Swan neck regulator
A swan neck regulator (or, at a pinch, a gooseneck regulator) is a finely adjustable regulator lever.
Specifically, it's a regulator lever with a piece of metal roughly the shape of a swan's neck gently pressing against one side of it.
An adjustable screw holds the lever in place from the other side. Several rotations of the screw can move the regulator lever a tiny amount, which in turn moves the regulator head an even smaller amount. This everso slightly adjusts the length of the hairspring exposed to the balance wheel, fine tuning the movement's frequency. This imperceptible change in frequency has a relatively profound cumulative effect over the course of a whole day's worth of ticking.
Further reading
Deep dives
- "Swan Neck, Part 1" Replica Watch Info, Sep 2011
- "Watch Regulators" Jason, Time Worn Watches, Feb 2020
Downloads
Documentation
Patents
- "Improvement in Regulators for Time-Pieces" George P. Reed, US Patents, 1867
Mechanical watch parts: Blued screw | Dial | Swan neck regulator
