Roger Dubuis Hommage Perpetual Calendar Bi Retrograde (H43) Roger Dubuis Watch Review

Hi, this is Tim of The 1916 Company. Welcome and thanks for logging on. If you love this watch, email us. Team also at the1916company.com for purchase pricing and availability questions regarding this watch. Today, we are discussing the Roger Dubuis Homage by Retrograde Perpetual Calendar in rose gold. This watch is 43 millimeters in diameter by 13.5 millimeters thick. Lug to lug, it measures 50 millimeters with a broad and contemporary 24 millimeter spacing between the lugs. I should mention that if you're watching this video shortly after it activates, the example you see right here has just returned from a factory service, which means not only is it as straight, well-adjusted and fresh as it'll ever be, but it also comes with a factory service warranty, a rarity on a watch made 20 years ago. So the timepiece right here represents the homage collection, which is one of the two original Roger Dubuis model lines along with the Sympathie back in the 1990s when the brand was founded by Roger Dubuis and his business partner Carlos Diaz. The Sympathie was something a little bit more extravagant in shape and untraditional in profile, whereas the Homage was a tribute to the types of watches Roger Dubuis had built in his prior careers, including Patek Philippe. So the watch you see here is an Homage in that sense, but the by Retrograde Perpetual Calendar system also recalls the module developed by Dubuis and Jean Marc Wiederrecht, later of Ingenieur, for the original Harry Winston High Horology watch, Perpetual Calendar in the late 1980s. So this watch incorporates that, but also a lapis lazuli moon phase disc and a weekly calendar complication. The timepiece is large, so 43 by 13.5 by 50 by 24, and then you put it on the wrist and my 16 centimeter circumference wrist, it's probably the smallest that can wear this. Now, I don't think a smaller wrist could pull this off. You can see the lugs are out to the edge of my wrist here, and over the top, I'm going to let you be the judge, but the further away you get from my arm, the more you realize it sort of wears in the context of the size of the person, not just the context of the width of the wrist. So this actually looks fine on me, the further away from my wrist you get. And although it's not super thin, it does have a concave bezel and a nicely domed sapphire, so it should slip underneath dress cuffs and tight sleeves. The strap is substantial. As you can see, we've used a Jean Rousseau strap on this watch, which means that it's basically the OEM supplier to F.P. Journe, Debuttoon, and many others. So top of the line, large rectangular, symmetrical scale alligator leather. All of those features in tandem indicate a very expensive and premium cut of the animal, a sort of honey brown, nicely matches the rose gold, the case with the contrasting stitch. You can see we have here a folded edge and then calveskin on the bottom, no crimping, no gouging. It's a brand new JR strap. And then we've got a buckle from RD that features a combination of branding, satin finishing and polishing. Now the case is a fascinating piece. You can see this unique step to the lugs. The lug doesn't actually extend to the base where the bezel meets the case. So it's a fascinating styling trick that allows the lugs to be extended along the edge of the case to create a long arcing character line. So rather than just stopping the lug here and creating a stubby looking lug, you have that visual extension that works so nicely. The bezel is slightly stepped in to visually thin the watch. You can see it's got a concave profile too. This is borrowed from many historic Patek references, RD branded crown. And then we go around and you can see the center line of the push register is actually a little bit higher than the center line of the crown. This is a modular complication on top of the Longines base. More about that Longines base in a moment though, because it already really makes it its own. So we've got this fantastic dial of scales where we have the lapis moon phase, we have the retrograding date, we have the retrograding day, we have the month, we have the leap year, we have this roulette-like week of the year outboard. And so there's a lot going on. So let's just advance so you can see how all this works in practice. And you can watch the by retrograde hands of the calendar system in action. So that's how that works. And you can see the moon phase moves in sync with it. Perpetual calendar, it does not need to be adjusted until the year 2100, provided you keep it running. And the moon phase needs to be reset every 122 years. The dial has a sort of off-white cream color that nicely matches the rose gold warmth of the case. There's quite a few different colors and tones and materials on this dial, but one of the features that makes it so agreeable is that it is fairly symmetrical from side to side. The only real exception being the leap year phase indicator. Now you turn it over here, see this is number 428. You've got a movement that Raj Dubee has dubbed the 5710, and that's all well and good, but you can see this twin barrel arrangement. This is the Longines 990, which has also done business as the Breguet 8810 and 8815. It was one of the last in-house calibers developed by Longines in the late 1970s, when Longines was still at the top of its game as a movement manufacturer, and it's been considered a super thin, fine, and high torque tractor caliber for complications in service of many premium brands in the 80s and 90s. So this is an elite movement before Raj Dubee adds chronometer style, five position adjustment, and Geneva Hallmark finishing. And to that end, not only do we get a very special rotor, but we get mirrored on goulash, black polished screw heads, engine turning on the base plate, satination on the wheels. You can see we've got a black polished and beveled steel swan's neck fine adjustment mechanism. If you get close enough, you can see the rounded mirrored beveling of the bridges. This is Geneva Hallmark. All of it is elite. We've got a four hertz speed rate, twin barrels, more for a very flat and mighty torque plateau rather than for a really long power reserve. Power reserve is 44 hours. So you just want to wear it on a daily basis and get the benefits of that automatic winding. Now these can be made to run very, very, very precisely. So that five position adjustment is not symbolic. These easily keep chronometer grade time and the Geneva Hallmark decoration, along with the beautiful abrasive wheel stripes on the bridges, the Cote de Genève. This is a very, very special watch. Front, back, inside and out, this watch is distinguished. And this example is sort of an homage from the mid 2000s, a transitional period when a lot of the original Dubuis designs were fading into the background as Carlos Diaz began to more and more take control of the design direction. So you could really describe this as sort of the last of the old guard Dubuis because it's the last generation of Dubuis watches that would really appeal to those people who found the original watches from the 1990s to be so appealing. So reach out to team also at the 1916company.com for purchase and pricing details. Oh yeah, 30 meters water resistant, but that's sort of dress watch standard. Don't submerge it. Again, team also at the 1916company.com for purchase and pricing.