In modern watchmaking, many complications that were once difficult to produce (and therefore very expensive) have become gradually less and less so. Watch brands, driven by a desire to offer better value to consumers (and more pressure to do so, as the buying boom of the early 2000s levels off) are more and more taking advantage of industrial fabrication methods to make complications like tourbillons and perpetual calendars more affordable than ever before. But there are still a few complications that resist this trend ? and one of them is the minute repeater.
Audemars Piguet: Royal Oak Concept Supersonnerie°
Rather than becoming more and more affordable, almost the opposite trend can be seen in repeaters ? they are becoming, increasingly, places where brands showcase their highest expertise, and at correspondingly high prices as well. One of the most recent watches to fall into this category is Audemars Piguet?s ?Supersonnerie? ? a minute repeater eight years in the making, intended to offer a slew of technical improvements that AP thinks will make it nothing less than the best-sounding repeater in the world. (The term ?sonnerie? is most often seen in reference to grande sonnerie watches, which strike the time in passing rather than on demand; however, the term taken alone may also refer to a repeater, which strikes on demand. The use of ?sonnerie? here might be confusing, so we should clarify that the Supersonnerie is a minute repeater, rather than a grande sonnerie.) To...