First Impressions On The Apex

[Steve Herschbach]

I am not trying to belittle anybody's desire for features at lower prices, etc., nor indeed my desire to belittle anyone at all. I have thoughts, I riff on them. If a person wants to understand metal detectors, ignoring business reality is an impediment. I interface with the companies well because I know what they are doing, and the goal is not to give you all the most power for the lowest price. It is to make money, and every feature is a move chosen to achieve that end.

In the case of Simplex, NM may have overstepped, putting too much power in novices hands. They are trying to drive a race car without experience, and lots of them crash. There is a general ignoring of the fact that most people are not experts, and do not need many of these so-called necessary features. Understanding all this requires getting out of my head, my desires, and seeing things from the perspective of the general market segments, the needs in each segment, and what makes money for manufacturers. If anyone thinks for one second detectors are anything more than products for profit, is either not tuned in.... or going out of business. Some manufacturers forgot that, and now they are gone.

When I worked retail, I constantly had to fight the idea people have that more money equals better results, and I downsold people into machines more appropriate for what they really needed. It is so easy to take advantage of people, so easy to manipulate people when greed is a motivator. I could get rich selling LRL if getting rich was my desire. People scam themselves, and all you have to do is go along, or feed it.

That makes me the odd boy out here, advocating for lower price units, when the average forum member tells people they must have "the best" (as they see it, of course), or go home.

The irony is the Apex has that feature list.... but people still are not impressed. Am I the only one that does not understand how to undermine competition by sending out the stealth marketers to YouTube to do their thing? That dealers play those games, people with vendettas assassinate product via social media? There are sharks in the water nobody but me is seeing.

[EL NINO77]

Steve ..... on this Detector prospector forum are mostly very demanding detectorists .. who mostly use the best models of detectors of various manufacturers ... ,, so the middle and lower categories of detectors sometimes become the center of criticism ... often even unfair ...

I think the right measure ... to evaluate the detector is the relative performance of the detector with respect to its price ... and here we really do not expect the performance of a new basic detector at a price of $ 200-300 - it will be the same as the new Top detector worth 700-1000 -1500 dollars .. ?

The new Apex category is somewhere between these two categories ... at a cost of $ 500 due to its technical features ... already means .... that it will satisfy many users with its detection features ....

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I lent my colleague my ace 400i ... so you found your first coin with a metal detector ... and you found this coin pretty quickly ...👍

 

[Steve Herschbach]

3 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

Steve ..... on this Detector prospector forum are mostly very demanding detectorists .. who mostly use the best models of detectors of various manufacturers ... ,, so the middle and lower categories of detectors sometimes become the center of criticism ... often even unfair ...

I think the right measure ... to evaluate the detector is the relative performance of the detector with respect to its price ... and here we really do not expect the performance of a new basic detector at a price of $ 200-300 - it will be the same as the new Top detector worth 700-1000 -1500 dollars ..

The new Apex category is somewhere between these two categories ... at a cost of $ 500 due to its technical features ... already means .... that it will satisfy many users with its detection features ....

You and I are on the same page for sure Slavomir  My low cost detector forum failed because everyone kept insisting on raising the top end to capture features they thought are needed.... missing the entire point of the forum. I'm enough of a snot that I think anyone that can't do well with a $300 detector these days needs to go back to detector school. 

Enough of all that. I've been grumpy and on edge, way overdue for a break, and poking at people in my typical contrarian fashion. Generally when the herd turns one way, I turn the other, and usually find myself alone. I faced a huge battle with Equinox, trying to convince people that for most users, it was a better choice than a CTX 3030. Now I'm facing an uphill battle with GPX 6000, trying to convince users that for most people, it is the better choice over the GPZ 7000. Entrenched users do not want to hear this, and dealers with stock really do not. I don't think I make many friends trying to help people out. The manufacturers have everybody too well trained.

The Apex? Well, good on Garrett is all I'll say, and leave it there. Hopefully there is still some desire for a U.S. manufacturer to succeed so people least pay attention to people here like palzynski or Monte (just to name a couple), who really do know what they are talking about. Skip the naysayers and listen to the other side for a change. Plenty of people want Garrett to fail, but I'm not one of them.

[JCR]

From my point of view in the real world, I'm glad there still seems to be some passion for detecting in many of the current manufacturers. Here in the USA and especially by some of the up & coming overseas makers. People make the difference in the products.

[kac]

Proof here that the Apex is no slouch. I hit the opposite side of the river that doesn't have a stinking coal heap under hardpack gravel and emi is reasonable but still loaded with tons of old iron bits the Apex did incredibly well. Most of the targets here were below the river clay on the gravel bed below. though not super deep digs the holes were 6-12" down. Snaked out a Kennedy silver dollar at the foot mark with solid low 90's. Machine is very sensitive to small targets as well but trickier to pick up on with the short audio.

Not comparing this directly to any other machine and I and my friends have hit this area well. Getting to the gravel with reliable numbers with all the iron in the area is impressing me. That short audio is acutally a plus in this case.

Bang for the buck this is one descent machine that should bring people a lot of good hunting if they have an open mind and learn spend the little time it takes to learn.

 

[phrunt]

I'm happy with entry level detectors, and a very large percentage of my finds could have been done with them no problems, I regularly fire up my Ace and others for a spin, I really enjoy using them, they're great fun and do remarkably well, I think the difference between high end and low end is very exaggerated, especially in my ground for coins, jewellery and so on.  It's more time behind the detector that dictates how well you do around here, more so than what detector you use.....

[palzynski]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

I'm happy with entry level detectors, and a very large percentage of my finds could have been done with them no problems, I regularly fire up my Ace and others for a spin, I really enjoy using them, they're great fun and do remarkably well, I think the difference between high end and low end is very exaggerated, especially in my ground for coins, jewellery and so on.  It's more time behind the detector that dictates how well you do around here, more so than what detector you use.....

True for clean soils , but a little different on high iron trashed areas . You would find very little with an Ace on some areas I know over here , where a fast detector with an excellent iron filtering like a Deus/Orx , Apex , G2 , Lobo etc is required  ... ( small/very small coins among hundreds of rusty nails ) 

[Rick N. MI]

Good hunt Kac. Nice photo.

[kac]

7 hours ago, phrunt said:

I'm happy with entry level detectors, and a very large percentage of my finds could have been done with them no problems, I regularly fire up my Ace and others for a spin, I really enjoy using them, they're great fun and do remarkably well, I think the difference between high end and low end is very exaggerated, especially in my ground for coins, jewellery and so on.  It's more time behind the detector that dictates how well you do around here, more so than what detector you use.....

I think many of us get bored with the easy machines and go for all the bells and buttons and stuff to fiddle with. Pretty cool how these supposedly lower end machines are closing the gap on what we once thought as state of the art machines. End of the day most modern day machines will get most of the finds.

[mh9162013]

3 hours ago, kac said:

I think many of us get bored with the easy machines and go for all the bells and buttons and stuff to fiddle with.

I can understand that sentiment. For me, I prefer fiddling with the mechanical/electronic aspects, not the settings, though.

However, figuring out the settings and seeing positive results is very satisfying.