imported post

Reviewer: Don aka Tattoo Chef

Watch Being Reviewed:  Lum-tec Super Combat B-1

Model was provided for review on loan from Lum-tec for the Watchfreeks forum.

Company Website: http://www.lum-tec.com/

About/History:

"Our watches are Designed with feedback from watch collectors around the world"

Our company brings features and quality normally not thought possible without spending thousands of dollars.
We are in the business of making custom and limited edition watches, creating unique designs, and pioneering new luminous application technologies to apply to wristwatches.


Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/#!/lumtecllc

  
Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Specs:

45mm width excluding crown.
12mm thick.
24mm. Lug width.
Solid titanium case with gunmetal titanium carbide PVD hard coating.
100 meters/330 ft. water resistance.
LUM-TEC MDV technology®.
Swiss ETA 6498-1 Rhodium movement (handwind) with blued screws, geneva stripes, and polished gears.
Thick sapphire crystal.
Double side clear anti-reflective coating.
Threaded sapphire caseback with oversized 30mm window.
Screw-lock crown with double diamond sealing system.
2 heavy guage nato nylon straps included (green and black). 24/24 size.
Premium water resistant riveted leather strap included (24/20 size)
1 year limited warranty.
Limited numbered series.
Free lifetime timing adjustments .
Price: $1,295.00

Super Combat B1T in solid titanium with gunmetal titanium carbide PVD hard coating. Larger 45mm size with 24mm lugs. featuring a premium handwind rhodium finished ETA 6498-1 with polished gears, geneva stripes, and blued screws. Includes 2 top grade military nato straps and a top grade water resistant leather

First Impressions: I think most members here know by now, I am primarily a dive watch guy, but I have to say, I was really blown away by this when opening the box. Just a very nice sized case, beautiful dial with large easy to read numbers, and just a very manly , rugged looking watch.  I was pleasantly suprised.
 


Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Packaging: Lumtec does a fantastic job on packaging. White cardboard outer box, a tan painted wood presentation box, lined with a nice felt inside, with all of the warranty cards, signed certificate and instruction manual. Again, for the most part , these boxes end up in the closets, but its nice to see when you pay a nice chunk of change for a watch, that they thought about presentation as well. As you can see, it has 2 compartments to the left and right of the watch, which house the nato straps that are included with this model.
















Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Dial: The dial of this model is just very striking to me. From the high gloss black dial, the Nav B UHR 60 minute military dial(used by pilots to make it easier to read time for position fixing and reporting, estimated time of arrival, etc), and the very nice stark white glossy numbers and indices's. Very broad sword style hands and a sub seconds counter at the 6 o'clock position round out the dial, and it is just a beautiful dial to me, and obviously because of the 60 minute dial, just kind of reminds me of a stopwatch, but in a good way. Normally I am not a fan of no date dial,s but in this instance, it works, and I don't miss the date on it at all. As a matter of fact, I think a date would have detracted from the dial.











Case dimensions:

45mm case without crown

47.7 with crown 

12mm thick 

24mm lug 

55mm extreme tip to tip lug to to lug


Case, Bezel and Crystal: The case of the Super Combat is very sleek. It is obviously done in a military style, with a domed coin edge style bezel and a very large easy to grasp crown. The whole case is made of titanium and coated in a titanium grey pvd coating, which gives it a very subdued look about it. It has short curved lugs, which makes it wear very nice on the wrist. The crown is signed with LT for Lumtec. Other than that, you have a very serious, no nonsense military inspired case to this model, which I'm guessing is what Lumtec was going for.









Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Bezel and non crown side





 

Crystal: The crystal is a flat sapphire crystal , with a double sided  clear AR coating. Now, for the most part, I am not a fan of these double sided coatings because I have seen many reports that you can scratch the coating. Chris assured me because it is a clear AR coating, that if you scratch it, you would not see it. That would have to be something that would need to be seen long term by the wearer. To me their is a little more reflection in the crystal than I was used to, but nothing that made it hard to read the dial in the sun or at a glance.




 


Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Exhibition Case back and Movement : The case back of the Super Combat is what exhibition case backs are all about . Just a very beautiful display of the 6498 movement with the blued screws and ruby jewels. Also on the case back it lists it being titanium, sapphire crystal and the serial number.








 


Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Straps  : The Super Combat B-1 comes with a couple of straps. The waterproof leather comes installed on the watch, and you have 2 nato straps as well, one black and one OD green. Since this watch was on loan, I did not do any strap changes, but will say the nato straps are very thick and well made.

The leather strap is a very comfortable thick leather strap. It starts out at 24mm at the lugs and tapers to 20. While it does not look horrible in any way, I would have like to have seen less taper, possibly down to 22m instead of 20.  It has grey pvd rivets in the strap. I personally have just never been a fan of these, because they serve no purpose , but for looks only. I know some people really like these though on the pilot straps especially.

It is a quality leather strap, but one thing I have to point out , is that it had a very potent smell to it. I asked Chris about this, and said he didn't notice it as he has no sense of smell, but I imagine it is the chemical that is used to make the strap waterproof. Lets put it this way, the smell was not very pleasant, but imagine that after wearing it awhile  the smell would wear off. The titanium buckle is also signed and the coating matches the case very well.
 




















Wrist shot on my 7 1/2" wrist: As you can see , it sits very nicely on my wrist. One thing to mention is that you can see there is 5 holes left in the strap. This might be an issue for the bigger wrist-ed folk.












Lum-tec Super Combat B-1 Lume: What can you say about the lume? Its Lum-tec lume. It has been applied very very heavily, and it super bright and long lasting. As you can see, the hands, numbers, indices's and even the second hand on the seconds sub dial is lumed. This really looks beautiful all charged up, and it is one of the things Lumtec is obviously known for.





Summary: I honestly don't have a whole lot of negative things to say about this model, the Super Combat B-1. Besides the issues of the strap I mentioned , this is a beautiful example of a military-pilot watch. Big easy to read numerals, excellent lume, choice of straps, and a very well done grey pvd hard coating.

I did not do a separate movement section, as noted above it is an ETA 6498-1 mechanical movement. The crown was smooth and when winding the crown had a very nice feel about it. I can not comment on the accuracy of the movement, as I did not have the watch long enough to do so.

All in all, to me , its always the attention to details. There are many offerings out there for this style or type of watch, but this watch truly has a high end feeling. Apparently there was supposed to be 1000 of these made but with movement restrictions from ETA, there will only be 200 produced, at least for now, unless movements can be secured in the future. If you like this style of watch, this is another one to look at possibly, and it is one of my favorite of this style of watch I have seen.

 

Thank you again to Lum-tec for providing this on loan for review, and as usual all comments and feedback are welcomed.