Spitz Artisan Horologer

Dan Spitz has one of the most unlikely biographies in independent watchmaking: a third-generation master watchmaker who, in an earlier life, co-founded the legendary thrash metal band Anthrax. As a boy of eight, sitting on his grandfather's lap in a watch and jewelry store in New York's Catskill Mountains, he stared into the inside of a Patek Philippe in amazement — the same hands that would later tear apart every mechanical and electrical device his father and neighbors could supply, just to see if he could fix what others gave up on. That instinct waited decades behind the guitar: as lead guitarist of Anthrax (and a co-founder of Overkill), Spitz helped invent thrash metal, earned three Grammy nominations, sold over 30 million albums, scored film and television work from Stephen King's IT to Married with Children, and became the first heavy-metal artist chosen for a NASA program that plays his music on Mars via the Curiosity rover — a claim his own site insists, deadpan, is 'not in any way a comedic anecdote.'

When he returned to watchmaking, he did so with total seriousness. Spitz broke a 53-year-old record to become the fastest graduate in the history of the Joseph Bulova School of Watchmaking's four-year curriculum — a title he holds in perpetuity — then earned a scholarship to WOSTEP in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the most prestigious traditional watchmaking school on earth, trained personally by curriculum creator Antoine Simonin. He went on to become head master watchmaker and complications specialist for Chopard, Franck Muller, de Grisogono, and Leviev across North and South America, creating the training courses for their watchmakers and consulting on new caliber longevity — including Chopard's four-barrel L.U.C. Quattro. He holds diplomas from Rolex, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet, and ETA, has operated four restoration centers for vintage and complicated timepieces, and was invited by personal invitation of the GPHG academy to serve as a juror — horology's equivalent of the Oscars. The New York Times has profiled him three times; Hodinkee named an interview with him its article of the year.

His own creation, the Libre Excentrique, reflects that obsessive rigor: a miniaturized wristwatch rendition of the historic Louis Richard single-impulse detent chronometer escapement, circa 1860, executed almost entirely in grade 5 titanium — including, remarkably, the hairspring itself, believed to be the thinnest titanium spring in watchmaking, mounted on an extended-reach pallet arm that handles impulse, shock resistance, and locking in one weightless assembly. The 38.7mm titanium case (USA-made) houses a hand-wound 34.2mm caliber beating at 18,000vph, with raw German-silver mainplates imported from Glashütte, a free-sprung hairspring hand-pinned to a proprietary 18.4mm balance, a solid-gold nameplate, hand-blued screws forged and tempered from bar stock, and a solid silver dial cut on a Swiss Leinhard guilloché machine — finished throughout in Côtes de Genève, perlage, satin, black polishing, and anglage. The escapement is part of an open-source research collaboration, 'Échappement Partagé,' that Spitz pursues alongside fellow independents Luc Monet and Cyril Brivet-Naudot — built, in his words, so that properly trained watchmakers of the future can manufacture every part of the caliber. The Libre Excentrique's books are now closed, and Spitz is developing Series 2: an entirely new flying tourbillon of his own mechanical invention, not yet seen in watchmaking history, currently progressing from CAD through prototyping for a small circle of collectors already gathering on his subscription list.