Vostok Amphibia 960 Neptune

Earlier in the year I picked up a couple of the 2018 releases of the Vostok Amphibia 960 from Meranom. The 960 has become known as the “Vostok Neptune” after the Roman god of the sea whose likeness appears in the Neptune logo and branding. The 960 case is probably Vostok’s most unusual watch due to the watch case’s single central lug and strap attachment method, I talk more about this below. I also have one of the 2014 Special Edition (SE) releases, I have included some pictures and will refer to this in comparison. In doing some background reading I discovered more about previous releases, so I thought I would start off with some a little info about these.

A Little Neptune History

As far as I can work out there have been 5 releases of Vostok Neptunes. As always, I am willing to be corrected if anyone can give me more information.

1. Proto Neptune? 1980s

Whilst researching a bit about the various Neptune models and releases I also came across a version of the 960 case with the classic blue “Scuba Dude” dial – there are images of this at both russianwatches.altervister.org and ussrtime.com – which was released in the 1980s. Obviously this is the same Vostok Amphibia 960 case, but without any Neptune logos or Neptune casebacks, so not I am sure whether people classify these as Neptunes or not. I included it here anyway. There were also some released at the same time with an iridescent yellow / orange dial.

2. Late 90s/2000s

The first Vostok Neptunes were produced with a “setting sun” type dial with four different coloured dials including a brownish / orange (960045), a blue (960046), green (960044) and black /silver (960128). These came out way before I was into Russian watches and I can’t find exactly when they came out. There are some really good pictures of the green one at Watchuseek F10. Some describe the dial as the sun setting over a lagoon, I thought it was sunrise. Glass half full or glass half empty?

Here is a great photograph courtesy of Watchuseek forum member Cuthbert from Italy with three of these late 90s/2000s Neptunes, including the nice looking brownish / orange one. There is also one of the 2014 SEs on the right.

Most of the posts about the “rising sun” dial design date back to 2007/08, so I was thinking they were issued then, but Michele Cuoccio at his blog has them as has them as being released in the “late ’90s/early 2000s”. The design certainly looks as if it would fit this era. There is also a nice review here. The stocks of these models ran out in around 2003/04.

3. Some time in the 2000s

I haven’t managed to pin down an exact time, but there were some very nice Vostok Neptune watches re-issued in the 2000s. These had a large Neptune logo across the centre of the dial which I think are very cool looking. These were at least three versions of these with the large logo, a yellow dial (960278), a grey dial (960284) and a black dial (960282). There were also a couple of other slightly different designs with black dials (960280 and 960269). I would love to see some reissues of these. You can see images of some of these in this Watchuseek thread.

Edit 07/08/18: Cuthbert tells me the that these came out in 2010 as standard Classic Amphibias. The dials were made in China. Cuthbert tells me that the  second from the right in the photograph above is one of these which has been upgraded with a different bezel (and a Neptune caseback).

4. 2014 SE Release

In the Autumn of 2014 there were some Neptune Special Editions released by Meranom, including the black dial Vostok Neptune SE 960727 that I speak about in this post. There was also an SE with a green dial and bezel, a pretty orange one, a blue model (SE 960B28) and, if my memory serves correctly, I think there was a red model too. There are some pictures in the thread above. Here is mine, the black dial.

Vostok Amphibia Neptune SE 960727

5. 2018 Vostok Amphibia 960 Neptune Releases

Spring 2018 saw the arrival of 5 new Neptune models from Meranom. These were:

Amphibia Classic 960761 – white dial, 24 hour black and red bezel, seconds sub dial and GMT 2426.02 movement

Amphibia Classic 960762 – black dial, 24 hour black and red bezel, seconds sub dial and GMT 2426.02 movement

Amphibia Classic 960760 – black dial, black and red bezel, 2416 movement

Amphibia Classic 960759 – blue dial, blue and red “Pepsi” bezel, 2416 movement

Amphibia Classic 960758 – black dial, black bezel, 2416 movement

Vostok Amphibia Classic 960760 Neptune

This is one of those 2018 Neptune releases. The 960760 has a black dial with a bidirectional red / black typical divers bezel, red coloured from 12 to 4. The black dial harks back to the setting sun dials with a series of horizontal lines across the bottom half of the dial whilst the top half is untextured and smooth. The dial has simple white markings for the minutes and seconds with numerals at 5 second intervals (60 at the top). The indices sit inside the seconds markers, these fairly simple, raised bars with a good amount of lume – an improvement over the SE indices which appear smaller with a very narrow strip of lume. There is a large lumed “12” at 12 o’clock and a date window at 6 o’clock with black numerals on a white background. The dial features the cyrilic “Amphibia” under the 12 o’clock, “Нептун” i.e. Neptune and “31 jewels” above the 6 o’clock. At the very bottom of the dial is сделано в России, Made In Russia.

There are baton type hour and minute hands. They are nice and wide, with a small point at the end and are well-lumed. The hour hand has a silver strip down the middle. Both the minute and hour hand stretch to, and meet, their appropriate indices nicely. The seconds hand is a dark red needle with a square lume box towards the tip. The 2014 SE has the same hour and minute hands but has a funky orange coloured seconds hand. In this case the red seconds hand of the 2018 release ties in nicely with the red of the bezel.

The Vostok Amphibia 960 Neptune case measures approximately 45mm lug to lug, 40 mm without the crown and about 14 mm deep. The central lug juts out about 3mm and is 9mm wide. The one thing that is a noticeable change is that the 2018 release takes a 22mm bracelet whilst the 2014 SE takes a 20mm bracelet. The fact that the 2018 release takes a 22mm bracelet makes it look like a chunkier watch (some people had previously mentioned that the 20mm bracelet of the2014 SE was a bit weedy). The crown is stainless steel etched with the “B” Boctok logo, the SE is unsigned.

So the bracelet is bigger. As mentioned above it is 22mm at the lug end which tapers to 20mm at the buckle. The links look solid from the side, but they are clearly folded if you look at the joins. They are 3 across. The outer links are nicely brushed whilst the the middle links are polished for contrast. There are 4 removable links (push pin) either side of the buckle and the lug link has a push pin that allows it to be removed. The strap has a lockable clasp with the “Boctok” logo on it. I have a seven and a half inch wrist and this fits quite nicely straight of the box.

Comparing the 2018 with the 2014 SE, the SE strap is similar but has a slightly different clasp. The 2014 strap is a little smaller but it feels to be a slightly better quality than those on the new release. In fact, on further inspection, the 2014 SE strap is solid, the new 2018 release straps are folded. However, the larger wider strap of the new releases does give the watch a bit more presence on the watch and, to my eye, looks a little bit more balanced in size for the watch.

One small gripe I have with both the 2014 and 2018 Neptunes is how the strap fits at the lug end. The first link nearest the lug end on the new release is a little fixed and doens’t swing freely. The 2014 release first link swings freely. The fit is probably best on the new release but with the slightly fixed lug you end up looking at the end of the second link. On the 2014 SE you end up looking at the end of the first link. This doesn’t always look great.

The 2018 Neptune case back has a large Neptune logo with “Neptune” underneath and various cyrilic words around the edge. The older style had horizontal lines on the bottom half echoing the lines of the older dials.

Vostok Amphibia Classic 960762 Neptune

The major difference between this watch and the previous is that this watch features the Vostok 2426.02 movement, a GMT type movement with seconds sub dial. The case and bracelet are the same as those of the 960760 above. The hour and minute hands are also the same. The GMT movement requires a third hand, a red arrow hand with lumed arrow tip which travels round at half the speed of the hour hand proper. I have written about GMT watches before. Basically the GMT hand can be used to monitor whether it is AM or PM and, in conjunction with the moveable bezel, can be used to monitor a second time zone.

There is no central seconds hand on this watch, instead the Vostok Neptune 960762 features a seconds sub dial just inside the the 9 and 10 o’clock markers. The seconds hand is a small silver needle style. The dial is plain black in colour with no textured lines like the previous Neptune – probably a good thing as the dial is already pretty busy. It has a “rail track” outer minutes ring with numerals at 5 second intervals. This “rail track” design is echoed in the seconds sub dial which has a similar seconds marker around the outside with numerals every 10 seconds, starting with the 5 second marker. There lumed numeric hour markers at 12, 3, 6 and 9 (which is partly overlaid by the seconds sub dial) and there is date window, black numerals on white, between the 4 and 5 o’clock markers.

The dial features the cyrilic “Amphibia” logo inside the 2 o’clock marker. Above the 6 o’clock marker is the word “Нептун” (Neptune), 31 jewels and under this сделано в России (Made In Russia). The bezel is the same type as bezel as the above watch and the SE but this has a 24 hour bezel insert, with a black top half and red bottom half which ties in with the 24 hour red arrow pointer and allows for that second time zone to be monitored.

Vostok Amphibia 960 Neptune Lug and Strap Attachment

The case shape of the Vostok Neptune is pretty unusual with its central lug for the bracelet attachment. It is a rare design today but, through the years, there have been many watches produced with this central lug design. I even found a picture of Slava with a similar fitting system in Juri Levenberg’s book “Russian Wristwatches”. As always Vostok straps cause a lot of discussion and the first thing that a lot of Vostok watch owners do then they get a new Vostok is to change out the strap. Obviously this is a bit more difficult with this method of attachment.

However it is possible to get some T-Bars (also known as Gucci Pins) which fit the lug. In fact Meranom sells Vostok Neptune 960 Case Pins separately. These screw together through the central lug and allow a leather strap to be fitted. There is also a black leather Neptune strap available. However, with a sharp craft knife or a notching tool it is possible to take central notch out of most rubber or leather straps to fit any strap you want. It is also possible to grind out or cut a notch out of a mesh strap which I have seen has been done too. You can see pictures of both solutions here and here.

I did also come across another rather ingenious solution. This clever chap decided to fit a watch buckle to each central lug using T-bars and couple of spacers. This then meant the Neptune could be fitted with a Nato strap. Very clever, a kind of swing lug Neptune. I reckon, with some hunting around one could find some really interesting buckles to do this with.

Both 2018 Neptunes were $105, the 2014 SE was $121.50 at time of purchase.