Chopard Unveils L.U.C Grand Strike, Its Most Complicated Chiming Watch Yet

In watchmaking, few complications inspire as much awe as the chiming mechanism. It is where engineering becomes emotion and where gears, springs, and levers summon music from metal. To mark the 30th anniversary of its L.U.C collection, Chopard has unveiled its most complex chiming watch to date: the L.U.C Grand Strike, with a characteristic sound that the Maison calls “The Sound of Eternity”. This exceptional creation, which debuted at the Dubai Watch Week, captures the shared soul of watchmaking and music — mathematical in structure, poetic in expression.

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Crafted entirely within Chopard Manufacture, the Grand Strike stands as a rare convergence of craftsmanship and innovation. It is both a tribute to the Maison’s heritage and a confident stride into the future of acoustic watchmaking.

A Dial-Less Symphony

Chopard makes a bold aesthetic statement by removing the dial altogether, allowing the L.U.C 08.03-L calibre to take centre stage. This openworked architecture showcases the chiming mechanism in motion — every lever, rack, and cam part of a mechanical choreography preparing each strike. Despite the complexity within, the watch remains elegantly proportioned. The 43mm ethical white gold case features soft, restrained lines that direct the eye inwards, proving that high complication and refined design can coexist without excess.

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Most chiming watches rely on steel gongs. Chopard challenged this tradition by machining the gongs and dial from a single piece of sapphire crystal — an unprecedented feat. Sapphire offers superior acoustic resonance, but until now, had been considered too fragile for such applications. The innovation pays off: sapphire gongs vibrate in unison with the sapphire dial, directing sound outwards rather than losing it within the case. The resulting chime is exceptionally pure, tuned to a C♯–F♮ musical interval that conveys stability and harmony to the listener.

Three Ways to Hear Time

At 10 o’clock, two polished steel hammers signal the watch’s identity as a chiming masterpiece. A selector near the crown allows wearers to shift effortlessly between three sonnerie modes; this gives collectors extraordinary control over how the watch communicates time, from constant melody to meditative quiet:

Grande Sonnerie: striking hours and quarters automatically;

Petite Sonnerie: striking hours at the top of the hour, quarters thereafter; and

Silence: chiming only on demand via the minute repeater.

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Complexity Made Wearable

With 686 components, a tourbillon, a 70-hour power reserve, and a full chiming suite, the Grand Strike could easily have been oversized. Instead, it remains remarkably wearable at 43mm in diameter and 14.08mm in thickness, which establishes it as a modern miracle of efficient engineering. Once activated, the chiming mechanism becomes a performance. Levers descend, racks advance, and hammers strike sapphire in a crescendo of motion that transforms time into sound.

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Aesthetically, the Grand Strike embodies Chopard’s dual identity. Traditional case curves and high-end finishing echo classical haute horlogerie, while the dial-less design and sapphire innovation embrace contemporary watchmaking. On the wrist, it feels less like a complication and more like a finely tuned instrument: one that rewards every glance with mechanical wonder.

The Sound of Chopard’s Future

The path to the Grand Strike began decades ago, when Co-President Karl-Friedrich Scheufele pushed the manufacture into the world of chiming watches. After the L.U.C Strike One of 2006, Chopard set its ambition: to create its own grande sonnerie. Achieving this required more than 11,000 hours of focused development and resulted in 10 proprietary patents, five created solely for this model. The Grand Strike emerges as the culmination of that long pursuit — a testament to the Maison’s determination to redefine what a chiming watch can be.

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The L.U.C Grand Strike is more than a celebratory creation; it is a defining moment for Chopard’s acoustic expertise. By blending elegance, innovation, and emotional resonance, the Maison has crafted a chiming watch that honours its legacy while reshaping expectations for what modern haute horlogerie can achieve. To hear its chime is to experience the rhythm of Chopard Manufacture: precise, resonant, and unmistakably its own.

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