phrunt

I think Garrett purposefully limited the Apex so they've got some left in the tank for the ATpex, their multi frequency technology is probably better than it may seem and they're refining it for the higher end model which they may time for release when Nokta is about to hit the market with their machine, who knows? It would be a good thing for them to do. First to the post often gets the most sales. I'll be pleasantly surprised and also very happy if Nokta do achieve multi-IQ performance from their multi frequency detector, and I'd be quick to get one . My Simplex is better build quality than my Nox 800, including the coils. I think to maximize profits Minelab went a bit too cheap on build quality, something Nokta never does. I'm not at all impressed by the performance of my Simplex however, it's because the things that matter to me are the things the Simplex is weak at, accurate target ID's and depth, and most importantly a combination of both..... Hopefully this is improved on the Multi Freaker, I've never used a high end Nokta so maybe I'm just a bit hard on their entry level unit however entry level now from a few manufacturers is often exceeding or very competitive with flagships from other companies in many ways. In hindsight the naming contest years ago was a bit of a mistake, I'm sure they realize that now... I think it's vital Nokta consider advancing their focus on a PI prospecting machine, they said about the time they did the naming contest for the multi machine they were going to do a PI gold machine.... This is an area of the market that's open for the taking, a lower priced PI prospecting machine with good performance would sell well. It doesn't have to better or equal the Minelabs, it just has to be in the game, something equal to a QED in performance perhaps with automatic ground balance or a ground grab button and a far better build quality than the QED which is the norm for Nokta anyway and they'd be on a winner and fill a gap the market desperately needs filled.

Don't be shy to dust off the old Ace 400, I've found coins in a spot I'd missed with my Nox by using my Ace, sometimes a different detector can just sniff out a few more, I don't know why or how, I just know it happens.

I find the Equinox to be just fine as a turn on and go detector where you just select your detecting environment and go. It's only complicated if you want it to be. It's stable ID's make learning detecting on coin type targets a breeze. Sure the Vanquish is just as easy if not easier as you can't get tempted to play with settings but I personally wouldn't tell someone to buy a Vanquish as they're a beginner and buy an Equinox when they're more skilled, as you can just buy the Equinox and use it as a turn on and go detector and have room to grow into it. I love my Vanquish, it's fantastic but the Nox is better. In some detecting environment's a Vanquish won't cut it without ground balance so a Nox is necessary so a beginner buying a detector that won't ground balance in their soil isn't going to go down very well. I would say buy an Equinox if you an afford it, buy a Vanquish if you can't knowing one day you might want to upgrade to an Equinox anyway as you become more skilled at detecting and want to broaden the targets you look for, such as gold nuggets.

I got a full set of coil ear protectors from a local guy, he seems to have used very strong 3D printing plastic for them, some 3D printing is brittle and snaps if you do much with it, I gave these a good flex and they're fine. Now I need to decide if I want to epoxy them on or just use them as is. I'm thinking I'll use them as is, I've gone a couple of years now without breaking a coil ear so the little bit of added protection they give should be enough to prevent any incidents I hope. One for each of the Minelab coil sizes, I'm not too worried about the Coiltek 10x5" that I've got, I haven't seen any issues with their ears.

You're a great photographer, that's a great set of finds.

It's been out for a long time Chuck, It's a bit of a copy of a Gold Monster 🙂 well if it popped up on Aliexpress made by the Chinese that's what people would call it. Looks great build quality though. I was disappointed in Nokta when they hyped up it's performance so I had no interest in getting one. This is off their website section for it. I wish manufacturers would not do this sort of marketing. So now when they say the Lightning is better than the competition, will I believe them?

Yes, I'm quite new to the CTX, only had it a few months and haven't had it out all that much since getting it, I'm not sure if the 17" coil is all that much deeper yet than the 11" as my targets are always around the same depth and both coils hit them fine, about the depth of a Garrett Carrot but it covers ground better which is good in my park type areas with sparse junk and plenty of silvers to be found. I guess some find it heavy and I can see why, but after swinging my GPX and GPZ for a few years now and I was never one to use any bungees the CTX feels light, even with the 17" coil The attributes that mean the most to me in a coin type detector are outright depth, while maintaining target ID at that depth in very mild relatively junk free soils and the CTX has proven itself for that, prior to it the Equinox and Vanquish were the kings for me, since getting the CTX it's been able to out perform them in my situation, although they're still outstanding for what I do. I can imagine that 17" coil is great for Mitchel doing his beaches, such big areas with a lot of ground to cover, I'll certainly be using it on the rare occasion I hunt a beach here, they're a similar situation with not all that much junk, mostly pull tabs so I think it'd be good.

Seems a reasonable fix, seeing the coil was broken anyway I would have put a big wad of good epoxy under it before cable tying it down, you'd probably end up not even needing the cable ties. On a side note, I wish they made that coil for the Equinox!!!!

Well I would imagine there will be a Simplex 2 and it will include their multi frequency technology, every main manufacturer seems to be onboard now with making multi frequency machines (except First Texas but I no longer consider them a main manufacturer) and Multi Frequency has crept into entry level detectors very quickly. ML is never making another single frequency machine and I suspect no other manufacturer will in the next few years either, as it just won't sell well. The Simplex competition is really the Vanquish and the Apex, both are multi frequency. It's behind already.

Good to see you firing up the 3030, and a successful hunt too. I have all 3 coils for mine but have mainly only used the 11" so far, I plan on using the big sucker on my next ventures. I've not read too much in the way of favorable reviews of the Coiltek aftermarket 3030 coils, the 10x5" again seems to be the better one much like the Nox. Most say they were just not necessary it seems. I guess because the coils are chipped only "Minelab Approved" manufacturers were able to make coils for it and that just ended up being Coiltek. Nel made E-trac coils but wasn't able to make CTX coils. It's the cycle that never ends I'm afraid. I'd personally rather a Nel coil for it than a Coiltek coil. It's the reason a E-trac is now a possibility in my future now I've enjoyed the delights of the 3030. I'd be quite happy to swing a Nel on an E-Trac for my coin hunts.

Just like the T2, remarkable.

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.

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/ 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.

I hope yours is faulty Jeff, as your problems sound a little bit too bad to be how it should be. The Apex now has a brilliant range of coils and one I'm extremely jealous of swinging my detectors with their very limited range, I'm really hoping they do well with their higher end Multi freaker so I can buy one to have access to some of these coils. Fingers crossed you get it back and those problems are improved or resolved. Part of the problem is they released the entry level model first and we weren't comparing it to the other Ace models, we started comparing it mostly to high end machines 🙂 It's going to be difficult for any detector to match the ID stability I can get on my multi frequency machines though, it's just unbelievable how well they do. We have to remember though and it's easy to forget that the Apex is an Ace so having not a lot of notches to notch out and things like that are what we should expect due to it's placement in the lineup. It even looks like a high end machine and I really like the look of it, especially the screen! The length of time they're taking between the Apex and the ATpex might be an indication of how much they're working on improving and enhancing the performance though as really the quicker they can get it to market the better with Nokta on the verge of their release. First to market will always get the most sales, the later you are in the game the less sales you'll get.

a built in torch, vibration in the handle, carbon shaft... that sort of thing I'd imagine.

Don't worry Jeff, the older I get the older old is, my daughter thinks I'm ancient. She can't believe cars had tape players in them when I was a kid. She'd never even seen a tape before until I found one in a cleanup of my garage and was fascinated by it. Garrett's Apex is the modern look I like in a machine, I hope they stick with that design, especially the larger screen. My AT Gold and Ace detectors have tiny little screens, it's rather odd that they're that small with so much information on them and if they want to keep the appeal for the older people having a nice big clear screen could only be a positive.

A good thing about this place is you can have an opinion that differs vastly from many others and not get attacked for it. It takes a very stubborn person to think only their opinion is right and other peoples opinions don't matter at all. It wouldn't hurt for manufacturers to read a broad base of opinions and try leverage them all to their advantage. I'm glad you did your post, such discussions are what forums are for. Listening to and communicating with customers is something many detecting companies could improve on, not just the US ones.

The other thing is the post under it where a guy posted his screenshot from Coiltek saying they are going to make 6000 coils 🙂

I read some article on the internet somewhere about Whites demise, and the writer said a statement that sounded about right to me and it's not intended to be a dig at anyone, Whites designs were becoming old and outdated with little attempts by them to give them new life. Whites supporters were also becoming old, and many reached the point they were not detecting anymore, or detecting in their mind more than they were in reality. They were not needing to buy new detectors to put money in Whites pocket, they ran their 10+ year old detector and were happy, but money in Whites pocket 10 years ago isn't going to keep Whites in business now. That's not word for word for the article as I can't remember it or find it now. My take on the point being a lot of their most avid fans had the detector they wanted and loved it and used it and had little need for another, they said it was built tough and built to last (with exception of the coil I guess) so they didn't want to buy another one and were not sitting there wishing for a new model with more features, and the younger generation of detectorists were not really big Whites buyers. The AT Series seems very popular among the younger US detectorists and that's likely Garrett's good marketing achieved that and their use in various TV shows, social media and so on. It might be a generational thing, my age group and younger grew up with the expectation new models of everything come out every year or two, it's been normal for us with just about everything for our entire lives and seeing older products on the market no matter how good they might be leaves us wanting a newer model. It didn't matter if our phone broke down in under 2 years, we'd have a new one by then anyway. Phones started to have fixed batteries that were near impossible to replace, we didn't care... as if we'd want to run an old phone. This sort of mindset became common in younger people. The Nox came out with a battery built in and some of the older generation hit panic stations, many of the younger generation took it as it was great, that sounds like they'll have a new model out before the battery becomes a problem. It's just a different way of thinking. There was a lot of talk about it not being built to last, a bit of a throw away detector, to some that was a problem, to others it meant that a newer model would replace it, great. For a business if you have to or want to buy their newer model every year or two that makes good sense for them, they need the sales to survive. If you build a detector with a lifetime warranty like Tesoro did with little chance of big upgrades in new models, why would someone buy a new one? It just makes no sense from a business perspective. It's a bit like cars too, you see some of the older guys driving around in their old cars with the "classic not plastic" stickers on them, and I could only imagine that sticker on a Whites detector 🙂 This is by no means saying these people are wrong loving their older Whites, and that they shouldn't want to use their favourite detector forever but for a business that's primary role is to sell metal detectors, it's not a good business model and means they will fail when other companies are in the market using the constant new improved model disposable method that society is now getting so accustomed to. I completely see the point of someone who did buy a detector 10 or 15 years ago and are still using it today, take the GB2 for example, other than a few annoyances with ground balancing and so on you could still do as good with it if not better than some newer models today even though it's 26 years old and you've had it from day 1. The same likely goes for some Whites coin detectors I have no idea as I've never paid much attention to them with no availability in my country and being what I consider old technology detectors. Again this is just a different point of view, not meant to offend anyone.

So the website the news come from was likely speaking horse dung about the FBS. The Apex sure doesn't appear like an FBS detector.

Is this true? True Simultaneous Multi-Frequency Technology. Unlike the Garrett Ace Apex which uses a form of Minelab’s now patent-free FBS technology, we think that Nokta Makro will have developed their own multi-frequency detection tech or at the very least, added to FBS. The machine will also have several selectable individual frequencies to choose from.

I'd rather them continue the FBS2 detectors along side the Multi-IQ detectors, for me they're two very different animals and in its element I would prefer to use my CTX over Multi-IQ any day. They each have their strong points where one excels over the other though and in plenty of scenarios I'd use the Nox over the CTX, more often than not really. A lighter faster CTX would probably go down well with people, I'm not at all bothered by the weight as I'm used to swinging heavier gold detectors and I find the CTX extremely comfortable to swing. They must have the technology by now to improve the CTX performance in trashy areas. I don't know how much to do with this sort of thing processing power is, but a huge amount has changed since the CTX was released. The Nox could do with vastly improved build quality when they come out with the Equinox 1000, even if that means paying more and leaving the 800 on the market as the cheaper version I'd be happy with that. I hope they don't discontinue the CTX as I'd be a buyer of the new model.

That's pretty cool, I can't believe the size bits they were able to get, it looked like he got a 4.6 gram big flat piece just sitting on the surface. I'm surprised about the mosquito's in Alaska, I thought they were just a tropical thing. Quite funny he called them the state bird of Alaska 🙂 I haven't seen a mosquito since I left Australia, horrid little things they are although they don't bite me, I must be toxic to them as everyone around me was always attacked and I never got a bite. I need to mosey on up to Alaska.....

The August Garrett Searcher is out https://bit.ly/GarrettSearcher_08 The AT Pro really dominates the finds in this one, hopefully I can find some nuggets with my Garrett 24k to submit to try get myself into this next time!!!!

Very well done, I dislike hunting in trashy areas but you've found a way to make it work for you and it's paying dividends. That one big ring looks huge, maybe it fell off Mr T.