HYT Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue: 8-Piece Limited Edition in 5N Gold

The Read

• The HYT Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue (ref. H03000-A) is a limited edition of precisely 8 pieces, each case back individually engraved HS-78, priced at CHF 355,000 excluding taxes and available exclusively through hytwatches.com.
• Case architecture in 5N rose gold and DLC-black titanium, with gold signing the crown, side grilles, and frame.
• Calibre 701-TC: a hand-wound conical tourbillon completing one revolution every 30 seconds, 533 movement components, 40-hour power reserve.
• Three blue liquid-filled spheres orbit the tourbillon at 4, 5, and 6 turns per minute, producing a chaotic animation that never repeats within an hour.
• Blue fluorescent fluid rises and retrogrades through a borosilicate capillary tube to display the hour, the defining technology HYT has developed since its founding in 2012.

The Original Idea and What It Became

The Conical Tourbillon Midnight Blue did not begin with gold.

HYT’s earlier Conical Tourbillon Titanium Blue established the mechanical premise: a three-dimensional tourbillon inclined across multiple axes, surrounded by liquid-filled spheres, timed to complete one full rotation every 30 seconds. That reference attracted attention within the independent watchmaking circuit, including at Watches and Wonders, precisely because it fused a historically grounded tourbillon geometry with HYT’s proprietary fluid mechanics. The Midnight Blue takes that exact mechanism and transplants it into a case of an entirely different material register.

The architecture is now bicolour: 5N rose gold on the crown, frame, and side grilles; DLC-black titanium receding as a dark substrate beneath. Gold does not crowd the dial. Its role is structural and perceptual, catching light at the flanks and drawing the eye toward the one element that actually moves in any direction at any moment: the blue fluid.

The Mechanics at the Centre

Master watchmaker Eric Coudray, winner of the Prix Gaïa, drew directly on the inclined tourbillon research of German watchmaker Walter Prendel when developing the 701-TC calibre.

The spring-balance is inclined at 30 degrees to horizontal, the escape wheel at 15 degrees, the pallet fork at 23 degrees. This geometry, itself rooted in the earlier theories of master watchmaker Alfred Helwig, was Prendel’s attempt to improve rate stability through oblique inclination. Coudray adapted and extended it for HYT’s movement in the early 2020s. The result is a cage of 159 components turning once every 30 seconds inside a movement totalling 533 parts. Add the dial’s 39 components and the case’s 66, and the complete watch accounts for 750 individual parts, each assembled by hand.

The three spheres, each 2.5 mm in diameter, rotate at 4, 5, and 6 turns per minute. Because their speeds share no common multiple within an hour, the pattern of their positions never repeats across a 60-minute window. Inside the tourbillon cage itself sit six smaller spheres of 1.5 mm: two white, four blue. The blue minutes hand sweeps centrally. The hour, as with every HYT piece since 2012, is indicated by fluorescent blue fluid rising through a borosilicate capillary tube and retracing its path at the retrograde.

“Gold has always promised permanence. Blue, here, is what keeps moving inside that promise,” HYT states in its release. “We didn’t want to colour the gold. We wanted the gold to hold something that colour could truly belong to.”

Where It Sits for a Collector

Eight pieces is not a production run. It is closer to a private commission at scale.

For collectors in the GCC who follow independent watchmaking at the level of MB&F or Urwerk, the Midnight Blue occupies a clear position: it is the most materially precious reference HYT has produced around this calibre, and the edition size means secondary-market scarcity is effectively guaranteed from the outset. At 48 mm wide and 25.15 mm thick, the case makes no concession to discretion; this is a piece worn as a statement of technical confidence rather than social camouflage.

Specifications

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