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It’s unlikely that anyone will feel like they have taken a step backwards anywhere as comparing Equinox to Manticore. Well, except coil selection. Hopefully it’s not a three year wait for more coils this time, but that is something to consider. At absolute worst, when it comes to capability, you should be no worse off with Manticore. At best, there will be advantages, including with Gold Mode. At a minimum, more power to the coil translates to enhanced small gold capability. But there are always caveats, as in the form of enhanced small hot rock sensitivity. By it’s nature more power to the coil equates to the best performance enhancements in the mildest ground. So Florida white sand or neutral turf hunters get the biggest boost. Conversely, gains in extreme soils can be nil to none, as more power simply saturates the signal faster, calling for reduced sensitivity. The only reason I’m playing hard to get with Manticore is I am well invested in Nox custom rods and coils, and VLF usage is quite minimal for me anyway. This year over 95% of my detecting time is with PI, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. So I can afford to sit back and see how the coil situation with Manticore plays out, plus pass on the all but inevitable bug fix phase. But it’s coils more than anything that I’d like to see before I get all hot and bothered over it. The 5x8 looks really nice, but I’m not ready to give up my 6” round or 5x10 Coiltek just yet.

Day 4 of detecting down under. I started the day running the big dog Z7000 with 18x12 XCOIL. Running High Yield/Difficult kicked a lot of hotrocks and no gold. I switched to the 17 Concentric coil and it ran really smooth in HY/Difficult, untroubled by hotrocks, but no gold. After I took a break and rested my back, I broke out the gold killer, 6000 with 14x9 Coiltek. I started finding tiny bits at remarkable depth with that machine. I worked the fringes to stay out of the hotrocks and found 18 bits for the day. Nothing big. All the big stuff has done been got, all that is left are the crumbs. Clearly you can't expect to find big gold if you're sticking to the same known patches, but it's early yet. Couple weeks to go, maybe some blue sky exploration to find that dream patch. Photo 1 is yesterday's finds Photo 2 is day 1 and 2 Photo 3 is today's bits

That is a neat knife and silver of any kind is always good. WTG! HH Jim Tn

No cracks...one of the first ones made and use it in the water all the time....got lucky I guess strick

I’m always happy with silver..nice find. Strick

They certainly do record it all, it doesn't seem it's there for us to see. When I was buying my first 4500 second hand I wanted to verify the thing was genuine, because it was an old Aussie one it didn't have the fancy hologram thing it just went by serial number. To prove it was genuine they wanted to know the name of the person it was registered to along with the serial number. They said both the name and serial matched their records so yes its genuine. They then changed that original name over to my name for me in their database. They said for people to contact them with their GPX 6000 serial number and they'll tell them if their serial number is an affected detector so they know the range of serial numbers involved. A bit like the older GPX 4500 recall, they listed the range of serial numbers that had the problem. The serial number range was 00000 - 01200 so 1200 detectors and Minelab made contact with the registered owners to say they had an issue with their detector. It seems this time they're just going to let it fly and if people contact them with an affected number they'll fix it, possibly hoping most people won't contact them.

Do they? I've registered more than one Minelab product over the years and I can swear when I go on to my account with them, I can't see or find the multiple registrations. When I have gotten a new detector, I drop the info into a new form that I can't seem to find. I've never gotten an email that said you are the owner of such, and such numbered detector and we just wanted you to know something. Can you look up your warranty on their system? I know my dealers have had them and they have accepted my 800 but that is because they know their stuff and not really mine. Who maintains their purchaser database?

I guess it's a bit like the Avantree Torus and it's crackling, some hear it, some don't even though Avantree themselves admit its a limitation with the device and they can't fix it, but everyone has it that uses aptX LL on the Torus. I think some just don't notice the speaker problem as much as others do, and some just don't use the speaker at all so it doesn't bother them. I'm a speaker person so of course any speaker issue bothers me. This video is a funny example, some people swear to death this video has no sound, but it does. Kids use similar tones on their phones at school so older teachers can't hear the SMS messages rolling in 🙂 This is another cool video on the hearing thing

Personally, I hope they don't stop at 1.0. Version 1.0 software doesn't guarantee a finished product. Look how many other detectors and other products had and still have updates after their version 1.0 comes out. In today's computerized hardware, products should be continually updated as needed. In reality a finished product that is no longer updated, specially a metal detector, is actually at its end of life.

Nice hunt with a good outcome. Good luck on you next hunt.

Whats the big deal, you just detected a beach with that guy last week. Better hope someone don't knock that guy out and steal his rig.

Welcome to the forum and glad to have you here with us. Love seeing items dug up from your area as it always has history behind it. Good luck and good hunting as you learn this new hobby that you are doing.

Kellyco shows 20 of the 11" version of the WS6 Master units in stock.

Thanks, F350, I can't seem to get away from fingernails... I find them everywhere! 😱 Yeah was in dig all mode to make sure I was making the right calls on bad targets and wasn't skipping good targets. Most of them were what I thought they'd be, but a couple fooled me. 😉

Geezer, Thanks for the encouragement on the MDT, but that find was a freak event because I went over that ground with the MDT & 9" coil and only found some larger non-ferrous bullets and thick copper wire. That was before I found a few 1 gram to 2 gram nuggets with the higher frequency Gold Monster & Gold Bug 2. I also went over the ground with 2 other 18 & 19 kHz detectors--nothing much. When I get my MDT 9" coil ear repaired I'll take it to a good trashy relic site and give it hell until I can reject most of the trash by sound--I don't look at numbers much, just to see if they're plus or minus on this machine. There are a lot of factors at play. 1/2 of the tiny gold I've found there was 1-2" deep. I've detected the relic site with the Tek G2+ and Fors Gold+ and found some interesting stuff, liked the Fors better for tones, but G2+ is easiier to use and also gets the goods. The Gold Monster also tells what's what--ferrous, non-ferrous. In fact I should spend a little more time there with it. Although I'm not really into relics anymore, what detectors will do is interesting to me. Gerry's gold detecting class at Rye Patch years ago showed me how to recover tiny nuggets with the scoop technique which is probably on U-tube somewhere--doesn't take very long.

Yep. Exactly what I've been saying for a while now too - that it wasn't just my machine but it must affect a lot of machines at once since I've noticed it on other machines I've run around/with too, even sometimes when the owners themselves didn't know what they were hearing. At least some aggravated people can stop inferring I was making something up now or saying I'm whining because they can't see it on their specific machine. I take a lot of pride in the accuracy of my field observations with regards to equipment and didn't much appreciate the inferrence that I was just whining or even lying about something that ML already knew was an issue. The 4500 upon first release had a recall to replace mainboards due stability issues, mine was one of them. ML was upfront about it and didn't hide the announcement in a place no one would find and half the world didn't even have access to, so when people reported problems with the 4500 they didn't look like pariahs. Would be nice to see them do the same with the 6000. Some (if not all?) US dealers aren't even aware of this fix yet and it's been out for a while.

Thanks phrunt, That's how I always interpreted audio feedback, like you described. So just wondering what's their definition here.

I'm not sure why they're describing it as audio feedback, that normally would require a microphone picking up sound from the speaker while the speaker is playing sound from the microphone creating a loop I would think. A signal feeding back to itself. You can get it with Skype calls if your speaker volume is too loud and the software can't cancel it out. I believe they're meaning they have an electronics problem with the speaker not being isolated from the PCB of the detector well so the speaker is causing interference with the signal, eg detector generated EMI and instability that many people have been complaining about. It requires a hardware change, which begs the question, why are they acting like it is only some detectors and not a production run from this date to this date? Or is their quality control so bad that runs of detectors have variations in their hardware? In all likelihood it is the case that it's every detector made within certain dates, they just don't want to say which dates they are as it means a massive recall, they're just hoping most people don't notice the problem as they're encouraging headphone use and have been for quite a long time with the previous notice issued in March 2022 telling everyone it is best to use the headphones. https://www.minelab.com/anzea/support/product-notices?article=482551 Perhaps this is when they finally realized there was a real problem. It's sounding more like a cover up to me.

What is audio feedback? False signals, excessive emi chatter??

Well well well, what do we have here! They've finally accepted they made a mistake, after lots of complaining went unanswered they've had to accept they have released faulty GPX's with speaker problems and are going to do warranty on them, oddly only for Australian's so far, if you access their website from other countries IP's the content is not there, only from Australian IP's. People knew they had a problem, people knew their detector was not like the others yet it went unanswered for how long? How many times were people being accused of being whingers when they knew they had a problem! They could have acknowledged when the newly manufactured GPX's with the update take place from to give us an idea. Was it from August this year? Was it January? Was it last year? Looks to me like they're encouraging people to use headphones so they don't notice the problem with theirs and are not being upfront about how many potentially problematic ones are out there to avoid having to do warranty on them. They know the serial numbers affected, they could just contact the owners, most people have registered their warranty, that gives them the contact details. They could do the right thing and contact everyone with a faulty unit that they have the details of rather than wait to be contacted by those that realise they have a faulty unit. They also have a video on how to do it For those with an acceptable IP address https://www.minelab.com/anzea/metal-detectors/gpx-6000 and clicking updates. They must be gradually going to roll the "recall" out around the world so as to not flood their service agents or something, they will have to get the parts to them all starting off with Australia, the easiest one I guess. Here's a screen print of the page for those that can't see it GPX 6000 - Metal Detector speaker problem.pdf

They fit good and the buttons line right up with the cover. Got from detector warehouse.

I don't really like to talk about specific places I detect on forums, just brings too much of the wrong kind of attention to places. But so much of that area is private, state, or claimed that I guess it doesn't really hurt to say something here, it'd be difficult to prospect without knowing ranchers, getting a prospecting permit from the state, or running into that mining company's claims. Anyways, there were small nuggets and fine gold found on Crow Creek and it's forks going all the way into Cheyenne, reported all the way back to the days of the Transcontinental Railroad. A farmer used to find nuggets in his chicken's crops on one of the forks too. The propensity for poultry to peck up shiny things including nuggets, IMO was the likely origin of the "golden goose" myth, separately. Pretty much all of Wyoming is an intensely interesting area, geologically. The Wyoming Craton was basically it's own little subcontinent in the Archean times, is some of the oldest rock on Earth (some gneiss is 3.6 billion year old), so the suture zone where it long ago collided with the later rock that is now North America can host all nature of interesting mineralogical features. That mine is basically on or very near that suture zone. I believe some of the Montana mineralization is on that same suture zone as it extends north out of Wyoming too.

I've been keeping an eye on Seaghost and I just don't know how to get in touch with him! And all I had to do was buy accessories from SeagHost makers! Because I have a great electronics repairman here, who can help me install and weld wires

dogodog -- Thanks for your interest! My 3-piece travel shafts are custom builds; with mine, the upper shaft section detaches, via one of my clamp-type cam locks, and then the lower rod collapses inside the middle shaft. So, when transporting/travelling with the shaft, you will actually have two pieces -- the detached upper, and then the middle section with lower rod collapsed inside. Being custom built, these shaft sections can be tailored to fit whatever bag or case you plan to transport them in. The only limitation is that they need to be long enough to allow whatever extension length you use, when detecting. So, the first thing needed when I build a custom travel shaft, is that length -- from butt end to the bottom of the lower rod -- that is your comfortable detecting length. Once I know that length, I know the minimum length each section can be built to, and still achieve that extension length. From there, I can tailor those lengths as needed. Often, with 22 inches being the maximum length allowed by the airlines for carry-on bags, I try to keep all the sections at or below 21 1/2". However, I can often go shorter (customer dependent), and have even built the sections to very specific lengths, to fit into a particular hard case that a customer may wish to use. I'll attach a picture of one such custom build, below; I'd be glad to work with you on a travel shaft, if you are interested. If so, send me an email at steve@stevesdetectorrods.com, and we can chat about it. Thank you! Steve

True. I just wanted to tell people what I loosely based the journal on - or at least what gave me the idea to write it.