Guest Bum Matt Kessler-Cleary reviews Delma Continental Pulsometer
You may have noticed from the skyrocketing vintage watch prices, and the bevy of back-catalog reissues from major brands, that vintage watches, and their associated design aesthetics, are decidedly in. That trend doesn’t seem to be slowing much at all, rather, it is gaining and sustaining speed in such a way you’d assume Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock were driving the market. Many of the watches that fit within this all-vintage, all-the-time trend, come from the heavy hitters in the watch industry: Seiko, Rolex, Tudor, Audemars Piguet, and just about every Swiss brand you can imagine.
At the same time, with the re-emergence of Nivada Grenchen, Aquastar, Vulcain, and similar pre-Quartz Revolution brands, we’ve seen the resurrection of several dormant or dissolved brands whose claims to fame are rooted in the halcyon days of “mid-century”. [As a side note, what are we going to call the period from the middle of the 20th century when we hit the middle of the 21st? Not such great foresight with that original moniker.] In between these two trends, there are brands like Delma, which have persisted somewhat under the radar since their inception, not succumbing to the Quartz Revolution like many of their peers, but not reaching the general public awareness of industrial heavyweights like Rolex and Seiko.
Don’t be fooled, though, into thinking that the less acute public awareness of Delma is correlated to the quality of their wares; they make high-quality, robust timekeeping instruments, and have done so since the brand’s founding in 1924. Similar to brands like Sinn, Damasko, Fortis, Mühle-Glashütte, and, dare I say it, Rolex, Delma’s ethos is decidedly purposeful and functional. Even their dressier offerings, such as the Rimini lineup, are equipped with 100 meters of water resistance, a pressure rating that the Continental Pulsometer shares, making it suitable for anything that I am likely to do.
If the Rimini and Klondike sit towards the dressier end of Delma’s offerings, and the Shell Star and Blue Shark at the more instrumental end, the Continental occupies a middle point between those extremities. It is a purpose-built tool theoretically capable of descending to 100 meters, but it has more elegance than the Montego, another Delma chronograph with a more brutalist, linear design. The vibe here is less aquatic adventure, or even terrestrial exploration, and more white-collar professionalism. This is most evinced by the tasteful embellishments of the subdials, with their simple, polished hands suspended above subdials marked with concentric, nested rings, and minimally adorned with a modernist font in three increments.
Taken as a whole, the dial has a lot going on with the polished and lumed hour markers, subdials, inner minutes ring, pulsation timing ring, telemeter scale, and finally, the tachymeter printed on the rehaut. Delma has done an excellent job, though, in keeping the functions legible, and the top-down view of the watch cohesive and balanced. A key factor in keeping such a complex dial cohesive is the use of color. Including the dial base itself, the Continental’s face has five colors: the anthracite dial; the sandy lume on the hour indices, hour hand, and central minutes hand; the polished steel of those same elements and the sundial hands; the white printing for the majority of the scales, logo and “AUTOMATIC” script below the central pinion, and date function; and the red for the pulsometer scale and central chrono seconds hand. Enough color variation to distinguish between elements of the dial, but not so many as to look messy.
The red elements call out the primary stated function of Continental Pulsometer, the capability to measure the number of heartbeats occurring within a particular number of seconds. Don’t ask me any more than that, as the prior sentence already stretched my medical and mathematical abilities (for more detail on this function, check out this description at Fratello). Not being a medical professional, I won’t speak on the technical merits of a mechanical pulsometer, but as a qualified watch reviewer (I am here, writing this, after all), I can say that the pulsometer’s esoteric nature makes its presence on the Continental’s dial decidedly cool. What is a love of watches if not a love of ephemera?
The pulsometer function is enabled by a Sellita SW510 BH, which is the whirring heart of the Continental Pulsometer. The movement is a cam-actuated automatic chronograph with 48 hours of power reserve, a central chronograph seconds hand, a 30-minute chronograph totalizer at 3 o’clock, running seconds in the sundial at 9 o’clock, and delightfully, a quick-set date function located in this application at a harmonious 6 o’clock. The cam-actuation makes for delightfully thunky clicks of the chronograph pushers, and the color-matched date wheel makes a dramatic difference in further balancing the abundant visual elements on the dial. There is a bit of play to the caps for the pushers before they mechanically engage, but it is not a functional impediment.
Automatic chronograph movements tend to make for thick watches, and the Continental is no outlier, measuring 15.2mm thick, to go with its 42mm width. Despite the watch’s height, it did not feel heavy or unwieldy – truly, it is a very comfortable watch. There are four key factors at play in making the watch wear more diminutively than its dimensions suggest. The first is the relatively short lug-to-lug distance, which I measured at 49mm, and the second is the dramatic turndown of those lugs, which immediately descend from where they meet the midcase.
The third factor is the undercut of the case back, which terminates at a see-through mineral crystal window, through which the customized Delma-signed rotor is visible. That leaves just about 29.6mm of contact from the watch to your wrist. This is almost 1mm less than the same contact point of the known wrist-comfort champion that is the Seiko SKX009 (the 009 is better than the 007, send me your hate mail). The fourth, and most subjective factor, is that I’m a fairly large human, so your experience may differ from my own. I found the Continental to be much less of a burden to my wrist than my head is to my poor neck.
The visual weight of the watch is also offset by the mixed finishing of its surfaces. The flat crystal terminates at a deeply-sloped and polished bezel, which adjoins the midcase with a thin, flat, polished edge. The midcase itself is finely, and fairly deeply, brushed to convey a not-quite-satin appearance, and is seated upon a caseback that quickly transitions from a brushed vertical band to an obtusely-angled, polished edge upon which just about every spec and material element that comprise the watch are printed. While the Continental’s profile is only slim when compared to Sylvester Stallone’s watch collection, the mixture of surface detailing Delma has deployed helps the watch visually shed some of its quantitative heft. If, as they continue to refine their lineup, Delma were to shave off a millimeter or two from the watch’s height, it could increase the Continental’s appeal. Then again, it is entirely possible that non-enthusiast buyers — as in, reasonable people — are less concerned with the numeric dimensions that vex the enthusiast community.
Delma offers the watch in silver or black dials. The version of the Continental that I had for review came affixed to a black leather quick-release strap adorned with contrasting white edge stitching. The strap was pliable and comfortable, a bit surprisingly so given its sueded finish, which also hints at the slightly-less adventurous soul of this watch.
The Continental can also be had on a 7-link bracelet for an additional $75. Nice as the supplied leather strap is, the right decision is to get the bracelet, especially with such a minimal price gap. With a 22mm lug width, it won’t be hard to find a variety of quality straps, as shown through this review’s images, in which you can see my own preference for wearing this watch on a bund strap. It will, however, be a challenge to find a well-made and fitted bracelet for the Continental on the aftermarket.
Delma’s attention to detail carries over to the box that the Continental arrived in, though “box” seems too trivial a word to reflect the actual thing. It is a lacquered, push-button opening beauty of an enclosure that arrives nested within a more humble brand-signed, black cardboard box. Unnecessary? Yes. Likely a not-insignificant part of the watch’s $2,800, as spec’d, price? Also yes. Does the presentation factor it provides add an ineffable sense of gravitas and splendor to the watch? Emphatically yes.
Given the Continental Pulsometer’s combination of robust capability and rakish design, you may ask who this watch is designed for. We could get lost on a Socratic tangent trying to find the source of truth regarding the real intention of a particular watch model or a watch at all. Telling the time is the low-hanging fruit, and in this case, being able to time the duration of a particular happening is also functionally evident, as is the ability to measure a consenting person’s heart rate.
To the subjective question of who this watch best suits? My response is, well, anyone who finds it cool. This isn’t a fairly ridiculous watch capable of reaching a depth that most humans cannot, literally, fathom. Whether you love the idea that you could time how long it actually takes for your food to be delivered, or like me, you just think the watch looks damn cool, the Continental’s beauty is that it does not constrain the opportunities for someone to enjoy it. Rather, its effervescent, esoteric, and robust nature imbue it with an undeniable sense of fun.
The Delma Continental Pulsometer is available now for $2,800 on leather or $2,875 on the bracelet. See delmawatches.com for more.
Matt is a lifelong watch lover but fell deep down the rabbit hole of horological madness in 2018 while listening to watch podcasts during 4-hour roundtrip commutes to work. His collection is mostly sports watches, likely due to an unfulfilled childhood dream to be Indiana Jones, and ensuing delusions of grand adventure. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wonderful wife, who, through sheer strength of spirit, manages not to fall asleep as soon as he starts talking about watches. You can follow him on Instagram at @Mattkaysea.
