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Holy ____! I'd be shaking if I found an 1918/17-S Standing Liberty. Not that it means anything, but that is my favorite 'error' coin of all time. Take a look at the VF-35 graded coin here. https://www.pcgs.com/photograde/#/SLQe/Grades It's an 8/7. Look at the weakness on the 'ER' of 'QUARTER DOLLAR'. That's likely a die weakness which helps authenticate your coin, not that there is much doubt with how strong the overdate is. I'm not going to try and grade this from your photos, but it's safe to say if you sell it you can buy any modern production MD short of the GPZ7000 (ok, probably not a GPX5000, either, but I'm not feeling sorry for you ?). BTW, in terms of rarity this probably isn't close to being up there with the 1850's and 1860's -S mintmarked quarters that have been shown here in the last few weeks. But in terms of value it's probably well above those. This is a good example of demand. Lots of collectors out there want an 18/17-S Standing Liberty. "Find of a lifetime" may be turning into a cliche'. But consider this -- you might be the only person ever to find one of these with a metal detector. I don't know what else I can say, except be proud and enjoy!

Between work and projects I've managed to get out on a few hunts. I bought my buddy an equinox 800 since he has been kind enough to let me run all around his ranches as if I own them myself. He has showed some interest in detecting...he thinks he's going to find a 1 pound gold nugget . After spending some time showing him how it works...I'd mark a target and then have him go over it and then dig it...he started to get the hang of it. So on our second outing he goes and finds a 1855 seated quarter (like Deathrays) but not in nearly as good condition. He was stoked and I wish i had brought my camera with me so I could get a pic of him smiling and holding the coin. Been hitting some other locations near where I live. Old homesites and street tear outs. Day before yesterday was a quick but pleasant hunt. Dug the standing liberty and put it in my pocket so it would not get banged up in the pouch. I never look at items much in the field but wait till I get home. I was glad I put this coin in my pocket. I'm going to have to get it looked at just to make sure but I think it's the real deal. If anyone knows what the sun god thing was? kinda cool digging it and have that smiling back. HH to you all strick

It wasn’t on their radar. A PI detector is not something they had their sights on - then this opportunity presented itself and they went for it. Pretty bold move for what is, after all, like all the detector builders, a small business. They bought more than the design, they hired the team. Their own development goals proceed - I have no info on what that amounts to, my only insights were about the PI.

Busting bedrock hasn't panned out that well, so I decided to heed Bill Southern's advice. I broke down the crust on the first pile, and started swinging the EQX 800. 15 minutes into it, and "bingo", nice little 3.2 grain nug, all rough and course like it hasn't traveled far? "This is going to be an EZ day" I'm pretty sure ran through my mind, since there were plenty of tailings' around? I guess the penny is somebody's idea of a "cruel joke"? At least it was shallow. Brett

I love competition.

Hi Gerry, Do you have a link to the statement? Or was this something sent only to dealers? Personally I have no doubt the SDC was very finely tuned to the 8” mono coil. Some loss of small gold sensitivity may occur with other coils. But if you believe ground coverage matters, and I do, giving up a little to get more coverage.... well, we have been making that trade off for as long as there have been detectors. Edit: found it https://www.minelab.com/usa/customer-care/product-notices?article=353456..... SDC 2300 PRODUCT NOTICE & WARRANTY STATEMENT Recently, Coiltek has introduced aftermarket coils that can be retrofitted to the SDC 2300. These have been developed independently of Minelab and Minelab has not had any involvement with these coils. Minelab cannot and does not provide any information or support regarding the use of these coils. Minelab does not guarantee the SDC 2300’s performance when used in conjunction with these coils. The SDC is manufactured by Minelab in a standard configuration designed to be robust and offering easy to use high performance; any changes to the product may alter its performance. Further, such modifications may materially impact the ability of Minelab to support and warrant your SDC 2300. The SDC 2300 is not designed for changing coils nor for use with other coil sizes and specifically any damage which is assessed by Minelab or its Authorised Service Centres (ASCs) as having resulted from such modification will not be covered by the Minelab warranty. All Minelab detectors are engineered in Australia, manufactured to exacting standards in ISO 9001/2000 quality accredited facilities, and backed by up to defined transferable warranties. Review the full Minelab warranty period, terms and conditions on our website.

When I was reading the beginning of this thread the GPZ came to mind. It has no TID screen. How many tones does it have? We consider it to be the best, most sensitive gold detector out there. Could someone use it as their only detector? Sure. Would I be digging a lot of targets that would be a waste of time? Sure. As Steve says it is a judgment call and sometimes you only have a limited amount of time to hunt a site and you or it will be gone. Sometimes you only have so many holes you want to dig for that session. Minelab (and all manufacturers) has made many 'judgment calls' for us by the way they set up the machine from the factory and the controls they allow us to change. Ground balancing is a 'judgment call' of sorts and 'Iron Bias' is another judgment setting, etc, etc. All of that being said there are times (quickly walking a beach line) when going less than 50 tones to cover an area faster is a better option for me. I believe on the beach I sometimes miss targets if the machine (and my brain) is trying to process everything too quickly. I would compare this to the 'find patch' setting on the GPZ which lets it process differently. The 50 tones are king after you find that patch. Mitchel

Had just an hour yesterday but given the bad weather coming our way (considerably worse other places, though) I decided to take advantage. Went to my recent best producing site, a school yard. 11 inch stock coil, Park 1, ground balanced, recovery speed = 5, iron bias = 0, gain = 20, no discrimination (i.e. horseshoe toggled), 50 tones! Dug a few moderns in the first 15-20 minutes. Then I got a solid mid-20's signal. Did the usual 90 degree angle of attack method. One direction was steady around 25 or so. The other direction was swinging from about 23 to 28. I didn't notice any obvious nearby iron grunts but my brain is pretty good tuning those out. Six inches later I saw the sweet white color (see photo below). This one is well worn -- probably About Good condition. No mintmark (Philadelphia) and weighed in at 2.22 grams. Compare that to a freshly minted dime of 2.50 grams so 11% loss due to wear. Best WAG is that this was dropped in the 1940's. Nothing special in terms of scarcity, but silver always gives me a good feeling. "Beginner's luck" (with 50 tones) is a serious candidate for the reason I got this nice result. But I was surprised at how smooth this hunt went. It's not my trashiest site by far but anthing with ~100 years of lost items that hasn't been searched to death is going to have trash. I still have a lot to learn (actually that goes without saying, always) but for the first time ever I have a good feeling using multitones, and that includes previous attempts with other detectors. Thanks, again, for all the responses. I can't wait to get another decent weather day (next weekend?).

Because of heat waves, vehicle trouble and well, almost a complete lack of motivation, I have done very little detecting this year. In the early days of the 5000 I got the bigger speci at Moliagul and it`s got about half a gram of gold in it. Since then I have gone over and over and over that area with the 5000, 2300 and 7000 for no result. Yesterday I was out there again and about 15 feet from the first specimen, I got the smaller one with the 7000. Very faint signal that just broke the threshold and about 6" deep. The bottom picture is the only bit of gold visible in it and is almost impossible to see with the naked eye, but the signal it`s giving off says there`s maybe a half a gram to a gram of gold in it. Once the better half has seen it I`m going to bust it open to see what`s inside but I think with this one I`m going to end up with a heap of small bits of quartz with a little bit of gold in them. Dave

Dear fellow hunters, I am running my new Nox 800 for about 2 months now. Trying to go out nearly every day for 2-4 hours. I did find some nice coins and other cool stuff and some not so cool stuff. Learning the detector is fun. I found a several times when being in AUTO ground tracking the machine got a little loud/unstable. When I looked up the ground tracking it was telling me a number in the 90ies. Switching off AUTO and do manual tracking (pumping the coil) the machine went quiet at 12. I was expecting the AUTO ground tracking to be "up to date". Did you make similar experiences?

While I agree this is true when it comes to Minelabs, I've seen other detector vendors try to add "99 tones/delta pitch/fill-in-the-blank)" tones to their detectors, but the audio they convey is harsh and digital sounding, whereas Minelab has proven itself to be able to give us smoother, analog like audio which is more pleasing to the ears. My point being that just more tones, doesn't always equate to better audio intelligence, sometimes it equates to audio fatigue.

Yeah and I know a few things also JP. The same was said about Minelab when they first came out. It will be a few years before NokMak goes toe to toe with Minelab. They are going to eat First Texas, Garrett, and White’s first on their way there.

I doubt Minelab cares as much as you all seem to think. This is just a standard “cover your posterior” statement. Frankly, Minelab would be negligent to its stockholders and customers not to let people know that if you screw something up doing this, you are on your own. People might think this would be obvious, but I personally have a lot of knowledge about warranty administration. I will never forget the guy that felled a tree on his Husqvarna chainsaw and wanted me to warranty it. His rationale? “If it was designed properly it would not have broken”. Minelab does not produce enough coils fast enough, period. Why there is not a 6 x 10 coil yet for Equinox or small coil for GPZ is beyond me. Take a look at Nokta/Makro for a lesson in how to do coils. They launch new detectors with a half dozen coils out the starting gate, and a dozen aftermarket coils follow in a few months. It is just one of the strategies NokMak is employing to win customers and it is working. People are still vastly underestimating that company.

For me MLs basically saying the SDC is unique and the first of its kind, being made "tuned" to one coil, but is that going to hold water if as we`ve found with MLs PI range from the SD to the GPX, aftermarket coils rule. Will the Coiltek SDC coils prove MLs "tuned" SDC is no different to its other PIs? Look at the new flat wound coils and how they`ve narrowed the difference between the Xs and the Z. Warranty concerns? I think a lot of us go for performance first and if these aftermarket coils prove successful, market force will rule, as it will with the Zs aftermarket coils. For me ML rules no doubt with gold detector tech. but not so with coils.

To do freq shift, the mode switch is placed in the Nois cancel position and the pulse delay/noise cancel switch is rotated to find the quietest position.

You have to remember that Eric Foster was the person that invented the PI technology. Ones something is invented, other people will find ways to make it better. Having use the Aquastar for a number of years. I can not wait to have a Manta to use.

I would love to participate a forum outing. I'll be in CA in Sep 2019. Attached a picture of my AZ finds. The burro shoe and the grandsons of the original owner...for me the best thing in prospecting is camping in a tent, Joe's special coffee with that little "extra" in the morning and spending time with friends and making new friends. If I found a nice nugget in AZ but did not have such a good time the nugget could not make up for that. Julie, if the good lord grants us more years to be on this beautiful earth and if we both put our time in we both will find gold.

Yes without the aid of the French, we'd still be a British colony. I have nothing against the French, I've been to France many times, it's one of my favorite places to holiday (and arguably the best food on the planet)....my point is let's give credit where credit is due. Fisher didn't design the electronics, they may have designed the physical package, may have tidied up the electronics a bit, but they bought the electronic design. Nothing wrong with that, we live in a global economy, our history, past and present is chalked full of foreign technology being realized in the U.S., acquisitions are common place. I'm sure it'll be a fine detector, but I'm a bit disappointed that with all the engineering horsepower at FTP, of all the American companies they couldn't design something on their own.

The Americans are fighting back with a French designed detector ?

Tracking can mess you up if you're detecting around a lot of iron as the detector will start to track to the iron (nails). I've found that unless I'm hunting in highly variable mineralized ground, the detector works best by doing a manual GB, or just turning it on and hunting works better than using tracking.

For me the key to using ground tracking is that the ground must be highly variable. It is not how highly mineralized the ground is but how variable it is that matters. If the ground is relatively homogenous I don’t see a need to track the ground and in fact I would tend to recommend against it. In very low mineral / low salt ground there may not be enough mineral content to track to and the machine could run away with itself as you have described.

Hello all and there are some good points and discussion in this thread and I thought I'd jump in for a chat... Feel free to ask questions as the more you know the better you can make your own decision whether you think the new GOLD EXTREME coils are for you. from this thread the main queries are: Why aren't the new coils water-proof? We thought long and hard about this and decided to not epoxy fill the 10x5" coil due to extra time and weight from this and essentially if you wish to keep the unit water-proof then keep the 8" coil on or revert back to this. (time and more materials mean more $$$) For those that hunt the water this (8") is all you need. But you never know what the future holds... Warranty - is it voided? the short answer is no but as Gerry stated in a previous reply as long as there is no misuse or damage made during the conversion. Like any product under warranty - if it is deemed a fault of the user then it will not be covered. our coils come with a 2 year warranty - if you have an issue with our product we deal with that separately - if you have a warranty issue with the SDC unit itself revert the unit back to standard and send it back to Minelab - simple. Does the conversion require any hard modification to the unit? NO. there is no cutting, slicing, cracking or any type of firm modification required. Just undo two hex screws, undo two flat head screws, help the plug around the corner in the shaft and drop the coil away - then attach our shaft piece using the clamp and screws we supply, wrap the cable around the shaft like a GPX unit or any other treasure detector, plug in and screw up the plug collar, install the Coiltek cover over this area and use the hex screws you took out before to tighten up the cover over the plug area. turn on and go! Why does the cable wrap around the shaft and not go in the middle? We didn't want to complicate the install. I am sure even Minelab would say that getting the cable up the shaft and around the elbow of the unit is tricky and requires a cap and ball chain to pull it around. We supply a cap and ball chain in our attachment kit so you can get the unit back to standard whenever you want. Essentially we didn't want to have a user make the cable go up the shaft every time they want to change a coil, its far easier to interchange coils like we have made it. How does the shaft work? It has been designed to fit straight in to the carbon shaft once the standard coil is removed. the holes line up and the clamp we supply fits to help keep it in place. one of the main benefits of this shaft attachment is it now makes the unit around 4-5 inches longer so if you are 6'2" or there abouts the unit is now extended and when I hunt with it I no longer feel like i am stooping or at risk of stepping on the coil (figure of speech!) We will have a full attachment video coming out soon which will help guide you through the fitment process. So in short we have thought long and hard about this set up and certainly spent a lot of effort creating the right shaft attachment. Of course no one is forcing anyone to buy the coils and if you think they are not for you then this is perfectly fine. Coiltek is all about providing more options for the Minelab Detectors as this is what we do and I for one am excited to see these coils get out into the market and start to provide the user with more coverage, more depth, more opportunity and hopefully more gold! Trevor.

I came across this topic on Wednesday and on Friday I experienced the same thing. After every hunt I fully charge my detector and headphones. This time I did a partial charge on both for a 6+ hour hunt on the next day. I get to the beach and I turn the detector and headphones and they are not pairing up. I tried twice to pair them up as if it was a new set of headphones and nothing. I did a factory reset and still wouldn’t pair up. On my 3rd tried after the reset they finally paired up and I was able to get down to business. That day started bad right off the bat. When I got there I went to get my scoop and found out I had left it the night before. I was lucky to have parked two spots from the night before. There were some people doing work on a house and they found my scoop and returned it when I asked about it. The day started quite bad but there was a silver and gold lining at the end.

This is a killer post. It says more in a paragraph than whole threads. Detecting is hugely comprised of judgement calls. Anyone who thinks it's a matter of empirically following tones and vdi's is missing a gigantic area of detecting knowledge; experience, judgement and many times intuition and sometimes flat out guessing.

I don't count on purity of tone - it's simply something I look for. If you do not want to miss targets get a GPZ and dig everything. Everything short of that is a judgment call but attempting to explain nuance is near impossible in writing. That's why it is kind of pointless to weigh in on these sorts of things. Everyone calls their own shots and everyone has a different idea of what makes a good target or a poor one. I am either digging everything, or I am making judgement calls and without exception anyone that does so is leaving good targets behind due to bad calls. Anyone thinking otherwise is kidding themselves.

I recently returned from a Beach Hunt and was able to put some time on my new White's TDI Beach Hunter. I'll be posting photos of some of the finds as time permits. This interesting discovery had me laughing all the way home. Not exactly sure what it is, but about 5" long and looks to be a snorkel with a 2 headed and 8 legged octopus on the side. One end has a breathing mouth hole piece and the other has a small hole with brown stain around her rim. I'm sure you can't go down vary far with such a short snorkel, but I'm no expert either. Anyone have any clues?

From the perspective of just a guy just swinging his detector the effect of obsolescence and general market depreciation is a far greater threat to me than risking the warranty on a well engineered adaptation that increases my use and enjoyment. Warranties expire and nothing short of some miracle will get all your money back selling a used machine and if anything we may have missed the boat picking up a good deal on a used 2300 if these coils prove out as it looks, certainly got to be good for the folks that own one now.

This is always going to be a complex subject but at the end of the day demand will drive supply. ML have every right to be concerned about an add on that is taking the product away from its original function (in this case getting away from being compact, foldable and water proof). Aftermarket coils have been available for many years, funnily enough I was on the ground floor for ML PI machines after seeking permission in 1995 to have coils hand built under licence which then highlighted the demand and need (amazing how things haven’t change much in 24 years). Over the years I’ve seen a lot of aftermarket coils that were far from ideal, a lot of detectors they were attached too often went back to ML under warranty at ML’s expense, quite often it was more than once due to nothing being found wrong with the actual unit. Obviously things have improved over the years but from Minelab’s perspective there is a very good reason why there is a chip in the GPZ 7000 coils. I have not tried the new Coiltek coils so currently have no opinion on the subject but as a dealer I’ve ordered a few which I will trial first on out of warranty units and make my own conclusions on stocking/promoting them or not. I will say I’m not a huge fan of flat wound coils (I doubt if the new SDC coils are flat wound) but they have put a lot of life into the GPX product line as a VERY viable solution to improving sensitivity and depth, using them in variable saturable ground however I can easily HEAR the “Cheat” of the forced early demodulation and the way it causes the detector to behave, if there was no GPZ then of course I would use them but it would be under duress. The key point in the case of the SDC is MPF (and I’d say Minelabs chief concern), FAST means very tight electronic parameters which means the coils are critical to the equation, get them wrong and the detector is not going to play nice. Coiltek seem to have done their homework and are confident enough to go to market in spite of the need for removal of components and special tools required to revert back to original. I’d say early adopters will be the people who have SDC’s that are out of warranty, their feedback and successes will be what drives demand. JP

Well, we need to remember this is still a prototype, not a production unit. Personally, I have mixed feelings about knobs. I like them from an operational aspect. I dislike them because they collect grit and are an inevitable failure point - the more knobs, the more chance of one failing. There is something to be said for a seamless sealed pod from that perspective. I prefer something like Garrett did on the ATX myself, but that’s just me. I don’t see the point in the shaft attachment design unless there is a possibility of the cable running up the rod, which might be the case. Again, this is a pre-production prototype so we don’t know for sure on anything.

Yeah, for me I`d want ML to concentrate their R & D on the detector advances first and foremost and let the after market fellows concentrate on coil advances, and why not, this has worked brilliantly to now.

Yeah, if this ends up being over 2K I will probably take a pass and wait for more models to appear.

Yeah, will be interesting to see if the Coiltek extremes give the SDC that boost, doubt any PI will match the Z overall but that is a personal opinion and will be debated for many more years. Top debate because through it we are getting aftermarket coils for both PIs and Zs.

At least you have something to show for your efforts. Try the SDC-2300 on it just to get an idea for those who have an SDC and keep dreaming GPZ. Thanks for sharing.

Here’s a better pic of the control box and the coil - my pictures.

I would LOVE to find an old burro shoe - what a neat piece of history! I’m quite fond of the burros too. ? If you’re ever in California do let us know - we should arrange a forum outing! ? -Julie

The batteries are under the arm cup - rechargeable LiOn - The Russian site said 10 hours with an option for another pack (external?) for 20 hours. I had my hands on a prototype a while back for a couple of days. It worked fine in our AZ dirt. Hot rocks were detected but depth did not suffer in what is sort of 2-3 bar (on an F75) dirt. I didn’t play with the controls to try and balance out the hot rocks. It was quieter and significantly deeper than either of the TDI’s I have owned. Black sand at a San Diego beach caused no depth loss - solid return on a nickel at 17” in the gravel of a wash in Gold Canyon was the same at this beach - solid signal at 17”. My Nox gave up the nickel at 7 - 8” in the same sand with a very low VDI number - the Nox got 12” with the nickel on the surface with correct VDI reading.

Yeah, I have followed it closely. I set up a reviews page about it back in December... There are multiple threads about the Tarsacci on the Metal Detector Advice & Comparisons Forum including this one. Goldbrick also reported here. Impulse AQ - I like it. Referential to the old Fisher Impulse. If the machine is even remotely as pictured I will probably get one. It may not be designed for dry land use in extreme ground but there is plenty of ground in Nevada that is relatively mild but which does have a lot of alkali salt in the ground, maybe a few hot rocks. If nothing else it looks like a killer Lake Tahoe detector.

? Thank you Horst, I found that amusing. Best of luck when you are back in the US in September. ?

Basically, no. The GPX is about as good as it gets with both tones and a shallow iron disc function, but it is far from perfect. Garrett ATX the same but not as powerful. Minelab GPX Discrimination GPX Iron Reject The Manta no matter what they say will have ferrous limitations. Nature of the beast.

Kevin is a great guy. He KNOWS a lot. I have a Kevin story I tell often. If you've heard it stop reading! haha I went to a Minelab Metal Detecting Day in California with my 2 year old 5000. We were not allowed to use it in the coin hunt (PI) so a few of us had a private session with Kevin under a tent at the event. He was talking about any detector that anyone wanted to talk about including the 3030 that was just coming out. I asked him question after question about the settings on the 5000. He kept answering them and I would look at the manual and say 'Well, the book says such and such ...' He would try to explain what the manual was saying to me and a few other people and we would move on to another topic. After about the 4th or 5th topic he said "Let me see that manual." I handed it to him and he took it and threw it across the tent. (Wow, don't tear my pages I'm thinking.) To paraphrase Kevin after that goes something like this: I KNOW MORE THAN THE BOOK, I WROTE IT! He does know what he's talking about. Mitchel

I've now used the 24K in the field for only 3.5 hours and although the gold is flowing, its all small bits on ground I've already flogged hard. But still fun finding a little bit every few minutes ? The iron discrim I haven't had an instance where I needed to change off factory settings yet. But that time will no doubt come one day. One thing I WILL say....that 6.5" concentric coil continues to surprise me with its ability to handle mineralized ground and its sensitivity. The threshold stays solid and hot rocks are easily cancelled out. 18 bits of gold and counting......

I'm taking names for a Pre Order LIST here in the US (not even on my web site yet) so contact me direct. Trevor at CoilTek called and was giving me some info on these coils that is not in the brochure. The prices are in the photo below I am posting, as is my business name. Realize I am not taking money, just getting names for those who want one. Are these coils for everyone who owns an SDC-2300? I would never say such, but I do not know. The 10" ellip coil will be able to sniff out tiny nuggets better than the stock 8" coil and will also have 2" more of ground coverage per sweep. Many of the folks already are familiar with Elliptical coils and their ability to get up under brush and rocks, in those tight areas nuggets like to hide and the areas others can't get their larger coils (virgin ground pockets). The 11" round coil will give the most depth on larger gold and you get 3" more of ground coverage. It is the deepest of the 3 accessory coils and vs the stock coil on bigger gold. The 14x9" is a hybrid coil which will offer best ground coverage per sweep and increased depth on larger gold. If you already own a GPX or GPZ along with the SDC, then you probably do not need one of these coils. But I imagine that is not most of the folks who own an SDC-2300. Here is a fact that just happened 2 weeks ago with my staff members in AZ. One was using his SDC-2300 with stock coil and found a small patch of nuggets. He cleaned the patch out and called Lunk over with his GPZ-7000. Sure enough, Lunk smiles with a golden grin. He shows Wade exactly the spot and lets Wade listen. Wade spent some time on the target and went through all the settings, trying to get the signal to respond and nothing. Luck carefully removed a few inches and let the SDC check it. Sure enough, Wade could finally hear it. Folks it was just a matter of a few inches and Wade would have had the largest nugget of the hunt. He feels the 11" round would have heard it and paid for the coil right there. What was the nugget Wade missed in that small patch? Just another 1/3 oz'er to ad to Lunks collections. Again, Contact Gerry's Metal Detectors if you want to get on the Pre Order List (not taking payments until I have them in stock and I call you to ship) to get one sooner as Trevor said there will be a limited supply coming into the US at 1st, which is typical.

Dear Valued Members, As Nokta Makro Detectors, we are committed to investing in process improvements that will benefit and support our end-users. Due to the growing demand of our global business and our commitment to providing the best service, we are pleased to announce our new USA Service Center which will start servicing customers as of March 1, 2019. This will help us to streamline the repair and/or replacement processes and respond to end-users on a timely manner to provide them with the best customer service experience they deserve. Please find below the contact info for the Nokta Makro Service Center in the USA and should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us directly. NOKTA MAKRO SERVICE CENTER Email: service@noktamakrorepairs.com Tel: 706-619-2601 Address: 7579 Nashville Street Ringgold, GA 30736 Best Regards, Dilek Gonulay 

FWIW - I quit golf for detecting. Decided golf was doing the complete opposite of relaxing me. Detecting on the other hand. I can just as much enjoy taking in the scenery at a great historic site as digging a gold ring out of wet beach sand. Plus, I feel I'm better at it than golf. It is my stress therapy and love it but agree with the elements of the golf/detecting analogy, nevertheless.

I agree with you, and believe me nothing gets me more excited then being at a 1700's or 1800's site and getting a nice pure 25+ on my EQ800! I'm just pointing out that's not always going to be the case, and if you only dig those text book perfect signals, you'll miss a lot. BUT YES start with them, commit the audio to your muscle memory and then experiment with the less obvious signals. It really boils down to doing it, nothing anybody can type in words will describe the nuances of audio better then your own experiences.

This is not one of "those" forums. The goal here is to inform, not paranoia about people defecting to other forums. Post links at will - please - to relevant subjects. A significant amount of my time is spent chasing down and editing posts to provide the links people are not making themselves. Tarsacci added to the Detector Database....

I think this is an ancient snorkel used by shamans to travel to distant lands, circa 1978AD. Legend has it that these travelers often suffered extreme hunger, paranoia, and appreciation for a local musical troupe called Los Muertos Agradecidos.

You seemed to have taken quite a lot of pleasure in the different photo angles!!! GaryC/Oregon Coast

Thank you Steve, I was either selling the SDC and getting a QED or changing it to what I believe is what most of us wanted. Especially with the hopeful release of the NF SDC coil. No doubt the Z is my main gold detector, now I also have a lightweight & easy to swing PI for those areas the Z just can`t get at, although a bit agricultural in looks it is very functional. I suspect I will use it a lot more now, well until ML make that smaller coil we seek for the Z. It was a very easy mod., the basic guts of the SDC have not been changed at all, so to put it back in its original form would take probably 2 hours max. No wires were cut, no soldering or alterations of the CBs, just so easy to do for anyone that is handy with their hands.

I got pretty excited about this so, yesterday I did this and I`ll let the photos tell the story. Bit agricultural but has it been to Jenny Craigs, the SDC box without the electronics weights 839 grams, the "Plumbers" SDC box with the electronics weights 662 grams. I have a couple of 2700Mah LiPo batteries for a Hubsan Drone in the mail should be here next week. I believe one of them will be enough and it weighs 116 grams and will slide in below the circuit board. Alternatively the 18650s in a 2 cell holder will also slide in below the CB but I feel the flat pack LiPos with their PCB will be the more permanent go so as once tested it can be sealed and batteries charged externally, Also in the screw on end cap there is room for the Pro Sonic Trani at present I have the speaker mounted in there with holes cut in the end cap but once finished suspect I`ll just mount the Pro-Sonic Trani and seal as that.