Well, you are correct, as individuals we each have our personal likes and dislikes. I got one of the first Apex devices in when they started selling them, and I currently have a total of 4 Apex devices. My original was is version 1.23, and the others were 1.25. All of them were updated to 1.28 when that revision came out.
On my first unit I did have a little bit of noisy behavior and I contacted Garrett, sent it to them, and it was quickly returned repaired and working much quieter.
In some areas I had more noisy activity due to the bigger size Viper coil, and that is expected because I spend most of my time searching very littered areas with iron debris. As soon as they announced the Ripper and Raider coils, I acquired them and I keep the Ripper, which is 5X8, on my main-use Apex. I keep the Raider, an 8.5X11 DD, on my 2nd Apex for hunting the beach, plowed field, wide-open grassy park, or any other place with sparse targets.
My 3rd Apex is set to use a smaller-size coil, such has the NEL 5" DD. I do have a 4th Apex w/Viper coil that I keep on-hand as a loader unit for family and friends.
I have found them all to provide reasonably quick recovery speed, they all work well in iron nail contaminated sites, and at times they can be a little noisy or chattery if I am hunting in a lot of trash, near power lines, Etc, but when it's bad I simply reduce the sensitivity one or two notches, three at the most, to stabilize the unit.
Owning and using for Apex devices since their first release and all of them having the current update and all using my same Custom program, have assured me that the Apex can work well for many applications.
All four of them are in my Custom program which accepts everything from 20 on up, starts out in MF, Vol. '8', Iron Vol. '2', and most of the time I simply Ground Balance and start hunting. Also, they are all saved at full maximum Sensitivity, and I only reduce it as needed if there is any EMI type noisy behavior.
Like most detectors it should be used with a search coil roughly 2" above the ground because if it is too close you get a lot of back-reading which is multiple hits from shallow or Surface targets.
The one big mistake Garrett made was taking it with the Ace series label because it is not an ace series circuit redesign and doesn't really work like the Ace series. The Apex should stand alone as a series of itself since it is totally different and also a selectable frequency/multi-frequency device.
Monte
