Leaderboard

I talked to friend today today who tried the 15 inch on his Nox. He used it for a few months but said it was to noisy here in the bay. It did provide the coverage but he had to make so many adjustments that there was no depth advantage. After he told me that I remembered the same when I tried a few larger coils on the Excalibur. The WOT, and the Detech ULT13.. the 13 was so hot, once it was in 3 foot of water I could not even adjust the sensitivity down enough to stop the noise. Even more interesting is the "AQ's big 12.6 inch coil. It can be noisy but with coil control (And setting adjusting) it is manageable. I just got a 10 inch special made coil for it and I swear that baby is silent. I'm taking the AQ out tomorrow with the 10 in rough waters. See how all goes.

As far as actual genuine additions in the form of real additional performance I expect little. GPZ was a genuine breakthrough, as was Equinox, but next generations are likely to be fine tuning of the original breakthrough. Back to what has been disparaged as drip feed, but reality is genuine advances in metal detecting only come once a decade. So I basically expect more of the same, plus other companies piling on with their versions of SMF and PI, all of which will add up to more of the same. More choices in style, feature mix, and price. But more capability that actually makes a real difference in what I can find in any given day? I’m not holding my breath at all. The good news is I’m very content with what I have now, light years beyond what I started with almost 50 years ago. I’ve personally experienced going from detectors with no ground balance, no discrimination, and no depth to speak of, to the fantastic options we have now. I’m way more focused now on finding better ground than a better detector. That’s the ticket to success, not whatever new flavor of vanilla somebody is brewing to part me from my dollars.

Some thing that really woke me up to how hard it was to dig 18 inches was when I dug the holes for the PVC pipe when testing the "AQ" The PVC pipe was 20 inches long..... Honestly, After digging those test holes I don't think I've dug many that deep. If any, when hunting.

Got my coil back today (25th) after sending it out last Saturday (16th). I asked for some new washers, and they sent them along with a new bolt and skid plate. The skid plate is not as tight as my original, but it makes it easier to remove! The service was excellent and communication impeccable. It cost me $13.55 for shipping to the facility via priority USPS.

It might be OK with the 6000 but would it get off the ground with the 7000 & 19" DOD. 😆

I just use the 12V lead off my GPZ battery charger (or you can also use the 12V lead for the SDC Lithium battery) to charge my GPX6000 battery when out bush rather than use the supplied alligator clip 12V charging lead. The other way to do it is to replace the alligator clips with an Anderson plug, most caravan people run an Anderson plug to provide current to the DCtoDC chargers on their rigs. JP

Ok, well here's just a few from the past 2 months.....

Interesting you guys bring up depth. In the water that could be difficult , but done long enough as OBN , you got a pretty good idea. Many moons ago , I actually carried a mini 6' tape measure to check on depth. Then for a few years ( it was posted on the other forum) I put colored tape on my scoop handle. Tilting the point of the scoop on the ground , then measure 12" with a tape vertically , then again at 24". I am confident on eyeballing measurements. But this was more accurate. The problem is , depending on the width of the hole and if you can get your coil to the bottom , is were it can get a bit tricky. I'm sure there are times where the ring was deep and in the side of the hole. And that scoop brought it down. But I know other times I've had that scoop at the bottom 18" and still reading the target solid underneath it. 1 more scoop gets it. Now , It doesn't really matter unless I got a new detector. Then I would just like to know.

Some of you blokes might need to lay off the tinnies while you wait for delivery.

Early wet Weather in Northern Nevada, sure messed up a few of my hunts! But, this last Hunt was called Rain or Shine! Be there or miss out with the original hunting party. We had half the amount of coils on the ground during this hunt and managed to find a few sweet spots of dinks to add to our pokes. Rain on us with snow in the ground 200’ above us all 4-Days! 6000, Retune Button got a workout. I kept the 11” Mono on. Tried the DD for a few hours with no luck, don’t know if the ground and line I took was bad, but the guys behind me where finding nuggets…so back to the 11”. My truck is out in the drive way in the wet Weather still loaded up with me gear! Getting wet again to unload it, I can’t wait 🤨 Until the next Hunt! LuckyLundy

The obvious cheap alternative to using the 18 volt '7000' charger is to repurpose a redundant laptop power supply. They ARE regulated, have plenty of current capacity, and you may have one lying unused; they can be obtained free from family/colleagues, cheap from flea markets/car boot sales etc. They are typically 14V to 18V, use the dropper diode circuit to get them down to 12V or so.

I use various cigarette style chargers while in the road, but our cars, or at least the one I have now, do not have “live” 12V accessory plugs unless the car is running, or key in accessory position. My last rig I hardwired in my own always on receptacle. I’m a bit paranoid about it, as I did use the accessory key once, but other things in the vehicle come on, boosting the draw, and I accidentally ran a battery dead. In a bad place, and only got lucky finding a person who could give me a jump. I got an emergency jump kit for that reason. But current car if I want up charge overnight, I’d need to add that always on receptacle, so until then, it’s clip to the battery. Or use a separate charging option. Whatever, lots of ways to go, sure not anything new for me. The worst actually for me was the SDC 2300 and finding a 12V C cell charger that would charge four cells at once - an uncommon item. Even if the battery ran 16 hours I’d have another. It’s not running time for me, but that I refuse to not have a backup, just in case.

I know it was all about weight with the 6000 and if it had a heavier longer lasting battery it would be edging even closer to the GPX 5000 weight so at release they wanted it to be as light as possible, however do you think it would be possible over time that they would just release a long life battery for it as an optional extra, obviously it will be heavier but the marketing side of the weight advantage would have done it's work by then anyway and the many users will have told their friends how light it feels so having accessories that add weight wouldn't matter as much as the advantages they bring. My detecting days are usually 8 to 10 hours, normally longer in summer when the days are far longer and I would be a speaker user if I had one that worked so I'm at that point where 1 battery is not enough but a slightly bigger battery would be.

If it's priced around $1,000, that would be pretty sweet (although I expect it to be closer to $1,500). That's still too high for me, but it's close enough to the Equinox 800 to impose some serious competition...assuming it performs well, of course. But based on what people say about the Deus, I expect the Deus II to be competitive with other SMF machines.

Choices: 1. Wake up and change battery on supplied main charger 2. Use supplied 12 v battery jumpers to charge spare at your leisure. Strick

NE, Ive only tried a friends 6000 for a trial and I'm slowly putting gold aside to pay for one.....but bills keep getting in the way 😞 I dont have any ML wireless headphones to try but Ive used all the same brand types from the transmitter brands Ive tried. So far, none have been fast enuff for my liking. If it aint as quick as a set of corded headphones, I wont bother. Gold wise, yeah Im doing OK I spose....nuthin like the good old days though lol. Im sitting at 5.6oz for the year so far....477 bits, 8.5 grammer is the biggest.

Thank you everyone.

I grew in the the snow country but the Army brought me to AZ where I got spoiled. I will never leave, I love the heat.

What would FMF mean? Full multi frequency? Certainly an XP Deus II though. I enhanced the image a bit to make it more readable. You can also see the two charging points on the coil below the red light.

Well it will have to wait another day to unload 😂

Thank you! I sold all in late 2012 when I was sick. I do regret selling then. The last 7 years I've saved most, I have them locked away in a bank in another state. Occasionally, I will have a friend pull them out for me and I'll add to, get a few pictures (or video) then put them back. Someday my grandsons will hopefully be the beneficiaries, if I taught my daugther correctly on how to get the most out of them. I'm very Blessed that I don't need to melt them, but I do send my silver in for melt and do good with that.. A side note, If I hunted the land only my ring count would be about 1 a year, if that.

Something similar has already been done. The White's VX3 had the exact same hardware as the V3i but the features (all software) were considerably stripped back. However, all those features are still in there and can be progressively enabled with the right passwords. I think there were 4 levels: the VX3, 2 levels in-between, and the V3i. The thinking was that when a customer got good with the VX3 he could then "buy up" to the next level for, say, $99. It would have had the benefit for White's that a new customer would be less likely to overbuy and get frustrated with the V3i, and for the customer that they could buy only as much as they wanted. The "upgrade" was never implemented, mgmt didn't like the idea. Please don't ask me how to do it; it required running the unit's serial number through a passcode generator that only White's had, and I'm certain that even that has been lost.

Not seen such a thing, but not saying it's not been done. But most reports on the NF12 say it's about the same as the stock GPZ coil, just lighter. So you could leap from there to GPZ stock coil to 6000 comparisons, which are GPZ deeper on bigger stuff, 6000 hotter on smaller stuff.

A friend took me out on his boat Friday in search of Gold and Silver at a spot that is very hard to get too. Fours hours and all I had was several silvers but I could smell the gold.. It was close...just never found it.... Saturday I forced myself to get out of bed and go in search of that yellow stuff again (alone this time). Different beach...Water was calm.. and the tides were not the best but being what they were it forced me to hunt in the right spot. Not a lot of targets but got into a little area I could feel it again, then about 16 inches down, out came a 12 gram 10k gold. Hunted for a while longer, then as I was walking in, "out of the blue" I got another signal. Out came a 5.8 gram X10k. Old stamp.. Final total (both hunts) 7 hours,... 2 10k golds, 13 Silvers. I've had a very "Blessed" week, 5 gold rings total (30.58 grams of gold) , 24 Silver coins..in 4 hunts, about 16 hours. Three different beaches. Winds and Tides are off this week, then that crazy day light savings time is coming.😒 Both John and I had a good time, and interesting, I had a chance to see how well the Nox 800 with stock coil did against my 10 inch coil Stealth Excalibur. In short, I have nothing to worry about from the Nox's. No doubt the best machine to have on fresh drop beaches, but when the targets are very deep, I'm not even sure the 15 inch coil on the Nox would help. Wish I could get back to the one spot, the AQ would kill that place I believe, Here...when you digging a lot of silver.. the gold is right there with it. It was just to deep for the Excalibur at the first spot. Good Luck to everyone out there and Be Safe!

Went back to the farmhouse today, Chase wanted some detector time so I invited him down. It was a cold morning, 50s and windy but good for the hard work ahead. Chase got there shortly after I did, my first find was a 1990 nickel, and it really didn't get much better. I had to dump my trash bag 4 times, lots of plumbing parts, matchbox car parts again, molten metal and just about everything that gives a false good VDI and tone. Bullet shells, you name it. 😀 The place is getting sort of lean. Here's what I got, some of it is interesting: The usual clad and memorials, nothing older than 1972. Remains of some kind of brooch with rhinestones, it was pretty mangled but still had 3 stones. A 3 ring bullet flattened, some sort of knob that has a coin edge. The most interesting finds aside from the bullet were the aluminum penny token which is about the size of a quarter, and the small brass "E. Faber" fountain pen tip case which contains a small pencil. The token is corroded and broken so that the date doesn't show, just the bottom of the memorial and "One Cent" on the back. It was a fun day, always good to have Chase along. He found some stuff too.

it is about direction and who is taking that direction. better to venture than rest. the 1st car manufacturer does not still make the best car. other's risk the venture and that is what i apperciate. XP is going in that direction, armchair quaterbacking is easy and not always helpful

That was me, there is something else on the coil that catches the red pulse, guess we will have to wait and see.

Good question, but the answer is "I haven't". Not in a testing, scientific type of way at least. All I know is that if there is a lag, it isn't enough to be bothering me. Which isn't saying much though as this sort of thing isn't usually something that worries me too much. However, I do know I tried some bone conduction ear phones which were not Low Latency on the Equinox and that did give me the shits! The bone conduction part was actually fine, the lag was terrible. I'm heading out tomorrow and will take both, space out some coins and lead and stuff and have a little play. I started this thread so I guess I had better give some proper, decently tested feedback 👍 Nice, you're doing well. I've been getting a few nice pieces too but last Friday/Saturday pulled up a skunk. Friday was my first ever at Wedderburn and caught up with a mate staying at the caravan park. We tried a spot where he had found a few bits before. Nothing but lead shot and .22 bullets for both of us. Did a bit of scouting around in the arvo and had a look at where the potato diggings were, etc. Planned on camping out Friday night but a slight, Tier 1 Covid site, stayed with possible contagious people type incident sort of derailed the rest of the day. Once the C-19 issues were sorted during Saturday morn I just had a scout around the Whipstick looking for a new patch and finishing for 2 hours on an old patch. But nothing. Used the 17" coil exclusively both days. Great coverage, nice and quiet but that coil does nothing to eliminate picking up bl@@dy lead shot unfortunately. Rather than a stupid question, I guess this is sort of a statement - you've tried the Minelab supplied headphones. Still a noticeable lag for you? Will any of the other headphones or receivers you bought hook straight up to the in-built GPX6 Low Latency signal rather than using a transmitter?

Apparently, they plan to make their first deliveries in 2022. But I hear ya on the potential for vaporware...

Hi all. I must ask if anyone has been using the supplied 6000 headphones and checked if noticeable time delay is present, and then try it plugged into the machine and the delay disappears? Would need someone to check a target in the field both ways before digging, cheers sturt

At $92,000 USD, I don't think they will be selling a lot of them. It would make a great prospecting vehicle for any kind of prospecting or exploration.

Epoxy a coil support on that baby!!!! Make sure it works first😉

Well said Steve. However, I wish I still had the same young body that swung those early detectors. Technology now is brilliant and plenty of potentially rich new ground just begging to be walked -

yes sir a real whopper for that region .

Well done Rick swinging in adverse weather is always a chore .

I have been detecting an old home site. I started out with my ORX and the x35 9" coil it found alot of targets, and then kinda went quite, so i grabbed the Tarsacci, with its 12" coal and the ground let up again , and in the one spot the east yard it to went silent, but what gagged me was i was digging down 14 inchesand doing what i call a frontabout 3ft wide and just detecting the dirt i was throwing out of the hole and using a magnet to pull out the iron and going over the dirt again but now i was using the Mackro racer with the 5" coil to do this and it was pulling out lots of non iron targets this way but what caught me off gard was when i went out side of the hole and just for the heck of it started scanning the surface the other two detectors had gone over , i started getting hits, pulling up more shotgun shells and other non iron targets , so the 5" Racer coil was doing somthing the other two could not do . it was getting in between the metal and at a good 6 " , this took me back because i figured no way it would do so well but it did and is ,

Air Force does like their Controlled Climate and I never argued 😂. First time I ever lived in Snow Country and I enjoy it so far. Grew up in Florida and Arizona. I’ll be back home in Arizona next month to hit a few of my old spots if I can remember where they are at! Rick

Just doing what a small coil does when masking is the issue.

Thanks. It was a bit of a disappointment, only one silver coin found here so far. Tons of clad, almost 100 coins here. There is so much junk in the ground you really have a challenge. In a way we are cleaning it up for future visits, but nothing jumps out at you as much as the debris does.

Another great hunt. My Nox I was able to get a good 16-18" in the wet , not in the water. My DF went deeper. Nice old ring. A few years ago I got the same script ring dated 1886 , my oldest. It was unique in that the ring had a reeded edge. Like that of a $5 gold , but it was worn down. Wish I still had it our took a pic. It was also around 22k.

I know the Nox was running beach 2 with a threshold.. Does that sound right? And remember my Excalibur's are not stock, many modifications.. and I hunt in PP/All metal. I've taken CZ20/21, and other Excalibur hunters and they can't hear the targets either.... I've hunted along side Nox's before but this is the first time that I went thru and picked out faints for them to check and dig. And for the record I did have one guy that had a HOT CZ21, that thing could hear all I heard and even deeper then my Excalibur.. He was getting a 6 gram gold ring at 16-18 inches.. My excal was getting it at 14..and this was on the Jersey shores several years ago...I have done several upgrades to the Excalibur since but that CZ21 was as deep as the "AQ" is.. So what I did, I would find deep faints targets for John in PP using my Excalibur. Most I would have to remove two scoops..about 10 inches? For him to find the targets. He did hear them then but they gave a iron signal ......after a scoop or two he would get a discriminated silver tone .......John is a excellent land hunter, and hunts the water but mostly fresh drop beaches.

Nice Indian, great find! You are getting great results with the ORX

Look for BiPolar Pulse Induction (ZVT) units with changes to coil voltage/amperage and frequency/timing shift tech (similar to how the 6000 samples on-the-fly) to be the new benchmark in gold detector technology....from Minelab of course. I can see an opening for a 2300-beating small gold specialty detector using the above tech with fast sampling and CC coils, plus a big gold-big depth version with a wide-lobed DOD coil with slow-er sampling. Or maybe a killer 'one unit fits all' adjustable machine to get it all? But thats gonna be a $10K+ detector for sure, knowing ML's expenditure on R&D to get new tech on the board.... Don't quote it as gospel of course....I can just see the logic in this, now that ML have 'let the cat out of the bag' with the 6000. Seems logical to have a hybrid detector using both 7000 and 6000 tech.

Thanks, I appreciate the clarification and sorry if it sounded like I was disagreeing with you, there is no doubt in my mind the GB2 is the best detector First Texas currently make, aside I guess from the Impulse AQ but I know nothing about it and intend to keep it that way after reading enough about it now 😜 The entire lineup is a bit long in the tooth and dated but it seems that it's going to stay that way. I guess I'm a bit disgruntled they made a Gold Bug 2.1 instead of a Gold Bug 3 in a model that's so long overdue for a new version. It'd be good if they could address it's shortcomings like it's poor recovery after hot rocks and having a ground grab along with auto tracking and other modern features we've all come to expect on a detector purchased in 2021 but then maybe the reason they haven't is because it wouldn't really change the fact that sales of the detector would still be slow, competition has the market now, it's hard to get it back. Up until their Multi Frequency machine all Nokta has done is what First Texas should have done, and could have done and they've made an entire business around it selling a significant number of detectors that are just feature packed detectors similar at heart to the FT detectors.

It is amazing to see what you are able to find in a single hunt. I hunt 99% of the time in the turf, and my gold total for 3 years is what you find in a week. Right place and lots of hard work on your part.👍 Do you hang onto your rings, or do you sell them for scrap once you get a certain amount? If you don't sell them, do you have a pic with all of them in one place? I bought a couple detectors from a guy in Salt Lake City years back. While at his house, he took me to his detecting finds part of the basement. He had a substantial bunch of gold rings he had found all hanging on a large carabiner that astonished me, as I had never found anything gold up to that point. It was an inspiration to see. I emulate him a bit. I just use a much smaller carabiner so it looks like it is loaded with gold rings.😁

One of my other Buddies is heading home soak & wet! Here’s is Poke

Then watch piracy kick in at full force, dumps of the software upgrades all over the place people installing for free. They'd need some sort of license key situation that a key can only be used once and on one detector, they could have an algorithm that when you purchase the upgrade it uses the serial number of your machine to generate the upgrade code which then only works on your machine and is checked online. Sure there are always ways to get around all sorts of protection but I just don't see metal detectors as something that anyone serious would bother trying to break the protection, especially if it's very difficult with online verification and serial number matching for machines. It'd be best done like some software where features are unlocked by the license key you enter rather than requiring customers to firmware update machines and just have the license key "activate" to the detector online so it can't be used on another detector. It'd be funny to see key generators for metal detectors 😛 It all sounds good and would be nice and convenient for customers to be able to upgrade at home with a few simple clicks.

David is in poor health and is mostly retired, though he continues to dabble as he can. I do have some unsanctioned side projects but they go slowly.

This case is still a thorn in my backside!!🌵 And obviously, more so to Odyssey Marine, to this day!! I had bought a large; (to me) amount of shares of Odyssey Marine for my kids, long before they found this huge amount of treasure! Than the carpet was pulled out from under them, and us investors, by our own courts!! Unbelievable!! That would have been a huge help for my daughters college fund! Thanks!! 🤬US Courts!!! This, and other more recent discoveries; being awarded to the "country of origin", are the reason why many salvagers have stopped looking for ships in US waters!! Other than Mel Fishers hard won case, and his "secured" leases, the vast amount of other's are out of luck! And those potential discoveries will be left to rot away on the ocean floor, where no one will ever see them!! Including ironically, the archeologists that fight salvage operations, but don't have the funding, resources, or knowledge, to find them in the first place!!👎👎

There is no assuming......the warranty will not be transferable. It is 5 years and applies to the original registered buyer only. With the second coil I might go $275, tops especially if shipping costs are added on. There are so many different versions of the F75 that you have to shop carefully. The discontinued F70 did not have variants and the currently produced Teknetics Patriot which is exactly the same detector are somewhat different from all of the F75s. They weight less by half a pound and at least where I detect, they are more stable. If I really wanted an F70 I would not hesitate to buy a Teknetics Patriot new from Amazon or Teknetics Direct since the 5 year no questions asked warranty is worth the extra $99 in my opinion. I have used that warranty on several FTP detectors in the past.