I recently serviced this Vulcain Cricket calibre 120 alarm watch from the 1950’s. The Cricket was a popular alarm watch for many reasons— their quality was very high and they were designed to be the loudest alarm watches available. Vulcain is still in-business today. You can see a video showing the alarm running (movement exposed and fully assembled in case) by visiting the ClockSavant Instagram page. As you can see in the video on the ClockSavant Instagram page, when fully serviced, the alarm in this watch would be difficult to ignore. This watch is a sentimental for the family that owns it— passed-on from one generation to another. Alarm watches can be complicated and take a good deal of work to fully service (fully disassemble.) They often received heavy use and saw many watchmakers, thus leaving a trail of items to correct. Vintage alarm watches are underrated in my opinion. They are truly useful, charming, tend to make you smile, and represent significant horological accomplishments. As you can see in the follow-on pictures, this watch has a large number of parts. I want to comment on the Seiko Bell-Matic’s for a moment. These are lower cost watches made later but also interesting. They are very complicated with many parts and a good deal of work to fully disassemble and service.
