Leaderboard

I have this one; and power it with a cheep harbor freight corded right angle grinder. The grinders held up fine so far as has the little mill, I’ve no doubt my cordless Makita would power it just fine. the bearings and everything’s replaceable and the steel is thick enough to hold up and will powder the rock although to get it all to powder you need to screen it and make a couple passes through the mill. here is the eBay link https://www.ebay.com/itm/353373950334

Hey All, Midwesterner transplant roaming up and down the West Coast, been living in NW Oregon the last few years and digging it every chance I get. Been an XP user for about about 8 years now with the Deus and Deus2 but impulsively picked up a Manticore last week and have been focused on learning all its beeps and bonks. Did some prospecting while living in California. Really enjoyed it and looking to get back into it around Oregon and Washington. Still enjoy camping and fly fishing too, but detecting gets most of my attention now. For your enjoyment, heres a fake picture of me in the future, using the latest in detecting technologies at my local beach.

The storms are a few days behind us but there are a few good waves coming in to make some patches. I found one patch today on one of my 'go to' local beaches and got a couple of golds! One has some stones (10k/2g/diamonds) to go with it. The other is a 14k gold earring that is not so rare this year. It is my 2nd one after many years of the similar style being always junk.

April 24 2002 Part Six It was mid afternoon by the time we got up to the boulder field area. Jacob wandered about for quite a spell trying to get his bearings when he suddenly recognized a familiar rock. We followed him over to take a closer look and sure enough, there in the massive boulder was a circled X. My partners and I just looked at each other in amazement. He had actually found one of them. They were real. Jacob said there were more that could be found but he was too tired to look for them today. He told us that a temporary camp had been set up somewhere around here but the ground had changed and he couldn’t remember exactly where it had been. He said that the crew had hidden some of the treasure east and north of this area. Some of the crew may have also hidden gold up here. It seemed it was all done by the seat of the pants so to speak with no real plan or map. Or was there. According to Jacob he had seen several crew members making drawings. It was the rule not to ask questions of other crew members and they took this agreement very seriously. Jacob was worried that if any of those possible maps had been found after the crew was murdered the killers may have found locations of buried gold and treasure and dug it up. There was just no way to know for sure. But he figured his was still there. He walked slowly around the grounds trying to get a bearing on certain landmarks but was having trouble. After about an hour he told us he was getting tired and wanted to go back down to camp. It was nearing supper time by now anyway and there was plenty of time to search for treasure. For supper I emptied a bunch of cans of stew into a big pot and set it on my propane stove outside my camper. We had a nice campfire going and I heated up some biscuits and dinner rolls as well as bread. We all sat around the fire and had a feast. Jacob said the stew tasted better than the Hoover Stew Jed used to make. He said he had missed being with a crew and thanked us for inviting him to join up with our team. I told him we were more than thrilled to have him with us. We sat outside for a while and looked at the stars and talked about gold. Jacob brought out a bottle of whisky and we all put a little in our cups. He said he didn’t drink nearly as much of it as when he was young but still liked to have a drink or two nearly every day. He brought up the idea of posting guards like they used to. I told him I didn’t think we would have any problems and things out here had changed since the 1930’s. Jacob looked over at me and stated flatly that nothing ever changes when there is gold. It got me thinking. TO BE CONTINUED ................

Thanks Art… that’s the one that caught my eye. I already have a corded harbor freight grinder but will probably be adding a Makita fairly soon because I’ve started replacing all my battery tools with the Makita 18/36 volt system…I already have 6 batteries…. Here’s a pic of what I found on the property… there’s tons of mineralized float quartz here and an abandoned mine at one end. The gold is about the size of a grain of rice.

Pets are part of the family and always a hard loss. Just think of the great 16 years you had together. May he RIP! HH Jim Tn

George This old boy has cried over the loss of a dog than some family and because I knew that dog loved me. Chuck

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.

Nordic, before taking him up on his offer, ask him why you will need a two quart can of pepper spray bear repellent in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Hint: how we differentiate the poop from bears eating either deer or eating humans is to smell it for the scent of pepper. If present, then we search around the immediate area for his detecting equipment...

I'll see what I can find. I am assuming you want the Toyota because, unlike my Jeep, it has windows, a heater, air conditioning, a radio and brakes.

Remember, part of the journal was based on some actual events.

Getting all portable battery tools on the same battery is a wonderful thing..😍 Wait for Black Friday for battery deals. I have a Makita drill that I got in the 90s still going strong. The batteries died but they were 12 volt so I wired it to plug into the rig batteries/solar charged.system .

For what it's worth, I think the Manticore is probably Minelabs most rounded and complete detector to date for a coin/relic/jewelry hunter. We've only scratched the surface of settings and capabilities. Just running it in stock programs, they've done a A+ job in my opinion. If it holds up in the water without leaking...then they've knocked this one out of the park. My one wish with it...is I wish it had the red backlight like the Nox 900. And that's it. With the incoming coils for it, I couldn't think of anything else I would add to it.

I can thoroughly recommend Mick at Detectronics. His work is of a very high standard. He repairs most Minelab PI detectors and provides excellent modifications as well. He’s regarded as the “Gold Standard”. https://www.detectronicsaustralia.com/

It is the exact same width and one inch longer in the heel and one inch longer in the toe. It’s foot print is a bit larger than that. Dwarfs the 9” All and all I think it’s not worth the money over the eleven inch. JMHO. I do find it being used more than the 11” at the beach though. Mostly psychological I think though. They all pin point well for me in the sand. The weight of the 13” is not really that noticeable unless compared to the 9” on my XP lite shaft. I still think though the 11” is the one to beat.

It is mostly the market. Steve is right, there is an R&D aspect to it but the hardware costs are only marginally more than a VLF. The real problem is lack of competition. As the technology matures (read: patents expire) then prices could drop, assuming more companies jump in. But by then, Minelab may have another design that sells for $10k and the cheaper PIs just won't do. The TDI-SL was specifically designed to support an MSRP as low as $700 but what people wanted was ML performance, and they were willing to pay for it. So, yeah, it's mostly the market.

April 24 2002 Part Five I didn’t want to ask Jacob any questions about this sensitive subject and left it up to him to decide what he wanted to tell us about the old days on the claims. He said that he wanted us to know most of the story as his days were numbered and there was no one left to give the information to. Jacob told us that Jed was very secretive about the hiding places for his gold back in 1936. Jed didn’t even tell his brother but for some reason Jacob believed that when Jed was murdered and his gold stolen the robbers didn’t get it all. Jacob seemed to think that Jed had hidden a portion of the gold on the mountain. Possibly some of it off the property. One time Jed had told him that the mining property was the first place thieves would look. Jacob said that he didn’t think Sarge’s gold from the 1937 season had ever been found either. He said he wanted to spend his time looking for hidden gold, including his own. His memory of his hiding places had faded with time and he never made any maps. I told him my crew was here to mine gold but we would also help him as much as we could. Jacob told us he also wanted to help us mine and could assist with likely locations to prospect. With that we all got in the truck and headed back to camp for lunch. After that we planned to head north up along the creek where the marked boulders were located. He wanted to show us this area for several reasons. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

Yesterday I went to a park in Albany, OR. I was using my custom General program. Discrimination at 10, 11 through 40 notched out, Sensitivity at 95, reactivity at 2, and pitch tone. It was about 6 inches down in the ground. It came in at 54 vdi. When I opened the plug, I could see it shining in the bottom of the hole. It is a 10K white gold mans ring with a star sapphire stone.

April 25 2002 Part One DIGGING GRAVEL WITH JACOB I got up before sunup this morning and Jacob was already done with his breakfast of canned hash and biscuits. He was pouring out a cup of coffee and offered me one which I readily accepted. The rest of the crew was still sound asleep in their campers. It was a cold morning but Jacob had a nice little fire going. He said he preferred to be outdoors and not in his camper unless it was raining. We sat close to the fire and I heated some water to make oatmeal. Jacob was going on about how rich parts of the claims were. He had the buried gold and treasure out of his mind for now and wanted to help us find some places to take samples. He said the Northern Drift Mine was a good place to start. Over the years the slides had buried all the virgin ground. He wanted us to get out our picks and shovels and drive a sampling drift into the mountain. He wasn’t exactly sure where he had found the glory hole area but told me that if we went into the hill about 20 feet or so we should hit virgin gravels. I told Jacob I was up for it and my partners would be as well. We had no approved plans so old fashioned hard work was called for. Jacob said he wanted to do a little digging with us. He was thinking he could still do hard labor but at a slower pace. I just suggested he take it easy and not to work too hard. He laughed and said hard work was all he had ever known. Eventually Vern and Jim got up and made their way over to our spot by the fire. The sun was up now. Vern asked Jacob when he got up. Jacob told him he usually got up an hour or so before sunup and sometimes earlier. Jim said he was to be admired for all his hard work. Jacob just laughed and said hard work was something he had been taught as a young boy. Around 8:30 AM we placed our shovels and picks in the back of the truck along with pans and buckets and some five gallon water containers to pour into a wash tub. My truck had a cab and a half so all four of us could ride inside if they chose. Jacob sat up front with me. On the way up to the site Jacob spotted a big mule deer and gave me a nudge. It was a big one for sure. He said there used to be lion up in this area back in his day but I told him we hadn’t seen any yet but hadn’t been here too many times. Jacob laughed and said we were still green. I agreed. What else could I say? Jacob suggested we set the panning tub in a shady spot which we did and then we filled it with water from the containers. The sun was up and it was nice and cool. A great working day for sure. We got the picks and shovels off the truck bed and walked over to the base of the mountain. Vern, Jim, and I looked at the mountain and we felt overwhelmed. The slides had come down at a steep angle and somewhere behind all the overburden would be gravels we wanted to test. Jacob could tell we were a bit intimidated by the job facing us and he gave us a talk. He said nothing good ever came of inaction and once you took the first step the rest would easily follow. He told us not to think of digging out a drift into the mountain but just think about opening some ground a little at a time. He said this was our beginning and the first step to mining gold. Then he took a pouch out of his pocket. He opened it up and dumped the contents out in one of our pans. It was gold. He said there was one ounce there in the pan and it came from right here where he was telling us to start digging. We looked at each other. Vern and Jim had big smiles on their faces. The first picks hit the base of that mountain and rang out as they struck the gravel. We were spaced out a little farther than shoulder to shoulder and Jacob was working right beside me. It seemed like a dream. We were mining with a legend. TO BE CONTINUED .................

A good question in all seriousness, potential purchasers of the Manticore including myself who are still on the fence will need to understand that any review Simon is generous enough to provide us with will be from using his machine in near perfect conditions.

g'day TomT Ok mine is not a battery operated angle grinder but it is a cheap $50.00 Ozito and it is lasting quite well, the chain links in the mill will do about 20kg of quartz specie material before they need changing. turns it to powder in a single pass change the chain links fairly quick and easy cheers dave

No, don't consider it. The exposed 31mm length ( in conjunction with the first 31mm of the shield ) acts as a centre-fed half-wave antenna. This in theory has an input impedance that is purely resistive at the intended frequency. This resistance is 50 Ohms, which matches the characteristic impedance of 50 Ohms co-ax cable. So maximum signal transfer from the antenna to the cable occurs. The cable is low loss at 2.4 GHz, so most of what 'went in' comes out at the other end - all you need to do is match it to another similar antenna, and the signal gets re-transmitted. To be extra nerdy, the length of the co-ax cable matters, and it should ideally be multiples of half-wavelength long, ie. 62mm. It matters because the RF signal current flows in the inner core AND the outer screen. ( Anyone familiar with CB radio, for example, would know the ideal co-ax cable length ( rig to antenna ) is 18 feet in Imperial units ( 5.5metres ), and even if your vehicle installation only required 12 feet, you don't cut down the cable, just leave the slack in your trunk etc.)

Been using one for a year now for scouting / prospecting. It seems to work well and will fit into most any pack

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.

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.

so sorry for your loss he will always be in your heart & hunting with you in spirit

Thank You kind KL, I`d jump at the chance, the bears, the gaggle, SS but that Jeep nah nah, any chance you have a 70 series Toyota laying around? GC🖖

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.

I certainly wouldn't say I'm skilled in iron, put me in some of the places you guys hunt and I'd panic not knowing what to do or how to deal with it, I've been spoilt with my hunting areas that trash has never really been much of a problem, even in my worst spots all that is required is a smaller coil and I'm pretty good. Masked targets are relatively uncommon for me, big areas, few targets. I even hear people saying their gold prospecting areas are loaded with trash, here I've rarely found any modern trash in a gold area other than bullets and shotgun pellets. Some of the more rare trash items like old metal match boxes which can be a pain as they rust away and break apart into bits and the odd square nail there isn't all that much junk. I think I've found less than 10 nails prospecting my entire time. If shotgun pellets didn't exist I'd dig more gold than I would junk when prospecting, something like 10 bits of gold to 1 bit of junk wouldn't surprise me. Even in my park type areas coins are often more common than junk, the worst place for junk I've been finding is lakefronts which is such a shame as the lakes are beautiful clean clear things and clowns throw bottle caps down on the rocky beaches when they're sitting there drinking I guess, sadly this is more common on the heavily used tourist beaches more so than the more hidden spots locals only go to. I detected this beach for 4 hours with my Manticore, it was one of my first times using it once it arrived, I found ZERO targets, not one target in that 4 hours. If I didn't know better I'd not have a good impression of the Manticore after that hunt, but I was at the same beach a year ago and with the Nox and only found one target, someones car key from memory. The surprising thing is this beach is a 10 minute drive from the city center of the second biggest city in the South Island, and has suburbs go right to the beach and houses all along next to the beach, why there is no targets on the beach I have no idea, people just don't litter so all I can find is something someone has lost.... not an easy task. At this beach I would have been happy to find some junk, at least then I'd find a target to experience my Manticore finding targets! So no, I'm not a skilled detector user although I thank you for the comment, I am just lucky I live in a place with not much junk, very few detector users so more targets in the ground to find, and by the looks of it some of the more milder soils around, all this makes for some easy detecting so generally I am just a turn on and go detector user, not needing to delve deep into settings. I don't think Manticore owners are beta testers, 3 years in development based on existing technology of the Nox that's been around for 4-5 years now, it to me is an Equinox where they've put on a better screen which then allowed them to add on 2D target trace visuals which is just a modified simplified version of the CTX target trace which has been around what, a decade? If anything the original Nox users were the beta testers as it was the first detector based upon Multi-IQ, and for the most part Minelab did a fine job of the software on it, a few updates were required, they never did fix the pinpoint volume bug on it but overall it appeared a well tested machine with only build quality letting it down. They've now improved that on the Nox 700/900 and Manticore, based upon data they gathered from the original Nox, the detector that would be more likely considered a beta detector, being the first in the range. I'd be interested to hear if the pinpoint bug is fixed on the 700/900.

Based on info we got as to buried treasure and gold from the mysterious person who stopped by our claims as well as advice from Jacob we went treasure hunting. Not with a pick and shovel but with a proper digging tool. I won't say here if we found anything but keep reading.

Now you've made me feel ashamed of myself. I will expect you here sometime between June first and September 30th but first read Mn90403s' article so that you have astronomically high expectations. I will loan you my 2 quart pressurized container of bear spray, a gold sniffing hound, a Jeep with the steering on the right side (which would be the left side), Your choice of a gaggle of detectors and Sourdough Scott.

That’s a tough one George. My little guy is almost 11 now...since the kids are gone he’s like our child. God speed Sammy boy. strick

The little sluice will tell him if there’s gold in the creek. A pan would do just as good, maybe better with practice. Mike

I am spending a week at the beach waiting for the tide to go down. I will post the finds later. While reading the other posts about what is the best detector, I realized why the Tarsacci is the beach machine for me. 1. In mixed mode it gives a very clear dig or don't dig signal. Since I am a simple person, this is all I need. It doesn't matter if it's a penny or a gold ring, if the Tarsacci tells me to dig, I dig. 2. It will reach down 16 inches. In the surf, where the holes are filling in as quickly as I can dig them, I really don't need anything much deeper. Could I use it in the wet sand? Maybe, but how much deeper are the new machines? A half an inch? 3 It is built like a tank. I am pretty rough on my equipment and the Tarsacci has never failed me. 4. It pinpoints spot on when you find a target. The thing I hated about the Nox was the pinpoint function was poor and I would lose targets in the wet sand when they sunk out of sight because I was digging in the wrong place and the hole was filling in. Depth, Accuracy and Rugged. My only complaint is I would like it to be a little lighter, but Dimitar can do that with the next Tarsacci. Some people want accurate vdi numbers and pretty tones. I just want the machine to tell me when and where to dig.

You may be too high tech according to the picture you posted. I for one need lots of help and you may be the one that fits the bill for me. Laying the jokes aside it’s great to have you here and just maybe we can help each other. Feel free to chime in anytime you wish. I got my wife thinking that I know everything but I have to admit that’s not totally true. Pull up a chair your home now. Chuck

Well it's simple, the Nox wasn't near as good on silver coins as my CTX in my soils. This is especially true as most of my silver coins are deep having been in the ground a long time in soft soils and the CTX is certainly deeper than the Nox in this situation finding many coins I'd left behind with my Nox, without a doubt it is deeper. I found myself not using my Nox much at all anymore for coins after getting a CTX due to finding so many coins I'd missed with my Nox, I liked the CTX target trace too. The problem is the Nox was lighter, less complicated and more compact, plus I could just take one detector as I could use the Nox for gold nuggets in the morning and then hit a park in the afternoon with it. I liked it was an all rounder. The Manticore ended up being a crossover between the Nox and CTX bringing the Target trace across to what I see as essentially an upgraded Nox. They also touted it as deeper than the Nox, I'm yet to see this depth advantage although I haven't used it in the places that will take advantage of that as I was away for 6 weeks. So far I'm very happy with my Manticore, the only downside is it has significantly less stable Target ID than the Nox perhaps due to the wider target ID range but there is something more to it as the numbers are often bouncing within 10 digits out not 2-3 out, I see Nox 900 users are reporting similar. For someone that's used both the Nox and the CTX the Manticore is not such a big learning curve, more a successive model.

Possibly they were laying in a pile on the same towel when the owner forgot and picked up the towel. Also, if you hit the beach during a low tide later in the day, go as deep as you comfortably can in the water during that low. When you're deep at low tide, that is the least hunted area by others due to it's inaccessibility at the other higher tides.

Looks like glass melted in a fire to me.

You mean the device sold that shamelessly rips off an old Garrett model name? I won’t help them by linking to their website, so people will have to Google it. Simply trying to Google the old Garrett model brings this thing up, no doubt what they intended. And only $2499! Be interesting to know exactly where this is made, as the U.S. is claimed and made a big deal of in the advertising. It seems to be sold far more outside the U.S. than in this country, and got here last. It first appeared on Middle eastern websites in early 2021. The U.S. website is newer than the foreign based websites. I literally never heard of it until today. I'd like to say more but I don't need to get myself in hot water, so I'll leave it at that, and let people figure it out for themselves. Do yourself a favor and stick with the name brand detectors discussed on these forums. The original Gold Stinger: The X5:

Parkgt has a super idea there! I never understood why XP provided such a long antenna in the first place. Parkgt's design should have been close to the initial factory design. To their credit, XP is coming out with a shortened antenna that I intend to snatch up as soon as they're available. Such a shortened antenna should be perfect and much more convenient for internal use with Steve Goss' CF shaft. Good job Parkgt. I love to see such ingenuity like this!!!👏

I second that, I had a modded 4500 from Mick and he did a repair for me as well. Complete professional and top notch work. He is completely familiar with all Minelab gear and does work on earlier VLF's and Whites PI's as well.

Up that draw on the right looks interesting.

I am sorry to hear George. I lost my dog 7 years ago and it still hurts..

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.

No detector but I got the manual dated 1979 .

Nokta has a PI in the works. Given the precedence of the Simplex and Legend, I suspect it will be an excellent performer, submersible, and low cost.

Steve, I couldn't agree more. My reason for asking Phrunt his opinion is precisely because he is skilled hunter. I'm just burned out on all of these knee-jerk YouTube reviewers who hunt for an hour and render a verdict on a detector.

Let's take a look at some considerations: 1) No one that I know likes to have to return a detector (or other device) for a fix/repair. 2) Modern detectors, at least most of the higher end ones, now have the capability of software upgrades available to the user, so no physical return is necessary for a software fix/upgrade. 3) Some modern higher end detectors (e.g. XP Deus 1 and 2, Nokta Legend, Minelab Equinox and Manticore) take considerable time to learn for most people, at least for those who want to optimize settings for the highest performance in their sites. 4) There is no requirement to buy ASAP, even for people who know they want the new model. So, short of hardware issues that require a return, there is zero downside for those who want the detector ASAP, and those who want to wait for things to settle down have that option. It's a win-win. It's an easy choice for me. Rather than waiting months for the manufacturer to find every bug, small or large (and realistically we all know, or should know that is just about impossible today) I can be using and especially learning this detector on-the-fly. Will I have to 'unlearn' something because of a future change? Maybe, but I'll still be months ahead on the learning curve. P.S. Back when I bought my first new vehicle (1977), there was already a piece of advice tossed about -- wait for the second year of a model before purchasing. So unless 45 years is like yesterday (and it does seem like that as I've aged ), this isn't a new occurrence and it didn't start with consumer electronics.