I Want To See What Minelab & Garrett Is Bringing To The Table

[Rick N. MI]

With what has come out now, they have to push the limit of vlf or maybe something new. Can vlf be pushed anymore than it has already. 

I can imagine with what has come out, that they might have to rethink what they're working on. The top end detector competition is getting tough. It's time for something different than vlf.

[GB_Amateur]

Three technologies are currently on the market:  IB/VLF, PI, and ZVT, and I don't know how much difference there is between PI and ZVT.  Given that only one ZVT detector is currently sold and it costs an arm and a leg, only its developer (patent owner) is likely to have a say there.  Could that technology even be used for practical all-around detecting or is it confined to being a specialty (native gold) niche detector?  Maybe Ground Penentrating Radar (GPR) can be included among the technologies -- Nokta/Makro has that on the market for hobbyists (well, cheaper than a ZVT, anway).

In the affordable (to most hobbyists) realm, better software signal processing is possible.  Also many have requested a VLF/PI hybrid over the years, but AFAIK no developer has done that successfully.  (The Geotech forum members likely be able to say more on the feasibility of that.)  If such a hybrid comes to market I doubt it will be cheap, either.  Still, gold hunters (native gold and jewelry) might still be a lucrative market for it.

IMO, improved signal processing seems to be the lowest hanging fruit, but that likely is an incremental improvement, not anything revolutionary.

[mh9162013]

Companies don't necessarily have to come out with new, groundbreaking tech. They can still hit a "homerun" if they implement existing tech in an effective way.

I think the iPod is a great example. When it came out, nothing about its tech was really that new. HDDs, Firewire, LCD screens, etc. had existed for a while. But Apple effectively combined all of those technologies into a device that revolutionized the music industry and entertainment.

So imagine Garrett comes out with the "AT Apex" where it's a SMF VLF detector that performs about as well as the Equinox (and Legend?), but comes in a form factor that's as robust and reliable as the current AT series. Assuming they priced it competitively, they'd have a real winner...and I'd look for ways to trade in my Equinox 600 for that machine.

Not saying it would pass the Deus II, Legend, Equinox, etc. in terms of profitability. But it would sell plenty of units!

[Mike_Hillis]

I know Minelab is working on the Equinox 1000 from things Nasa Tom has leaked on his site.

I would assume that Garrett is looking at their GTI and Multiflex.   There is still room for the AT single freq base, but the GTI needs a boost.  

HH
Mike

[phrunt]

There were plenty of MP3 players on the market long before the IPod existed, years before.  The IPod was late to the market but Apple used their marketing and name to turn it into something more mainstream.  I had a great Chinese made one with FM radio and a good amount of storage and it was more compact than the first Ipod, I had it a couple of years before the first Ipod hit the market.  The Chinese even had CD Player models that also had AM/FM radio and could play mp3's off CD and original CD's of course along with built in storage for Mp3 audio, I bought one of them too.  All Apple did is copied ideas and put their name on it and used their name to make it mainstream for a gadget many people were using for years before Apple even considered making an Mp3 player.

I also had a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox which was the first big brand to release one and that came out a year before the Ipod.   Creative are also a US company.

Anyway, veering off track.

If indeed the Deus is better than the Equinox then Minelab have a little bit of work to do, for all we know that work could be almost done.  One thing Minelab needs to greatly improve is the quality of their product, I think we can all agree on that and improving quality should be an easy task for them, improving performance is the challenge.

I hope there is more to come in the future from VLF's, but to me the holy grail is still a PI that has the Target ID capabilities of the VLF's, the first to bring this to market will be the start of the next big evolution in metal detecting.  Minelab have had little reason to bother trying to do target ID on their PI's, they're focused on gold prospecting where the major benefits are not really there and a lot of people wouldn't even use it.  It's the other markets that would latch onto it with much excitement.

[PhaseTech]

Hated the MP3 file format and still do, although I admit on shitty speakers you can't really tell, and higher resolution versions are okay. 

For portable music (before the days you could just use your phone) I still kept using cassette tapes. Give me a little tape hiss over the horrible digitized echo sound of a bad MP3 file any day! 

So I guess older audio guys like me were never Apples intended market haha. 

As for discriminating PI's, imagine you could get the depth/sensitivity of a GPZ but able to blank out Iron to 7 inches. That would open up a lot of areas!! I'm all for discrimination. Even if you only use it 5% of the time, it just gives a particular gold machine that little extra versatility. 

[Steve Herschbach]

Detector tech is largely tapped out right now as far as performance. Expect more of the same in different packages. Improvements to be had there for sure, but more depth? Better separation? Better discrimination? I'm not holding my breath or waiting around for anyone.

[Cal_Cobra]

I remember encoding my first MP3 on a Pentium 4, it took an hour to encode ONE song (from the DOS command line no less), but just the fact that you could do it was awesome at the time!  Then Napster came along 🙂 There were all kinds of neat MP3 players on the market when Apple came along with the iPod.  Believe it or not it wasn't so much the consolidation of existing technologies that made their iPod popular, it was the Apple's iTunes that catapulted it to popularity.

Funny story.  Years ago I won an Apple iPod Shuffle at a company event, and when they were new they weren't very expensive.  I never used it, never opened it, it just sat in a drawer for years.  Fast forward ten years and it became a collectors item.  Put it on fleabay and it sold for $250 and the buyer was ecstatic about it 😁

[Rick N. MI]

Those were the good days :).

[phrunt]

59 minutes ago, Cal_Cobra said:

Funny story.  Years ago I won an Apple iPod Shuffle at a company event, and when they were new they weren't very expensive.  I never used it, never opened it, it just sat in a drawer for years.  Fast forward ten years and it became a collectors item.  Put it on fleabay and it sold for $250 and the buyer was ecstatic about it 😁

haha that is funny, I have a shuffle I've won too at a business event, I've never used it either, never opened the package.  I should try find it if I haven't thrown it out. 

The thing with technology is you don't know what can be done until it's done, it just takes some new innovation.  With the smaller amounts of investment that metal detecting companies spent on R&D it was easier to ride out existing technology, as the hobby grows (hopefully) and more investment takes places and processing technology improves that may change.

Minelab have come out with various methods over time to improve performance aside from traditional VLF detectors.  The more investment that gets thrown into R&D and the new comer engineers as the old guard move on the more chance something new might pop up. 

A famous legend about Bill Gates was at a computer trade show in 1981, Bill Gates supposedly uttered this statement, in defense of the just-introduced IBM PC's 640KB usable RAM limit: "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

It's now known as one of the most short sighted blunders in computing history, it's not proven if he said it or not but a good demonstration of what can happen with detectors in the future, VLF might be as good as it can be, until it's not.  Now and even 15 years ago 640k was considered next to nothing.

It could be Garrett, Nokta, Minelab or one of the European players like Rutus that strike the new technology, I just hope it happens, it just has to be possible. I'm forever the optimist 🙂