De Bethune DB28 GS John Player Special Dive Watch DB28GSV2JPS De Bethune Watch Review

Hi, this is Tim of The1916Company.com. Welcome and thanks for logging on. If you love this watch, email me, Tmosso at The1916Company.com, for purchase pricing and availability questions concerning this watch. Today, a personal favorite from Debitoon of Lauberson, Switzerland, a 2022 launch. Made in 50 pieces, it's actually made of a combination of DLC black and zirconium, hardened steel coated in DLC, and fired yellow titanium. Combine that with the sapphire and you have a dazzling mixed material watch known as the Debitoon DB28GS-JPS. So, the DB28GS-JPS features the famous John Player special Lotus Formula One livery of the 1970s. So, JPS is a sideways nod to the motorsports inspiration of this watch, which is the closest thing Debitoon has ever done to a car themed timepiece. Of course, it is a dive watch and we'll get a little bit deeper into that, pun intended. But first, let's talk about the fit. 44 millimeters in diameter. It's probably thinner than you think. It's definitely thinner than it looks at 13.1 millimeters thick. With the lugs at full extension, they are 54.7 millimeters across the wrist, full compression, 51.3, and then it is a 26 millimeter spacing in between the lugs. On the wrist, you get a better sense of the watch's thickness. It is thinner than you expect. Remember, a Submariner, no date, is about 12.8. So, this is 13.1. If you know that, you'll know this. Now, the lugs, as you could see, are variable geometry. That is a long running patented element that Debitoon has featured on watches since the DB26 of 2008. And it does allow the watch to fit well, even on a smaller wrist like mine. And you can see in profile, it actually will fit underneath most sleeves. And then down the barrel, the lugs are not out over the edge of my wrist. Now, the strap is something that I haven't sized down and buckled. So, I'm pulling it kind of tight, which makes the watch look broader than it is when viewed from over the top. The watch comes with a rubber strap. Don't worry. You're not going to have to swim with this leather lined strap. The rubber one is best used for aquatic activity. And if you want something a little bit more rugged, or maybe a little bit more tactically inspired to match the blacked out aesthetic, you've got textile on the top. You've got a leather gusset sewn in for strength, and then on the bottom, you've got the calfskin. No crimping, no gouging, brand new DB factory strap. We've got a buckle to match the watch blackened and fired yellow titanium right there. You can see Debitoon branded. Debitoon buckles generally match the design of the watch. So, you can see the lugs. Then you look at the buckle and you realize these two things were meant for each other. You have these little torpedo tips on the end of the lugs, the last styling remnant to the original DB1 chronograph from 2002. These little torpedo tip lugs have become the signature of the brand, and they have been used since the inception of the company on most of the models. Not all, but most. The lugs are made of hardened steel. It's actually heat tempered. That's then been coated with diamond-like carbon. So, if you're familiar with Zinn's tegament process, when they use hard black or DLC coating, Zinn always uses hardened steel under it. Because otherwise, having a super hard coating on soft metal, like conventional 316 stainless steel, any impact against the surface is going to cause whatever is under the DLC to indent, which is going to cause the DLC, which is hard but brittle, to fracture. And so, Zinn only uses DLC on tegament or carbon-diffused hardened steel, and so does Debitoon. This is heat tempered and hardened steel over which diamond-like carbon has been applied. So, just like an eggshell will collapse in on the soft yolk, DLC will collapse in on a soft metal, but not on a hard metal. The result is that you don't get the conventional fracturing and breakup of DLC that you see on softer steel watches. This is going to be very resilient, almost completely impervious to scratches, and that goes for the bezel too. Now, the bezel is also made of hardened steel, but you can see that the steel has been polished to give a little bit of a different aesthetic, and then it is coated with diamond-like carbon. You can see that there's a knurling outboard that's easy to grasp with wet, sweaty, or gloved hands. Look very carefully, you can see the index is up at the top. The action is very light, but the detent is very positive, and the click is very loud, which I like. It's a 60 click, and although you can read the index against the minute hand by day, it's really designed to be seen in reduced light conditions. Now, there's two ways to understand the lume on this watch. One is the passive lume, which is present, but not super bright. You can see though, it does have a luminescent seconds hand, which I think is important for a diving watch. You need to know whether your mechanism is working in the dark. It's not really designed to lume that way. Let's hit it with a little bit more light. Passive lume is not nearly as exciting as the active lume. Now, you can see the mainspring barrels are running backwards. A minute repeater style centrifugal governor is slowing them down, so you can get a large amount of luminescence by dynamo generation. The barrels drive the dynamo, the dynamo activates four LED lights, which light up the whole dial, but also backlight the bezel. Now, you can easily see that the bezel is calibrated individually for each of the 60 minutes of the hour. The power reserve indicator is off to the side. Typically, you've got about one minute of continuous luminescence before a fail safe will activate to make sure that the LEDs turn off and the dynamo shuts down while you still have 24 hours of power reserve left. So, you cannot accidentally stop the watch by running the dynamo off the barrels. The barrels do give you five days of power reserve. There's a little power reserve indicator in the corner. It's a four hertz beat rate. It's a 30 millimeter movement. The barrels have a patented self-adjusting quality that means you cannot accidentally over wind them. Taking a quick look at the crown, you can see it is fired yellow titanium. Everything you see here that looks like gold is actually fired yellow titanium. That gold color is an oxide layer. The crown is a screw down. The watch is water resistant to 105 meters. Again, like I said, you cannot accidentally overwind the watch. You could see that little minute repeater style governor right there. If it didn't have a governor for the discharge of the mainspring energy, it would only glow for about three or four seconds before the barrels were completely exhausted. So, it'd be very bright, but also very brief. Now, the watch does have a mid case that's made of zirconium. So, blackened zirconium. You can see that mid case right here. You can also see that it's been engraved with a pattern that De Bethune calls micro light. So, it's a type of guilloche that's used on its cases, dials, case backs, movements. And you can even see that it's used on the interior of the watch, the cover of the barrel bridge and the cover of the base plate. So, this is a type of reductive lathe guilloche. It's just a more modern form. It wouldn't look right to have a Breguet style rosette here or coining the way a Breguet marine case would be designed. So, this is a much more modern way of using lathe guilloche on a watch. Now, the dial also features mirror polished and fired titanium elements to achieve those yellow tones. The watch features one, two, three shock protection springs, which is there for avoidance of damage, yes, but also improves the timekeeping qualities of the watch by allowing the flanking springs of this patented triple parachute system to take up most of the shock so that the Inca block spring at center doesn't have to return the balance staff pivot to its cup jewels. If the flanking springs can take up all the shock, then the balance staff is not displaced and the watch will keep better time as a result. So, triple parachutes there for survival of the parts, but also better timekeeping. This is one of the very, very few DB28 watches that has a running center second. So, keep that in mind. The finishing is world-class, albeit unconventional. Look at elements like the mirror polishing, the beveling of the barrel bridge, for example. If you look at the springs flanking, you'd see those have been satinated on their tops, polished on their side. You can see that we have beveling within the jewel sinks as well, and polished screw heads with satination on the wheels. On the reverse side of the watch, you can see this is under a sticker. There's micro light on the case back, micro light on the movement, satination as well as polish. You can see the mechanism that underpins this power reserve indicator. And this whole movement is called the DB2080. So, let's think of all the patented elements we've got here. We've got triple parachute shock protection. We've got floating lugs. We've got dynamo lighting. We've got self-adjusting barrels. We've got a patented titanium and white gold balance that minimizes the effect of temperature change on timing, maximizes the percentage of mass in the rim, and also, to the extent possible, minimizes the effect of aerodynamic drag on timing. That balance is patented, and it's fired yellow titanium here in contrast to the usual fired blue. And then we have a hairspring that's Debuttoon's own patented terminal curve, and they actually shape that by hand and then micro clamp it to the inner spiral. So, it breathes concentrically like an overcoil, but it also has the flat thinness of a flat hairspring and the greater resistance to shock of a flat hairspring. So, there is a lot, a lot, a lot going on inside this watch. You've got over half a dozen individual patents. You've got hard metal with DLC coating. You've got dive watch aquatic capability. You've got the crazy dynamo lighting system, and you've got a watch that is one of a kind with a little bit of a motor sports overtone to it, which I find profoundly cool. So, if you love this watch, reach out to Tmosso at the1916company.com for purchase and pricing details.