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Profile
2.5 mm ultra-thin
Winding
Automatic · Micro-rotor
Frequency
5 Hz · 36,000 A/h
Striking
Sonnerie au passage
The Philosophy
Most striking watches begin with a calibre and find room for sound. The Calibre VBA01 was conceived in the opposite order. The acoustic architecture was defined first, drawn from 230 years of bell-founding, and the entire timekeeping movement was then disciplined to live within 2.5 millimetres around it.
Architecture
At 2.5 millimetres, the VBA01 sits among the thinnest automatic striking movements ever realised. A micro-rotor, recessed into the plane of the movement rather than mounted above it, preserves an uninterrupted view of the going train and the striking work.
It was developed in close cooperation with one of Switzerland's most distinguished independent movement ateliers, a house that builds grandes complications for names it will never disclose.
| Calibre | VBA01Van Bergen manufacture |
| Type | AutomaticRecessed micro-rotor |
| Thickness | 2.5 mm |
| Frequency | 5 Hz36,000 alternations / hour |
| Striking | Sonnerie au passageAutonomous half-hour strike |
The Sound
This is the record. Not the loudest, not the most complicated, the largest hammer ever fitted within a wristwatch, a claim that belongs to a house that has spent 230 years understanding precisely how mass becomes tone.
The half-hour sonnerie au passage strikes of its own accord, without request, marking each passage of the half hour as a carillon marks the hours over a city. It is not summoned. It simply speaks.
Every striking component is tuned by ear, by people who tuned bells before they tuned watches.
Finishing
What the eye is given, the hand has settled first.
Anglage
Every bridge edge is chamfered and polished by hand, including the inward angles that machines cannot cut and that only a hand can prove.
Côtes & Graining
Côtes de Genève across the bridges, circular graining beneath, perlage where the eye will never reach, because we will know.
Tuning
The strike is finished not to a tolerance but to a tone, adjusted by the same discipline that voiced carillons for two centuries.
A calibre is not merely a mechanism. It is a statement of what its makers believe a watch is for.
Erik Meijer, Chief Executive Officer · Van Bergen 1795
The Collection
The Calibre VBA01 beats within every piece of the Heero Collection, the Inaugural edition in five dials, and the Monaco Special Edition in titanium and white gold.