Announce time on hour issue

I use the Bells voice.

'Announce the time' is checked for 'on the hour' with the custom voice of Bells, without a custom rate (of speech) but with a custom volume.

Note: In the middle of writing this I heard my Mac begin to speak the time: 'It's 1 o' clock', and I definitely sounded like it said 'clock' at double the speed as it said 'It's 1 o'...'.

To go a little deeper, I do not have the system's clock displayed in the menu bar, i.e. 'Show date and time in menu bar' is unchecked. I instead use iStat menus to display this information. Is there a possibility that this could be an issue? It doesn't seem to me that this should make a difference.

Also, I tested Bell's ability to speak the word 'clock' on my system by setting Bells to the system voice, typed 'clock' into TextEdit, and went into the Start Speaking feature under Services. It worked just fine in this situation, so there must specifically be something wrong with the execution of speaking the word 'clock' when it speaks the time on the hour.