Steve Herschbach

Congratulations on a terrific first year!!!

Hopefully nobody takes offense, but I’ve deleted multiple links posts, good and bad, and just placed one link to the draft manual in the post that starts the thread. Even this post will go away by tomorrow.

I’d have to disagree about Apex vs Vanquish performance. A Vanquish is basically a stripped down Equinox, and rivals or equals Equinox performance in many situations. The Apex really is not in the same league when it comes to actual performance, especially the ability to retain depth and a good target id in bad ground. I could nugget hunt effectively with a Vanquish and small coil in bad ground, even lacking a manual ground balance, while the Apex falls far short.

If you kept going I was going to combine all your threads into one. If you overdo posting item after item without doing the most basic research yourself, don’t be surprised if people start to tune you out. In general it’s wise to be sparing with the basic “what’s this” types of posts. We get so many “what is this rock I found in my driveway” posts here and on the meteorite forum that I’ve considered banning id requests.

Really great review and perspective - thanks! I did think the Ripper coil was the only coil to use on my Apex while I had it. Like you, I enjoy poking around at a slow, methodical pace, and smaller coils help rein me in. And what a great feel on the arm! Performance aside, it’s a great design, just a couple changes I might make in the menu, but well thought out overall. Certainly nobody matches the Garrett Z-Lynk system when it comes to sensible integration across the product lineup.

An Ace is an Ace is an Ace….. The Garrett Ace Apex slots into the Garrett lineup just above the Ace 400, and below all the AT models. It’s priced and positioned where it is in the lineup for a reason, and makes perfect sense when looked at in context. There should be zero expectation it will satisfy people demanding top tier performance. The real question is how it compares to the Vanquish, or the Legend, and it’s here that Garrett has come up short. That’s the real problem, not how it does compared to Deus or Equinox. It’s a great physical design. I like the integrated wireless headphone and wireless pinpointer compatibility, something you only see with XP and Garrett. But horsepower wise the Apex is more akin to my White’s old DFX than any current generation multi detectors. For the money the Vanquish, and I have to assume Legend, offer more bang for the buck. Too bad though as more horsepower in the exact same package really would make for a great detector.

That’s a lot of digging. I have to say I really enjoy your use of PI detectors to hunt for coins, something rarely seen. And the realistic presentation of the trash dug. Not seeing that would give a totally different impression. Thanks for posting.

A coil reads all the items that are under it at the same time, and delivers a single target id number. Not only various metal items, but the ground itself. Two nickels stacked together do not read like a nickel. So a dime in bad ground next to a piece of trash can read very different than a dime in the air. The more you learn about target discrimination, the more you will see that simply digging all non-ferrous items is not a bad approach in some locations.

Good question, lists as 150 grams with battery in manual, but no dimensions. Rather unlike XP as they do love their specification listings. Maybe you can talk calabash into breaking out a ruler.

XP Deus II Manual Page 36:

Since you never even took your Equinox out of the box, and because this IS the Nokta/Makro Forum, I’d say get the Legend. No point in spending much on stuff you may not use anyway.

Or find a hobby you enjoy enough to make time to take part in. Maybe detecting is not your thing. I can’t imagine buying a detector and leaving it in the box unused. Just not going to happen.

Full tones can be too much if you are not used to it. For me though my detector is like my buddy that talks to me. I just pretty much always use full tones even when in theory there is no reason. If I’m digging all non-ferrous, two tones is fine in theory. The detector talks to me in full tones, all that information being imparted via the language. It’s a vocabulary, like my little friend knows 50 words. Then I tell the detector it can only use two words, yes or no. And it works. But I miss the conversation we were having. It’s like I gagged my little buddy, and for me, the detector no longer sounds “normal.” I’m not knocking what anyone else does, or advising anyone do what I do. But basically I always run full tones because, well, that’s what I’ve been doing so long now that anything else seems off to me.

The coil/rod combo is horrible. Extremely heavy due to the fiberglass rod. And very expensive because with every coil, you must buy the same rod you do not need over and over!! First thing an ATX makeover needs is new rod and coil combos.

I’m a big fan of contrarianism in my detecting. If a place is getting hit 95% with one model, a certain class of target is cleaned up and essentially gone, but another class is also being completely missed by all those same detectors. Being the oddball person sometimes really pays off. And if I’m anything, I’m an odd ball

It’s about way more than frequency. When the circuit gets the results back, how are the results compared i.e. processed, to arrive at a desired result? It’s the proprietary processing algorithms where the magic takes place, and XP refers to in their commentary. The processing can be additive, subtractive, etc. two machines with exactly the same frequency “weighting” can have totally different responses. It’s like knowing both our cars have eight cylinder engines, and trying to derive performance data from that, without knowing the rest of the details. My 6 cylinder can outperform your 8 cylinder, and vice versa, based on other aspects. So whiles it’s all interesting stuff, I simply test the detectors on my targets in my ground, and go with that. The rest is “forum fodder”

It’s purely a matter of how deep the targets are, and trash to “good stuff” ratio. If you have lots of targets a VLF can reach, with lots of trash, VLF will win almost every time. You’ll just dig too much trash with the PI, no matter which it is. But if the surface is scoured clean of targets a VLF can reach, now it’s time to break out the PI, while the VLF crowd goes home empty handed. I’ve an old saying… “use a VLF when you can, and a PI when you have to” and it refers to just this sort of thing. If always go VLF if I can, but some places that just gets you nothing, so time for the PI.

Beauties for sure, thanks for sharing!

Everything except when a person can get one, and what it costs. It's bad enough that we get this kind of months or years long teasers over a new detector, but a new coil?

This. It’s a shortcut, nothing more.

I’d go a step farther and say Best Video Metal Detector Instructor - All Brands. If there is a detector I’m interested in I want to hear about it, and nothing else. White’s set the standard for this type of videos early on, with hour long, in depth video “instruction manuals” for models like the MXT. Really great stuff. Minelab has put out some nice tech type videos. I’ll do my own comparing - what I want is in depth info, that goes beyond what is in the instruction manual.

Nor was it new or groundbreaking on Deus. Which is beside the point. Run wide open, adjust tone volumes as needed, no real need for horseshoe. But it’s nice to have anyway, and I do use it for those rare times when I actually do reject or notch out targets, and can see why people like having it.

Just sold the Garrett Apex, Tarsacci MDT 8000, Nokta Simplex+, and a spare Goldmaster 24K. Still leaves me with GPX 6000, Garrett 24K, White’s DFX, and Equinox. Deus II on order. That will do me just fine for 2022. The only thing that I’m on the lookout for is another PI to complement my GPX 6000, something a little more beach and coin/relic oriented, but what I want does not quite exist yet, so I’m not holding my breath. Looks like I’ll be settling at 5-6 detectors, with just a couple of those accounting for nearly all my detecting. Right now that would be GPX 6000 and Equinox, but maybe Deus II will change that equation. We’ll see. I’m looking forward to 2022.

No idea what you mean here Hugh. I always run the Nox accepting ferrous but with iron volume set low. As you say, negating need to have horseshoe button. Tone Volume - A relatively new feature allows some detectors to set the volume of the ferrous (iron and steel) tones to be lower than the volume of non-ferrous tone responses. This can be much easier on the ears in locations full of ferrous trash where every swing of the coil produces many ferrous responses, with the non-ferrous responses being few and far between. Both the Equinox 600 and 800 can adjust the ferrous tone volume. Relic hunters in particular find being able to adjust the ferrous tone volume to be a very useful function. Again, this feature is available on both Equinox models. The Equinox 800 goes a step farther in allowing the non-ferrous tone volumes to be adjusted. Maybe you have coins set to give a high tone, but you have a hearing loss in the high tone range. The Equinox 800 allows you to increase the volume of the high tone response in relation to the other tones, making it easier to hear. This is most useful in the five tone mode, which by default has one tone for ferrous, and four separate tones for different parts of the non-ferrous discrimination scale. Each of these four non-ferrous tones can have individual volume levels. Equinox Full Tones Adjustment All a long backwards way big saying I’ll not miss the lack of button in the Deus 2, as it’s set up for the way I hunt anyway.

I agree for separation type tests. I was thinking max depth tests where people are straining to hear a signal at all. A meter response would mean they would have to hit the same mark on the meter to be considered a signal. Think like old TR deflection meter days.