One of the splashiest Geneva Watch Days releases this year was the all new M.A.D.3, the latest entry in the ongoing series from M.A.D.Editions, the popular MB&F spinoff. You’re probably pretty familiar with the M.A.D. project at this point, but just in case you’re stumbling onto it here for the first time, a brief primer.
Coming from many of the same people behind MB&F, M.A.D.Editions was originally conceived as a way for brand founder Max Busser to thank his many longtime collaborators with an affordable watch that kept to the same avant-garde spirit of the high end luxury watches MB&F has been making for years. That first watch was, apparently, not intended to ever be made widely available, a story that is perhaps apocryphal given the incredible success of the project across several release cycles. M.A.D.Editions is now a full fledged microbrand, with watches made available via highly competitive raffles on a regular basis. The brand has pledged to keep their watches affordable, relatively speaking, even as the overall quality of the pieces has been leveled up since the first watches appeared (they have moved to Swiss movements, and the finishing is noticeably nicer on newer watches, including the M.A.D.2 introduced last year).
The new M.A.D.3 leans deeper into an idea we saw with the M.A.D.2, which is to make these watches a genuine collaboration with a friend of the brand. That watch was designed by Eric Giroud, a longtime MB&F collaborator and one of the more accomplished watch designers of his generation. The M.A.D.3 is a partnership with Vincent Calabrese, who is a real inside-baseball indie watchmaking legend, and given the particular complications he trades in, a natural partner for the M.A.D. project.
Unlike the previous two M.A.D. watches, the M.A.D.3 essentially lifts an existing complication from Calabrese’s work, a wandering jump hour execution from his Baladin series that is perhaps his best known watchmaking trick. Time is read via a rotating disc with an arrow that points to an outer minute track. Alongside that arrow is an aperture through which the current hour is displayed. As the disc rotates toward 12:00, with the aperture of course moving along with it, the display snaps over to the subsequent hour and the process then repeats itself. It’s elegant and easy to read, and the mechanism itself works quite well (original Baladins are apparently a little finicky, and one of the motivations on the part of the M.A.D. team here was to create a more mechanically reliable version of Calabrese’s complication).
The M.A.D.3 is available in two dial colors, a bright pink that is only available to MB&F “Tribe” members (owners) and a similarly bright blue for general release. Both have prominent sunburst finishing and are complemented by a lumed outer minute track, which is actually constructed from sapphire and lumed on the underside (hour numerals are also lumed). A simple “M.A.D.3” signature sits just opposite the hour aperture. The dial is appropriately spare despite the choice of two very loud colors, which I think serves to highlight the complication itself while still retaining some of the flamboyance we expect from the MB&F/M.A.D. design language.
The case measures 40mm in diameter and 12.7mm tall. It was designed by Eric Giroud and is probably the most restrained of any M.A.D. case to date. The lugs mirror the design of the original M.A.D.1 and keep the lug to lug short at 43.7mm. Like the other M.A.D. pieces, the base movement here is a La Joux-Perret G101.
The M.A.D.3 is an incredibly charming watch, and my first impression was that it is probably my favorite of the M.A.D. watches to date. As a (former) owner of a M.A.D.1S, I feel that this is a watch that can be appreciated in all the ways you’d want to appreciate a M.A.D. piece. It’s weird but not loud (like the M.A.D.1) and a bit more subtle than the M.A.D.2, which has more of that MB&F coded sci-fi inspiration that goes over well at watch meetups but is harder to justify day-to-day (not that you need to). Another way to say it, I guess, is that I could see myself actually wearing the M.A.D.3 as a watch, and not as a conversation piece.
The M.A.D.3 is priced at CHF 2,900. More information can be found at the M.A.D.Editions website here.
