Calibre 601 — the most widespread manual of the series

In brief

Pick up a hand-wound vintage Omega today and this is what usually turns up inside. The 601 is by some distance the commonest calibre of the manual 6xx family — 17 jewels, no date, and an eccentric regulator where the 600 used the Reed system.

Short history

Omega borrowed the bridges, the wheels and most of the jewelling from its automatic 5xx calibres and reused them across the whole 6xx series. That kept the factory simple in its day; for a watchmaker now it means spares move between the two families without difficulty. The movement makes no claim to be more than it is, which is part of why so many Genève and De Ville watches carry one. The last of the manual series left the factory in 1974, with quartz already dominating Switzerland.

Watches that used it

• Omega Genève
• Omega De Ville