Legacy Machine Sequential EVO

Max Busser does not call himself a watchmaker. He calls himself a creative director. MB&F stands for Max Busser and Friends, and the friends are the master watchmakers, engineers, and artisans that Busser commissions to build machines that happen to tell time. The Horological Machines look like spacecraft. The Legacy Machines look like Victorian scientific instruments. Nothing in the MB&F catalog looks like a watch.

The Legacy Machine Sequential EVO won the Aiguille d'Or at the GPHG in 2022, the top prize in watchmaking. The Aiguille d'Or is not a category award. It is the best watch of the year, full stop. The LM Sequential EVO contains two independent chronograph mechanisms that can be started, stopped, and reset independently or simultaneously. Two column wheels. Two vertical clutches. Two chronograph trains. The combination allows split-time, cumulative timing, and sequential measurement in a single watch. The movement is visible through the sapphire crystal, with the twin balance wheels suspended above the dial on arched bridges, beating in the open air.

Busser's contribution to watchmaking is not technical. He does not build movements. His contribution is conceptual. He asks the question: what would a watch look like if it were designed by someone who had never seen a watch? The answers are the Horological Machines, the Legacy Machines, the co-creations with artists and musicians. MB&F produces approximately 250 pieces per year across all references, which makes them larger than most independents but still small enough that each piece is finished by hand.

The LM Sequential EVO is here because the Aiguille d'Or means something. When the jury that includes watchmakers, collectors, journalists, and historians selects a watch as the best of the year, it carries weight. MB&F winning it validates the idea that watchmaking does not have to look traditional to be taken seriously at the highest level.