Garrett Vortex Metal Detector

[DSMITH]

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Well I don’t want a wireless coil. I also don’t want another cell phone on a stick. I want an S rod and I want a widescreen. A fully submersible Apex with depth and separation to rival the Deus 2 or Manticore and I’m sold. Or Equinox 800 performance at least with a really great price. Anything less why bother?

I am with you on everything you stated, other than the S Shaft, but I could live with that as long as it performs, personally I do not even need it to be water proof rain proof is good enough for me personally, I really like the Axiom form factor so if this new Vortex comes out like that I will be happy to throw my $$$s to Garrett

[Ridge Runner]

If everyone gets what they want In this detector we may have to carry the controls in a backpack 🎒.

 If we get just half of what’s been posted this detector will be one hot cats meow . 
 Just remember a little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

 Remember this that has nothing to do with detecting ,

  If it hadn’t been for mother’s we wouldn’t have Father’s Day . I must say us guys really shine trying to be one.haha

 Sorry Steve I can’t help myself too full of bull. Delete if you wish .

 Chuck 

[Steve Herschbach]

14 hours ago, DSMITH said:

I am with you on everything you stated, other than the S Shaft, but I could live with that as long as it performs, personally I do not even need it to be water proof rain proof is good enough for me personally, I really like the Axiom form factor so if this new Vortex comes out like that I will be happy to throw my $$$s to Garrett

The only reason I say S shaft is it seems like we have plenty of straight shaft options out there. Cell phones on a stick abound and Garrett could stand out by being different than that at least. Straight shafts suck in the water due to the handle not being inline with the force of the movement, contributing to a rollover effect that must be counteracted with muscle power. Straight shafts work better with very heavy detectors, where the weight of the detector hanging below the balance point offsets the rollover effect felt in lighter models. The crossover seems to be around 4 lbs, with heavier models doing better with straight shafts. The lighter you get under 4 lbs the better S rods work, with the Deus being the best example and why they went S rod. Better ergonomics. The main problem with S shafts is that to get a good collapsing design you have to do something weird like XP did. Straight shafts are far more amenable to super short telescoping setups.

I was able to confirm that the whole storm thing was just a marketing campaign for the new Vortex series of metal detectors. Notice that Vortex was trademarked while Storm was not (or at least not by Garrett). There is no Garrett Storm metal detector. I changed the tags and updated the database entry to reflect this.

[RobNC]

4 lbs? That's quite a bit for any of us with rotator cuff or tendon problems in the arm. Not everyone is wanting to go under the knife quite yet due to many circumstances- quack greed hospitals and doctors being a big factor for myself. So anything of that weight wouldn't be useful to me. Sure I could detect an hour at most and would really feel it too.

It's a shame nobody outside XP has managed to make lighter detectors that hold up under use. No, I'm not an XP fanboy but I do recognize their innovations. I'm not against an S Shaft system if it is solid while being lighter. But this cell phone on a stick situation I can say is not ideal. Landscape screens would be nice in a lot of ways. Better visibility, more room for complex features to be displayed properly instead of being crammed together into microscopic blurred things. Lot of room for improvement in the creature features department now. I don't see them making much more progress in depth but they could work on separation and target ID definition/accuracy. So the metal detecting industry still has some things it can pull out to continue making money.

But this depth mentality being the pure determiner of performance is hurting us all in my opinion.What good is depth when you have so much modern junk on top the detector can't see through or manage? *shrugs*

[Steve Herschbach]

2 hours ago, RobNC said:

4 lbs? That's quite a bit for any of us with rotator cuff or tendon problems in the arm. Not everyone is wanting to go under the knife quite yet due to many circumstances- quack greed hospitals and doctors being a big factor for myself. So anything of that weight wouldn't be useful to me. Sure I could detect an hour at most and would really feel it too.

I never said anything about this detector weighing 4 lbs. I was discussing rod configurations and the ergonomics behind them. All the big gun prospecting detectors until very recently were all over 4 lbs and almost all used straight shafts, well before it became common in coin and relic designs. s rod was the norm there until the pod on a stick came along, and now that’s practically a fad.

Lighter is not always better. Balance matters and despite what XP fans think, an unbalanced nose heavy design is not optimal. The Deus only works well with small coils, the larger the coil, the more obvious the lack of balance is. It’s a fact whether people want to believe it or not, that slightly more weight that results in perfect balance is actually less strain on your arm. Take any nose heavy detector, put a counterbalancing weight under the elbow, and you can immediately prove this as true.

Depth is not held up as the only determination of performance. Most knowledgeable detectorists count separation also. But it depends on the application. If relic hunting a bed of nails depth really does not matter, it’s all about separation. If hunting a 10 oz gold nugget in the open, all that matters is sheer depth.

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Lighter is not always better. Balance matters and despite what XP fans think, an unbalanced nose heavy design is not optimal.

I think it's great AND it does have an S Shaft, so there's that.

Seriously though, for the larger coil many of us rabid, irrational XP fans do tend to go for 3rd party solutions that introduce more weight but better balance (thanks @steveg) so point taken (i.e., I agree).

[Dug D]

Maybe they have a new way of wiring the coil to match the logo. 

That would be new. 

[GB_Amateur]

49 minutes ago, Dug D said:

Maybe they have a new way of wiring the coil to match the logo. 

That would be new. 

You mean something like this? (Snapshots from Garrett's 2020 catalog, pages 26 and 28):

[JCR]

41 minutes ago, Dug D said:

Maybe they have a new way of wiring the coil to match the logo. 

That would be new. 

You could be on to something there. Marketing often mimics some aspect of Engineering.  At one time we had Vortex Combustion touted & advertised on small black Chevrolet engines due to the Intake manifold plenum & Cylinder head combustion chamber design.