Aquachigger: Metal Detecting Civil War Relics With The New Garrett Vortex VX9

[IBMe]

 

 

[Fredneck]

You'd think if Chigg was hoping for things he could find with the fancy new Vortex that he'd missed with earlier Garrett's he'd try SMF instead of just hunting in AT Pro mode, I don't get it ?

[phrunt]

As he said in the video, he's using a prototype machine and there are a few things going on with it he wants them to look at before the final release, I would guess he found 13kHz worked better in that location than SMF modes or he would be using MF over single.  

It's good it's being well tested and regularly revised, by release it should be a pretty good detector, I think.

[Fredneck]

He also said at the end of the vid you have to dig all those different alloys of trash or ya might miss a good target like a cuff button or lil ID tag, to me more reason to use MF ? You saying if I buy this thing to upgrade my old AT Gold for my river/stream hunting I'm not going to be able to use its flagship feature, still don't get it ?

[phrunt]

I think it's best to wait until it gets into the general public's hands and see what happens, sponsored people doing promo videos are unable to really release too much information and will be very limited in their thoughts.

For now, it's a work in progress, and hopefully when released it's what we are hoping for.

[Daniel Tn]

10 hours ago, Fredneck said:

He also said at the end of the vid you have to dig all those different alloys of trash or ya might miss a good target like a cuff button or lil ID tag, to me more reason to use MF ? You saying if I buy this thing to upgrade my old AT Gold for my river/stream hunting I'm not going to be able to use its flagship feature, still don't get it ?

He's saying the unit he has is not a finalized version.  So he is using what works on the prototype that he has.  For all we know, the MF setting on his prototype doesn't work and or any number of things.  He may not be able to show it on camera as of yet....single freq may be all he is allowed to show for now.  

[The Lama]

I'm thinking he wanted to see how it compared to his max on an area he already hit with the max 13 khz apples to apples

[Bob S.]

I personally would like to see more prototypes illustrating the iron signatures and reactivity speeds. Only recently has Garrett let us hear the audio and see the visual ID's. I do know the Vortex release has been slowed again and will likely be available towards the holidays, hopefully late November. Something about the coil connector in the housing possibly leaking or inferior part. I do know Garrett has always done their best to not release inferior quality. I've owned the AT-MAX and it was a good detector and went deep. Coming from the Apex and enjoying it, I'm still looking forward to the Vortex VX9. Slow and easy sometimes wins the race!

[Chase Goldman]

The only apparent thing Garrett has done wrong here is put out overly optimistic release dates and engage all the YouTubers before they got feedback from hard core testers (both those who have a social media following and those who prefer not to be on camera) to better understand how far they were from actually being done with the design.  There is still a ways to go here both from a physical AND software design perspective for this detector based on information I have gathered from multiple sources (i.e., the delays are caused by issues much more significant than a flimsy charge port cover or because they wanted to add "new" features requested by vocal influencers - the issues are not insurmountable but they will simply take time to resolve).  I think cooler heads have finally prevailed at Garrett to put a muzzle on these unvetted, unrealistic release dates (that have indeed done damage to the Garrett's rep) while they focus on the engineering at hand (without over pressurizing the design team),  Hopefully, this will signal a departure from their focus on hype and marketing which permeated the run up to product announcement until they finally conceded it was going to take a lot longer to get to the finish line than they anticipated.  To partially restore the damage done, Garrett's only choice is to get it 99.9% right as they have basically used up their "good will" capital amongst their user base by trickling out what was essentially release date misinformation (whether they knew it or not doesn't matter, either way it was a self inflicted wound due to hubris or their own lack of understanding).  I hope they have the fortitude to stick to the new plan and release it only when it is ready to meet all the capabilities they have advertised it will meet, even if the Holiday release has to be sacrificed.  So as far as AquaChigger and others are concerned, you are not going to get a lot of useful information regarding Vortex performance from these YouTubers until they get finalized software to validate in the field so we are probably still talking at least a few weeks down the road.