The Iconic Valjoux 7750 Chronograph Movement: Everything You Need to Know

For many years, just about the only Swiss mechanical chronograph watches costing less than several thousand dollars ran on one movement: the trusty, old 7750. Or some variation of it. Or some copy of it. Powering watches from big Swiss brands to those from small upstarts, it’s a central feature of the modern watchmaking landscape. Many a watch fan is familiar with its specs, layout and quirks, but fewer know its backstory.

The History of the Valjoux 7750

1970 was a year of great ups and downs for the mechanical chronograph. The vaunted Omega Speedmaster helped bring the crippled Apollo 13 space capsule back to Earth. James Bond’s Rolex Cosmograph helped 007 foil Blofeld on a mountaintop lair in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And it had been only a year since the great riddle of making a self-winding chronograph was solved, with several companies crossing the finish line in what was horology’s version of an arms race.

Fresh off of this triumph, the market was awash in great chronographs, like the Zenith El Primero, the Heuer Monaco and the Breitling Chrono-matic, all still icons to this day. But what should have been the dawn of a decade of glory for these automatic timepieces was prematurely overshadowed by a new, even more revolutionary invention: the quartz movement.

Within a couple of years, no one cared if their chronograph was self-winding. Quartz watches were all the rage — light, durable, infinitely more accurate and growing cheaper by the year. They were the future while mechanical watches were century-old relics — heavy, complicated and expensive. In perhaps the most telling indication of the mechanical watch’s demise, even James Bond switched from his reliable Rolex to a digital Seiko for 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me.

During this dark (from a traditional watchmaker’s perspective) period of the early ’70s, a humble watch movement was developed that may have saved the mechanical chronograph from the dustbin of history. And it’s still being made to this day, found in countless timepieces from (relatively) humble entry-level watches to expensive perpetual calendar masterpieces.

That movement is the ETA 7750 or, as it was formerly and still commonly known, the Valjoux 7750. It is a movement that inspires heated debate among watch connoisseurs, equally revered and ridiculed. But no one can deny the impact this movement has had on the watch industry.

TISSOT

Most of the chronographs of the 1960s used a delightful little mechanism called a column wheel to start, stop and reset the stopwatch functions. Appreciated for its precision and snappy response, the column-wheel chronograph took skill to produce and was seen as a high achievement for a watchmaker. But it didn’t lend itself well to mass production or low cost and was an easy target for the cheap hordes of quartz watches coming out of Japan. The mechanical chronograph languished.

In 1973, inspired by the automatics of Zenith, Heuer, et al., the Vallée de Joux movement maker Ébauches SA adapted one of their old hand-cranked chronograph movements and released the Valjoux 7750 to little fanfare. The movement was not as refined as Zenith’s El Primero or Heuer (et al.)’s Calibre 11, but its relative crudeness is made up for by its robustness.

The 7750 uses a coulisse-lever escapement, meaning that the stopwatch functions are driven by levers that push an oblong cam back and forth, alternately starting, stopping and resetting the chronograph. The architecture of the 7750 lent itself to easier mass-production than did column wheel calibres — but by the mid-’70s quartz was king and there wasn’t the call for a high volume of mechanical chronographs and the movement remained largely dormant.

By the mid-’80s, the Swiss watch industry was showing signs of life thanks in large part to the cheap quartz Swatches that were all the rage. Many companies survived the so-called Quartz Crisis by consolidating and sharing resources. Ébauches SA, now known as ETA, was absorbed by the Swatch Group and cranked out movements for any number of watch companies.

While quartz was still on top, a renewed interest in mechanical movements led to a renaissance of automatic watches. Proud old names of watchmaking were resuscitated — Omega, IWC, Longines — and started selling old technology to a new generation. It was finally time for the Valjoux 7750 to have its moment in the sun.

With the watch industry just back on its feet, in-house production of column-wheel chronographs was not practical — they required considerable design and manufacturing resources and were expensive to make and to sell. The Valjoux 7750 was the perfect answer and the movement found its way into countless mechanical chronographs from everyone from Tissot to Sinn to TAG Heuer to Omega.

Bremont

Bremont

The Valjoux 7750 Today

People who know watches can usually tell a Valjoux 7750-powered watch just by holding it. It is characterized by its rather stiff pusher action, sometimes by a slight backlash of the seconds hand as the chronograph engages as well as by the familiar “wobble” of the winding rotor when it spins inside the case.

These traits annoy some and are endearing to others. The movement is not only simple and rugged but it is also highly flexible. While the most common iteration is a three sub-dial layout, the 7750 could be adapted to display a date, the day and date, two subdials (in lieu of three) and even a moonphase complication. A 7753, for example, has a 3-6-9 subdial layout rather than the basic 7750’s 6-9-12; and a 7754 adds GMT functionality. They’re all built upon the 7750 underneath. Watch companies could order the 7750 however they chose and either drop it into their case as is, or modify it in-house.

For many years, you could walk into any watch dealer looking for a mechanical chronograph and the majority of timepieces you’d see would have a Valjoux 7750 or some variant of it ticking inside — no matter what the watch company has renamed it. This ubiquity led to a sort of snobbery among watch geeks who tend to prefer in-house column-wheel movements.

The picture today, however, is somewhat more complicated. There are more options for third-party automatic chronograph movements from Swiss and even Japanese brands. You’ll still find the 7750 in a range of watches as well as alive in the form of clones, such as from the popular clone movement maker Sellita with its SW500 series of movements. ETA itself now provides its Swatch Group sister brands with upgraded and more modern variants with features like longer power reserves, but these are also evolutions of the 7750.

Like the venerable Mercedes 280 Diesels that have done time as third-world taxis and limousines alike, the Valjoux 7750 cannot be dismissed as a second-rate movement. It’s the motor that revived the mechanical chronograph for a new generation and has powered countless fantastic timepieces. While the market for automatic chronographs has become more varied in recent years, the 7750 has an ace up its sleeve: it’s already proven its versatility and adaptability. It’ll surely continue to have a place in modern watchmaking — and in watch-lovers’ hearts.

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