Steve Herschbach

No more VLF for me unless it’s a clear replacement for my Equinox. I’ve been thinking about the ORX and Simplex but just keep telling myself no. It’s the way they are packaged as much as what they can do that makes me want them. I suspect my next detector will be the Fisher Impulse AQ, assuming that they ever actually release it.

When it comes to marketing never underestimate the power of a name. The Minelab name alone will sell the Vanquish versus a company that truthfully few outside the forums have ever heard of. I’m a big Nokta/Makro fan, one of the first, but they have a long way to go to match the power of the Minelab dealer network. When the company combined they should have just dropped a Nokta and gone with Makro. Would have put them just ahead of Minelab in alphabetical lists instead of just after. Simple decisions like that matter, and Nokta/Makro is clumsy no matter how you say it.

They were posted recently on the Equinox Forum. That’s the best place to look for Equinox information.

If I buy alkalines it’s the Kirkland, been happy with them.

Has anybody used both or have any opinions on which coil offers the most useful overall frequency range? With the X35 you have 4, 8, 12, 16, and 26 kHz and with the round HF coil you have 15, 30, and 55 kHz. It seems to me the X35 26 kHz is sufficient for most nugget detecting while offering frequencies as low as 4 kHz. I guess another way of asking would be has anyone really found the 55 kHz or 74 kHz settings to be that much better than the 30 kHz setting on the HF coils? I’m just speculating that for the die hard nugget hunter the HF coils make sense but with the ORX X35 wired headphone combo available for as low as $649 it might actually be the better option for the multi-use detectorist. XP ORX with 9” round HF coil XP ORX with 9” round X35 coil

The basics of all tuning is to find the most sensitive settings that will handle the ground and hot rocks effectively. What you have left for power when that is done is what you have. Attempting to go for more power will bring back the hot rock or ground response... that is the problem in a nutshell. First thing I would do if Normal/High Yield is not working is try Normal/General. Next up Difficult/High Yield and then Difficult/General. In each case sensitivity to where the detector is on edge of stability. It may be that once you get the machine stable you will feel you have “choked the settings down” too far. Unfortunately that is how this game works. Some ground forces you to detune the machine, which in turn means it might not do what you want to do. As GB just mentioned the GPX may be the better option. The sad truth is not everything is as detectable as we want, and some locations are such that any detector is almost worthless. Luckily those areas are extremely rare, but artificial locations like a manufactured pad are high on that list. Even if a machine is unstable, working extremely slowly and digging signals that are different that all the other noises can get results. Background noise and hot rocks have a certain audio pattern and a nugget will often sound slightly different. I’ll still miss a lot but I can usually pull nuggets out of some pretty bad background noise by working very slowly and patiently. Or go somewhere else easier!

If that were possible a lot more people would be doing it. Panning is a prospecting method, and not normally a way to go out and make a living. What country are you in? There are places all over the planet to pan for gold. No matter where you go there will be rules, regulations, and property owners to deal with. Here are some public areas in the U.S.

Large nuggets are found in the United Stares and metal detecting is legal. Large nuggets are also found in various African countries, Mongolia, Brazil, Russia, and others. I am not sure what the legalities are in those countries but people are detecting in them and finding the gold.

No nothing has really changed and I don’t expect anything to really change as regards VLF metal detectors. All you have to do is spend as much time as I do cross checking on real targets to see just how minimal the real world difference is between all the top detectors. There are literally dozens of detectors I can grab and do about as well with, so it just boils down to the specific type of detecting you like and what features you prefer for that detecting. If any detector completely blew all the rest away everyone would use it, but that simply is not the case. It’s all splitting hairs on the hardest targets, with most detectors all being able to find the vast majority of targets equally well. Your detector skills and locations are what matters, far more than the exact detector used. And don’t forget the hours. A $200 detector that gets used will find way more than a $2500 detector in the closet! Here is the photo I could not post at the time that shows the fourth detector that was involved in my testing. I sold all the others plus my CTX 3030 after completing my tests but still have that one with the white coil.

First thing everyone needs to know is what settings you are currently using. Factory default and if not, all adjustments you have made. Minelab GPZ 7000 Factory Default Detect Settings Gold Mode - High Yield, General, Extra Deep Ground Type - Normal, Difficult, Severe Noise Cancel Channel Auto 1 to 256 (Preset 129) Manual 1 to 256 Sensitivity - 1 to 20 (Preset 9) Volume - 1 to 20 (Preset 8) Threshold Level - 1 to 50 (Preset 27) Threshold Pitch - 1 to 100 (Preset 53) Volume Limit - 1 to 20 (Preset 12) Audio Smoothing - Off, Low, High Ground Balance Mode - Auto, Manual Ground Smoothing - Off, Locate Patch, Salty Soil

I don’t think that has happened yet. Equinox is a beginning, not an end. And it just builds on BBS and FBS.... Minelab has a huge lead in this area. Given that Equinox was the first shot at Multi-IQ I expect whatever higher end Multi-IQ product eventually replaces CTX will be far more refined than Equinox.

I don’t think he was asking if you could put bigger batteries in a VLF but if more power gives more depth. There are reasons why that limit has been met in single frequency VLF and the thread I linked to above gets into that.

Personally I think single frequency VLF maxed out many years ago, and on the same targets on the same ground all I observe is the classic difference in strength with low frequencies having a edge on high conductors and high frequencies having an edge on low conductors. Frequency to frequency it’s really splitting hairs with differences often attributable to the coil, not the detector. The short answer is single frequency VLF hit a depth limit ages ago and so now we are in a race to the bottom for how many features can be offered at the lowest price. I expect Simplex will be as good as anything offered in the last ten years when it comes to single frequency and depth.