Why Are These Pulse Induction Devices So Expensive, The Price Of A Popular Car?

[Steve Herschbach]

2 hours ago, JCR said:

Steve , you mentioned the hardware was part of it, can you elaborate?

There are two parts to the equation. First is the development of cutting edge tech. For PI that pretty much means Minelab, and they pour many millions of dollars into development. Those costs must be recouped.

Then there are simple hardware manufacturing costs. Something like a GPZ 7000 really does cost more money to make than a simple PI , though that alone does not account for the price. There is that development cost, plus the fact that they can charge extra for cutting edge product. 

It might surprise people, but making new coils and housings can be very expensive. So a brand new from the ground up design like the Axiom has a lot of costs going into designing the housing, then getting all those new parts made. Putting a new circuit in an old box costs far less.

Nokta can take out of copyright designs, for instance Minelabs older GP type circuits, and tweak with the latest hardware and microprocessor designs. They could also use something like the existing Impact housing. If they do that, both development and hardware costs are kept to a minimum and a very good product can be made at a very low price.

Even the Fisher Impulse models are nothing new, just old circuits tweaked and tuned for maximum effect. No new copyrights at work there. There is no shame, and none of the shadiness some people like to imply, in using out of copyright designs and making them better at lower cost. Do any of you buy generic drugs? No difference at all.

So yeah, there is no reason we can't get my desired near 4 lb under $2000 high power ground balancing PI. It will happen, it is just a matter of time, and who will do it first. But there is also room at the top for another $10,000 GPZ 8000 design. If it can genuinely make played out gold patches come to life again, gold prospectors around the world will line up to buy them. Most of you approach this from a hobby perspective. People who literally find gold by the pound look at it differently. I'll easily spend 10K on a new detector if I think it can put an extra 5 ounces of gold in my pocket in reasonably short order.

But blah blah blah and yes, I agree with Carl, it's mostly the market that sets the price, not the outright manufacturing cost. Especially given my last point. Minelab churns out many millions of dollars in profits, and that all comes from the spread they are making on the product.

[phrunt]

I look at it from a hobby perspective where I'd have difficulty paying off a detector in finds so everything prospecting seems expensive to me, but I see people in Australia and they don't blink an eye about buying a GPZ then buying another 5 coils at almost a couple of thousand AUD each paying the price of the detector all over again in coils, plenty even buy a backup GPZ so if they have issues they have a spare handy for their trip. Then you find out they're finding $50,000 AUD of bread and butter gold each season with the potential for a lot more if they find big stuff which they sometimes do and it starts to make sense.  If Minelab made a GPZ 8000 for $20,000 a big queue of people would be buying it if it was indeed better than the 7000 because these people know they would recoup that money plus a lot more in finds.

Our finds dictate if we think a detector is expensive or not, VLF's are easier to justify, I paid my Equinox off with one ring find, so it's easy to justify their price, gold detectors are a bit harder for the hobbyist to justify but when put in perspective with the prospectors with good gold ground it's the same thing, some likely think the GPZ is very good value for what it finds them.

[JCR]

Thank you all for your insights. It agrees with my speculations & gives me hope Nokta or someone else will offer a high performance GB PI for hobbyists like me who want to detect bad dirt sites/salt beaches at an affordable price point.

[VicR]

I think there is a few factors at play for high cost pf PI machines

- As mentioned very high development costs over many years

- Tooling costs

- I would guess there is a smaller market for gold detectors - just by looking at the metal detecting club i am in - less than half of members have a PI machine while all have a VLF therefore you have less per unit sales to amortise your fixed costs of R&D and tooling.

- being smaller production runs production costs are higher

- Marketing - you are not selling a PI detector - you are selling the dream of finding untold wealth - there is a price for dreams.

At the end of the day there is that sweet price point where a company maximises profit by not significantly affecting demand by having too higher price  - and the above other factors just fall into line so you do not end up with cost plus pricing.

Oh - nearly forgot competition - always good to keep prices lower.

[Aureous]

In regards to R&D costs and development $$, when you look at Minelab's actual declared profit each year, the huge money spent on say the 6000 for instance (reports say C. AU$20M), there aint the massive profits,despite the high price. When a company pushes the tech and engineering envelope like Minelab does, the associated costs don't produce a 'magic bullet' cash printing machine it seems.

But, when you use old tech, make it more user friendly, package it well and incorporate multiple benefits together in one detector, the costs don't necessarily equate to a big development budget. So hence the likes of Nokta and Fisher CAN produce a cheaper PI. 

[Steve Herschbach]

6 hours ago, JCR said:

Thank you all for your insights. It agrees with my speculations & gives me hope Nokta or someone else will offer a high performance GB PI for hobbyists like me who want to detect bad dirt sites/salt beaches at an affordable price point.

In theory we have had just such an affordable device for many years in the ATX. It is a better performer than it gets credit for, but it is severely hobbled for many people by the weight. Then there is a ridiculous coil system that makes you buy an expensive telescoping lower rod with every coil, doubling the carry weight and the price of the coil, for a rod you don't need. But at just over 2K there is absolutely nothing wrong with the price/performance ratio. Really the main thing killing it is you can buy a used Minelab GP for the same or less, and frankly get a better system. Long story short as long as a person can scrape up $2000 then you can get some top tier GBPI performance, as long as you don't mind going used. You can pick up a GPX 4000 or an ATX used in good condition for $1700 - $1800. If I had nothing but either of those detectors I would do just fine.

[phrunt]

36 minutes ago, Aureous said:

In regards to R&D costs and development $$, when you look at Minelab's actual declared profit each year, the huge money spent on say the 6000 for instance (reports say C. AU$20M), there aint the massive profits,despite the high price.

That's the part I don't get, they spend all that money on R&D and miss the seemingly obvious like the GPX 6000 twisting shaft and coil ears so thin they snap crackle and pop, a decade after they first discover the problem they continue making them the same.

Maybe they have employees a bit like council workers where one does all the work, the rest stand around and watch so the poor guy doing all the work makes mistakes as he's just too busy 😛  Good way to keep costs high while productivity is low.

An important part of the testing of the GPX 6000 was burying a can of red bull and seeing how deep the 6000 could hit it, it was a big event and everyone important came along.  The product tester had to dig many holes in rock hard ground to discover the maximum can depth.

[Aureous]

5 minutes ago, phrunt said:

That's the part I don't get, they spend all that money on R&D and miss the seemingly obvious like the GPX 6000 twisting shaft and coil ears so thin they snap crackle and pop, a decade after they first discover the problem they continue making them the same.

Many years ago, when ML was bought out by an individual Millionaire dude ( forget his name but he built it up to the point where it was snapped up by Codan) a guy named Rob Elliott was the R&D manager. Rob said once Codan bought the business, a lot of minor R&D was then handed off to the Malaysians (Plexus) and then the issues began. They don't know the industry at all and what the customer expects....it hasn't improved over time. Great at populating boards and general electronics, batteries etc though....

For instance, coils were so bad when handed to head office for evaluation, that Plexus sub-contracted the job to a Korean company (Commander coils). The 6000 issues are simply a continuation of the same problem. An 'insider' has informed me that the 6000 coils have again been subbed to another company, hence the slow rollout of replacement coils at the moment. A friend has been waiting almost a month for a new 11" mono (his 4th one).

[phrunt]

This is off my GPX's replacement coil, it says Made in Malaysia, so I assumed it was the handy work of Plexus?

[blackjack]

8 hours ago, phrunt said:

I look at it from a hobby perspective where I'd have difficulty paying off a detector in finds so everything prospecting seems expensive to me, but I see people in Australia and they don't blink an eye about buying a GPZ then buying another 5 coils at almost a couple of thousand AUD each paying the price of the detector all over again in coils, plenty even buy a backup GPZ so if they have issues they have a spare handy for their trip. Then you find out they're finding $50,000 AUD of bread and butter gold each season with the potential for a lot more if they find big stuff which they sometimes do and it starts to make sense.  If Minelab made a GPZ 8000 for $20,000 a big queue of people would be buying it if it was indeed better than the 7000 because these people know they would recoup that money plus a lot more in finds.

Our finds dictate if we think a detector is expensive or not, VLF's are easier to justify, I paid my Equinox off with one ring find, so it's easy to justify their price, gold detectors are a bit harder for the hobbyist to justify but when put in perspective with the prospectors with good gold ground it's the same thing, some likely think the GPZ is very good value for what it finds them.

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