Sunday, November 22, 2009

#48: A simple swap, to add more sunshine.

It’s getting cold in the Netherlands. The days are also getting shorter. A stormy wind of 7 Bft and a gray sky doesn’t make it look better at daytime. It has it’s advantages. This morning I rode almost 40 km/h to school, while I barely had to touch my pedals. Only too bad I had to return home sometime…
Good thing I have a watch to be the highlight of the day. It’s the GW-6900 again, but now I have switched the bezel and straps from my G-6900A-9ER.
I did look for a GW-6900A-9 actually, but the prices are a bit too steep for me at the moment. Strangely the best prices at the moment are in Europe. On eBay the cheapest yellow Atomic GW-6900A is €128.- shipped within Europe. For a Waveceptor model in Europe, that’s a good price.
I already had a G-6900A. I think I bought it for around €60.- in Singapore or Hong Kong (recently bought a 2nd). Tiktox has, at the moment, probably the most interesting price for the basic GW-6900 (£73.44 - €83.-) in Europe (I prefer to buy within the EEC, because I don’t have to pay extra VAT upon arrival). I very much liked the yellow color of the G-6900A, but I like the Waveceptor function too. I bought a little bit too many G-Shocks recently, so a swap was inevitable.
Taking off the bezels was not to hard, but swapping the straps was more difficult. Actually I also liked the bezel only swap. Black and yellow seem to be an attractive combination. Pretty common in daily life on things that want to be noticed: taxi’s, smileys, wasps.
I suspect that the holes in both case-lugs are a fraction different, but eventually, after some strong words, the push pins fell in the holes. Luckily I have a good pushpin tool.
I think the result of the swapping was looking good. It was not hard to imagine how both models would look like. The biggest difference is the text MULTIBAND 6 on the GW-6900 and the text SHOCK RESIST on the G-6900. Also the buttons are different. The originally GW-6900 is actually a pretty much stealth model. That means a plain black light button with a black G. The G-6900 had a great black light button with a white G.
Well, these light buttons are still on the same case. It’s possible to swap the light buttons, but that means that I have to open the cases and to peel out the circlips holding the buttons, peel them out and swap them. It’s not an easy job to get the circlips back on the place. I think there is too much risk for me to perform this action. I work with a lot of water on the labs. It would be a pity if I learned the hard way that the watches lost their water resistance. I am already pretty happy with this result.
The red text on the GW-6900 does not look bad with the yellow bezel. The blue text on the G-6900 match good too. Actually my old basic black DW-6900 has the same color scheme. The solar panel is very dark. It makes a nice hard contrast with the bezel. I like that.
The past week the watch is like glued on my wrist. Even worse. Also the modded G-6900 has got a lot of wrist time. Not my left wrist, it’s going everywhere on my right arm. I have adjusted time about a week ago. It’s about half a second fast, which means it will gain about 2 – 3 seconds a month. I think that’s pretty accurate. I guess it will be hard to beat this €60.- G-Shock with a mechanical watch.While I have these watches around, you might get curious. Same case, same looks, a lot of functions in common. How about the display. The GW-6900 shows that it has received the atomic signal by the text RCVD above the seconds. Apart from that, both displays look exactly the same.If you perform a screen test (push button right and both left buttons at the same time) with both the GW-6900 and the G-6900, you’ll notice the RCVD text does not appear on both models. Strangely I noticed a text blinking for a fraction of a second while returning to the basic timekeeping mode on the G-6900. While holding the watch under an extreme angle, I noticed that the RCVD text is included in the G-6900 display. So Casio uses the same display for both models. I assume that the modules are pretty different.
Probably I will move along to a next favorite G-Shock, but this one will stay probably high on my popularity list. Just one look at the wrist and I feel happy for the rest of the day.

5 comments:

Seamaster said...

Another great blog, with superb photographs as usual.

I've never owned a yellow G, but I won't say I'm not tempted by this one - despite having owned the black GW-6900 which I have to admit was slightly too big for me.

Unknown said...

Great blog, and great post. I love my yellow G - seems you do too. I linked you up from my site, http://gshockwatches.co.uk/

Unknown said...

Hi Seamaster,

I am surprised you sold your GW-6900. I know it's bigger than the basic 5600 line, but the GW-6900 is not really big either. I noticed it's even thinner than the old DW-6900 line.

I think the yellow color is very nice. Like orange straps on diver watches, I think the yellow is striking, but a tolerable color. I can imagine people get strange remarks when wearing the metallic purple or the pink Crazy Colors, but a yellow or orange watch seem to be not per sé associated to extrovert lifestyle.

Hi Chris,

You have started an interesting webpage. I'm curios how you will develop this website in the future.

Enjoy your G-Shocks,

Sjors

Konafan said...

Great post Sjors, I've read this a couple of times. Why do you think yellow G's cost more than black G's in the same model? Like a yellow GW 6900/7900 costs more than the black version...it can't be the cost of the dye! Maybe Casio make more of the black models so that increases availability and brings the price down..?..

Hope your Dutch summer is more yellow than our UK version, cheers.

Unknown said...

Hello Kona Fan,

I think you already answered your question a little. The basic models are made in huge quantities, while colored models are only available for a short time or a season. I think the yellow GW-6900 does not cost that much more than a black GW-6900, but differences are bigger as the emission of a model gets lower (like the ltd ed. collaboration models).

Cheers,

Sjors