Pequignet Royale Paris Chrono BPM. Photo: Pequignet, via pequignet.com.
Doctors once used chronograph pulsometers to time a heartbeat. Pequignet has recalibrated the scale to time a song: start the chronograph, count 30 kicks of the bass drum, stop it, and the tempo is printed on the rim.
The trick is old and the target is new. Pequignet’s page describes the scale as working “like a pulsometer”: press the pusher, count 30 bass-drum beats, and see where the hand lands. The ring runs from 35 to 180 BPM, and the maker gives it landmarks: 60 for reggae, 70 to 95 for rap, 110 to 130 for French Touch, above 140 for trance. The arithmetic is simply 1,800 divided by the seconds it took, so a hand stopping at 30 seconds means 60 BPM. Your ear still has to find the kick.
The dial is built around the same joke. A vertical gradient runs from electric blue at twelve to black at six, which Gear Patrol relays as the brand’s nod to neon in a Parisian nightclub. Between twelve and two, a row of bars along the track imitates the level meter on a mixing desk. The two subdials are black and snailed: small seconds at 3, a 30-minute counter at 9.
The case is polished and satin 316L steel, 39.5mm across, 12.7mm thick, 47mm lug to lug, on 20mm lugs. The crystal is domed sapphire, and the sapphire caseback is held by six screws; water resistance is 50 meters. The movement is built on Pequignet’s Calibre Initial, with a cam-operated chronograph module from Dubois-Depraz, according to Gear Patrol and Monochrome. Gear Patrol gives 4Hz and a 65-hour reserve, and Monochrome’s review agrees; the maker’s page gives no reserve figure. It is made in Morteau, France. The strap is black woven Cordura or rubber; Gear Patrol’s lead photos show rubber, but it says Cordura is what ships.
It is a permanent-collection watch, not a limited edition, at €6,950 on the maker’s site with delivery quoted at 15 working days. Gear Patrol quotes $7,950 and availability from October 15. That is a lot for a tempo gauge, and the scale only helps with music that has a steady, countable kick. As a joke it is unusually well engineered.