Lets hope not. competition brings price stabilization and technical advances. More developers = better products.
By whose measure? This statement does not seem to jive with my personal experience or those who post UT videos using the Vortex to find all manner of treasure. On top of that, Garrett is made here in Texas and when I thought I had an issue and dropped by their business. the personnel could not have been any nicer or more helpful.
I think it can be measured in many different ways, but most point towards a once 'market leader' resting on it's laurels and dishing out outdated products into a fast moving and developing market. The made in America angle is probably one of the only plus points at the moment.. Maybe they will hit back with a product that rivals ,or betters those available on the market, in the right price range for enthusiasts , who are not easily fooled.. Otherwise they might end up as a real live relic , a place in history.
I agree to an extent, Garrett detectors aren't all that sexy, have all the new fangled features, but were one of the first companies to come out with a reasonably detector that could go in the water to a depth of 10 feet. Nokta and Minelab are not American companies, which has always worried me when it came to service work. But I agree that their newest release has had it's share of problems, which is surprising to me because Garrett has never been a company to release a new detector without fully vetting it first like the Vortex. I'm sure heads have rolled over that debacle.
The real question is how many good finds has your vortex missed?
No doubt you have found stuff, nobody said that Garrett detectors don't work and can't find targets,, of course they find targets,, the failure to modernise fast enough is the point.. They are slipping,, maybe to return with a bang (hopefully), or maybe go out with a whimper..? They need something great, and they need it fast...
Maybe a small hatch in a secret compartment that opens and drops a gold ring every 2 hours of use from a stack of rings covertly hidden inside the tube above the coil.
All detectors MISS stuff, which is why you can go back to sites you thought were hunted out and still find stuff. If your coil ain't over it, it ain't going to get dug.
Watched a pair of detectorists with non-Garrett detectors wag their detectors through a playground a while back and then followed them through the playground and found a 14K gold ring.
None of your posted responses truly addresses the question I posted.
If you had watched all of the videos you would have seen examples of the vortex missing good targets next to trash.
In the past I would send in a detector to Garrett for repair. Even older units were repaired and returned in working condition. Recently I sent in an older AT4 that was not working. Was in very good condition. Now being an electrical engineer and master technician I could easily recognize a unit that had been flooded. This one showed no such damage. However, Garrett returned it to me and said not repairable, Has been flooded. They told me they would give me a generous discount on anything new they have. I can understand a unit is not repairable if it uses application specific integrated circuits ASIC's. but this unit used no such items and was full of standard IC's widely available. I have it working, Since they do not supply schematics or any info on any of their equipment it was not easy but I just followed the signal from input to output to find the area where the problem was. I did this knowing the IC's input/output pins and used an oscilloscope to follow the signal. It (for me) was not difficult...for them it would have been very easy. This gives you an idea. of their commitment. They have a good business in the commercial side of detecting for security. They do not need us anymore. On the other hand, I sent in an XP Deuce and had it back in 10 days, all working and fixed at a moderate repair cost.... There you have it...
