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Looking for more info on my Casio watches

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Tom-HK

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Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post31 May 2016, 02:16

Hi, I'm new here but I have been looking around for information regarding my vintage Casio digital watches and it seems this may be the most promising place to find answers.

To give you a bit of my background, by way of introduction: my first few watches, when I was growing up, were digital Casios. One was even some sort of calculator watch with completely flat panel. It stood out because all the other boys' calculator watches had little rubber buttons. All those early watches are now either lost or deep in the bottom of storage boxes, now. These days I have a handful of modern Casios that remind me of my old watches (A168, CA-53W, DBC-611), though the main focus of my collection, in more recent times, has in the realms of High Accuracy Quartz watches. That is to say, watches that either through thermocompensation or thermoinsensitivity can achieve accuracy of better than 20 seconds per year. Although I have examples of most types of high accuracy quartz watch, I have now fine-tuned my collection to focus on rare 4.19 MHz watches, and this is where Casio comes back into the picture.

Watches with 4.19 MHz oscillators are less sensitive to climatic changes than watches with the standard 32 kHz oscillator. The first such watch was Citizen's Crystron 4 Mega, released in 1975 - a year after Omega released their 2.4 MHz Marine Chronometer. Whereas the Omega was spec'd to 12 seconds per year, the Citizen was rated at 3 seconds per year. For one reason or another, 4.19 MHz watches didn't catch on and besides the Citizen watches, the only such niche watch known to the high accuracy WIS world was the 1978 Junghans MegaQuarz. That was until relatively recently, when a 4.19 MHz Casio emerged.

Either in the very late 1970s or (more likely) in the very early 1980s, Casio produced three models containing Module 75. These models were the SP-400, the SP-410 and the SP-400G. The SP-400 and the SP-410 were both spec'd to 15 seconds per year, whilst the SP-400G was spec'd to 10 seconds per year. Module 75 includes a trimmer capacitor for fine-tuning the rate, so as to keep the watch on-spec over time.

Since learning about these watches, I have managed to identify only two of each model, out there on the Web. Here are the three (NOS!) that I have been lucky enough to add to my collection:

SP-400
Image

SP-410
Image

SP-400G
Image

All together
Image

The watches themselves are fairly unremarkable. They have the light, stopwatch and date functions that you'd expect but are otherwise special only in their accuracy. I have tried to find out as much about these watches as possible, but one thing I don't know is the date of production. It has been speculated that these watches were most likely sold in either 1980 or 1981, but I cannot find any information on any vintage watch forum about these watches or about Module 75.

So... has anyone heard of these watches or of Module 75? Would anyone be able to shed any more light on their production date(s) or the extent of their release (I'm guessing they were JDM)?
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dutchsiberia

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post31 May 2016, 20:04

I never knew of these watches, awesome!
I'd try to contact casio maybe they can shed some light on the matter?
For some Seiko's I look at old catalogs to get an idea of the production years.
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Tom-HK

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post01 Jun 2016, 01:22

I have tried contacting Casio, but either I'm not so good with Google or Casio are very good at redirecting people because I can never seem to find a customer service contact for Casio, Japan. The local Casio customer service centre say they have no details about these watches and I'm not really surprised. I had the same issue with Citizen. Local service centre had never heard of any of my vintage watches and couldn't find them on their computers, but when I was finally able to track down a contact e-mail address for Citizen, Japan, the people there knew everything and asked me to send my watches to them for service.

So... does anyone have a contact e-mail address for Casio, Japan?
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Adam

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post01 Jun 2016, 09:52

There's a bit of information here

http://forum.pocketcalculatorshow.com/t ... -module-75

Try asking Erik the original poster. The image behind his photo has an A-8 so early 80s is my guess.

Great shots thank you

Adam
http://www.digital-watch.com - online database of 2000+ watches, manuals and adverts from the 70s-90s
http://www.vintagelcd.com - Vintage Digital Watches for sale
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Kasper

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post01 Jun 2016, 10:07

Welcome to the board Tom.

I'm also in the dark, never seen before...greats shots btw.

:dwf: "willkommen"
Hey you all...this board is FREE and without ADS, so at least post something every now and then to show your appreciation.


Get the latest active topics of the board here.
http://www.newdwf.com/search.php?search_id=active_topics

- Kasper -
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Tom-HK

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post01 Jun 2016, 10:23

Adam wrote:There's a bit of information here

http://forum.pocketcalculatorshow.com/t ... -module-75

Try asking Erik the original poster. The image behind his photo has an A-8 so early 80s is my guess.

Great shots thank you

Adam


Thanks for the suggestion and for doing a bit of research. My own research had already led me to Erik, but he didn't have much information. He told me that his H102 was not fully functional and he sold me his H103 (which was battered but fully functional) instead. Those were two of the six such examples I have been able to track down. The folks over at pocketcalculatorshow, unfortunately, are as in the dark as the rest of us when it comes to production details.

Good catch on the catalogue shot. Someone over on the WUS high accuracy forum had the same interpretation, which is why I pegged the date at probably the beginning of the 1980s (my own knowledge on these matters is completely non-existent). Does anyone have catalogues for 1979 to 1982? I'm thinking these watches had an extremely limited release - possibly only one year (1980 or 1981?) and probably only in the Japanese domestic market.

Anyway, even if we can't shed any more light on them, I am glad simply to share their existence with this group. Besides trying to research them, I am also timing these watches and so far the H102 is the shining star of the group (though, with adjustment, they should all meet or exceed their factory spec).
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Tom-HK

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post01 Jun 2016, 10:28

Kasper wrote:Welcome to the board Tom.

I'm also in the dark, never seen before...greats shots btw.

:dwf: "willkommen"


Thanks for the welcome. I'm happy to find this group, though I am a complete technical nincompoop and practically everything I say will seem like utter stupidity to the experts on this site.
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simone

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post03 Jun 2016, 10:30

Welcome Tom!!

Stunning Casios..sooo lovely.If you want to sell one of these let me know ;-)
Some watches are made to last only as long as they are fashionable
Some watches, simply are not made to last
Seiko watches are designed to withstand the ravages of both time and fashion
Someday perhaps, all watches will be made this way
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Tom-HK

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Re: Looking for more info on my Casio watches

Post03 Jun 2016, 12:11

simone wrote:Welcome Tom!!

Stunning Casios..sooo lovely.If you want to sell one of these let me know ;-)


Thanks, simone. I'll certainly keep you updated if I ever sell these, but I'm afraid you may have to get in line ;-)

Of all the watches I've ever owned, these are the only ones I've ever had people e-mailing me about! Never imagined anyone else would be interested.

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