There are some songs so classic, so indelible and unfading, that they should never be meddled with. Crooning ballads from the 1950s, for example — or rough-cut edits of early rock. There are white-label test-pressings, sketchy bootlegs and 

 that they should remain forever untampered with.

Yep, we’ll take the originals every time, thank you very much. We’d much rather dust off an old vinyl than push play on a remixed, restored and altogether rehashed track. Remasters? Not on our watch.

And yet, Audemars Piguet’s latest has turned our heads. A triumph of timekeeping, 

 has seen the Swiss brand resurrect one of its rarest 1940s chronographs, the Ref. 1533. The original watch, with its two-tone case, teardrop lugs and rose champagne-coloured dial, was a gorgeous thing. But, despite the art deco styling, those three handsome subsidiary dials and that intricate tachymeter scale, only three were ever made.

That’s like The Beatles only ever pressing three White Albums, or Dylan releasing The Basement Tapes as a really, really limited run. It’s unthinkable. And so, in 2015 — over seventy years since Audemars Piguet first released the Ref. 1533 — they bought the original at auction and set about bringing it back to life.

The resulting [Re]master01 Selfwinding Chronograph is limited to 500 pieces, and will sell to the tune of £51,800. It maintains the same distinctive stainless steel and rose gold case as the original, and even carries over the brand’s classic logo that reads: ‘Audemars, Piguet & Co / Genève’.

But there are slight differences. As the watchmaker says, this is a ‘remaster’ rather than a ‘reissue’. The new watch has a yellow gold-toned dial and blue tachymeter scale. It’s also got a glareproofed sapphire crystal and caseback. But the best upgrade? Surely the brand’s in-house Calibre 4409; a chronograph complete with 70-hour power reserve and almost 350 intricately moving parts. Perhaps remasters aren’t that bad after all.

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