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Ace Apex Software Update 1.28


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This release brings your Apex up to date with all improvements made since its introduction. Some of these enhancements include:

  • Improved overall stability
  • Faster and more accurate ground balance in saltwater
  • More accurate pinpointing
  • More distinctive tones to better differentiate good targets from iron
  • Backlight powers on temporarily while making Menu changes

https://garrett.com/apex-update-instructions

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14 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

More distinctive tones to better differentiate good targets from iron

I read a lot of posts here and on top of that my memory ain't what it used to be.  I recall reading just yesterday a post mentioning the difficulty of sometimes distinguishing ferrous from non-ferrous tones. That may have referred specifically to the AT series, though.  Sounds like Garrett was already working on that.  It will be interesting hearing/reading from users as to which of these are noticeable.  (Hopefully all, in a positive way, and without any deleterious consequences....)

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Just for the sake of argument.     Myself and plenty others have and do own (including Garretts) that are not updateable.   They were made right the first time,  Of course some needed sent back for some tweeking.     Going back through history , they produced terrific finds.  Now we buy a machine that has to be (updated) with aspects that should have been included in the first place.   Like the ones listed in this thread.   Where as, even many machines from all price ranges got it right (more or less) the first time.    It's not a advanage when we go hunting and having to worry "Wonder if I missed a update?"    The Apex is a great shot in the arm for Garrett sales.   An Ace on steroids.     The biggest update would be water proof to 10 feet.   This is where the,    No Updates   All Terrain Pro series has been Garretts wheelhouse.      So same price range, no hassle .  No tip toeing around water.

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On 4/27/2021 at 9:47 AM, GB_Amateur said:

I read a lot of posts here and on top of that my memory ain't what it used to be.  I recall reading just yesterday a post mentioning the difficulty of sometimes distinguishing ferrous from non-ferrous tones. That may have referred specifically to the AT series, though.  Sounds like Garrett was already working on that.  It will be interesting hearing/reading from users as to which of these are noticeable.  (Hopefully all, in a positive way, and without any deleterious consequences....)

Many, many hobbyists can have a difficult time distinguishing ferrous targets from non-ferrous.  Part of that is due to the particular shape of the ferrous object, how man shaped the alloyed object into something that enhances conductivity, such as those blasted crown-type Bottle Caps.  You also have Iron Nails that that are not a nice-and-proper straight design and best oriented to the coil.  Instead, they might be bent, positioned at an awkward angle, and the Nail 'head' is 90° to the Nail-body and all those variables can have a challenging impact on the EMF as it encounters the hidden object.

ALL manufacturers should be working on improving the performance of their product line, and it isn't always so easy.  Many tasks were easily handles with some of those earlier analog-circuitry detectors that are more of a challenge today with a lot of the digitally-designed circuitry models, and to often make things tougher is that most manufacturers have followed the trendy move to Double-D search coil types and do not offer, or only have a limited offering, of Concentric coils.  

Concentric coils will generally provide more accurate Target ID than a DD, better Discrimination than a DD, and even slightly more depth-of-detection than a comparable-size DD.  We, the consumers, have to deal with some of the so-called modern trends in detector design, and that means learning to ignore some of the marketing hype, then select the best coils we can for the types of sites we hunt and trash-target challenges we typically face, and a detector that we happen to like and enjoy using..

Learn each detector well, really well, to know their strengths and weaknesses, and my decades-old encouragement is to own two or more detectors that can complement each other in order to select the best tool for the task a-at-hand.

I have a couple of Nokta / Makro devices, and my two all-time favorite Tesoro's, but my primary-use TID / Tone ID detectors are my three Garrett Apex devices, sporting different search coils.

Monte

PS: All of my Apex models worked well recently, and the first I updated the .25 software models  to .28.  I compared them with my original Apex that I got immediately upon their release which had the .23 software.  After comparing all of them, my original Apex still worked fine, but I could tell some subtle enhancement differences favoring the new update.  Last Friday evening we updated my 'original' Apex to .28 since it is my primary-use detector, and I am leased.

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8 hours ago, Dancer said:

Just for the sake of argument.     Myself and plenty others have and do own (including Garretts) that are not updateable.   They were made right the first time,  Of course some needed sent back for some tweeking.    Going back through history, they produced terrific finds.  Now we buy a machine that has to be (updated) with aspects that should have been included in the first place.   Like the ones listed in this thread.   Where as, even many machines from all price ranges got it right (more or less) the first time. 

My Tesoro Bandido II µMAX and Silver Sabre µMAX and Nokta FORS Relic are not 'updateable' and they work just fine.  As you mentioned, a lot of detectors, today or in the past, were not update worth.  However, keep in mind that a consumer does not HAVE to do the updates' either.  In this case, all four of my Apex devices (the three I use and the one I keep on-hand as a 'loaner-unit') worked just fine before the update and continue to.

But manufacturers didn't / don't always get things right in the first place.  A lot of the detectors we have had were analog circuitry and were not easily updateable.  They required  'service' or 'repair' in which case the manufacturer could make hard-component changes to improve their performance or add / change certain functions..

Tesoro and White's, to name just two, were manufacturers who had models that had glitches and required hardware changes or internal trimmer adjustments because they lacked the digital design that might allow a consumer to update them remotely.  And I am referring to models from two or three hundred dollars to some a grand or more.

Yes, some work good right out-of-the-box, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been better, and with some brands and models today folks have done an upgrade / update, only to go back to an original version.  So in this thread I have 4 Apex devices, and they were actually two different 'versions', but that was simply changes made in production design.  The difference now is we have some user updates available ... not required.

Monte

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I'm gonna show my ignorance here, because I've only hunted maybe eight machines, but hunted them hard.  Dry land / fresh, salt water wading.    Now I got a couple of good (nitch) machines that can out perform my others under certain circumstances.   I haven't picked threw rusty nails and such looking for Treasure. But I have a constant battle picking through bits of aluminum seeking gold ,Silver and Clad.   Here's my statement of ignorance.  I think it's true that some machines will give you a tiny edge. But I truly believe that a majority of good finds could be recovered by a Ace 250.    Why because of the site and the experience of the hunter.    Of course wading in water is another story.    But really don't some of you think these updates should have been addressed before hand ?  Saying your product needs a update isn't a very good selling point.  I think the biggest update I need is for people to start buying and losing more Gold. And that ain't gonna happen.   I still compete my machines against each other.  If I feel one is slacking, I start looking for a new draft pick.  Which can be a lot of fun too.

 

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4 hours ago, Dancer said:

 Here's my statement of ignorance.  I think it's true that some machines will give you a tiny edge. But I truly believe that a majority of good finds could be recovered by a Ace 250.    Why because of the site and the experience of the hunter.    Of course wading in water is another story.    But really don't some of you think these updates should have been addressed before hand ?  Saying your product needs a update isn't a very good selling point. 

Dancer - not ignorance, I think you are just missing the point a little.  

The statement you made below in a previous post is a great example.

18 hours ago, Dancer said:

They were made right the first time,  Of course some needed sent back for some tweeking. 

First of all - there is a self contradiction here - if they did NEED some tweaking, then having a software updateable machine would avoid the need to send it back in for tweaking.  In other words, by placing the two sentences above back-to-back you unwittingly backed up Steve's point.

But more to the point, I think you are not differentiating between updates required to fix a defect and updates that improve the detector's capabilities.   While it is true that updates are often thought of as merely fixing flaws, that is not the only reason to update a machine.  Updates to digital machines can also bring on board new features, capabilities, and improved performance and that is key.  Take the Equinox for example.  The latest two Equinox updates may have contained some "bug fixes" under the hood, but primarily they added additional capabilities to the Equinox including improved iron bias and added a new low frequency mode to improve depth when hunting specifically for high conductive or large targets.  So as Monte said previously, having the ability to self update your machine avoids the need to send the machine in for tweaks, bug fixes, or to gain new features.  

Steve's "just say no" to non-updateable machines was directed primarily at First Texas who seems to be the one remaining large detector manufacturer that does not provide machines with with field update capabilities and still requires them to be sent back to the factory for updates and/or charges for updates that add new features.  Nokta, XP, Minelab, and now Garrett have all gotten on board the update train which is really the expectation of todays technology consumers where phones, computers, and even cars are able to be updated in the field.  The one machine that has me scratching my heads is that Tarsacci (I own one) that despite being an advanced design, does not appear to be field updateable (the designer having once worked for First Texas may have something to do with it, but I doubt it).  That being said, it does not appear that software tweaks have been needed for Tarsacci which is a testament to the "first time quality" and out of the box capability of his machine.

Regarding your ACE 250 comment, that is fundamentally true - for 95% of detectorists and situations the ACE will do just fine and for the army of clad hunters out there, it will scratch their itch just fine and is still capable of finding significant treasure, jewelry, and relics merely by swinging it at a decent site (probably the most important ingredient for detecting success) and provided you simply get the coil over the target.  But old targets and natural gold do not get refreshed, clad is drying up as the cashless society progresses, and COVID has really taken a dent out of fresh jewelry drops at beaches and parks over the past year.

I believe the majority significant treasure now lies not at great depths but is buried untouched amongst the trash at relatively shallow depths because older machines just nulled out under those conditions.  Depth is not as important as speed and the ability to pick shallower targets out of thick ferrous and non-ferrous trash.  That is where the modern mainstream (Equinox/Apex/Simplex/Vanquish) and niche (Tarsacci/Deus)  machines come in to play with high recovery speeds, mutifrequency capabilies for salt and iron (more on that below), ability to have expressive audio that differentiates ferrous and non-ferrous targets well (Deus), and superior mineralized dirt handling (Tarsacci/Deus/Equinox).

What is so great about multifrequency?  Some target interrogation, salt cancellation, and signal processing features can be optimally implemented if the machine is using simultaneous multifrequency signal processing because targets of different conductivities respond differently to different operating frequencies.  Put simply, if you hit that target with multiple frequencies you can gain more target information in real time based on how the target responds to the different frequencies which enables better iron detection and better salt signal cancellation - that is why vlf multifrequency machines tend to do better than single frequency machines at the beach.  The notable exception being the Tarsacci which uses a special single frequency signal processing methodology to balance out the salt signal.

Anyway, it is always easy to make statements like "my old machine did just fine".  And like I said, for many, many, detecting situations you can almost get away literally with a pinpointer on a stick and do just fine.  But my ability to recently pick out an old Capped Bust dime in the hotest of hot dirt at a pounded site, 81 minie balls out of a patch of highly mineralized ground, and my first gold coin floating in a sea of iron nails and can slaw, really benefitted from using machines with special capabilities and state of the art technologies.  I can almost guarantee that I would not have the same success in those situations if I was swinging an ACE 250.  HTH HH.

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Yes I agree . I have a little story about this . Once I was in a "sea of iron nails"  with my deus hf set at 30khz and there was an other guy , that I never met before , who arrived at the same time with an Ace , I dont remember which model  . Two hours later we compared our finds , I had 15 small coins in my hand and he had found ... nothing.    I was really disappointed for him actually btw ...  Conclusion in this area you absolutely need a specialized high freq machine if you want to find something .  You would find very few with a machine running under 15khz there ..

This was a very interesting ( and not planned )  field test , which simply means that you need the right tool for the right job .

Concerning the software update yes I consider it as a very interesting feature , even if sometimes I get excited when microsoft blocks my PC with a windows update and I have something urgent to do lol ... 🙂 

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Chase, of course you are right on all counts.    In my case the drying up of Clad/ Jewelry.    And I can't argue the popularity of some of the upgradeable machines out there.  It's the menus than sub menus and I don't know what else that seem more like gimmicks, then those nuances have to be enhanced.  I believe I have read that coming up there will be machines that will accept cell phone calls like the newer automobiles.  Oh, it's gonna happen.  Maybe tied in with the wireless headphones.  Distractions!   I too own the Tarsacci and have a lot of hours on it. Will I ever truely understand it? Probably not.  But I'm going to squeeze as much out of it as I can.    The Tar along with the Vista X and Garrett s At Pro and Infinium is about all the Technology I can handle.     

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