A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold Watch Review
The A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold was recently unveiled at Watches & Wonders to critical acclaim. Dressed in the German marque’s proprietary noble metal, the watch features a rich, intricately detailed brown dial. Mark McArthur-Christie explores this sublime product of Saxony in his inimitable style.
A. Lange & Söhne sports watch
Glashütte isn’t the sort of place where people are given to rushing things. Unsurprising when you’ve seen a bit of life and been through the Great Depression, a World War and forced nationalisation under the Soviets.
While everyone else was queueing up to release their brand new integrated bracelet stainless steel sports watches, A Lange & Söhne planned, designed and waited. It took until 2019 for the firm to unveil its Odysseus model. There was a little pearl-clutching from collectors at the time (‘A stainless steel sports watch? From Lange? Whatever next?!’), but it has since become a popular model with a lengthy waiting list to match.
Since then, A. Lange & Söhne hasn’t let the grass grow. We’ve had a white gold and rubber bracelet version, one in titanium and a stainless steel chronograph that’s a bit of a beauty. But, until Watches & Wonders this year, nothing in yellow gold. Step forward the new Odysseus in Lange’s proprietary honey-gold with a rich, tobacco dial.
A. Lange & Söhne Honeygold – a proprietary metal
Honey-gold has been around since 2010. It originally encased three watches that were part of the “165 Years – Homage to F. A. Lange” anniversary editions: the Tourbograph “Pour le Mérite”, the Lange 1 Tourbillon and the 1815 Moon Phase. Since then, it has formed the cases of 12 different watches. It’s a patented gold, copper and zinc alloy that overcomes the usual problem with yellow gold – its ability to scratch almost as soon as you look at it; not an ideal characteristic for a watch case, let alone one designed for a sports watch. But honey-gold also has a colour all to itself that seems to shift in different lights. A sort of anti-bling gold, if you like.
A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold – practical
With this latest Odysseus, it also makes up the watch’s bracelet. However, the hardness that makes it ideal for watch cases creates a headache for machining small components like the bracelet links – let alone the finely-worked integral 3-pin links Lange use. The firm has persisted though and the new watch is already establishing itself with collectors.
Despite the price tag, this isn’t a watch that needs putting in a padded box only to emerge on special occasions. This is intended to be a sports, rather than a dress, watch, and with the crown screwed down, it’s water-resistant to 120 m. That said, it’s far more likely to see service on the sort of yacht with a bar and an on-board chef than the sort where one has to hike in a turn on a Laser sailing dinghy. Good to know you could, though.
The level of water resistance is impressive, given the case construction. Look to either side of the screw-down crown and you’ll see what look like crown guards faired into the case edge. They’re actually the pushers for changing the day and date, so those need gaskets and fine machining to make sure they keep water out. It’s not the chunkiest of cases either – just over 40.5 mm in diameter and a fraction more than 11 mm high. Put simply, it’s a wonderful example of proper, precision casemaking.
A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold – dial
There aren’t many Lange models with brown dials. And calling this one just ‘brown’ is a little unfair – it doesn’t really tell the full story. It’s a deep, rich, stippled tobacco with a raised, ridged platform carrying the notched baton appliqués which are also made of honey-gold. It’s a thoroughly three-dimensional dial with the hour track, the recessed and textured sub seconds at 6 and the gold-edged raised 2.4 mm date and day windows. The brushed gold rehaut is marked with a minute track. If you’re thinking it could do with just a bit of colour, look at the top of the dial and you’ll see the bright red 60-minute marker balancing out the muted tones of the rest of the dial.
Lange manufacture calibre L155.1
It’s a pity the dialside of the movement isn’t visible (one could perhaps carry a picture in one’s wallet) as it’s a proper beauty. That’s partly down to the level of hand-finishing, both visible and hidden. A mix of blued and polished screws, perlage and brushed components with polished anglage are executed to a flawless conclusion. It’s also down to the way Lange’s day and date indications work. The latter involves a combination of an outer toothed date wheel that runs around the edge of the movement. This looks after the second date digit – the ‘units’, if you remember your primary school maths. Carrying the ‘tens’ is a circular disc, save for four flat edges, that rides just over the edge of the ‘units’ wheel, allowing the two to work together, the edges are hidden by the bar of the date window. The day wheel has the first two letters of the day printed so they show through the day window at just the right angle. There are happy hours to be had just operating the day/date pushers, watching them repeatedly change.
The back of the case gets a sapphire window so you can admire the movement properly. With a Mohs scale hardness of 9, it’s pretty much unscratchable. You’ll make a dent with diamond, but that’s about it. Again, I can’t see this Odysseus getting too hard a life, but it’s good to know you don’t have to baby it.
Behind the caseback you’ll see the Lange manufacture calibre L155.1 Datomatic with its 312 movement parts, all finished to within a fraction of a ligne of their lives. If you thought winding weights were just, well, winding weights – they’re not in the Odysseus. The bidirectional winding rotor has a 950 platinum mass fixed with heat-blued screws to a carrier that’s skeletonised and partially black-rhodiumed.
The rest of the finishing is equally as top-drawer. The plates and bridges are formed of untreated German silver and enlivened with a mix of blued and polished screws. There’s a screwed gold chaton above the escape wheel. Movement wheels and the mainspring barrel are decorated with circular graining or solarisation. The mainplate is adorned with perlage, a form of decoration that must have taken a watchmaker hours, gently making small overlapping cloud-like circles with a rotating abrasive peg. If there’s an edge, it’s chamfered and polished with the contours of the bridges being circumferentially brushed to achieve a contrasting matt surface.
The three-quarter plate has Glashütte ribbing gracing its upper surface. More work here as the uniform stripes of the ribbing pattern are produced by a watchmaker guiding a slightly inclined, rotating grinding wheel along the component in straight, parallel lines. In a fine demonstration of watchmaking obsession, the surfaces of springs and levers are straight-grained by rubbing on abrasive paper in careful straight lines.
Even the free-sprung balance is worth taking time to look at. For a start, it’s highly polished with anglage on each of its four arms. Hard to spot as the balance operates at 28,800 vph (4Hz), but it’s regulated by four recessed screws inside the balance edge for less turbulence and drag, aiding precision. Once fully wound, it’ll keep spinning for 50 hours.
If you’re a Langeophile, you’ll probably also spot that, unlike other Lange movements, the L155.1’s balance has a bridge secured at two points, rather than the customary cock (fixed at a single point). It’s engraved, by hand, with a wave pattern intended to evoke thoughts of the water resistance of the watch, and features a swan neck which can be used to adjust minor beat errors.
A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold – returning to the bracelet
I’ve mentioned the bracelet already, but in a practical sense it’s way ahead of most. Adjusting bracelets is the sort of pernickety job that is best done without anyone who might be of a sensitive disposition in the room. Not so here. Simply use a pin tool to push down on the circular release on the link you want to remove and slide it out. Remove another link likewise and then reassemble. No fuss, no evil collars and pins to swear at, chase across the bench and lose, no chance of bending a pin and no tap-and-hope-it-doesn’t-bend with a watchmaker’s hammer. And if you want to adjust the bracelet by a few millimetres, that’s even easier. Simply depress the pusher on the deployant buckle and you can vary the length by up to 7 mm, without even having to open the buckle.
A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold – closing remarks
This new Odysseus is a classic example of what A Lange & Söhne do so well – a watch that has taken months of work (including being test-assembled before final assembly), is packed with design thinking (those pushers…) and is beautiful, yet simultaneously completely unfussy. Even in honey-gold, the Odysseus manages to be understated enough to wear pretty much anywhere without attracting the wrong sort of attention. It’s a cracking good addition to the line-up.
Further reading
https://www.alange-soehne.com/
Technical specification
- Model: A. Lange & Söhne Odysseus Honeygold
- Reference: 363.150
- Case: 750 HONEYGOLD, diameter 40.5 mm, height 11.1 mm, water resistance 12 ATM (120 m), sapphire crystal to the front and exhibition caseback.
- Functions: hours, minutes, subsidiary seconds with stop seconds, date and day of week displays
- Movement: Lange manufacture calibre L155.1, self-winding movement, frequency 28,000 vph (4 Hz), contains 31 jewels, power reserve 50 hours when fully wound, 312 components
- Bracelet: 750 HONEYGOLD, safety deployant buckle with precision adjustment mechanism for adjusting the length
- Price on request
- Limited Edition: 100 pieces