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Ron,that is the exact same setup that i use ie the Docs Gold screamer and also use a BT LL transmitter and the heaphones that i purchased for my Equinox......must admit the system does work exceptionally well and no long cables from either the battery pack or headphones.

So let me tell you a little story about being a Minelab Dealer since 1992. I have been a diehard Minelab dealer. It's not only that I believe in the brand, I believe in the hobby. It's just one of the most fun things I have even been involved in. April 5th of this year Placer Pete had their Spring festival. This is mostly geared towards new detectorists who want to learn how to dry wash, metal detect, etc. etc. I was invited to be a guest lecturer. My fee? $0. How much did it cost me? Over $1000. I sponsored some treasure hunts with prizes. I would say at least 50% of the detectorists had Minelab machines, mostly Gold Monsters. 95% of those folks had no idea how to use their detector. So for 4 days. In cold and wind and then sun and heat I gave lectures and training every day. Then went into the field to help these new users learn how to use their detectors. How much did I sell. NOTHING! I did not go there to sell anything. I went there to share my passion for gold prospecting with a bunch of excited folks eager to learn. Do you know how many Minelab reps were there? NONE. Just me, a lowly dealer. But I was there to represent Minelab, and help people who had purchased Minelab machines learn how to use them. Not one of those people had purchased their machines from me. So I wonder if Minelab in Australia really understands or appreciates what all Minelab dealers do to promote the Minelab brand? We just don't sell Minelab machines we promote this industry. I have to tell you, selling metal detectors is not a winning proposition in terms of profit. Can you imagine having $60,000 worth of metal detectors sitting on your shelf hoping some consumer will decide they want to buy just one of those machines from you? Do you know when I sell a Gold Monster on Ebay and the consumer pays with a credit card, wants free shipping and I have to pay listing fees I average around $78 profit? The point being, most dealers are dealers not to become rich, it's because they love this crazy hobby. So I will just hang in there and go with the flow. I want to believe Minelab has a different role for Minelab dealers that fits in with this new marketing approach. If not, I am unclear as to what the purpose a Worldwide Partner Conference next year in Australia would serve. I have faith there is a bigger picture that we are not privy to as of yet. Doc

This explains why you were saying all coins ID the same and the ID you had for them was not an ID a coin would come up 🙂 I was puzzled by that and thought it must be your faulty coil, turns out you weren't even looking at the Target ID's in the first place just the ground minerilization number. I probably should have showed you how to do that when you were prospecting with it as we were in an area with a lot of pellets and it would have saved you a lot of time not digging as many. Now when you go back to the beach you're going to have a ball using the real target ID's. Flick it on in your lounge room, put it in pinpoint mode, lower the sensitivity until stable, probably about 15 or so and run some coins over it and get their ID's. Unlike a VLF you don't swing them past over and over again to get an ID, just hold them still in front of the coil. Pinpoint mode can go out of whack when left in that mode for a while, all you do is press the button again to retune it and keep going.

May 5 2003 Part One Wire Gold Paul and I hiked up ahead on the footpath to get an up close look at Dreamwind Canyon while Clay and Conor were busy clearing debris and making the trail. I noticed that as we got up near the entrance there wasn’t a sound to be heard. No birds, animals, nothing but a slight wind rustling through some pine and underbrush. Paul wanted to show me his secret entrance from the west. As we got near an opening the rock walls rose quickly and the change in temperature surprised me. It was a beautiful early May day and the temperature must have been around the mid 70’s up to here but as we entered the canyon walls the temperature had climbed a good 15 degrees or so. Paul’s entrance was on the west side of what appeared to be a solid rock wall but actually was a narrow slot about eight feet wide and 50 feet in length. No one would ever know it was there and I was impressed by Paul’s scouting abilities. I mentioned the quick change in temperature to Paul and he just laughed saying that this was nothing compared to the Summer here. At least our camp would be just outside of the canyon walls and much cooler. Paul had camped inside those tall rock walls many times and it must have been rough. He told me that you can get used to the heat if you survive the first few days. I started feeling a little uneasy about this whole deal but made my mind up to stick with the exploration. I just hope the others will as well. Once in the canyon I looked up at the top of those cliffs. They were a good 250 to 300 ft or more in height and there was no climbing them. Paul said Dreamwind Canyon ran for miles to the north and the walls got even taller. We worked our way along a rocky path on the west side. Paul said this was the easy way to travel but also the riskiest. I asked him what he meant by that and he said it was used by mountain lion as well as occasional humans. He said that in his experience any men that were in this canyon could be desperate people either looking for gold and treasure and possibly on the run from the law. In other words, the canyon was sometimes used as a hideout by criminals. I hadn’t heard this from him before and was a little upset that he was just now telling me this. Paul said that over the years he had run into some pretty strange people out here. It’s just not a normal place for most people to want to go and most have a reason for wanting to be in such a remote place. We continued moving north for about an hour and the hike became extremely difficult. Brush and rocks became tough to get past and there were numerous steep elevation changes that required nearly straight up climbs and severe drops of 50 feet or more. All inside of those steep canyon walls. After going a little further I told Paul I was exhausted and needed to get in better shape to deal with the heat and terrain. He convinced me to go just a little further before we turned east into the thickest brush I’d ever tried to walk through. We went another 100 yards and stopped at a rock outcropping. Paul walked over to it and placed his hand on a quartz vein that had poked out of the rock and then quickly disappeared again. He told me to take a good look at the quartz. There was visible wire gold running all through it. I just looked at it with awe. I looked over at Paul and he was smiling. TO BE CONTINUED ...............

That would be cool if it was a small coil, as the bigger coil often defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place especially when using it for a gold pinpointer to pinpoint the tiny gold your big GPZ coil detected, the ideal size coil for me would be the GB2 coil, but I don't want to sacrifice my GB2 for it and its too fiddly to use for a quick pinpointer, so I did it with my Gold Monster as I've never use that again as a full-size detector anyway. It can easily be converted back as it was a detector designed for the purpose as it was designed to be put on a wooden broomstick and came with the attachment for a coil to go onto the broomstick. I wonder if the new cut back Gold Monsters still come with this stuff. It's a really different and cool idea Minelab had, and I guess it was for the African market and broken shafts mean they can just use broomsticks which would be available anywhere. The GM1000 is the detector off the shelf closest to coming as a mini pinpointer when all you need to do is buy a short dowel or a broomstick and cut to length to have it be one. If they come out with a SMF GM2000 and keep the broomstick method available you'll get your wish Ron 😉 I haven't used my GM1000 pinpointer in ages now, I just use my Sphinx 03 pinpointer, its sensitive enough to pick up #9 lead pellets and has discrimination which appears to work pretty well except on tiny targets which my magnet often sorts out.

Some more nails 🫢...But this doesn't mean You're forced to dig it all. Just be aware of mixed traces and sounds with a dot on the line, connected to an upper trace...

The number you see while swinging is the ground mineralization number. To get a target id you must stop and analyze each target using the pinpoint mode:

I really did not notice much difference in performance just an amplified sound. The Doc’s system did get rid of the always shorting curly cord and also allowed for more amplification to run an external speaker. Going cordless through a Bluetooth relay is the best thing nowadays or using a transmitter and receiver headphones option.

It takes about 15 minutes to fill a bucket screened and about 10-15 minutes to run it through my Geo highbanker drop riffle unit, which uses less water flow then + riffle units. But it captures even the tiniest microscopic gold.

Thanks!

The fires are a couple of hundred miles north. The smoke was so bad last weekend that I opted to stay indoors. Last summer, I ventured out several times wearing a N95 mask.

I just realized that the 'number' I've been looking at when using the 1500 is not the real ID number. I'll have to research a bit more to know what the swinging number represents. In order to get the accurate ID number available on the 1500 you have to put it in pinpoint mode! Now let's see what our clad numbers really are. Sometimes we know what we are using and often times we don't.

They should have given Beast Mode a new name. All the earlier Beast Mode videos are going to make things very confusing for a lot of people.

The First Swing is only being sold in Europe. It's the same as the Midi-Hoard but with Black Housing. Midi-Hoard = $149 Midi-Hoard with Pinpointer = $248

Thanks Steve. I did read the page you posted. Great info as always!

If this direct sales keeps Minelab growing as a company then I’m glad for them as I would hate for Minelab to close shop due to all the competition they are seeing currently. I’ve got to admit my passion for this hobby comes from Bruce Candy’s Pulse Induction technology and I will always be looking forward to the next best and greatest thing his patents produce keeping me engaged in this great outdoor hobby and adventure. I’m also glad I was able to take a hobby and turn into a job after retiring from my first career. We have seen all the small stores here also struggling and closing doors due to online shopping and big name companies going direct sales. They always say if you can’t beat them then join them. I’ll guess I’ll have to see if my son wants to be an electronics engineer for Minelab and help him through college, then if I ask him nicely he will make me what I’m looking for in a decent detector. 😀

Tiny thing but that old SD threshold warble drove me crazy. The GPX models have a rock steady threshold. That plus better small gold capability and better hot rock handling would have me never going back to a SD or even GP model from the GPX series.

So I do have Docs screamer battery kit on it. How much does that change performance?

Looks like you're right. Minelab issued v1.0.4 in September 2018. That's slightly before my time with the Equinox (I purchased in November 2018), and now that my memory is jogged, I'm sure mine already had v1.0.4 installed when I received it. I never updated mine until 2.0 was released in Sept 2019. Interesting that Minelab has wiped all mention of v1.0.4 off of the Equinox 600/800 downloads page. Clearly 2.0 is what they consider the starting point for the machine at this stage, which obviously would have all of the components of v1.0.4 anyway (though not mentioned in the notes for v2.0, for folks who may be updating older machines late in the game). Quite a few additional items were included in that first update - here's a screen grab from a Gigmaster video at the time of v1.0.4's release (don't get me started on Minelab's conceited, self-applauding lead-in for the "What is new?" section): Again, I'm not defending Minelab on this - there is absolutely no question that Nokta puts out more frequent and substantial updates in response to customer/user feedback than Minelab. My only goal was to point out that it isn't surprising that Minelab has not put out an update based on their own past behavior. Turns out we can call the 700/900 overdue for an update/patch even by Minelab standards. Unfortunately, maybe you've hit on the crux of the problem right there.

Vanquish 340 or 440

Fisher Gold Bug 2 is definitely proof of this happening. 😄

Peroxide will bubble on platinum because platinum is a catalyst. You have a candidate for platinum if it comes from an area noted for platinum occurrences. Aluminum may react to peroxide to some degree too, unsure. I'd do an accurate specific gravity test. Ie - not trying to measure displacement directly, but taking a wet and dry weight on an accurate scale, one with 2 degrees of precision (0.xx grams). Or just take it to a good jeweler or refiner with an XRF.

Some people says that Manticore is a little bit deeper than Equinox. That people does not have Manticore domesticated... Manticore with the right settings and the right hands is another world: you wouldn't believed it if you haven't experienced by yourself.

How long does it take you to go through one bucket

The SD/GPX Legacy series & the GB2 have found a lot of gold for many people in the goldfields. Having a discrimination VLF for low mineralized ground and a more recent version PI is always a good combo if pursuing a better chance of finding gold in a variety of soil conditions. The stock SD series just lacked the ability to hear the smaller gold that the GPX can hear much better.