New Go-Find 66 Announced

[Nuke em]

On 1/1/2018 at 9:46 PM, tsunamiscott said:

I would love a GoFind/Equinox hybrid.  Imagine a collapsible carbon fiber stock, with the Equinox control head and search coil. I'm ready to pre-order Minelab!

That stem is cheap plastic and is brittle , not for serious and long term detecting . Wasn't joking in my last post . It would break in no time .

[dsb]

I got a 60 for $100.  It's a neat concept but really   whats the word, delicate .  I sold it But if it was sturdier and and you could turn off the light show that is distracting and a battery eater I'd buy another. Used it in a sand volleyball court and it worked fine.

[Steve Herschbach]

I got a chance to handle the old Go-Find models and it was the somewhat loose plastic feel to the whole thing that turned me off. I was at the dealer meeting where they were introduced (I was there to speak about GPZ) and I was offered one for free. I declined under the pretense that surely a dealer there needed it more for their purposes than me, just an old retired bloke. The truth is I did not want to accept a freebie only to take it home and sell it immediately! My perception was that it was a kids toy, and nothing wrong with that, but not what I needed.

Hopefully the new models have been firmed up to feel more solid. I think Minelab is on the right path here in trying to make a detector that appeals to the younger generation. But that is another area where they fell down on the job. The phone app for the Go-Find 60 was more advanced and had some cool functions but I never saw anything ever released by Minelab that explained what it was all about or the perceived benefits.

[Johnnysalami1957]

Go finds look like the old polio crutch with a smartphone cradle.

[dsb]

I thought about keeping it for out of town work but i have a compadre that works fine for that.  Using the GO-FIND got me wanting something newer then my tesoro,s  with a screen, dang thing.

[Nuke em]

I wonder what the improvements are going to be ? 

I might consider 1 as a scouting machine .

It would have to be better stem wise . Wish they would put a coil cover on too.

[Jeff McClendon]

I have young nieces, nephews, etc. that like to go detecting with me. I don't like giving them my 
mid-level detectors and they don't like my ancient Tesoro Cutlass II microMax (I do!!!!)  I decided
to pick-up a Gofind 40 for them to have fun with especially since all of the original Gofinds are being closed-out
with the new models about to hit the shelves. Thanks for the heads up on the new models, Steve. I really like how they fold up. Yeah they are very rickety and the armrest is a joke but they will fit in a back pack and I've got lots of camo duct tape! Bought it new for $135 with a nice carry bag and hat included. So, I thought I better learn it first so I can teach them.

Today was the first decent day here lately in Denver to try it out. 40 degrees and after scraping 4 inches of snow off of my test bed I tried my X-Terra 705 (7.75khz concentric), my Tesoro Cutlass II (8" donut) and the Gofind 40. Ground phase mineralization numbers are low 80s to low 90s when the ground is dry. Wet ground plus EMI made the 705 and Cutlass II sound like a tree full of extremely rabid squirrels unless I cut sensitivity way back on the Tesoro and did lots of fancy adjustments on the 705. The Gofind40 was totally quiet even at full sensitivity?????  So I said " WTH " and figured that the Gofind 40 probably wouldn't even detect a surface target with all of its pre-set discrimination circuitry under these conditions. Wow was I wrong. It nailed a 7 inch deep US nickel with no problem and with a clear signal. Target ID was way off but so what.... It nailed all of my shallower targets with pretty accurate target IDs and very clear signals too. 

The Xterra 705 could not even detect past 4 inches in any of the four pre-set coin modes because it gave only a very low signal (-8, way off TID too) in All Metal on the 7" nickel. Maybe I should have tried Beach mode!!!

The Tesoro was somewhat better with 0 discrimination and sensitivity at 8 (half of full maximum) and gave a quiet, clipped signal on the 7 inch nickel and fairly normal signals on the rest of the shallower targets. There is nothing like ED120 on my 18 year old, totally beat up, microMax Tesoro.

So, I am fairly impressed with the Gofind 40s ability to detect at decent depth in damp, cold, high mineralization and high EMI conditions with what doesn't even appear to be a proper search coil! I wonder what it will do in normal conditions or at the beach. If it doesn't completely fall apart it will be a keeper.

jmaclen

Teknetics G2+
Makro Gold Racer
Minelab Xterra 705
Tesoro Cutlass II microMax
Tesoro Mojave ( being fixed in Prescott I hope!)
Minelab Gofind 40