New Minelab Pi Announcement Date 2020

[flakmagnet]

19 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

Weight alone is not worth another huge investment for me

I don't think anyone is saying that weight alone is the issue (except maybe after six or seven hours into a hunt). 

Best wishes...

[Chase Goldman]

20 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

Unless the new detector has the potential to find more gold than the Zed in its current configuration, I will not buy it. Weight alone is not worth another huge investment for me unless there would be a significant advsntage in the field.

Well, not having made that huge investment yet, myself...

But seriously, Minelab needs to consider whether they are going to court those who have already invested in the Zed and new buyers, or new buyers only.  I suspect that ML will want to attract existing and new users, so some performance enhancement likely needs to be part of the equation.

But frankly, an updated, lighter version of the GPX with similar power would be all I am really looking for and I would be willing to " upgrade" from my current GPX even if the performance enhancement were marginal.

[jasong]

I think it's a lot harder to make a successful new gold prospecting machine without any real tech advancements than it is to make a new coin machine with no major tech advancements. Nature isn't making any more nuggets, but new coins and rings get dropped every day by people so you need much less tech to succeed in coin shooting than you do in nugget shooting. In 50 years my Ace 250 is still gonna find me gold rings, but my GPZ won't find a single nugget when there are none left within range for it to find. So, a new gold machine better be a major improvement over the last model in some shape or form, or I just don't see it succeeding outside of the 2nd and 3rd world, even if they get down into the sub-$3k range. It's pointless to run a detector over ground with no targets left in detection range.

To compound the issue - most guys I've met nugget shooting are in their 70's and 80's now. Very few new or younger people have joined since I started 13 years ago, mostly due to obscene pricing schemes. And nugget depletion is a massive problem here in the USA too. Nugget shooting is already dying quick here in the USA from what I can tell. Most of the success is limited to people with areas of exclusive access or exclusive knowledge in the USA today. Dunno about Australia or NZ, just talking about here.

Waiting another 5 years to release something significantly better than the GPZ might find half their market in the US missing.

An observation: I've taken my X Coils around quite a bit now. They are definitely giving me a nice, repeatable, measurable sensitivity boost. But I can say for certain that it's just not enough anymore. I've found maybe $700 in nuggets I missed with prior technology, in total. It's not enough to pay even my gas for a 25 hour drive round trip, let alone food+propane, tire repair, etc. Whatever ML does next needs to be better. It needs to cancel salt and retain GPZ level sensitivity or greater. Or cancel iron mineralization and maintain sensitivity. Or lower the noise floor a full magnitude so RX sensitivity can double. Something major like that. Discrim doesn't help me personally, but clearly many would buy a new machine based on that major upgrade too. It needs to be big. A GPX remix would be a major letdown to me personally unless a successor to the GPZ was also released contemporaneously too.

The computing power has been there for a decade. It's possible to do, especially with a team of physicists and engineers. There are a lot of different things that can be done with that many extra computer cycles, beyond just a coil on a stick. Gradiometry, interferometry, magnetometry, GPR-like methods, etc. The chips are literally fast enough to measure the speed of light (and thus EM reflection) over distances which a nugget or ore body might be buried now. There is much room for improvement.

[Steve Herschbach]

People in general have a lot more faith than I do in the ability to get the technology much past where we are now from an outright power and sensitivity standpoint. I don’t expect any new detector to change the fact that we are pretty much down to grubbing for leftovers now when it comes to nugget detecting. Hate to be a bummer, but that’s just this prospectors opinion.

[Gold Catcher]

Agreed. I dont expect something major on the technoly front that is comparable to the PI>ZVT leap. However, I could imagine some major improvements in the versatility. A new ZVT that is foldable and water proof, with more coil options and iron probability meter. That would do it for me. I like to hike into remote areas and the SDC is the only option currently that fits into my backpack. Can't drag the Zed around for long difficult hikes.

[flakmagnet]

I agree Jasong. There is no point in another expensive detector, especially with GPZ-type weight without some sort of major advancement. It is hard to imagine there are no improvements in the ML pipeline…that is not how they do business. How often have we heard JP relate he was working on an upgraded detector even as ML's latest public release was fairly recent? That is how they roll their R&D. It may be some sort of discrimination, or a number of other possibilities that are seemingly within ML's capability. 

The physical depletion of surface gold is our problem. Yes there are a lot of us who are older and less inclined to go further afield looking for new ground, but that is not the point as far as new detector technology is concerned. That is for the customer to deal with and should not be a reason for ML or whomever, not to continue to pursue their technological advancement, especially in the face of the jumps in electronic and computing capability that continue apace every year. 

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Metal detectors have some basic limitations on how far they can detect items. From http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/200TrCcts/MetalDetectors/MetalDetectors-1.html :

“the sensitivity is roughly proportional to the cube of the object diameter (as expressed as a function of the search coil diameter). Sensitivity is also inversely proportional to the sixth power of the distance between the coil and the object. All this means is that if the object size is halved the sensitivity is reduced to one-eighth. Also, if the depth is doubled the sensitivity is reduced to one sixty-fourth. It’s easy to see why all metal detectors which are designed to pick up small objects use small coils, (150 to 300 mm diameter) and really only skim the soil surface. If the search coil is doubled in diameter for greater penetration the sensitivity to small objects falls to one-eighth. You rapidly encounter the law of diminishing returns.”

Famed metal detector engineer Dave Johnson reiterates this in a different way at http://www.fisherlab.com/hobby/davejohnson/davejohnsonjohngardinerinterview.htm :

“Getting extra depth out of a VLF, multifrequency, or PI machine is very difficult, because these machines follow an inverse 6th power law relationship between signal voltage and depth. If everything else is maintained equal, doubling the depth requires 64 times as much signal. If this is done by increasing transmitter power, doubling depth requires 4,096 times as much battery drain. That’s the basic reason why depth increases come so slowly in this industry.”

[Steve Herschbach]

11 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I'm seriously considering a trip to Australia for prospecting.

You should do that Simon... it would convince nugget depletion is a real thing. Nobody is saying all the gold is gone everywhere. Yes, some people are still doing well but they are getting rarer every year. Places like Africa and such are newer fields but if nugget detecting has taught me anything it’s that it’s amazing what a few thousand people with metal detectors can do given a little time. The gold lasts forever but the cream of the crop goes away in a stunningly short period of time. Not long ago finding an ounce of gold a day was not that hard for me. Now I’m really happy with an ounce in a week.

Anyway, I’ll shut up now. I don’t want to be that old guy raining on the parade. Lots of gold out there for sure, just ask any metal detector dealer! 

[flakmagnet]

Phrunt, Steve is a bottom-liner, but don't let that fool you, he's just as big a dreamer as we are and he's been at it a hell of a long time. Keep dreaming...

[jrbeatty]

Quote

I came out here like many more

To pick up lots of gold;

If I greased my boots 'twould stick to them,

At home I had been told;

Charles Thatcher: "The Green New Chum"

http://www.cobbersbushband.com/green_newchum.htm