Running The 15" Cc X Coil Over A 6000 Patch

[WesD]

I agree with Steve, that was sure a pity X coils couldnt get the chips from Minelab or allow anyone that right. My guess maybe Minelab felt that the gains from the hotter coils on the Z would compete with the release of the 6000, as the small gold performance gap seems pretty minimal between the two detectors when the Z is running the hot rod coils. Just speculation there.

[phrunt]

I think if Minelab gave X-coils the chip the GPZ would suddenly be the hottest thing in town, people would be rushing to buy one so the funny side of it is it's Minelab that are holding back the sales of the GPZ, if people could just plug an X-coil into their GPZ and go detecting the GPZ would be selling like hot cakes.  People have been selling their GPZ to buy a GPX as they want to find the smaller gold better, wouldn't it just be nice to save some money and just buy a small coil and I believe exceed the 6000 on small gold by doing so, I guess that would eat into 6000 sales massively though.

So it's quite funny that Minelab themselves are limiting the sales of their flagship detector to a trickle when it could be selling many of them with one simple change.  People could get their tiny coil, their really big coils, concentric coils and the list goes on.  NF, Detech and Coiltek would start pumping out coils for it too to bringing even more options, if anyone thinks NF wanted to take years between each Z-search release they're kidding themselves, something is holding them back.   It'd be like the good old days again when you could easily get a coil to suit your needs.

I wonder how the shareholders feel knowing Minelab themselves are the reason the GPZ isn't selling near as well as it could be. 

I think it's widely known the GPZ is the better of the two top end Minelab detectors, it's just locked up in a cage, set it free and then let's see which one people want to use.

The GPX is better on smaller gold you say? Is it... or is that just want Minelab want you to believe.

I guess I'm overly optimistic Minelab would come to their senses on this one day, but I think why they'll never do it is they need to leave something in the tank for the next model, and a way to do that is restrictions on coils, it's pretty easy to release a GPZ 8000 which technically is very similar to the GPZ 7000 with more cosmetic changes than anything but with improved coil designs and different sizes and people will buy it.  If everyone is swinging X-coils and other brands of improved coils they'd really have to work hard to make a GPZ 8000 viable.

[jasong]

Agree. The GPZ clearly has a lot of capability able to be unleashed just by some clever coil design. I can't imagine Minelab, the people who actually designed the detector, didn't understand this early on too.

The lack of coils seemed pretty intentional. Given how ergonomically unsound the 7000 was due to excessive weight, and the potential damage that occur to people's arms, if there was an intentional preventing of the release of lighter, smaller coils that could have relieved potential damage to people's arms earlier, then I find that decision to be particularly tone deaf and disrespectful to loyal customers.

I've spent something close to $30k on Minelab products. Yet companies who might get something closer to $3k over the same period from customers seem to care much more about the people who buy their products.

[GR Guy]

I’ll come from another angle. Why should Minelab in the age of Chinese and Russian counterfeits not be 100% protective of their brand and reputation. They are in the business of making the best metal detectors in the world and clearly are doing a great job at it. There will be plenty of aftermarket coils for the 6000 on the way which look to be all verified by Minelab soon. The Zed filled the market where everyone wanted a machine that went deep, now the newer technology comes out in the 6000 that has opened up goldfields of finer gold people expect Minelab to go open slather on older technology to see if another organisation can mimic the 6 on fine gold. Why would Minelab do that. I don’t see Apple opening up the Macs to the rest of the world?

[Norvic]

Down in my backyard I`m having a ball with the 6K finding patches in close I have been walking over for 50 years, the Z did it to those before, the 5000 before it and so it goes right back to the early VLFs. But as all of us who have tried aftermarket coils know MLs developed the go for gold detectors since they started but not for coils. From the user it certainly is a shame they`ve found it necessary to chip their machines for whatever reason. 

[phrunt]

GR Guy, the GPZ is not old technology to someone who goes down to their dealer today and buys it, it's the top of the line most expensive detector Minelab sell.  If that's how it should be looked at they need to pull it from the market.  It's not old technology, it's the current technology.  If anything the GPX is old technology, it's a hotted up to little gold and dumbed down in settings GPX 5000.

I think your chain of thought is more something that someone at Minelab would have, you're not thinking like a customer, customers don't care about that stuff you're talking about as much as Minelab would, they care about how the equipment they buy works and how it benefits them above everything else.

[jasong]

50 minutes ago, GR Guy said:

I’ll come from another angle. Why should Minelab in the age of Chinese and Russian counterfeits not be 100% protective of their brand and reputation. 

What does aftermarket coil selection have to do with counterfeiting?

50 minutes ago, GR Guy said:

....now the newer technology comes out in the 6000 that has opened up goldfields of finer gold people expect Minelab to go open slather on older technology to see if another organisation can mimic the 6 on fine gold. Why would Minelab do that. I don’t see Apple opening up the Macs to the rest of the world?

Again, coils aren't counterfeit detectors, no one is mimicing anything. Aftermarket coils are detector accessories, and they've been available for almost every model since I started detecting and X Coils designs and builds their own to sell, not copies. Unless you have some kind of inside track knowledge that no one else knows about?

No one is asking Minelab to open up their internal hardware for copying en masse. In your example, it'd be like Apple forcing ONLY Apple branded or approved products to be connected via USB, bluetooth, etc (headphones, chargers, external devices like computers, etc). Minelab is doing exactly this by saying no one can connect anything to their own detector they paid for, unless it's approved by the company. Worse, they are failing to offer approved versions of the things their customers have clearly been asking for for years, so there are no real options for people who paid $10k for a top-tier piece of equipment that historically has always had options.

[GR Guy]

17 minutes ago, phrunt said:

GR Guy, the GPZ is not old technology to someone who goes down to their dealer today and buys it, it's the top of the line most expensive detector Minelab sell.  If that's how it should be looked at they need to pull it from the market.  It's not old technology, it's the current technology.  If anything the GPX is old technology, it's a hotted up to little gold and dumbed down in settings GPX 5000.

I think your chain of thought is more something that someone at Minelab would have, you're not thinking like a customer, customers don't care about that stuff you're talking about as much as Minelab would, they care about how the equipment they buy works and how it benefits them above everything else.

Fair enough on the old technology with the Zed, it’s the latest at the high end. I meant that the 6000 was the latest released (Geo sense etc..)

[GR Guy]

17 minutes ago, jasong said:

What does aftermarket coil selection have to do with counterfeiting?

Again, coils aren't counterfeit detectors, no one is mimicing anything. Aftermarket coils are detector accessories, and they've been available for almost every model since I started detecting and X Coils designs and builds their own to sell, not copies. Unless you have some kind of inside track knowledge that no one else knows about?

No one is asking Minelab to open up their internal hardware for copying en masse. In your example, it'd be like Apple forcing ONLY Apple branded or approved products to be connected via USB, bluetooth, etc (headphones, chargers, external devices like computers, etc). Minelab is doing exactly this by saying no one can connect anything to their own detector they paid for, unless it's approved by the company. Worse, they are failing to offer approved versions of the things their customers have clearly been asking for for years, so there are no real options for people who paid $10k for a top-tier piece of equipment that historically has always had options.

If there wasn’t counterfeiting of Minelab products they wouldn’t need to put the extra security on their IP. They have just included coils as part of this security.

[phrunt]

The chips are in the coils, not in the detector, the detector itself seems safe from counterfeiting, although there are fake GPZ 7000's under the hood they're not fake GPZ 7000's and just poor performing detectors, with the easier to clone detectors like VLF's there are fakes that are virtually identical in performance, with I would guess worse build quality.

So the aim of the chip on the GPZ coil cable, and inside the GPX 6000 isn't to prevent Chinese from making fake detectors, it's simply there to prevent coils being made by anybody outside of Minelabs control.