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What Are Your Plans With All These New Great Metal Detector Choices?


We are flooded with new great detectors, what are you going to do?  

78 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you intend to buy one of the new coin and treasure detectors on the market?

  2. 2. Which of the following new coin and treasure detectors do you intend to buy or have purchased already.

    • Minelab Manticore
    • Minelab Equinox 700
    • Minelab Equinox 900
    • XP Deus 2
    • Nokta Legend
    • Garrett Apex
    • I haven't decided
    • I'm sticking with what I've got already
    • Other
    • Garrett Axiom
  3. 3. What is the primary purpose you would use a new detector for

    • Coins and Jewellery in a park or field setting
    • Coins and Jewellery in a beach setting
    • Gold Prospecting
    • Relics
    • Detecting in the water


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I currently use the Minelab Vanquish 540 pro pack, I really like it and have found many awesome finds with it. I been recently wanting to upgrade to the Equinox as I always thought there performance are top notch and I like there tones. But I always felt the Equinox quality issues were of concern, but now Minelab has just addressed all the quality issues we been asking them to do, plus a few other additions. With that said I'm excited to purchase either the 700 or 900. I have looked at the Legend but from what I see the Equinox is slightly better performance wise and I think the Equinox tones sound better. The Legend is built rock solid but it looks like the new Equinox will match the Legend in quality. 

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6 hours ago, GB_Amateur said:

Assuming this in in response to Dick Stout's blog post, I have a feeling you guys are in agreement.

What bugs me (it's worse on YouTube than here, but still happens here) is when someone gets a new detector, takes it back to a site s/he has previously detected, and finds some good targets -- THEN associates that result completely to the new detector.  I often go back to not only the same site with the same detector, coil, and settings but go over the exact same ground (well, 'exact' isn't quite true... please see the following) and find a good target.  So, can I credit the detector for finding it this time but missing it last time?  Nope.  Although there are exceptions, by far the most likely (Occam's Razor) explanation in my case is that I simply never got my coil over that target previously, even if I think I had already covered that ground.

I wish there were a 'service' that would show detectorists after-the-fact exactly where the coil covered and didn't.  IMO, an extremely large percentage of detectorists wouldn't have thought s/he had missed so much.  It's kinda like the answers to that standard question "are you an above average or below average driver?"  The accumulated answers will be far more 'above' than 'below'.  😁  There's an entire field of study called "behavioral economics" that exposes this kind of overconfidence.

But even if the entire coil covered the ground completely, the deepest detectable targets are only responsive if the center of the coil is over them.

When I got the Coiltek 5"x10" Nox coil for the ML Equinox 800 I went to a site (previously hunted, but not the part where I did the test) and three colored flags to mark finds -- yellow for those I thought were ferrous, red for non-ferrous, and orange for 'unsure'.  Then I went back to those tagged locations with the 11", for each flagged target making an overall judgement and subsequently digging to see which (when they disagreed) was more accurate.  I wasn't trying to compare which was more sensitive but rather which gave the more accurate TID.  (You can do this for comparing sensitivity but you must, IMO, divide the area in two and give each detector/coil the chance to be first.  Most here know why -- it's a lot easier to pick up a target if you already know it's there.)  This isn't the perfect experiment by any means.  The biggest potential flaw when comparing two different detectors (as opposed to same detector with different coils) is some combination of sub-optimal settings and simply asymetric knowledge of the two competing detectors -- i.e. one you know like the back of your hand and the other you just acquired.  But there are other weaknesses as well and the better those are known the better chances of getting a good answer.  Finally, allowing "can't really tell" has to be among the possibility of results!

 

6 hours ago, phrunt said:

I have no doubt there is a placebo effect when people get new detectors, I hate the term "found stuff in hunted out ground".  I've detected spots a lot, so have others better than me and yet I can still go there are scratch out a nugget or two on the exact same ground.  You try harder, you dig more iffys, you focus more, you try get that coil into places you likely missed, there are many reasons you find something missed other times.  I do know newer technology does help though, that's a fact.

You both make valid points, targets are missed, case in point is The Leonora specking patch, its been throwing up gold for 45+ years. But when you hear from a reliable source [not youtube] that has gone over ground thoroughly with new technology and found gold each time they use the 'improved' version you have to also acknowledge that the technology is indeed improving. Especially when the targets are getting smaller and deeper. When GPS technology improves to the point of being mm. [or inch] perfect we will see the end of missed targets. I for one hope that never happens

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4 hours ago, Chuck M said:

I currently use the Minelab Vanquish 540 pro pack, I really like it and have found many awesome finds with it. I been recently wanting to upgrade to the Equinox as I always thought there performance are top notch and I like there tones. But I always felt the Equinox quality issues were of concern, but now Minelab has just addressed all the quality issues we been asking them to do, plus a few other additions. With that said I'm excited to purchase either the 700 or 900. I have looked at the Legend but from what I see the Equinox is slightly better performance wise and I think the Equinox tones sound better. The Legend is built rock solid but it looks like the new Equinox will match the Legend in quality. 

Spot on Chuck I bought an equinox 800 4 months ago, added the 6" coil and would like to have a telescopic shaft, as well as having more confidence in it's waterproof abilities. Sound's like the 900 ! Whilst Minelab are in the detector business, would it be too obvious to observe that they are in the money making business a little more. Us minions will never outguess big business, buy the 900 and be happy for new buyers when Minelab supersede it, as I am for you. 

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After an afternoon of detecting the beach with my 800 something struck me about what I 'need' in the way of a new detector.

I have a 3030, SE Pro and an 800.  All of them still work on the beach.  Buying a Manticore or a 900 will marginally affect my beach finds.

I have a Zed, 2300, a 5000 and the 800 for nugget hunting.  I've even found gold with the 3030.

What I don't have is a lightweight PI.  Axiom here I come!

Eventually.

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I bought a Legend to replace an out of warranty, likely to leak Nox 800. After realizing how good the Legend was……. no point in continuing with an 800 pod replacement if it did happen to leak. Legend has nearly all the features that were missing or needed improving on the 800.

I bought a Deus 2 Lite because I like the Deus/ORX platform and it has for the most part been very impressive.

I simply am not interested in the Mandibular  

Then Minelab totally surprised me with the Nox 900 release which has almost all of the feature improvements I have been wanting on the Equinox……..got to have one immediately, thanks Gerry’s Detectors. 
 

 

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It would be interesting to graph the results above and how they change from month to month. 

I'm sure people's responses will change over time.

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On 12/3/2022 at 11:12 AM, phrunt said:

Here is a short poll to get a feel of how people are going to deal with all these new detectors on the market, and get an idea of how many people intend to jump in and get one.

I’m good to go for now…kinda wish I’d held out for a more waterproof version of the nox 800 but so far I haven’t killed it. When/if that happens, I’ll look and see how the other waterproof detectors are doing.

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2 hours ago, mn90403 said:

It would be interesting to graph the results above and how they change from month to month. 

I'm sure people's responses will change over time.

I don't think you can even set a poll so people can adjust their answers.  It'd be good if you could, imagine the GPX 6000 faults poll now with all the extra ones that have died since 😉

 

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It's interesting that a lot of prospectors are now starting to look at and use discriminating machines more. While it seems there is increasing interest in all-metal mode detectors (PI) for relics and whatnot. And we are both looking more towards do-it-all units in general, and paring down the fleet.

Priorities, plans, and techniques shifting around to meet the changing times it seems.

The big missing link in the market seems to be a hybrid detector now.

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