TabMeister

Sorry to say that Reg Sniff passed on July 25th. There was no funeral or public announcement per Reg's request as I understand. RIP Reg.

It's been quite a while since I posted around these parts but this is a fun subject. I've wondered about the rumored new technology detectors and pricing because it impacts whether I want to chance buying/trialing a Bulgarian, or Russian machine or wait it out. Plus I have a healthy dose of paranoia of wasting my money on another VLF that does wonderfully on youtube or out in a pasture 20 miles from town but is pretty much average in my local urban soil and EMI conditions. I think there are two or three ways of looking at a new tech machine and pricing. Obviously a manufacturer has to look at their costs for R&D, production costs, staffing for support, distribution, expected sales volume, etc. and go from there to make sure they succeed as a business. Let's pretend that total base cost is $300 per machine to produce. Lets say it's performance would essentially kill both PI and VLF machines currently on the market depending on the pricing. So what do they set the MSRP at? I guess it will depend on what a given company currently sells and what machines in their own line they intend to kill off. I think in the case of ML they would shoot for around $3k-$4k so it's positioned over the CTX. Or maybe kill the CTX and replace it with the new model. Or maybe $10k since they aren't shy about these things. If it's FTP I would think they would want to set MSRP over their highest (while lowering the F75 Ltd) around $2k to sell like hot cakes and kill off almost all competition which may include putting a dent in their lineup. But FTP has already positioned themselves for cutting the MSRP and eliminating existing machines so it might makes sense. If you are a Russian or Bulgarian company, don't have a large lineup and have already shown you are willing to undercut the big boys with price/performance then maybe a sub $1500 price range would sweep away the competition while making them very rich. If the new machine sniffs gold reliably and deep then I may consider focusing on the gold market in Africa, Australia and US first and sell a lot of units fast. No matter what can a new model be produced fast enough to keep up with demand if priced at the lower end? Now me as a consumer? It depends. If I live in an area with hard soils and primarily coin hunt I may not be interested because it would be overkill. Locally in my case we are seeing coins go past 10 inches in older urban areas. Most machines fail at that depth or hit and miss at best. I take the usual YT "tests" with huge grains of salt since the location of the 10 inch coins is already known while the ground is scrubbed. It's not like the usual random walking around and swinging which is affected by a lot of stuff like surface weeds, EMI, speed of the swing, etc. For all I know some coins may be heading towards 15 inches locally. But after a while it may not be practical to dig a hole 15 inches deep and tick off the local city. I can't say I wouldn't blame them actually. In which case we can say goodbye to all of those nice old coins. That only leaves clad and to me that isn't worth spending much money on a detector. BUT if I were into relic hunting (I wish I was back east) then something $2k or under would get my attention. Gold hunting, maybe $5k would get my attention since I might view it as an investment and expect some return versus being just a hobby machine. Then as the new whiz bang machines get sold there will be all of that used equipment sitting around and selling cheap which will directly affect the leftover VLF and PI new retail sales. It will be interesting to watch. I hope I get wind of a new machine early enough within my budget so I can sell off about everything else I own at that time. ;)

Good news. I was never crazy about camo finishes. Now if they can package the F19 with the 5 inch and 5x10 inch coils they would have a killer package. Additionally if Fisher or anyone offers multi-coil packages I think it's time for them to start including enough rods for the coils. Just a personal annoyance.

The 8 inch round coil is excellent for general detecting. I like it better than the 950 on the MXT. Also the 5.3 inch/6 inch or whatever you want to call it is an excellent coil for trashy areas.

There must be a huge market in the $300-ish and lower range of detectors. Between the new Whites and a few models before them, FTP with Bounty Hunter, Fisher, and Teknetics, then Minelab's new series, Garrett has a few plus a few others, there sure is a lot of choice. I've always wondered where the profit margins are best for the companies. I assumed it was the mid range $300-$1000 market that would provide the largest profits, but maybe not. I would think the manufacturing costs between a $300 machine and a $800 machine are not really the $500 difference so it would seem the $800 machine would give more margin even with fewer units sold. I still don't quite get it with Whites marketing and these new machines since they aren't selling them through the big sporting goods stores like the others. It doesn't seem like they could ever move as many units as FTP or Garrett. Unless I missed something.

This message was posted on another site today- Hello all! In an effort to improve support to Nokta and Kellyco Customers in North America, Nokta Metal Detectors and Kellyco are proud to announce that effective 1 June 2015, the Kellyco Repair Center is certified as an Authorized Nokta Warranty Service Center for North America. Warranty and Non-Warranty Service will be initially provided for the following Nokta products and will be expanded to cover additional Nokta models in the near future: Nokta FORS Core Nokta FORS Gold Nokta Velox Nokta Golden Sense Nokta RS Pinpointer Nokta Pointer Questions regarding Nokta Warranty / Non-Warranty Service in North America should be directed to the Kellyco Repair Center at 888-535-5926, ext. 121.

I guess I may have to wait on getting the new F75 LTD and see what this one turns out to be like. The pricing looks attractive. Being only 3lbs is real nice. It looks like the trigger is a conventional toggle switch. I haven't held one but the trigger on the Fors CoRe looks like a nice design improvement. Too bad it didn't make it on to the Racer.

New to this forum. I jumped in because of the Racer announcements. Exciting stuff to see these guys get aggressive about developing the technology. I'm a little disappointed there are only a few still photos. See and hearing this thing in action would be great, especially before someone decides to buy one. I do like a display using at least more than standard monotone LCD. For some reason it strikes me as loosely resembling a merged F75 display on an F70 rod.