Spotting The Bell & Ross BR01 Instrument Tourbillon Watch Line

An exotic timepiece sighting is this rare series of Bell & Ross Instrument Tourbillon watches. The complete collection is here, even the elusive Phantom model. A few years ago Bell & Ross wanted to do the “tourbillon thing,” but do it their way. So they did. Some design work and a nice tourbillon movement from BNB Concept, and we have what you see here. At the time carbon fiber was still really in. Bell & Ross wanted to use it in a unique way. So you have the silver threaded carbon fiber, carbon fiber placed into the sides of the watch, and the best part is the carbon fiber rear plate of the movement. That last part was cool, and apparently really hard to do.

The watches have a few interesting things on the dial. Bell & Ross truly wanted to make the watches “instruments,” not just basic watches with a tourbillon. So it made the watch a regulator, and also included a power reserve as well as a torque indicator. The power reserve and torque indicator work together to give you the ability to ensure that you are getting the most even flow of power from the mainspring so that the watch is more accurate. As a joke, Bell & Ross called the torque gauge a “trust” meter. So you have a power meter and a thrust meter, a subsidiary dial for the hours, the main dial is for the minutes, and the tourbillon (with the cool Bell & Ross “&” logo) serves as the seconds indicator. Going back to the power and trust meters, the way they work is that you want the trust meter hand to be in the middle most of the time. This means that the mainspring should be not quite all the way wound, and not near being empty. It is sort of gimmicky, but an interesting addition to the watch, and certainly helps it feel like more of an instrument.

The watches were placed in the BR01 case with a different style bezel that was actually inspired by a part on a motorcycle. I really like how the watches came out, and finally being able to wear them sold me on their cool factor. The watches were each very limited. No more than 60 pieces for each.. with at least one model only having 15 pieces. Price for the Bell & Ross BR01 Instrument Tourbillon is about $150,000 each. These images were taken at Lussori in Carmel by the Sea, California.

Images and article by Ariel Adams of aBlogtoRead.com.

Tags: bell ross, br01, carbon fiber, gold, instrument, Tourbillon, watch

This entry was posted on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Watches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.