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I guess I'll just jump right with my first post as a new member since it pertains to the subject currently being discussed. Just minutes ago I received my brand spanking new MX Sport. While I was unboxing it, I noticed that it had the "optional" cracks (3 minor) around the perimeter of the faceplate. Being that I didn't order them, I thought it only right to let White's know that they had inadvertently included them without charging me. Before I went any further, I called White's and talked to Mary (who was great to work with by the way). She immediately offered to ship me a brand new base model MX Sport, which of course does not include the optional decorative cracks and since I'm not the kind of person to take advantage of an obvious oversight such as this, I gladly accepted the kind offer. Had my financial situation been better, I might have opted to pay the extra $ to keep the additional adornment. My background includes manufacturing and engineering and I knew going in that new products often have growing pains that do not show up during the development and testing phases. I also knew that I might be one of those who get bit. Is it disappointing?, of course it is, but I know that the people at White's will not only make it right, they'll apply the lessons learned to the production of even better products in the future. One more thing about White's detectors, they're conceived, designed and built right here in the United States and I for one intend to support our own. I've been metal detecting on and off since the early 80s and am still using my one owner 1997 model XLT Spectrum. I believe the Sport will be a good addition, both for it's being waterproof and for it's comparative simplicity when newbies want to tag along. As many has already said, White's service is excellent,,,,,,,,,,,,,, and according to Mary the new unit should ship tomorrow. Monty

Chuck, The cracks are from a bad part, not removing the faceplate. Removing the faceplate doesn't require any prying if it's done correctly, and the unit we sent you was New In Box, except for me taking it out to make sure it worked properly before sending. If there was a chip there from a hoo-man it was from my clumsy a$$, but I'm pretty sure it's just from the weak spot on the plate. We updated the part in May when we started getting a few reports of the cracks. They seem to be caused by weak parts of the resin. Tried to catch it early but a few units squeaked out.... The fail rate isn't that high but we want to hear from anyone who has a cracked edge of their faceplate. Once a company has a couple thousand units out there you start to see little things that can be improved. Thanks for posting all of your feedback and pics, making a new product ain't easy but the more info we can collect the better we can make it. Tom

When I saw a video showing the Makro Gold Racer recovery speed using two nails and a gold ring, it caused me to reflect on the various internet nail tests. Nearly all employ modern round nails, when these items rarely present issues. The common VDI (visual discrimination scale) puts ferrous items at the low end of the scale, and items with progressively increasing conductivity higher on the scale. The problem is the size of items also matters. Small gold is low on the scale, and the larger the gold, the higher it reads on the scale. A silver quarter reads higher than a silver dime, etc. All manner of ferrous trash including medium and smaller nails fall where they should when using discrimination and are easily tuned out. The problem is large iron and steel items, and ferrous but non-magnetic materials like stainless steel. Steel plates, large bolts, broken large square nails, axe heads, hammer heads, broken pry bar and pick tips, etc. all tend to read as high conductive targets. Usually it is just the sheer size pushing it higher up the scale. Detectors also love things with holes, which makes for a perfect target by enabling and enhancing near perfect eddy currents, making items appear larger than they really are. Steel washers and nuts are a big problem in this regard, often reading as non-ferrous targets. Oddball shapes cause problems, particularly in flat sheet steel. Old rusted cans often separate into irregular shaped flat pieces, and roofing tin (plated steel) and other sheet steel items are my number one nemesis around old camp sites. Bottle caps present a similar issue in modern areas. These items produce complex "sparky" eddy currents with both ferrous and non-ferrous indications. Many thin flat steel items produce remarkably good gold nugget type signals in old camp areas. Two general tips. Concentric coils often handle ferrous trash better than DD coils. A DD coil is often the culprit when dealing with bottle caps where a concentric coil often makes them easy to identify. Another thing is to use full tones. Many ferrous items are producing both ferrous and non-ferrous tones. Blocking ferrous tones allows only the non-ferrous tone to be heard, giving a clear "dig me" signal. This was the real bane of single tone machines with a simple disc knob to eliminate ferrous objects. You still heard the non-ferrous portion of the signal. Multi tones allows you to hear the dual ferrous/non-ferrous reports from these troublesome items, helping eliminate most of them. Certain detectors can also show multiple target responses on screen at once, like the White's models featuring the SignaGraph (XLT, DFX, etc.) and CTX with target trace. These displays show target "smearing" that stands out differently from the clean VDI responses produced by most good items. A machine with a simple VDI numeric readout can only show you one number at a time and the only indication you might get is "dancing" numbers that refuse to lock on. Usually though the predominate response overrides and fakes you out. This is where a good high end visual display capable of putting all VDI response on screen simultaneously can really help out. the bottom line is there is not a clear line between ferrous and non-ferrous, but an overlap. Many detectors offer a variable control to deal with this - the iron bias setting. Higher settings eliminate more ferrous, but also runs more risk of missing the desired non-ferrous. Conversely, lower settings reduce the risk of missing desired targets, but you dig more trash. I have been collecting these odd iron and steel items to practice with and to help me evaluate which machines might do best in ferrous trash. The main thing I wanted to note here is contrived internet videos with common round nails often present a misleading picture. Many machines do very well on nails yet fail miserably on flat steel. Steel Trash Testing Tech explanation from Laurence Stamatescu at Minelab:

I was in Oklahoma coin hunting with a friend with my MX Sport. I had the 950 concentric coil on with it in the Coin & Jewelry Mode. Had the Sensitivity set at 5 and had it on 4 tones. The reason for the concentric coil is I just like it over than a DD coil when coin hunting.. With the sensitivity set at 5 gave me more depth for the ground I was digging in. The ground was like you had stack flat rocks on top of more of the same. I've seen lots of rocky ground but this was beyond rocky. On the number of tones I may up it as time goes by. Like old home sites most can be a high trash ground to hunt. I found I could pick out a coin in between trash being on both sides without any trouble. The Sport would give me a good reading on my target with no trouble on it's ID. I've hunted with a lot of solid coils over the years but I really like this concentric with the hole in the center. When you pinpoint a coin you can almost see the date through the hole in coil.Haha. My friend sure like the different tones for each coin I would detect. I have White's TRX pinpointer and the only time had trouble when it got within about a foot of the coil. Over all I find the MX Sport to be a great coil hunting detector. I've yet to do any nugget hunting so that will come at a later date. The only thing I think that could be better and that is the detector stand. Unless you put it on level ground it will fall over. I'm going to see what I can come up with to correct the problem. The detector sits so low the elbow hits the ground when put down. This is just below the hand grip. I put a leather wrap to protect it from damage over time of hitting the ground. This is because of the short stand too. Chuck

We decided to detect the high country with the idea that we would be out of the smoke from the Trailhead fire that was burning near Foresthill. We arrived at our destination with clean air and blue skies, yahoo! I started the day hunting the trashy areas with my discriminator. After a few hours and only digging bullets, I was getting a little worried about the possibility of a skunk. Next, I brought out the GMT. This is my anti-skunk machine! I detected an area that I knew had an abundant of small gold. Again, after a few hours, nothing but hot rocks and one bird shot. Wow, not looking good and now the smoke is beginning to fill the valleys. I really don’t enjoy the two hour drive home when I don’t have any gold in the poke. Finally I decided to finish the day with my 5000 and the Sadie coil. Normally I like to hunt with a large coil, but I had left that coil in my car which was parked in Truckee. So I detected my way down the mountain finding two nails and half a bullet, about 6" deep. It was now 4:00pm, and time to head back up the hill when I came across an area with a lot of small quartz rocks. I thought to myself this area looks really good. So I began detecting the quartz and immediately I got a huge signal by a tree. I thought to myself, must be a nail since it’s so loud. I scraped the ground with my boot and the target moved, so I knew it should be an easy recovery and probably trash. Well, after an embarrassing recovery that took way to long, I had a 6.9dwt quartz and gold nugget in my hand. The nugget was basically on the surface and had two friends below it. I detected the area only to find one square nail, but I think there is definitely more gold there. The hike up the canyon is never fun but the drive home was great and the wifee was super happy. I whinked the gold for three days and now the nugget weights 6.3dwt, but it’s much prettier now.

These are exactly the reasons AMRA, PLP and other groups working to protect our rights are so important and deserve our support and also as had been said so many times before on this forum... Why it is also so important that we police ourselves and give those whom wish to end prospecting no reason to oppose our activities.

Typical contrived test in that a gold ring is a near perfect target. Still, I am noting that the Gold Racer at 56 kHz is different than most machines and does have some unique ferrous handling capability. The only problem is the machine is very hot, and can produce some really sparky responses on flat steel that will fake you out. The response time as shown however is near instantaneous and quite impressive in some locations.

Wish dealers got this kind of cross ship service instead of having units/cash tied up traveling to and from Sweet Home for vacation instead of being able to be used or sold. :(

The cracks in the faceplate are something that I've been following too. I checked with engineering and they updated the part back in May to address this. So any detector that's been built since then or comes back for any reason gets a new one made out of the different material just to be safe. The failure rate isn't high but I think they're doing the right thing in replacing them to be safe.

Silver is a good buy too.

I agree gold will be going up Chris. I think however, the price may go way higher in the very near future. I don't believe we and the rest of the world, can get away much longer with our everything on credit society. We will probably see negative interest rates here in America soon and the money printing presses can crank out phony money only so long. Stocks in gold mining companies are doing really well. Many of them much better than gold itself. I believe these stocks have a lot more room to grow and are still relatively cheep for the potential. Especially the junior ventures. Mike

XP have never really been the quickest folks too bring the latest software or coils onto the market,the latest software version 3.2 is very reliable,but saying that version 3.0 and 3.1 'did' have a few glitch that have been rectified in the ultra reliable 3.2 that most folks use today.So yes even XP can get it wrong,but the winning trump card that they hold is the fact that you can down load the latest updates from the internet if a problem does arise and its also free. No having to send the detectors back too the manufactures for software upgrades to rectify glitches,not sure if the 3030 software can be upgraded that way,but its possible i would think. Regarding a smaller coil in the 6-7'' size of course that would make a really deadly combination for trashy sites and i guess small gold as well,but my way of thinking is could they have problems putting all the electronics that are in all the other coils including the battery inside that small coil housing ?? gut feeling tells me its not as easy as one would think. One of the biggest leaps forward and exciting things that will appear within the next year or so is the wireless pinpointing probe that will then be able to give precise information back to the headphones.Pinpointers linked to detectors are not new as such as SunRay have done it for a long time albeit linked with a cable but it still provided basically the same information as what the Deus probe will do but of course without cables.