For Christmas 2025, my wife bought me a lovely 1984 Seiko A965-4000 “talking watch”, which had been sold-as-seen on eBay as non-working for spares/repairs. She likes getting me non-working stuff for presents because you can get a lot more for your money and the repairs keep me entertained.
When it arrived, sure enough it didn’t work. I fitted a new CR2016 coin-cell battery as per the user guide and reset the watch, it powered up and seemed to work OK but whenever I pressed the “talk” button it would crackle and reset itself. I had used a cheap battery so I figured it might not be supplying enough current, or that its voltage was collapsing under load, so I tried a good battery and everything seemed to work fine, including the speech synthesiser and speaker.
The original strap (Seiko part number B1661L 24mm x 16mm) was missing some links and its clasp on one side, so it wasn’t wearable unfortunately – thankfully we managed to find a new-old-stock original replacement part which was pretty easy to fit as the strap is just held in place with spring pins.
While the watch was all apart, I took the opportunity to give it a good clean out and to polish the metal casing with metal polish. I also cleaned the switch contacts and battery holder with contact cleaner. The electronics just pulls out and is connected to the speaker with a pair of delicate spring contacts. I also replaced a missing screw on the rear cover.
Now that the watch has been cleaned and repaired, it looks fantastic – the paint on the buttons has rubbed off a bit and there seems to be a bit of LCD leakage in the lower corner of the screen unfortunately, but it’s still a really lovely watch as well as a neat piece of history and an interesting conversation starter.
