Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Blue Manta-Ray

I always take a keen interest in discontinued models and so have decided to include the Alba 200m Divers "Blue Manta-Ray" into my Seiko collection.
Alba is a subsidiary brand of Seiko and the Manta-Ray uses the standard 7S26 caliber. The Manta-Ray got her nickname from the textured dial. If you look closely, the dial is made up of repetitive prints of manta-rays. The indices resemble shark's teeth and the hands are of gothic design.
This dressy diver maintains mainly the steel colour tone. The knurled screw crown is easy to operate even between those large crown guards. The black day-date wheel and drill-through lug holes are nice touches. The unidirectional bezel rotates in smooth clicks. Surprisingly the rubber strap is more comfy and seems to wrap the wrist better than the Seiko Z22 strap. Since I am not a rubber person, I change the strap to a blue stitched black racing leather strap.
Alba could have improved the functionality design of this ISO rated diver watch by using larger hands and better lume.

5 comments:

  1. slashdot effectOctober 2, 2009 at 12:43 PM

    Hi Kohym, how are you?

    I'm from indonesia, and my friend
    is visiting singapore this week,
    I would like to buy these alba blue
    manta there, as I always wanted
    those georgeous watch for so long,
    would you mind sharing which store
    still sell the blue manta in singapore? thank you very much,
    any helpfull information is appreciated.

    warmest regards, diyan
    slashdotfx@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. kohymOctober 2, 2009 at 2:11 PM

    See my blog post:
    http://kymwatchlog.blogspot.com/2009/08/good-and-bad-of-singapore-watch-hunting.html

    Watch Fashion (level 3 People's Park Complex): Friendly folks (look for Joanne). Many Seiko, Citizen and Orient here. Takes a little bargaining to get your target price. So far I have only bought an Orient Mako and an Alba here.

    I bought mine there but not sure if they still have it. You can try! :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. slashdot effectOctober 4, 2009 at 3:25 PM

    Hi Kohym, it's me again,
    watch fashion turned out to be
    skywatches.com.sg, a good and well known
    seller from WUS forum.

    I'll let you know when the blue manta
    arrived sometime in late this month :)

    thank you again. cheers, diyan.

    ReplyDelete
  4. slashdot effectOctober 16, 2009 at 3:14 PM

    ouch, Adrian, the shop owner
    has just tell me that the watch
    is currently out of stock,
    they told me the last stock
    was about 2 months a go,
    probably the last one is by you :)

    my friend is still visiting
    singapore at least until this
    sunday.

    thanks again kohym

    ReplyDelete
  5. kohymOctober 16, 2009 at 4:12 PM

    yes, i was lucky to win the last piece. :)
    good luck in your search.

    ReplyDelete