A minute repeater has one job: to tell the time by sound alone. A press of a slider, a chime of hammers on gongs, and the hours, quarters and minutes ring out – a complication centuries old, still one of the most demanding in watchmaking. With the Minute Repeater Resonance 12:59 First Edition, we built a minute repeater chime on demand: a dedicated function that plays the fullest possible sequence, any time you want it, independent of the time shown on the dial.
A minute repeater is a mechanical complication that chimes the time on demand, striking the hours, quarters and remaining minutes through hammers on gongs, entirely acoustically and without electronics.
A minute repeater chime on demand lets you trigger the mechanism’s fullest possible chime sequence whenever you want, instead of only when it happens to match the actual time. On the Minute Repeater Resonance 12:59, a dedicated selector plays 12 hours, three quarters and 14 minutes on demand, independent of the time shown on the dial.
A minute repeater never counts every single minute. It strikes the fewest units it can: first the hours, then the quarters, then whatever minutes are left over. At two o’clock, that’s two low strikes. At half past six, it’s six low strikes and one double-tone for the quarter. Simple, elegant, efficient.
Push that logic to its extreme and you land on 12:59. Twelve hours, three quarters (45 minutes) and fourteen leftover minutes – in our own words, the longest possible strike of the mechanism. One minute later, the clock rolls over to 1:00 and the chime resets to almost nothing. Our new 12:59 function lets the wearer trigger this exact sequence on demand, through a dedicated selector, independent of the actual time shown on the dial.
None of this works without control. A flying governor, visible on the dial side beneath the hammers, regulates the cadence of the strike so every chime lands at the same, even pace. It’s a purely mechanical metronome, and on the Minute Repeater Resonance 12:59 it’s also part of the show: hand-bevelled, circular-grained, and left in plain sight.
Behind it, the manufacture Calibre ARR25 does the heavy lifting: two independent regulating systems, each with its own barrel, gear train, escapement and balance wheel, synchronised by Armin Strom’s patented resonance clutch. Four hammers and four gongs deliver a full Westminster chime within a case just 11.70mm thick – twice the striking components of a conventional repeater, built into a more compact 42mm titanium case.
The Minute Repeater Resonance 12:59 First Edition is housed in a 42mm titanium case with a matte grey alligator strap, every component hand-finished and 360-degree decorated in-house. Just 25 pieces exist worldwide.
Discover the Minute Repeater Resonance 12:59 First Edition in full technical detail, or read our official press release. To learn more about the technology behind it, explore our Resonance watches.
