OK, I got bored, and remembered an old cheap watch that I used to wear, and remembered the band was too long for me till I adjusted it down, so I wondered if the band on it would fit the Diver and be long enough… Dug out the watch, and some new spring pins I have, and my watch pin tool, and, well…. 😉
I wore this watch for 4 or 5 years, from when I turned 18, after my Levis convertable watch, and before I started wearing my grandfathers watch that my grandmother sent after he passed away, which I wore for about 4 years before getting my other Citizen Eco Drive.
Its an Essex digital/analog combo. It was actually extremely durrable for a ~$20 watch, I abused it endlessly with varrious work and play. You can see the excessive wear, most all of the chrome platting is worn off of the case except around the numbers and hash marks…
Its not as flexible as a band, but it always wore fine, just have to be more carefull of it if its in a pocket or laying around.
It was too long as it was, and it was on its shortest buckle adjustment notch. I took out two links total.They are held together with a pressed in split pin… Boy were those a pain to take out and re-fit… Broke one, had to take out another link to gain one to use! Thus ending with too links out, which put the adjustment at the middle hole; Worked out great actually!
I had read that this Citizen band has Solid steel end links where it meets the watch… Apparently rare on a watch in this class and price range. It does have them, I’d never seen that before. I had also read that finding other metal bands that will fit the lugs/case of this watch is extremely hard because of the cases shape/spacing to the pins… The end links on the Essex band fits it 99% perfectly! Just had to bend the back tabs out a bit for the thicker case!
I didn’t want to take the stock band off of the Diver because it was part of the cool factor of being gifted a well used watch, it has a lot of wear and character added to it by my friend. But by the same token, this band survived a LOT of crap I put it through, a lot of good memories of adventures that I remember I was wearing that watch through… So I get a kinda ”best of both”.
I will still get a new link for the Citizen band and put it back on in the near future, but now the watch is sized great, and is a lot more wearable, so there is less rush on getting the other link.
Big bonus, this band actually looks really good with this watch, the watches are both fairly ruggedly looking, and this band has big enough links to fit well with the Citzens style.
Alaskan, Adventurer, Engineer. 