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10 Things I Like And 5 Things Don't Like About The Garrett Apex


abenson

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The Apex would be made by machine I would imagine, all the people do is assemble it which most 12 year old kids could do.  Like Lego only easier 🙂   Perhaps they just have had some new product teething problems which so many manufacturers seem to have when they first release a detector, some times it can be a certain little component doesn't meet expectations or has a higher failure rate than expected, a little 10 cent component can mess an entire product up and instead of having a 1 in 10,000 failure rate have a 1 in 1000 or something, It does happen and problems like that rarely get picked up in earlier prototype testing, only when mass production starts and people start using them and returning the random bad ones, then the manufacturer notices that one particular part causing abnormal failures and replaces it with another on the future production runs.

I've been following the 6000 release and even though it's a bucket load more expensive than the Apex there has been a significant amount of people especially on Facebook and even a few on here that have had to return them for repair/replacement.  These things seem to iron themselves out over the first few months.

 If you've never seen one of these Pick and Place machines in action it's worth watching this video, to anyone that's done any of it manually you see how redundant you are 🙂

 

And when you look at the Apex internals you can see very little human activity takes place, with my T2 the PCB was obviously made by machine but the coil connector mount was soldered the to PCB by hand using a short wiring harness.  The soldering was quite messy I thought and gives a potential area of concern/failure.  The Garrett PCB has the coil mounting connector directly soldered to the board so less likely to fail without the manual soldering although still can obviously.

The photos are from https://md-hunter.com/garrett-ace-apex-teardown-new-in-pictures/

941958831_insideapex1.jpg.17d89a992aac7fd9c96bbfd68a1ab2d5.jpg

1361158093_insideapex2.jpg.21fd08d06fdf06519e410cf1ace8fea3.jpg

It's a pretty nice looking PCB.  I used to deal with this stuff as a job and believe me, the one most annoyed about failures is the manufacturer.   

The biggest problem is being a newbie type detector there are probably a few out there with dud's that don't know it and think the behavior is normal although mostly the feedback I've seen on it on various versions of social media is by and large positive so the amount of dud's although might seem high based on forum users here doesn't seem to be that high.

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Jeff,   small world moment. My son is also a lead tech at a large GM dealership in Dallas. He does all the Cadillac transmissions. I grew up in a Chevrolet dealership shop and his descriptions of everyday jobs make my head hurt. He's 27, World Class GM tech and loves it. Not a bad detectorist either.

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No way of really knowing the failure rate of the product based on a few posts and few known rma's. The control box itself seems to be rock solid and the issues seem to be related to the stock coil and I believe early released versions of the stock coil. I say that because I have a new coil that is fantastic. That doesn't go without saying that how many early versions are sitting on dealer shelves. We don't know how many Apex machines have even been sold.

I still stand behind a bad batch of components or even just as simple as a bad capacitor can cause havoc to any product. Can't compare that to an auto manufacturer who probably has a 2 year supply of components on hand and were uneffected by the pandemic. Though they can't get chips for their trucks now on new models...

For what the Apex is and the market it is intended with a good coil it is a great product and should make that user very happy for many years.

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40 minutes ago, kac said:

No way of really knowing the failure rate of the product based on a few posts and few known rma's. The control box itself seems to be rock solid and the issues seem to be related to the stock coil and I believe early released versions of the stock coil....

I am not quite sure about this . I have a brand new viper coil sent by the Garrett after service and I still have some issues from time to time with it . Not critical but annoying . Weird ..   

One last thing ,  it is very difficult on my Apex to insert/remove the coil connector  in/from the control box, especially with the ripper , a little less with the viper . And I have some concern with this because this adds a mechanical stress on the PCB at each time I connect or disconnect the coil. Dont know if anyone else has this pb ...

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Does the housing bend at all when you plug in the coil cable? The PCB is supported by screws to mounts on the front side of the housing where two screws are placed right near the coil connector holding it solid, and the rear of the housing itself where the coil connector is located the coil connector is supported by the external housing.  For that PCB to flex the external plastic would have to bend, it's quite a good setup they've done by the looks of it.

 

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3 hours ago, palzynski said:

I am not quite sure about this . I have a brand new viper coil sent by the Garrett after service and I still have some issues from time to time with it . Not critical but annoying . Weird ..   

One last thing ,  it is very difficult on my Apex to insert/remove the coil connector  in/from the control box, especially with the ripper , a little less with the viper . And I have some concern with this because this adds a mechanical stress on the PCB at each time I connect or disconnect the coil. Dont know if anyone else has this pb ...

Possible the NEW coil you got might be from older inventory.

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2 hours ago, phrunt said:

Does the housing bend at all when you plug in the coil cable? The PCB is supported by screws to mounts on the front side of the housing where two screws are placed right near the coil connector holding it solid, and the rear of the housing itself where the coil connector is located the coil connector is supported by the external housing.  For that PCB to flex the external plastic would have to bend, it's quite a good setup they've done by the looks of it.

 

Housing and connector is solid, no flex at all.

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10 hours ago, phrunt said:

Does the housing bend at all when you plug in the coil cable? The PCB is supported by screws to mounts on the front side of the housing where two screws are placed right near the coil connector holding it solid, and the rear of the housing itself where the coil connector is located the coil connector is supported by the external housing.  For that PCB to flex the external plastic would have to bend, it's quite a good setup they've done by the looks of it.

 

Ok lets say that the housing and the PCB do not move/flex good news. However it is not normal that the coil connector is so tight in the CB housing , I have never had such an issue before with a detector. I have a Vanquish and recently had a Quest X5 their coil connectors are very easy to plug/unplug .  Garrett should take care about this kind of "details" , even if these connectors are probably not manufactured by Garrett themselves ...

So to come back to the thread subject ;

The things I dont like with the Apex 🥵 :

- some false signals in the high iron trash 

- coil connector in the CB housing too tight

- a random bug ? EMI ? for which I have sometimes to disconnect/reconnect this coil connector , hopefully it does not occur very often

 

And for me the main Apex advantages vs the competition 🙂 :

++ it is light thx to its thin control box , especially with the ripper coil ( 1.1kg ) and this can even be reduced by replacing the rubber handle and the arm rest with lighter components. 

+ it is very good in the iron trash , fast with short beeps on targets

+ it is easy to use/understand for both the audio and the user interface , it is a turn and go detector

+ the MS-3 wireless headphones are probably the best ones on the market 
   

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is an update on my Garrett APEX which was sent to Garrett Repair in Garland Texas for MS-3 pairing issues and jumpy, unstable target IDs.

I got my APEX back today. Garrett replaced the circuit board in the control unit and the circuit board in the MS-3 headphones.

The pairing issue is fixed.

The jumpy, unstable target ID behavior is not.

I get the same results as before (11 to 12) on Monte's nail board test (thanks for the new board Monte!!!!) and mediocre depth and target separation using the Viper coil. Target ID stability even with the latest software update performed at the repair center is below average in my opinion compared to the Simplex and especially to the Vanquish.

I have a 5" modern US nickel, 5" modern US quarter, a 6" zinc US penny, a 6" copper US penny and a US penny sized lead bag seal buried at 6" in my test garden. The Apex will detect the 5" US nickel and US quarter but responds with target IDs that range from iron to silver accompanied by all 5 tones=iron, low medium, medium, medium high and high. The US nickel should respond with a low medium tone only. The US quarter should respond with a high tone only. For me, nothing else is acceptable. The APEX I have using a Custom mode with 20 to 99 accepted, sensitivity on Max, MF, 20 kHz, 15 kHz, 10 kHz and 5 kHz detects those targets the same way. The 6" targets I listed above are not detected using the same setup on any frequency.  By comparison, my Simplex with the 9.5x5 coil in three tone Park 1 without using Max sensitivity correctly identifies all of these established in the ground test targets. By correctly identifying I mean that I get a medium tone on the US nickel and lead bag seal and a high tone on the zinc and copper pennies and the US quarter. The Simplex numerical target IDs are up averaged but still remain in the correct conductivity tone bin. The Vanquish will not only correctly identify those same targets with the correct tones it will also correctly identify them with the correct numerical target IDs using the 8", 10" or 12 " coils.

So, my Garrett ACE Apex experiment is over. At least I am confident that the Apex I own has been fully checked out and repaired by Garrett and I can sell it with a clear conscience.

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I would give Garrett a hollar, sounds like the coil is not good. Both my machine after coil replacement and buddies Apex behave the same as the ground balance, signal on targets and even in high emi areas respond exactly the same on sensitivity. Depth is also the same. His machine was used and never had any problems, mine was brand new and happened to have a bad coil.

The machine should lock onto the targets and numbers shouldn't be all over the place.

There is always a possibility shipping could do some damage and possible that is what happened.

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