A Monarte was never meant to be read from a list. Beat rate, jewels, hours of reserve: the numbers are shared by a great many watches. What sets one apart lives between the numbers, in hours of adjustment you will never see and will feel every day. It is the watch that is still right on Sunday evening, and the seconds hand that arrives at the marker exactly when you expect it to.
To understand that work, it helps to know the movement it starts from.
The ETA 2824-2 is one of the most widely used Swiss automatic movements ever made. Open a great many Swiss watches and you will find one. What most people do not know is that the name alone tells you little, because the 2824-2 was made in four different grades.
The 2824-2 is a self-winding movement 25.6 millimetres across and 4.6 millimetres high, with 25 jewels. Its balance beats 28,800 times an hour, eight times a second, which gives the seconds hand its smooth sweep. It has a quick-set date, and its seconds hand stops when you pull the crown out to set the time. Fully wound, it runs for about 38 hours.
ETA published four executions of the 2824-2. They share the same architecture. They differ in the quality of the parts that matter most for timekeeping, above all the balance and the hairspring, and in how carefully each movement is adjusted before it leaves the factory.
Figures for new movements, as published by ETA. Chronometers are tested independently by the COSC, the Swiss chronometer testing institute, over 15 days, in five positions and at three temperatures.
A watch does not run the same way in every position. With the dial up, the dial down, or the crown pointing up or down, gravity acts differently on the balance, and the rate changes. Adjusting a movement means measuring it in each position and correcting it until the differences are small. The more positions, the more time it takes, and the more consistently the watch will keep time on a real wrist, over a real day.
A grade describes how a movement leaves its maker. It does not describe how it runs once it has been cased, fitted with its dial and hands, and put on a wrist. That depends on everything that happens next.
Every Monarte Squid begins with the 2824-2 in its Top grade. That is the starting point, not the finished movement.
What leaves our hands is Calibre MA-19, our own calibre. It is built on the 2824-2 Top grade and taken to a much higher standard. We fit Triovis fine regulation, which lets the rate be set with far greater precision than a standard regulator allows, and KIF shock protection for the balance. Every movement is fully decorated. Each one is then regulated by hand in six positions, tested over 72 hours, and brought to within ±2 seconds a day.
None of this is required by any grade.
Each of these movements is good at what it sets out to do, and the right one depends on what you value. A 2824-2 in its standard grade is a sound and proven engine: dependable, easy to service, and fairly priced for the performance it gives. It has carried countless watches through decades of daily life.
If what you value is the craft itself, a movement can be taken much further: finer parts, full decoration, and hours of regulation by hand by very experienced watchmakers. That work takes longer, and it costs more.
Monarte chose the second path. It asks more of the watchmaker, and we believe the difference is one you feel every day.