Is Garrett About To Release A New Gold Prospecting Pi?

[tboykin]

Guys you are missing a huge part of Garrett's marketing expertise - MOST POWERFUL does not equal most sensitive. Expect it to take 12 D Cells, they only need to be replaced once per month.

[jasong]

Brutal. Non-zero chance this is a win a "Toyota", receive a "Toy Yoda" type situation then? 

The ATX is pretty sensitive, it gives me hope. @EL NINO77 posted some interesting results using various coils in the lead shot thread here (scroll down about halfway, also page 3). Also of note is the tests appear to be in a somewhat urban area, which gives me hopes it's good with EMI, a notable stumbling block of the 6000.

[phrunt]

The top end is only part of the market, some people not willing to pay the top end prices but still want a pulse machine they can go use a for a prospecting trip once a year or for a few weekends away are a largely untapped market.   At the moment they're most likely to buy a Gold Monster or something along those lines but they'd do better with a Garrett PI based upon an upgraded ATX design.

I don't know why everyone thinks it has to be the best detector ever made or Garrett are wasting their time, why does it have to compete with the GPX 6000 or GPZ 7000 to justify being made?  Yes, a lot of the people here demand the best and clearly can afford to pay for the best, but not everyone can, or wants to. 

What about other markets, how about Africa? What if Garrett can produce a good reliable easy to use PI in a strong housing with very little problems to be used as a tool and treated rough in Africa by the large number of Africans that want to give a shot at prospecting? Do you think every African who wants to look for gold has the means the pay for a high end Minelab? A lot of them lease their machines already and don't own them, many just buying VLF's and often fake VLF's.  They earn a tiny amount of money, we've all seen the stories on it.   If they can tap into markets like that it would be a success for them and for the Africans getting a PI that works over using the VLF.  Maybe they have ambition to tap into other markets.

By the sounds of it the ATX is a pretty good starting point, and it is sensitive to small gold, surely they can tweak it and get it even better and design new coils and housings for it to bring it up to be quite a good unit and if they can get the price right then who knows how it will go, I would think pretty good in the right markets.

I'm sure when Garrett were planning this detector they weren't aiming for the Aussies rusted onto their Minelab's, they would be chasing different markets.

It's a start towards competition, once it gets into the market and if it sells to their target market they'll continue development for the next version and gradually work their way up the ladder.  If everyone just shoots down anyone that tries we are stuck with no competition and status quo putting up with very high priced machines with quality to match the prices they're asking 😛 If that's how you like it go join the Minelab cheer leading team.

I'm happy to encourage any manufacturer to give it a shot in hope one can succeed and I wish Garrett the best with this project, I might even buy one myself.

[Jonathan Porter]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

What about other markets, how about Africa?

Africa is all about performance or using something cheap and simple like the GM1000 and everyone getting on a pick and shovel and hand digging everything. In other words these guys are not hobbiest they want as much gold as possible in a VERY competitive environment, to that end the GPZ7000 is selling like crazy over there. The detector is an actual investment that is expected to make them a return in as quick a time as possible as such the VERY best they can afford and depth on large gold is the order of the day.

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

What if Garrett can produce a good reliable easy to use PI in a strong housing with very little problems to be used as a tool and treated rough in Africa by the large number of Africans that want to give a shot at prospecting?

Garrett already do, its the ATX. I seriously doubt the klunky housing would effect them much if it actually performed as well as say a GPX5000. These are all grasping at straws comments that are not thought through. 

To break into the African market it needs to outperform whatever is performing right now which is the GPZ7000 or it needs to be very cheap and also have some performance, but needs to be more sensitive than the GM1000 VLF.

However if they made an ergonomic and light weight reasonably priced PI for the hobbiest market then that would be something that could get some traction, but it has to be as light and nimble as the GPX6000 as that machine really has set the bar for what is achievable weight and ergonomics wise. 

[Norvic]

I was in the process of answering when fortunately JP my Satellite Connection got with it and showed you had replied.

Essentially I was answering as you have but you did it much more eloquently, thank you.

 Garrett lost the plot way back after the A2B, although they attempted with the ergonomic but flimsy no performance gain A3B but Fischer picked that plot up with the ergonomic performing GB2 as did Whites with the GM2 and since ML has lead the world with its VLFs, Pis and ZVT. Something new Garrett or you`ll just repeat you old mistakes and not compete at all, except with second hand MLs.

[phrunt]

I think it's best just to wait and see rather than presume we know what is inside the head of every African or potential prospector from around the World on which detectors they'd spend their money on.  You don't know until it's sitting there waiting for them to buy if they'll buy it or not.   If it suits their purpose at the right price for their wallet then it makes sense to give it a go.   

Their new detector appears by the photos of having a full carbon shaft so it's a possibility they're aiming for light weight, it sure looks light in the photo.  They just have to get the price/performance ratio correct and it should be a good seller.

[Aureous]

I anticipate it being a decent prospecting PI with ATX ancestry. Probably on a par with late model GP or early GPX performance I reckon. At a (hopefully) low price of under $3K, it should still sell well.

[Geotech]

On 7/22/2022 at 1:48 PM, Jonathan Porter said:

To break into the African market it needs to outperform whatever is performing right now which is the GPZ7000 or it needs to be very cheap and also have some performance, but needs to be more sensitive than the GM1000 VLF.

JP is right. The TDI-SL was specifically designed as a $1000 detector for the African market. Lightweight, cheap, and ran on AA's but fell a bit short in sensitivity. When we pitched it to various people in Africa the only question we ever heard was, "Does it go as deep as Minelab?" It did not, so we then sent a bunch of free detectors to Africa in the hope that some people would find gold and it would kick-start sales. Never happened.

[Steve Herschbach]

The problem with the TDI-SL is that in moderate to low mineral ground you’d be better off with an MXT. What was needed was a pumped up TDI, not a watered down version. You’ve got to at least be in the ballpark with Minelab, and the SL was never remotely close.

But yeah, for a large class of users, you either top the best Minelab is offering, or they simply continue to use what they already have. Nobody serious is going to downgrade. There is a large number of more casual users out there however who might consider different options. People who might be looking more at the SDC 2300, for instance, than the GPZ 7000. 

Come on Carl, time to get that Impulse Gold to market!! Way too soon for the Nokta probably, but surely Fisher can get something done by now. I’m way more interested in a Fisher/Garrett/Nokta runoff than anything else at the moment.

[phrunt]

The T2 and Gold Bug Pro obviously had a big uptake in Africa, the T2 in particular wasn't a stellar gold prospecting machine so First Texas made their way into that market effectively without selling the best detectors available, now they both seem largely replaced there by the Gold Monster.

My logic is there are likely tens of thousands of people over there swinging the Gold Monster, we have most likely all seen the photos of hundreds of people holding Gold Monsters squished into a small area all running them side by side and no doubt why Nokta released their Gold Monster clone trying to get in on that market.

If a detector like the Garrett PI came out, wasn't anywhere near the price of the high end Minelabs and at a stretch these Gold Monster users could afford to upgrade to it and it gave better results on deeper gold than the Gold Monster why wouldn't a few percent of them upgrade or have the PI/VLF combo we all like to have.  It doesn't take a large percentage of people to buy one and have results to start the momentum.

As for the TDI, one companies failure doesn't mean all companies will fail, how did the other Whites detectors go there? Were their VLF's popular in Africa?

Maybe I'm just more of an optimist, and see a large market just waiting for another option especially if the price makes it more viable for the VLF owners which I'm sure would be the largest category of detector owners.

I do own a GPX 5000 that spent its life in Africa, it was a traded in for a GPX 6000, a lot of that was going on prior to the 6000 release, although once the 6000 came out the supply of detectors being traded in dried up and the guy importing them from his dealer mate in Africa stopped importing them.  It gave a few of us in NZ access to cheap GPX's though, JW and I both got one.

This was mine, photo taken by the African dealer prior to shipping it to NZ, it was the last one imported.  I got it checked out and put in a new housing by Minelab NZ once it arrived.  A lot of African prospectors lease their machines from detector dealers too, they don't actually own them as they can't afford to own them, probably trade the lease fee for nuggets even.  You're kidding yourself if you think large numbers of these African prospectors buy a GPZ 7000, small numbers can afford to yes, others lease, a majority can not even afford a metal detector at all, or at a stretch a VLF.  A small number is still a large number when there are so many of them though, in Mauritania where my detector come from there was said to be 16,000 "legal" small scale miners / detector users and an estimated 4000 illegal ones on top of that, and that's one small part of Africa.  Mauritania is only a small African country with only 4.65 million people.  Other counties with a lot of metal detecting prospectors like Ghana (31 million) and Sudan (43 million) have much larger populations, it doesn't take that many percent of their prospectors to buy the Garrett to make it successful.

The other interesting thing in Africa, especially in the area my GPX came from is the side hustle the miners have, finding ancient coins and artifacts and selling them overseas on Facebook.  You can read about it here.