Leaderboard

Phones hit a wall for making phone calls some time back. But new models come out constantly, and get bought. In tech you either produce product or go away. Multi is no more maxed out than PI. Good luck with the 8000. The fact is the nugget market is drying up and coin and relic is where the action is. Remember almost all detectors sold in the US and Europe are coin and relic. Plenty of room yet for a PI priced right. Axiom is still twice what it needs to be to get mass numbers going. Axiom at $1995 everyone would have one. Somebody will do it, just a matter of time.

I didn't get a chance to post this earlier, but a few weeks ago I got to go back to the site of my first ghost town hunt. It's one of my detecting club's permissions that has been hunted for probably 30 years of the club's 50 year history. My first hunt there 2 years ago was a daunting experience to say the least. If you've never done relic hunting, specially on a site that once had almost 2000 people living and workng there, then you cannot even imagine what that's like. The tons of iron and coal throughout the area makes every detector go nuts and a few detectorists too. 😉 There are other inhabitants on this site as well. A couple of local boys wanted to crash the hunt, but they didn't have their club cards on them so they were politely asked to leave. 😏 I was very excited to get back to this site hoping for some really old coins and artifacts now that I have had a few years of training and felt I was ready for the big game. Well let me tell you, it only takes hunting a few hours of hunting with 30 pro detectorists to to put you in your place and one of the big lessons I learned was that detecting is 50% physical and 50% mental. I started the first day rushing around to get out the door on time for the long drive to get to the site on time and discovering a few block from my house that my rear tire was flat. That set the tone for the day. I got that fixed and flew like the wind and just barely made it to the meetup on time. When we get to the site, I rush around getting my wife's detector set up and ready to go, grab my detector and climb through the barbed wire fence and discover I forgot my shovel, so I climbed back through the barbed wire, grab my shovel and slither back through the fence only to find I forgot my gloves... Auuuughhh! I run the gauntlet again with gloves in hand and finally get ready to hunt and my remote control lock mount decides to break off. Fortunately I have a couple of backups in my pack.... but I forgot to pack my little screwdrivers.... just shoot me! I manage to flag down one of my detecting buddies and he graceously stops his hunt to rescue me. When he returned to hunting, he was promptly rewarded with a beautiful 1876 Seated Liberty Dime with CC mint mark! By the time I get out on the field my brain is fried and I spend the next several hours finding junk while everyone around me was finding ancient coins and wonderful artifacts. That's when I just took a time out to get my head together. After I settled down and ate a sandwich I went back to the field and my training kicked in. I discovered everything I was doing wrong and adjusted accordingly and then the finds started popping out of the iron. There were some amazing finds made over the 2 days at this site by some great detectorists, not by me of course, but I did find a few interesting things and learned an invaluable lesson. Keep a cool head, remember your training, and most of all respect the skills of your mentors! They all did well and deservedly so. I look forward to day that I reach that level of Zen. Well done my teachers! One of my cooler finds was this tiny heart pendant or rosery piece: Here's a dime for size comparison: Unkown disc, possibly a coin or token piece but no discernible markings. Oil lamp wick mount with 1872 & 1873 patent dates: Mostly iron and lead trash:

That makes perfect sense for anyone who does a lot of relic or jewelry hunting. 90% of my time is spent coin shooting with a lot of notch. I can see where the spread ID and additional features could be more beneficial to those who relic hunt. Especially the ability to use offset-FT to separate the pitch of low conductors from iron. Speaking of relic hunting... I did score a really neat relic over the weekend. A brass boot spur! I had found plenty of pieces in the past, but never a whole one.

I went back to .71 and will likely stay there. I'm just not a fan of the new TID scale. Spent a year and a half getting familiar with how the D2 TID was normalized between programs and learning where/how everything reads, so having to start all over again just wasn't appealing to me.

Technology does hit walls where improvements are few and far between, Computer CPU's hit the wall a decade ago when it came to the GHz speeds, my CPU in my computer when I moved from Australia to NZ about 11 years ago had a faster clock speed than my current machine, Physics, transistor limitations and heat dissipation all put a halt to just increasing clock speeds to give a new model. Now the best way to increase computer speed has been having multiple processors, essentially more than one CPU, we used to do that with multiple CPU's on a motherboard, now we can just have multi core processors. Even then there are limits again heat being a big issue. I think detectors are similar beasts, yes things have improved but performance isn't the biggest factor that's changing. Technology made by other companies such as Bluetooth and faster processors has helped improve detectors but the changes aren't as dramatic as perhaps they used to be. There comes a point when a customer such as myself who has a GPZ and GPX 5000 and 6000 thinks would I really benefit from a GPZ 8000 if the major improvements they make to the 8000 are just Bluetooth LE, a nicer screen, a lighter package, carbon fiber all over the place, and some new coil sizes, perhaps taking on concentric coils after seeing the aftermarket's success with them but of course now moving the chips into the coils. Someone like me that has a lot of coils for my GPZ is probably going to be the most difficult customer to convince to buy a GPZ 8000 but even for many existing owners may not overly see the upgrade as worthwhile if the performance isn't all that much different to their existing model. I don't detect in salty soil, so just by putting my little 8" on my GPZ I basically have a GPX 6000 without even buying one but I have more features and control over my detecting and shed a lot of weight too with the little light coil So they can likely rule people like me out as customers unless they can somehow dramatically improve performance, then all those happy enough with what they've got, especially when people start doing comparison videos and the videos mostly show similar performance in a nicer lighter package. Then rule out the African market and what do they have left? An increasingly small pool of people to sell it to, someone who just bought a GPX 6000 is unlikely to get rid of it in the near future to get a GPZ 8000 unless they're very serious gold hunters with good ground to hunt. The average weekend warrior may not find it viable. They held back the GPZ 7000 small gold performance by never releasing small coils for it, this opened up being able to create the GPX 6000, but what could they have held back for a GPZ 8000 that hasn't already been opened up by aftermarket coils for the 7000? That's the big question. The GPZ may be like the CTX and not get a successor. I doubt we'll see another CTX unfortunately, love that detector. .

A lot of the V1.0/1.1 update was correcting and adding some missing features on the WS6 Master like a zero notch setting and tracking ground balance that made XP look kind of silly when they claimed earlier that the WS6 Master had virtually identical features as the main remote. I am trying to get used to High Square audio and the Silencer settings. I am still experiencing a lot of falsing on wet moderate to highly iron mineralized dirt in my area. Natural and manmade iron falsing even using v1.1 is pretty bad (not as bad as the Equinox 900) so more to come on that. The target IDs are also a moving target depending on ground balance and what frequency an EMI noise reduction frequency shift chooses. Setting notches like for Rattlehead's Silver Slayer is not as exact as it was using 0.71. More to come on that too. No change in FMF Goldfield's insensitivity to sub 0.5 gram and smaller gold nuggets and micro gold jewelry.

There's now a learning curve on dialing in Audio Filter and Silencer to attempt to optimize better sounding deep non-ferrous while eliminating iron falsing. (highly soil dependent). But that time investment has to matter to each individual. If someone is basically happy with 0.71 (and frankly I was myself), then no need to learn the "new" machine. Totally get that. Going to spend my summer refining 1.1 on the (dry) beach and parks so I'm good to go when my true passion, relic detecting, picks up again in the fall. I like and prefer the spread out TIDs and will also commit that to muscle memory this summer, but basically, when relic hunting, I'm digging everything over 40 (and investigating big iron) regardless of TID.

ZVT is a genuine ML invention and its underlying technology likely covered by patents with many years of coverage. So, I don't see how anyone could make a GPZ/ ZVT successor, other than ML itself. One thing to say about ML is that they have driven innovation in the detector technology like no other. If a competitor would want to truly match or even displace ZVT performance with their own high-end detector it would have to come up with a truly innovative and differentiated technology, just what ZVT has been for ML, or perhaps Geosense if you believe in it. And not just reformatting technology that was already existing or for which patents had already expired (not referring to a particular company here, just saying in general). Do other brands have the same R&D engine as ML is having? Perhaps. But I believe it when I see it. GC

Well getting out to detect with the new V1.1 update has been sporatic at best with my monsoon season in overdrive with rain everday for weeks now. As soon as I can find some dry wood, I'm going to get started on building an Ark! 😏 So one of my detecting buddies called on Saturday and said the rain has stopped for almost an hour in his part of town. Well that was all I needed so off I went to meet him at a site we call the dump which had houses there in the 1800-1950s that were then cleared to make a park. This site in dry season is hard digging, but the ground now is waterlogged, so much easier digging, however with several decades of man-made iron and ground mineralization, everything in the ground was lit up like the 4th of July! This site has a bunch of modern non-ferrous trash on top of the older iron and non-ferrous trash, and has been hunted extensively so it's always kind of hit or miss as to whether you'll find anything good there. Well this seemed like a chance to get friendly with the General program with the V1.1 update. I have sporatically played with General and @F350Platinum's Relic Reaper program since V0.71, but my goto has always been Fast variations for relic hunting and @Rattlehead's Silver Slayer program for coins and jewelry shooting. With all the wet ground, this seemed like the perfect scenario to see what the stock V1.1 General program would do. The only changes I made were to bump the Reactivity to 2.5 and change from 2 Tones to Full Tones with High Sqr audio. There was a noticeable taming of the ground signals and I was able to pick out some decent non-ferrous items. Needless to say, I liked the way General handled the soaking wet ground. I switched back & forth on targets with my Fast programs and General to see if there were any differences and there were. Fast overloaded easily while General allowed the good signals through better. Now I probably could have dialed in my Fast programs at some point to better deal with the wet, but I really wanted to see what General's Subtractive frequencies could do and it did not disappoint. I will definitely be exploring General some more. My finds on the "mudlarking" hunt include a hotel tag from the Alamo Hotel (1882-1968) which is probably a very early one, a decorative wall or door clip which may be related to the same hotel found about 6 feet from the tag, a Peters Victory shotgun cap (1911-1915), a possible valve stem cap marked "DILL CLEVELAND-O", and a very decorative metal strap or clip with an ornate water sceen on it. Does anyone know what that may be? So the exploration of V1.1 continues as the weather permits.

Well other day we did a double hunt. Got some junk jewelry/toys/coins at beach then stopped by local park and found 2 wheats 1944 & 1946. Funny I found both matching triangle shape earrings in the surf about 10 ft apart. Someone must have got tumbled around in waves. Usually only find single earrings. A day later wife and I went to another beach found rings (1 silver)/several pieces of silver jewelry and a lil silver n gold earring/toy cars/sun glasses/coins. Great day I was in a nice trough up to waist. The D2 using the DIVE program worked very well/stabile in trough and while having waves crash over the coil. Heck we even ran into Joe D on beach — he was testing out one of his setups. Good times for all. Now I am laid up again for a few weeks do to a surgery yesterday. So no detecting for a bit. But I will finally get a chance while I am laying around to look at everyone’s post n videos. Cheers and keep diggin!

The 2023 of Queen Elizabeth 11 and 100 years of VEGMITTE

Well now! Just to keep this thread on the subject at hand (detector prospecting) I must say Vegemite and hot dogs will be my next detecting trip lunch. Won't Sourdough Scott be disappointed when he snitches a bit of that.

Yes, let's celebrate imitation Marmite 🙂 "Vegemite started out as a response to a wartime shortage of Marmite. It's now a symbol of Australia that's spread onto toast, added to curries and even churned into ice-cream. Vegemite has inspired national pride – and outrage – since its invention a century ago in Melbourne" I'm a Marmite man myself, you can keep your salty Vegemite! Can't stand the stuff. They're celebrating a clone, a GPeeX 4600. For the Americans among us, it's a Pepsi/Coke thing 😉 with a lot of salt, think salty Pepsi. I should ad I do like the Vegemite jingle, I grew up with it as a kid even though I was a sworn Marmite devotee 🙂

I'm liking 1.1 OK. Took it out about a week ago to a silver mining camp where the mineral bar on the meter was maxed out. Used a program based of Fast with bottle cap reject 2, Silencer up to 2 and notch at 10. Worked pretty good IMO. Didn't find any coins but I did find a lot of relics. I'm really not that concerned about the ID on most items as I'm generally digging everything above 40 at those types of sites anyway.

Geosense is MLs latest word/term, over the years in their detector development they have come up with many such protected words/terms covering their inventions. I have learnt to trust each and every one such ML detector "buzz" word and use each new detector in accordance with that belief. The reason I have developed this trust in ML is simply this trust has put the weight in the pocket, Geosense/6K has done so straight from the box, as ZVT, SETA etc etc. did. Disclaimer... I`m talking their detector development not their coil development for equally I`ve learnt not to trust that, even before the top X coils proved conclusively so on the Z. Like Steve posted if the Axiom had been released before the 6K, it also would`ve been hot like the 6K has proved to be. Me too I`d love to see a Z with Geosense and an Axiom with Geosense but back to the thread Axiom vs 6K simply Geosense did it for me but the Axiom is certainly no slouch and I hope Garrett keep "R and Ding" it.

I’m a relic hunter, don’t use notch and even bottle cap: looking for little targets and I dig everything from early 20s to late 80s TID. Bottle cap only in the beach, shore and first 80cm/1m water wearing waders ...but I live about 70 miles from the sea so I go mostly in the countryside. Last weekend stayed at home because of lot of rain but I have to come back on hematite to set up a custom program which is promising. I’m studying audio filter which I consider a very nice feature and silencer as well. Talking about mild soils I’ll have to study new full tones feature..

I get that, and there's a lot to be said for being comfortable with your detector. But for me, the High Sqr audio and Max Frequency settings are a game changer so I'm willing to take a step back and learn all the new ins and outs just to have those two features. IMHO V1.0 had a few too agressive changes to try and satisfy everybody, which can't be done anyway. V1.1 seems to have dialed that back a bit and now, at least with my first four hunts with 1.1, it seems like a much more enhanced version of V0.71. One thing I'm learning is that this (and V1.0) made the D2 a much hotter running machine, and specially the Audio Response and Silencer and added features like Audio Filter and FT Offset to give even more control and I haven't even started to explore those changes yet. I can say it has helped to go with the stock Audio Response setting of 4 (and even 3 in some cases) and I start hunting with Silencer of 0 and raise it becomes necessary to tame the iron, which is usually not above 2 in my hot iron dirt. Silencer settings 0-2 are more gradual filtering like in V0.71 and 3-7 are more beefed up settings ala V1.0. Dialing back just Audio Response and Silencer have made my D2 much more responsive in my mineralized soil and iron filled dump sites and, IMHO, separate and unmask better. Running the machine too hot in my conditions just causes too much blow back, so at this point in my new learning curve, less is more.

Depends on the program, but for example, I noticed that in Fast, quarters were reading around 92-94 (usually 94-96), dimes and pennies both reading lower as well. In other programs, nickels are reading a couple of notches lower than before. Same goes for IHPs, minieballs, etc. Doesn't really matter to me if halves read the same as quarters since I'd be digging anything reading that high anyway. This probably isn't that big a deal to most and maybe I'm just lazy, but I've spent a lot of time getting used to where everything reads, and don't like the idea of having to re-adjust to changes. .71 has been working just fine for me, so the way I see it, if it's not broke, why fix it? The additional features in 1.0/1.1 are fine, but I'd likely never use them anyway. Audio Filter for example, does make deeper non-ferrous targets sound better. However, from what I saw, it also makes iron sound better.

Loved the advert jingle ! 😍 Now , how do I get it out of my head ?🤔 I knew I shouldn't have clicked on that but I just HAD to !🙄 Isn't there any peanut butter there anywhere ??🥸

Don't worry Mitchel, there is quite a healthy population of younger detector prospectors in Australia especially, they just all hang around younger people social media sites more so than forums so they are primarily just showing cool photos of their big gold finds more than sharing information and discussing detector technologies. 🙂 The younger people in Australia are attracted to the hobby there with how much gold they're able to find, yes skill is required but their hunting grounds are much more favorable than most of us have available to us in other countries. I don't know if the US is the same, there is certainly a big population of younger people in Australia looking for nuggets.

1st silver of the year, and I have been detecting since the snow was on the ground, its marked 925 LATH , It has a bit of tarnish on it from being in the grass for a wile, its not plated, I was running the Gold -1 program on the ORX and i got a solid 83-82 VDI , well the drought is over , maybe some Gold will come along to . It says on the pendant the words, Faith, Hope ,& love, my setting in Gold 1 where 84 gain, 14 khz, 2,5 speed, 2 IAR,

Hope you enjoy these two YouTube Video

The June Minelab Promo is here and yes Gerry’s Detectors has stock ready to ship. Here’s what we're offering for June. Purchase a GPZ-7000 and get a Gold Monster 1000 for free. If you already own a GM-1000, no worries, we'll talk and get you taken care of. Purchase a CTX-3030 and get a 6” coil for free. Purchase a Equinox 800 and get a 15” coil for free. Purchase a Gold Monster 1000 and get a Pro-Find 35 pointer for free. Of course and as a Veteran myself, I am privileged to offer those who serve/served in our US forces a 15% discount. Also, take advantage of the 3 Days Field Training courses we offer to my customers at a discount. 25 years of testing, using, selling Minelabs and still helping customers learn their detectors to find gold. If interested in trading your used detector towards these or any other I offer (I sell all major detector brands). Contact me & we'll discuss it. I've traded with many members here on DP & sold/trained even more. If our discussion and value of your used detector is not 100% happy for both you and I, no worries and we both go our own way. Happy Hunting. Gerry

I will have to check my collection one day.🤑 ....Link....

So not being able to update my Deus2 yet, leaves me watching everyone else. Boy it sure got quiet after v1.1? Did it solve everything, or did everyone unhappy just sell their machines? 🤣

Looks like running General on 1.1 is working well for you! Nice bunch of finds!

That's excellent, congrats!

the best and cheapest way to clean coins from the beach

what specifically? i did notice they brought the scale down a little on higher conductors which is a good thing. before the update, quarters and halves were about the same. now halves are 2 or 3 numbers higher.

I'm hunting in Belgium so we more or less have the same type of targets under the coil 🙂 and I can honestly advise you to buy the Legend. Be sure however to buy a new package (that's with version 1.11 and LG30 coil) and you will be set to go. I hunted with a Teknetics Alpha before this and there's simply no comparison between the two, the legend is simply the better machine. Multi-frequency is a game changer in some aspects but single frequency still has it's use (in high EMI for instance). You also need to consider the fact that the customer service of Nokta is very good and reading the manual (which is very complete) will get you started without too much troubles.

Well my reference to conditions is about EMI. If I can run the Equinox at 21-22 with the 11 and 15" coils, WHY would I ever want to try a 6" coil on a salt beach? What if I told you for the block and a half that I have EMI issues on, the Deus2 is unaffected. {Which it is} What detector would you pick and how would this affect your test? This is why it was important to say what detector you were using. It also only confirms what you experience in one location. ONLY! Not general rules on how all SMF will work. As for the Tarsacci, it sounds like it might be the detector of choice for your location?

If you two could just give me the gps #s for your finds ,,,I'd be happy to keep a guard on those spots for ya ! 😉 Hope you recover quickly , pain sukx , but great finds make it feel better !🖖

If you attend the club meetings I go to in the Los Angeles area you will know it is not the same. Clubs are losing members because of age and no buzz about good ground. Relics and the beaches are different. Younger detectorists there competing with us old guys.

Just like a new model of a car. It has to contribute to the bottom line. You have your design and technology waiting to satisfy a known market.

Simon, For all of the reasons you have listed (including cost) and others reasons from Steve, jasong and other contributors, it has added up to detectors used by OLD PEOPLE! Where is the new generation of YOUNG DETECTORISTS in the gold fields? Most of what I hear from forum members is that it is difficult for them to get their kids, grandkids and younger folks interested in nugget hunting. There are too many other things to do. Now they are trying to kill the gas engines which get us way out there so an era is coming to an end it seems.

I thank you for letting me know. I have one standing in the corner of the room. it would be interesting to see if other detectors in the same test would come to the same conclusion as you did with the Legend. Chuck

What exactly would this AxiomZ marketing brochure have to tell you so that you know it is an improvement over what we have? Could a marketing department put bells and whistles on a similar performance detector and get us (you) to buy it and not call it out for being not enough improvement for the bucks laid out? Our patches have been decimated and you can always say that nothing gets it all but that doesn't bring back what has already been taken either. The expectation that a new detector is going to pay for itself going back to old patches is a high hurdle to jump. New patches are hard to find but those are still the most rewarding for a detectorist looking to make a buck.

There is a little bit of a different market channel offered in the U.S. from the GPAA. I don't know how successful it has been but a few years back if you paid for a Lifetime Membership they gave a GM 1000 as a bonus. There were some other combinations of this leading up to the present. Now if you buy an Axiom you get a Lifetime Membership ... or at least it was. I don't know what the relative number of units are or the number of members of GPAA but it is a channel of potential significance. Most of the people in that club and many of the others I belong to haven't upgraded their detectors in years.

From what I gather reading posts on some of the other subforums - don't most people feel SMF VLF's have sort of already reached a wall? I have to admit my ignorance here as I just don't follow them very closely. But I'm curious if there is much room for expansion there if it's already a mature, crowded product space? A lightweight GPZ competitor for an affordable price would have no rivals or peers though. Granted, probably a much smaller potential customer base though. But the space is wide open right now due to Minelab's delay - same as it was pre-6000. I'm of course biased because these gold detectors account for like 95% of my detecting currently so I definitely want to see new ones even though I know the market for other stuff is better. And I understand coins/relics are a much, much larger market. But it seems like the time is kinda now or never for a competitor looking to enter the scene for something like a GPZ competitor? We aren't quite at the wall yet here as there are some easy improvements to make that ML declined to do on their own (coils, weight, namely). I am struggling to justify trying a $4k Axiom since I already own a GPZ and 6000, but I'd probably hop right onto a $6k lightweight ZAxiom. If another GPZ comes out first though - I'll be right back to where I am now struggling to justify trying one.

Note - I’ve combined this thread with the other thread on the same subject. The question is skewed by the price difference in Oz and the US. I've been quite clear I think the 6000 has the edge for nugget detecting. The easy answer if they are the same price is get the 6000. It's the safe answer. I have not used a 6000 in over a year now, and so getting into the nitty gritty versus the last build version of the Axiom is not really possible for me. I am satisfied to be using the Axiom and quite honestly I just don't care. I had a chance to pick up a 6000 for a song recently to maybe get into the question and passed. I don't need another detector for what I'm doing. Mainly I'd rather let truly unbiased end users speak to the situation given my involvement with Garrett and the Axiom. Plus these days I'd rather just go detecting than spend time in the field splitting hairs over detectors. The interesting questions arise since the differential is small, and the Axiom does have features the 6000 lacks that might matter more in some situations, especially for non-nugget uses. Chase Goldman and the relic hunters in Virginia, for instance, have a whole different view point about the machine. But again, at the same price, let's call it for the 6000 and nuggets. The big question for US users then - is the 6000 worth a 50% price premium over the Axiom? You Oz guys simply have a different situation and Minelab is a safe answer. Here in the US, it's not so simple. $4000 versus $6000 is a real and serious price difference and for some people it makes a genuine difference to consider. Is that $2000 worth it? That, my friends, is an interesting question, and one only answerable by the person involved. For casual users, maybe not. For very hard core users, probably. But that's as much as I intend on getting into it, as again, I think it's best for others with zero connections to industry or brand loyalties to speak to the issue. It is a shame in one way though. If Garrett had come out with the Axiom a year before the 6000, instead of the other way around, it would have shook the detecting world. Honestly people, take the 6000 out of this equation, people would be falling all over themselves to get Axioms, even in Oz. Minelab simply beat Garrett to the punch, and in doing so stole the wind from their sails. But that does not take away from what Garrett has done here, which in my opinion is be the first US manufacturer to make a PI nugget worth mentioning as a real option for at least some people to that offered by the Minelab monolith.

The Axiom is more sensitive than a GPX-4500, so you better contact your dealer and have him test it. I feel the Axiom is not working properly. You made a wise decision to upgrade and eventually you see the benefits of the Axiom.

I've really been surprised there has not been as much discussion about the Manticore as I thought there would be since it came out. That is much other than the ability to find one initially. I don't know how hard they are to get presently. Have they not sold that many I wonder? I'm doing what I consider great with mine. I'm far from a detector expert, but have detected long enough with Minelab detectors, and especially the Equinox to understand the Manticore decently well. I'm pretty sure it bridges the gap between say the CTX and Equinox. The Manticore's upgraded EMI mitigation as others have said really sets it apart. I have used AT-HC most of the time, and I personally think it's better than Park1 on the Equinox for silver. I have pulled silver from places I thought there was none left. Places that I had really worn out with the 800. Not like one silver, but several in one hunt. Five this past weekend from a park. The only reason I made the 45 minute drive was because weekend before last I had a 4 silver hunt from another site I was pretty sure I'd be wasting my time at. I ran the Equinox at both these places on the ragged edge settings wise. Park1, F2-0, Horseshoe on, Recovery 3-4, and Sensitivity as high as I could stay stable. I run the Manticore the same way basically AT-HC, lowered Ferrous-Limits, no discrimination/horseshoe on, Recovery 3-4, and only like 22-23 sensitivity. The crazy thing is mostly the silver I dug was not like really iffy. It was straight up I think I need to dig that for sure. A few were that's silver no doubt about it. One particular Merc I dug last Saturday was in horrible trash, but when I hit it I was stopped in my tracks. It was really tight not a lot of wiggle room. It was about 6"-7" inches deep, but I could circle it getting dime numbers a the way around despite there being trash pretty close by. I have also noticed I have no problem calling silver dimes and quarters for the most part. Silver just on average I.D.'s higher than clad in my dirt. I always thought silver rung up higher on the Equinox did too, but to me the Manticore seems to do it more often. It makes it a bit more easy to tell. For instance silver dimes seem to hit 83-84 for me. Silver quarters 90-92. Half dollars 94+. Anyway the more I use the Manticore the more impressed I am with it.

Sorry no Facebook. EVER!

So Simon are you only half a REAL Oz 🤣 marmite vs vegemite ..... Google Link

This was our discussion about it before: I remember when the regulations you cite came out and I think we came to the conclusion that if you go onto a mining claim and take meteorites then that is taking from the claim owner and is not allowed. If you collect meteorites from open land then it is ok according to the regulation. Barry would be my authority on the matter as he has studied the Barringer case. I don't know if there have been any updates and also don't know if one state is significantly different from Arizona where Meteor Crater is located.

Steve made a good point about Italian beaches. There must be pounds of gold in the sand there. Italians love jewelry, and a lot of it is high quality 18k gold, purer than a lot of natural gold nuggets. Even men there wear lots of it, and I remember my uncles all wore chains with gold horn pendants and at least one of them lost jewelry at the beach (my family there are mostly Napoletanos). If I were there, I’d definitely go to ocean and lake beaches and along any rivers or ponds where people like to swim.

What I'd do to be the first to swing a detector in those places 🙂

Now those are some great hauls, PI-Man, well done, and congrats on all the silver and gold! Hope you and mn90403 both have fast recoveries and can get back to doing what you love soon!

Simon, Minelab USA goes through spells. Back in the 90's and through most of the 2000's we used to have promos to match the US manufactures. Then a certain person came in shut down dealer promotions, dealer give aways, took away the 3 Day Air shipping and even took away the free hats on big orders. The promotions you have seen the last 6 months could be due to lost market share, drop in stock prices, lack of sales and profits. I can't understand why some countries don't get them though. Who knows, all it takes is a new person in charge with new ideas.

I've been busy with some other detecting lately out in the deserts. I like those nuggets and meteorites. You can kind of target those and know what you'll get. When you go to the beach (just like a park) you can get coins, relics and jewelry. Today's best finds were a couple of rings. The first was a stainless steel ring found after a couple of hours of mostly nothing except those tent stakes. My beaches have been very stingy the last few weeks so I was glad to get it. I slowed down with the 11/800 and began to find 'patch' stuff. I like patches. I grid them and just enjoy having a few targets together rather than long walks always. My clues were that I was out on a pretty low tide and things were seemingly deep for the 11. I'm normally a 15 user but the 11 was on and I didn't expect much and was back to where I started when I got the stainless steel ring. It says 316L and weighs 6.7g. I continued on just above the black sand line and found other coins and stakes and then I heard a faint 'penny' or it could have been. I made it down a full scoop (6") and it was still in the bottom of the hole. A couple of more scoops, around 10" I got it out. It was a nice shine for the early morning. This is a 10K with lots of little diamonds. It weighs 7.8 grams. My first gold ring in quite a while and first one with the 11" in even longer. I'm ready to take the 3030 out this week with the 17" and see if I can renew a liking for it and look at some of my old find points.