Steve Herschbach

Probably was one bad cell then. The rest may be good.

A good battery check meter is invaluable. Even with new batteries one bad one in the set can cause problems. I have to also admit I have found myself with one battery in the set placed in backwards. It works for awhile until it does not.

They have replaced some under warranty in the past... 800 Coil Tabs Coil Tab Reinforcer

My bad! I was trying to say I do not need more depth... I need discrimination to the full depth we already have. I'm digging deep enough, I just don't want to dig any more nails at that depth. Forget GPZ even a GPX with 18" mono coil finds nails deeper than I want to dig anymore. There really are some hard limits on maximum depth and getting just one more inch is like a moon shot. Discrimination at depth has not begun to catch up. We know the depth is possible because we are already there. Surely there is a way to get better discrimination than what we currently have.

If a CTX with large coil was as good as a GPZ for depth everyone would be prospecting with them. I’m asking for something that does not exist.

If you tune out saltwater you will tune out thin chains. That is just a fact of saltwater detecting and no new detector is going to change it. A detector that will detect the chain will detect the saltwater. Tune out the saltwater, can’t detect the chain. There is a reason you don’t use a Gold Bug 2 in saltwater. I tried to explain that a dozen times with the Equinox and some people absolutely refused to listen. Every new machine it seems people think we are going to revoke the rules of physics that govern this technology. It will be no different with the AQ.

He was talking about the Terra version Rick. Which I have referred to as the Impulse AU. That's why the SDC was brought up.

Doubtful.

A good summary here - Gulf Coast beaches are the very last paragraph. The big one to avoid is the Padre Island National Seashore - extremely off limits. Padre Island National Seashore NPS Map

I have to admit that almost every one of the manufacturers have had me pulling my hair out at times going "why, Why, Why, WHY!?!" It reminds me though of discussions I had with my management team at my old business. We'd be doing well and patting ourselves on the back and I would remind them "guys, it's not that we are so great, we just suck less then the competition." That was not only the truth of things but a good reminder that no matter how good we thought we were, the fact is there was always a lot to improve on.

In theory lexan is more impact resistant than abrasion resistant. All I know is I went with lexan based on the recommendation of prospectors using it in Australia on the GPZ 7000, and they claim it holds up very well under heavy use. Mine I have not scrubbed on the rocks long enough to know for sure. I have used it mainly in deep desert grass as it glides better than the open spoke. Less about wear then getting hung up in my case. Fact is it is way cheaper than a regular scuff cover anyway so if it wears out I will just replace. In my case I have more than one stock coil so devoted a coil to this and glued the lexan directly to the coil. See my link above for details. I have not regretted it.

El Paso

Sorry to hear that Chuck, always sucks when something new fails.

Ergo at 4.5 lbs or less should be way better than the 5.6 lb SDC and in the U.S. price should be better but given FT pricing in Oz you may be out of luck as regards price down under.

And ergonomics! I hope they don't just make a version of the waterproof detector but go back to the S rod and maybe even ditch waterproof to save more weight. Probably not though simply as using the same components as are already being made makes sense and it would hardly save any weight anyway. But the three piece S rod looks great for dry land and is easy enough.

Has not happened with mine.

He mentions in the video a couple months for the GMX so maybe same for the coil for some inexplicable reason. NokMak makes all the U.S. manufacturers look like they are mired in a mudhole with a two wheel drive ATV.

Maybe I'll get you back to posting more often now Paul! To be honest the best thing people can do to help Dimitar and therefore the long term prospects of Tarsacci is going to be to post about it. Google rules all and if people can’t Google things and see them as far as they are concerned they don’t exist. That’s the world we live in now. The good news is these forums already were coming up right after the Tarsacci site itself so this will help collect everything in one spot and make it easier for all involved. It brings me traffic and helps Dimitar... win, win!

The leap to digital is critical to the future of this technology. It really is more about signal processing than anything and there is almost no limit to the signal processing you can do once you go digital and put a small computer under the hood. Part of my hope for the AQ is that it does succeed to the point of convincing the bean counters the money is well invested. The sky is the limit, but only if there are profits to pay for it. So really everyone should buy one even if they never use it just to support future research and development!

It’s still going to be a trade off. That is why there is a Reject knob. If the machine simply had an optimum set ferrous/non-ferrous rejection there would be no need for the knob. It will allow you to open up or restrict the ferrous acceptance and that in turn will allow or reject certain classes of good targets. Further, the ground balance is being employed here first and foremost as a discrimination system instead of an actual ground balance control. That is why there will have to be a different detector for gold prospecting... the inability of this model to finely tune for small gold in mineralized ground. That also means the discrimination aspects, if any, of the prospecting version will likely be quite limited. The reverse of that however means the Impulse AQ is trying to work around the lack of a fully adjustable ground balance system for dealing with both salt and ground conditions, necessitating a control like the Volcanic Sand control. The bottom line is that for some time it has been quietly implied that the Manta/Impulse would operate to full PI depths while simply and easily eliminating ferrous targets... even seeing through ferrous targets. In my opinion reading between the lines on all this the reality is more complex and there are once again going to be the inevitable trades made between sheer performance and discrimination. I have no doubt the AQ is going to fine tune and advance the capability to a new level. My goal is not to take away at all from what is being achieved here. I’m right up there in line wanting a Fisher Impulse AQ. But it is not going to be a simple case of go dig rings at PI depths with no ferrous dug and no good targets missed. Like all things detecting, there is no free lunch. But maybe I will be proven completely wrong and I would actually welcome that. Only time will tell. Check back by the end of the year and we will see.

I have tried by writing quite a few different articles in slightly different ways to find the right combination of words to explain this complex subject. In response to some questions about the TDI I have given it yet another try. I will add a link to that thread to the original post here. It's all the same stuff just explained different ways and I am not the absolute know it all expert on all this. I'm just doing the best I can with the subject but frankly have run out of different ways to say the same thing. Hopefully anyone interested will dig into all my posts starting way back with the Garrett Infinium and through it all get a handle on what PI discrimination is all about. In the future any questions I get will probably just get a link back to these existing posts. It's a lot to study but if you forget about VLF discrimination and wishful thinking and just learn what these detectors can and can’t do I think the effort is worth it. I understand why people love VLF detectors but for me this stuff is much more fascinating and I am addicted to PI power. Instead of worrying about what they can't do I learn what they can do and then apply that for best results, including picking the proper locations to get the best results. But for some people, really, a VLF is a better choice. Not everyone is going to want to use a PI.

My first comment regarding discrimination with a ground balancing PI like the TDI and others is that people may be expecting things of the TDI it cannot deliver, and may be better off with a good discriminating VLF detector. If your priority is discrimination, no PI will discriminate like a VLF. There are two ways to tune the TDI. The first and preferred option is to tune the detector for the best depth. On low mineral beaches ground balance "off" usually give the best performance and you generally have to dig all targets. The sensitivity control and pulse delay are set to the desired level of quiet operation. You have to adjust those settings for your conditions. Forcing it by using settings other people use is fruitless. Salt conditions do vary as does mineralization and electrical interference, and the machines themselves vary by a small amount. I notice many people think lower settings will cause lost depth and therefore insist on higher settings, and then complain the machine is unstable. It simply is what it is. Adjust the machine for the conditions. If it does not perform to your satisfaction, use a different detector. You can't make a detector do what it does not want to do. As ground mineralization increases on some beaches, there is a point where using the ground balance “on” gives you more depth. Only with experiments can a person determine which setting gives more depth on your beach - ground balance “on” or ground balance “off”. If you use the ground balance, it BY ACCIDENT creates two audio classes of targets, those above the ground balance setting and those below the ground balance setting. These give either a low tone or a high tone. The resulting two classes of targets have only a little to do with what they are made of, but are based instead on the rate at which eddy currents decay in the target after the transmit pulse shuts off. Size has as much to do with the audio results as composition, just like on a VLF. The pulse delay sets the minimum level for this eddy current cut off or rejection. See Understanding the PI Metal Detector by Reg Sniff. With ground balance “on” you would normally, just like with ground balance “off”, adjust the sensitivity and pulse delay for whatever level produces quiet operation. I usually just put the coil underwater and pump it in the water, and first try lower sensitivity. If that does not remove noise I raise the pulse delay a little and try again. In general I am trying to keep the pulse delay as low as possible and sensitivity as high as possible. Eventually through trial and error I find a combination of sensitivity and pulse delay that eliminates audio results when pumping the coil in saltwater. The ground balance setting is determined by whatever setting gives no audio results when moving the coil up and down over the beach or the bottom when underwater. If basalt cobbles are present they may also need to be included in the ground balance tuning procedure. In extreme cases you may have to lower the sensitivity and pulse delay even more to get a proper quiet ground balance. Again, once you have tuned everything for best performance, you will have a pulse delay setting and ground balance setting that ACCIDENTALLY creates two classes of targets. The only way to see the result is to test various targets. In the U.S. our coins are much more conductive than many European coins and retain eddy currents better, and therefore generally give a low tone while most jewelry will give a high tone. Large ferrous will give a low tone and small ferrous a high tone. Very large rings may give a low tone as will most silver rings. In Europe and other places the tones may vary from what we see with U.S. coins. After experimenting to find out what items give what tones, you have a simple decision. You can dig one tone only, or you can dig the other tone only, or you can dig all targets. The results will be what you have determined by your experiments and if digging only one tone or the other loses items you do not want to lose then you must dig all items. If that is not acceptable, your should be using a VLF detector instead. Now, if you are willing to give up some depth, you can try to purposefully misadjust the ground balance control to move the tone division point. Doing so may switch some items from one tone to the other for a better result as regards discrimination. This however puts the detector out of proper ground balance. In mild ground you can do this easily but in highly mineralized ground the machine will now signal when moved over the beach or the bottom or past hot rocks. The depth is lost as you compensate for this by again reducing the sensitivity or increasing the pulse delay. Again it all is a matter of experimentation. If a desired item that is giving a "wrong" tone can be made to give the opposite tone by misadjusting the ground balance you may benefit from this in milder ground. It may be that the lost depth or audio side effects from being out of ground balance are not be worth it. You have to decide. To sum up, VLF detectors offer the best discrimination but may not get enough depth on mineralized beaches. A PI detector can get more depth, but any discrimination is an accidental byproduct of the ground balance system employed and will not separate targets like a VLF. In general you dig everything with a PI but in some cases you can derive benefits by digging some tones and not others, but you will without a doubt miss some class of good targets by doing this. That is just the way it is. The first ground balancing PI (GBPI) I used for beach detecting was the Garrett Infinium. Next was the TDI and then Garrett ATX. All three have similar tone results, but the TDI has the additional benefit of allowing you to manually set the tone break point via the ground balance setting. I have also used similar tonal separation using Minelab GBPI detectors. I go into more in-depth detail on another post referencing the new Fisher Impulse AQ where I reference all my notes on all these detectors so I am going to link there for further study. The Impulse is basically a refined version of what the TDI is doing, with the ground balance control used first and foremost as a discrimination control, and as with the TDI there will be performance trades depending on the settings employed. Understanding one will help you understand the other. This is a very complex subject for those wanting a simple VLF type discrimination system in a PI detector. They are however two different things, and you have to read and think quite a bit about how a PI detector actually works to get your head around all this. Or at a minimum do lots of experimenting and learn by observation. I have tried my best to explain things, but there is no magic tuning or answers I can provide that will make these machines do what people seem to want them to do - act like a VLF. They are not. If they do not discriminate the way you want I have no settings that will make it happen other than what I have tried to explain already. This is kind of a summary and along with all the other posts is really about all I can offer or have to say on the subject. I hope it helps! Fisher Impulse AQ Discrimination Explanation Where Will The Holes Be In The Fisher Impulse System White's TDI SL Owners Manual White's TDI Beachhunter Owners Manual White's TDI Pro Owners Guide Steve's White's TDI Review

This website has nothing to do with Geotech or any registration problems there. If you use the registration form there and fill it out properly it should work. If not use their contact form to describe the issue and see if they can fix it. I've been a member there since 2009.

More detailed photo closeups of things like the battery, battery connections, coil connector, etc. would then be a welcome alternative. People love good photos. Thanks Rick.

Honestly a real shame Garrett never fully exploited the ATX circuit by hobbling it with a 7 lb box and a crazy coil design. I’ve screamed for years for an ATX that looks like the Impulse. All to the benefit of First Texas however so too bad for the neighbors in Garland. My incredibly crappy cut and paste “prototype” LTX from 2014.....