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I haven't posted any comments regarding the whole CF issue (triggered in certain conditions) but I will probably grab one or two Kevlar lower rods instead of CF. The issue doesn't really affect me as I beach hunt and the coil and lower CF shaft are essentially "as one"......no coil manipulation when locating targets, etc. The only time there is any coil movement is when sometimes adjusting the coil angle by foot. I may as well buy Kevlar as backups as I am covered for scenarios that may present problems if I go nugget hunting with the Manticore. I am 100% happy using the CF lower for the beach hunting I do with a "fixed" coil and a lower CF shaft (typically at 45 degrees). I just hope Steveg doesn't have to worry about another thread of 30 pages which likely gave him some sleepless nights. There was an awful lot of information to get through. Want to hunt nuggets with the Manticore = Use a non-conductive lower shaft Want to hunt on the beach (not water) with the Manticore = The stock CF lower shaft will be fine (but be aware that any coil movement/manipulation relative to the lower CF shaft may generate a response). Now.....I just Googled Kevlar resistance to UV and and to some extent saltwater. Maybe I'm missing something but it ain't pretty ???

Did the dealer do the update or did you? I'm glad it all worked out!

Cointopia was a great learning experience for me, very little trash, probably 20 coins to every bit of junk. I really got to hone my silver finding ability by having so many silver targets in the wild to recover. The more you dig targets, the more you learn how they behave, what they sound like and so on. I got to the point I was always confident of the coin I was about to dig before digging it, and I was rarely wrong or surprised. Sadly jewellery is not my strong point at this stage, either people don't lose it or I suck at finding it. I quickly learnt I was the first to detect those sites, and oddly enough detecting is such a rare hobby here I can pretty confidently go to plenty of places and be the first to ever detect them. IT's grown in popularity lately in the big cities, but once away from them into the small regional towns you can be the first still to this day to run a detector over the hot spots. It's a shame your trip was so short and you didn't get to experience some of this stopping in at the many places you drove past to swing a coil, you would have found your own cointopia for sure, guaranteed. If I can dig it all in places I do, hard in parkland type places and certainly not in sports field areas, at least in gold areas the rabbits dig more holes than I ever could so the damage I cause is very minimal by comparison, so I can dig dig dig and I do. I'm not sure if you wandered down to the lakefront beach in the heart of Queenstown Mitchel, but it's very likely I was the first to detect that only a couple of years ago, if I wasn't the first the person that went, the person before me wasn't very good, as they left a lot of very old coins in the ground and over $100 worth of $1 and $2 coins that I was able to get my first time detecting it.

I'd be elated if any manufacturer focused solely on discriminating between gold and aluminum. It's not like it has to be anywhere near 100% accuracy either, because right now we're basically at 0% accuracy. What would even suffice for now, is a change in technology that was good enough to warrant the introduction of a gold probability meter.

Heard that same thing from the locals here in our mild soils that have ventured in that direction. We should all be rooting for Garrett, crazy not to, the more competition in the marketplace the better. We are hopefully on the final leg of the wait now to see what they can deliver.

I just turned on the TV on a all western station and in capital letters was VORTEX under it it said words and pictures . Now I can say I’ve seen that word more than one place. I’m really wanting to see it Tuesday of this coming week. Hopefully it’s more in a word than we’ve ever seen before. Chuck

May 4 2003 We continue to make progress on our trail. We have not heard or seen anyone in the entire area including camp at last year's dig site. It’s completely quiet. I can’t explain it but I have a sort of ominous feeling about the trail and Dreamwind Canyon. It’s as if I can feel bad energy as we are working. We are all just going about our business without any distractions so everything is off to a good start. Paul is a real work horse and is doing more than his share of labor. We are making great progress and I am hopeful that we will have the new camp set up within a few days or maybe a week. TO BE CONTINUED ..............

Absolutely. I have had a few instances like that too with gold chains and with damaged rings. For me, I practice really hard when I'm not actually hunting and when I am to not walk over good sounding gold range targets that have the "right" audio characteristics depending on what detector I'm using. When I am hunting with Deus 2 at least for me, plenty of targets sound borderline to iffy, even shallow ones. I will always try to dig 15 or 20 of those no matter what, if their numbers are right. I usually can call them as aluminum before I dig and I haven't been surprised yet. It's the really solid sounding targets with the right footprint that I make myself dig no matter what. Most of the time with Deus 2 they are aluminum or nickels but a few times they have been gold rings, chains, earrings or pendants. Making sure I know what the characteristics are of a "got to dig it" gold range target is my number one requirement when coin, jewelry and relic hunting and cherry picking is the only option.

While that's true with the Equinox, it's not with the Manticore, the shaft reacts reasonably badly in Beach low conductor and Beach deep. What this tells me is someone that looks for small gold jewellery on beaches has a lot more hope finding it with the Manticore, and that's a great thing, the Manticore no doubt in my mind is quite a big improvement over the Equinox as a beach hunting machine after seeing how much more it picks up a carbon shaft than the Equinox in some of its beach modes, it's been said a few times the Manticore was intentionally designed around being a machine for this task, and it does seem that's the case, although in all their testing they must have missed something as the firmware update included this, "General Stability Enhancements: Including improvements to Beach Mode Ground balance on dry sand" The Equinox in general doesn't react near as badly as the Manticore does on the shaft, in any situation, demonstrating the extra horsepower the Manticore has. I'm a lot like you Erik and your car noise analogy really suits my way of thinking, stuff can drive me mad and I can't let it go until it's fixed 😛 I've been known to pull many all nighters tackling tasks as I can't let them go until resolved, no point going to bed as I won't sleep until it's fixed! The best thing about this whole shaft debacle is I'm more impressed by my Manticore than ever, seeing it's differences over the Equinox, it's not just another mildly modified Equinox like the 900 is, it's a new animal, different enough to be a new detector, not something that could have been done with a firmware update to the 800 like the 900's software changes.

For me, digging everything with a PI is still the safest method, in particular when paired with "selective detecting". What I mean with that is that I do alot of scraping and digging, before I even start detecting. By a river I think about where gold could be (think like gold), then I start removing rocks and dig holes before I even start firing up my detector. On a typical 8h detecting day I find myself roughly 4 hour digging and 4 hour detecting. This method can be productive, since gold is usually not just laying around (anymore) for easy detecting. So, if I just wander around by a river and detect I seldomly find anything, unless I really dig. In the desert I most often do the boot scrape method but then detect everything that's left when using PI or ZVT. The VLF I most often use for tailing piles and then strictly go by ID, but caveats need to be understood. GC

Set realistic expectations and that’s when you get pleasantly surprised instead of continually disappointed.

The earlier stuff definitely seemed similar to FT stuff. Makro Racer models and the Nokta Fors both had FT style menus and functionality but they definitely left them behind by entering the world of multi frequency. Forgot that it was Detekniks before changing to Quest. I would imagine that with an international marketplace that minute patent disputes could easily go on for decades without resolution.

I and quite a few others on the referenced thread do not either. Non-conductive lower rods have been a near absolute (there are exceptions, CTX for instance) industry standard for decades. Why? Because a conductive lower rod might cause issues. Not will, might. The simple answer for companies like White’s to make sure it could not be an issue was to use fiberglass lower rods on all their models, as White’s did for ages. It never had to be thought about or engineered around because the problem could not exist. I do not have any issue with anyone making an informed decision to use an aftermarket rod that is conductive. It will not affect most lower frequency applications, beach modes in particular which tend to knock out the salt range. Informed decision being the key. What I do think is not wise is for manufacturers to use anything but non-conductive as a general standard. It’s just a common sense solution to keep accidents from happening. I’m sure Minelab simply overlooked the possibility of an issue when they switched from non-conductive lower rods on the Equinox 600/800 to conductive lower rods on the 700/900 and Manticore. For most people it will be a non-issue but for anyone running Gold Mode in particular it’s going to bite you. But it can show up in any mode that has a 20 kHz or higher frequency as a component, either singly or in multi. Easiest way to tell is just lay the coil back flat against the rod and wiggle it. You’ll know fast if there is a problem. There are quite a few people who obviously are very defensive over all this and react poorly when it is brought up at all, insisting it can’t be real or a problem. Check it out and decide for yourself instead of listening to anyone, including me. The idea is for people to have information to make their own informed decisions. You know, learn something - knowledge is power. Simply knowing what this is and why it occurs can help alleviate or avoid the issue entirely, as long as you are expecting it. Not everyone who owns these models will use them exclusively in Beach Mode. And that’s where Minelab erred in my option. The standard rod should be perfect for all modes and applications, not just most of them.

I always thought what I called NokMak detectors were far more similar to First Texas models than Minelab in their menu options, and more importantly, how they acted and performed. Until they jumped to multi, leapfrogging First Texas by a mile. But bottom line is no, they have not been licensing Minelab stuff, they are fully capable of developing product on their own. As far as lawsuits, they have been a constant in the metal detector world for decades. People usually just don’t hear about it. And yeah, FT sued Detekniks and won a finding that they had copied FT code, and then Detekniks changed their name to Quest to get away from the stink that left. I suppose if Minelab wins their case against Nokta then they will be forced to license whatever it is, most likely retroactively. Been going on a long time though with no resolution that I’ve seen yet.

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem.

Interesting that there is a lawsuit. I wonder if Quest had any patents on the current “cell phone” pod handle layout?(although a general layout probably isn’t able to be patented) Seems like they brought us the first version of the current trend in design. Although I remember Quest being sued by FirstTexas for cloning the T2 if my memory serves me correctly?

Yeah it’s went from Makro and Nokta….then MakNok……now Nokta. Always seemed like a Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet all being General Motors deal.

Another great video from Nenad, Testing on hard to see gold - E1500 & GPX6000 - YouTube

Hi Mike if you are still here I bumped you to Full Member status. The ten limit per day for new members is indeed there to stop mega spammers, and you are not one.

Here we go again, just got this email. OMG only 9 left, better buy now!!!! At this rate those nine are going to last about five years or more.

Unless we are Simon and in Cointopia we will never know how many pieces of trash and goodies are at a site. We just don't know if we are the first or the 20th detector over a piece of park unless we have been there before. What are we hearing? Trash, ignored trash, fresh drop, deep missed trash, notched out misses, Minelab misses, AT misses, etc. etc. The same somewhat applies to nugget patches. Why is that target still there? It is a hammered site. As Steve has said we just have to get 'lucky' to be at the right place at the right time to find a good piece. Sometimes that happens when we dig everything and sometimes it is with a new detector cherry picking. Trash is good and trash is bad. Digging everything is good and digging everything hurts the back. Detecting often is the common denominator! (or sometimes not) haha We all have stories. Now ... consistency is another matter. The body of work and finds. That takes some of the luck out of it.

Yes, Geotech's video in another thread about carbon rods shows this clearly.. The rods don’t react when the detector is in multi-frequency beach mode (where the rod’s signal is filtered out just like a salt signal).. I'm thinking about times when I'm not using my detectors in beach mode.. For me it's a bit like noticing a weird engine noise when I'm driving along.. It could be nothing and have zero effect on the car's performance, but my mind won't rest easy until the noise is gone.. I know that's probably irrational and I agree that for many years no one realized there even was a problem.. But now the problem has been brought to our attention, I can't stop hearing the weird engine noise.. And for simple peace of mind I'll fix the problem even though it might not be a problem at all.. I don't need additional background noise when detecting, where I'm constantly second guessing myself wondering if that iffy signal is the rod or a juicy bit of gold.. Just like everyone else I like to squeeze the most out of my detectors, and this means that from now on I'm using plastic lower rods even in salt water.. Maybe an overkill but also peace of mind..

Mike and I were having a little private discussion behind the scenes about his problem where I was reassuring him he would be fine with his warranty, and he was. He let the store he purchased at deal with it, good move. He's unable to post being a new member he's exceeded his posts limit however, here is his reply so the thread can end on a nice happy note. MichaelHill I'm not ignoring you guys on the thread, the site says I have reach my maximum amount of post for the day, never experienced that on a forum before. I'm assuming it's cause I'm a new member on a "probation" period? Maybe it will allow me to post an update tomorrow. Anyway, great news. I was able to exchange the unit for a brand new one at the store it was purchased at, so now I have a brand new Equinox 900, and it is fully updated. I was elated to hear they would exchange the unit no problem. Hopefully I will be able to post tomorrow 👍

I have always prided myself in my ability to cherry pick gold targets by digging that “gold sound” and in general I have probably done ok at it. I know that I have gone back to places I have cherry picked to dig trash out of desperation thinking I must have left gold behind, and in most cases I did not leave much. Yet just when I am giving myself a pat on the back a really trashy target will turn into gold. Many nuggets that sounded really bad for various reasons. With jewelry there was that balled up gold chain that sounded like crap, and that irregularly shaped pendant. Most ear rings get left as small foil targets. In the end we never know what the items we did not dig are, and given my years and volume of gold dug I can only assume I have left a lot of gold in the ground. Pounds probably. It’s just a time thing. I know many gold patches that once seemed full of targets, trash and gold, but years later now we are struggling to find any targets at all. Most places get ‘hunted out” but in the case of nugget hunters it’s more like we sanitize a patch. Regular parks replenish trash faster than we can deplete it, making cherry picking a necessity, but most soccer fields around here there is not one bit of aluminum to be found. Time, and how good is the site? A general park gets tons of people, tons of trash, odds not so good. So cherry pick. Soccer fields? Prime time jewelry site so people hit them and dig every aluminum signal until they do actually deplete out. Don’t know, no right or wrong about it really as long as we are having fun doing whatever we are doing. A few finds….

There is no MakNok now - it’s just Nokta.