An Eight-Year Blancpain Obsession Finally Ready

 

What eventually became the Grande Double Sonnerie didn’t start as a plan to build the most extreme wristwatch in Blancpain’s history. At first, it was simply an attempt to see how far a wearable chiming watch could be pushed. Eight years later, that experiment has turned into one of the most complex mechanical watches ever created by a major brand. Not in the sense of marketing fireworks, but in the very literal sense of mechanics, acoustics, finishing, and pure watchmaking.

 

This is the kind of watch that exists almost outside the normal idea of “product.” It’s closer to a long-term research project that just happens to tell time too.

Source: Hodinkee

A Grand Sonnerie - And Then Some

At its core, this watch is built around a grand sonnerie. For anyone not deep into chiming watches, that alone already places it in extremely rare territory. A grand sonnerie automatically strikes the hours and the quarter-hours, without the wearer having to activate anything. Add to that a minute repeater on demand, and you already have a complication stack that only a handful of brands in the world can actually execute well.

 

But Blancpain didn’t stop there. The movement adds a flying tourbillon beating at 4 Hz, a fully integrated retrograde perpetual calendar, and something no other wristwatch has ever done before - a dual-melody, four-note chiming system. That means this watch doesn’t just chime the time. It can actually play two entirely different melodies, selectable by the wearer.

 

All of this lives inside a manually wound movement called the 15GSQ, made up of 1,053 components and assembled entirely by hand.

 

Source: Hodinkee

Four Notes Instead Of Two

Most chiming watches work with two gongs and two hammers - a low note and a high note. The result is classic, but still fairly limited from a musical perspective. The Grande Double Sonnerie doubles that system. Four separate gongs. Four separate hammers. Four distinct notes tuned to precise frequencies: E, G, F, and B.

This transforms the chime from a simple sequence of dings into an actual melody. One of the two selectable melodies follows the traditional Westminster chime. The other is a custom Blancpain melody developed with musician Eric Singer. Switching between them is done via a pusher controlled by a column-wheel system deep inside the movement.

 

Even the way the melody is “programmed” is extraordinary. The rotating quarter mechanism that controls timing exists as a stacked, dual-layer system - one layer for each melody. Each tiny tooth that releases a hammer is adjusted under a microscope to control not just the note, but the exact tempo of every strike.

Source: Hodinkee

The Calendar And The Tourbillon

If the chiming system wasn’t enough, the front of the watch is also home to a fully integrated perpetual calendar. Not modular. Not stacked. Built directly into the movement architecture to keep everything as thin and open as possible.

 

The date is shown as a retrograde display along the left side, while day, month, and leap year appear neatly on the right. To preserve the acoustic structure, even the under-lug correctors had to be re-engineered and partially relocated inside the movement.

 

At the centre of it all is the flying tourbillon. Blancpain has a long history with this complication, having introduced the first flying tourbillon in a wristwatch back in 1989. Here, it’s updated with a silicon balance spring and surrounded by highly polished surfaces.

Source: Hodinkee

A Watch Built By Two People Only

The finishing and assembly process is just as obsessive as the movement design. Every surface, visible or not, is hand-finished. Bridges in gold. A skeletonised mainplate. Over a hundred inward angles are polished entirely by hand using traditional tools made from gentian wood.

 

Each watch takes roughly twelve months to assemble. One watchmaker. One full year. Only two watchmakers at Blancpain are qualified to build it, which naturally limits production to about two watches per year. When the movement is completed, the watchmaker signs the back with their engraved name.

 

This is old-school watchmaking in the most literal sense - slow, expensive, and absolutely uncompromising.

Source: Hodinkee

Size, Weight, And Wearability

On paper, the dimensions sound intimidating: 47 mm in diameter, 14.5 mm thick, and over 54 mm lug-to-lug. Yet, considering what’s packed inside, the proportions are surprisingly restrained compared to other ultra-grand complication watches.

 

Okay, it’s a pretty big watch. But it’s also not the unwearable brick that many might expect from a thousand-part chiming tourbillon with a perpetual calendar.

 

The case is made in either red or white gold, depending on the client’s choice. Customisation goes far beyond that - materials, finishing, and even the second melody can be tailored for the owner.

Source: Hodinkee

The Price - And What It Really Represents

The price for the Grande Double Sonnerie sits around €1.75 million, taxes included. That kind of number lives in a different universe from most watches, even most high-end watches.

 

But pricing here is less about market positioning and more about physics and manpower. Eight years of development. Over a thousand components. One year of assembly per piece. Two watchmakers total. Full hand-finishing on both sides of every part. When you break it down that way, the number makes sense.

Still, this isn’t really a watch you compare to anything else in a boutique window.

Source: Hodinkee

What This Watch Says About Blancpain

In recent years, Blancpain’s public image has been dominated by the Fifty Fathoms and its modern revivals, along with the wildly popular Scuba Fifty collaboration. To many collectors, Blancpain today is a dive watch brand first and a high-complication manufacture second.

 

The Grande Double Sonnerie reminds everyone that this was never the full story. While sporty steel watches were enjoying their moment in the spotlight, a small team in Le Brassus spent nearly a decade building one of the most advanced chiming wristwatches ever made.

Source: Hodinkee

Final Thoughts 

The Grande Double Sonnerie is a lot. There’s no way around that. Dual melodies. Four gongs. Flying tourbillon. Perpetual calendar. Magnetic regulator. Acoustic membrane. Over a thousand parts. Two watches per year. Probably even doing your taxes for you (wouldn’t be surprised). That’s called maximalism.

This watch won’t change the daily life of anyone who wears it. It’s not meant to. What it does change is the conversation around what modern haute horlogerie can still look like when expertise, time, money, and more money are pushed to their absolute limits.

I would say that if this is what we can expect from modern watchmaking now, we have a lot to look towards.

Source: Hodinkee