Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Memovox Luxury Watch Review

http://www.thewatchbox.com What do you get when you cross a legend with a healthy dose of blue-sky imagination? If you're "La Grande Maison" of Le Sentier, you get the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Compressor Memovox dive watch with mechanical alarm. The 1959 Memovox Deepsea, 1965 Polaris, and 1968 Polaris dive watches are icons of Jaeger-LeCoultre, and the Master Compressor Memovox draws heavily on the last to inform its distinctive style. Lead designer Magalie Metrailler, then in her early 30s, was asked to re-establish the dormant Jaeger-LeCoultre sports watch line at the turn of the 21st century. Having co-existed with sports watch specialists IWC in German firm VDO's watchmaking division, Jaeger had been forced out of the active lifestyle timepiece market since the late 1970s. Metrailler consulted the company's golden-era dive models to revive the JLC sports watch and set the template for the Master Compressor Memovox. But the new submersible alarm watch was far more than the many insipid "tributes" that merely recapitulate past models. With the Polaris' numeral and index arrangement as its foundation, the Master Compressor adds robust lugs, an asymmetrical alarm-setting sundial, a crown at 10 o'clock for the internal rotating dive bezel, and broad "trapeze" hands with ample lume. Moreover, the Master "Compressor" Memovox added a new innovation to Jaeger-LeCoultre's massive catalog of originals: the "Compressor" crowns. Each of the winged crowns features a toroidal (don