in every regard, it's gorgeous, perfect. In general, the classic ChronoMaster design is a beauty and it's puzzling to me that Dufour killed it altogether as if it were toxic. They are calling these new models ChronoMaster even though they have nothing to do with the ChronoMaster design. Why aren't they calling them 36000vph since that's what they really are design-wise. It's a silly name no doubt, but Dufour has got to figure out what he wants to do with the different lines at some point and be more consistent. It's been a couple of years now, and he talks about tradition and history yet treats the brand as if he's just inventing it now, unable to maintain continuity and identity of the brand.