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Steve Herschbach

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  1. And just a note. I never give your email to anyone without permission. If people try I contact you and give you their email (with their permission) so you can contact them or ignore them. I never give the emails to marketers. I never send out bulk emails. If you get emails from the forum it is because you have something in your settings saying you want a notification email about a thread or something. If you are getting emails and don't want them - turn it off in your settings. The main thing to know is I am a super private person and I hate being bugged and so I try to never bother others. I take security and privacy very seriously. So getting you to update your email is not part of some plot to send you junk mail or something. It is just so you can sign in here and do a password recovery if need be. And notifications about forum activity if you chose to follow something or somebody. That I have nothing to do with - that's in your settings (the Notification Settings seen in the pics in my last post).
  2. When you signed up you gave an email to authenticate your account and also to act as a password recovery email. You also created a display name. When you sign in / log in you have been using your display name and password to sign in. This is going to change to you signing in with your account email and password. It is a good time to be sure your email on account is still one you have access to. Some people get new email accounts and never update it here. That can be a huge problem if you need to reset your password for any reason. In the help post at the top of every forum there is a link to password recovery. It sends a recovery email to the email you have on file here. Wrong email, you are not going to get it. New Member Signup - Click Here! Lost Password - Click Here! <- Password Recovery Forum Tips & Tricks Advanced Search Tag List/Index And again, you will need to enter your email to sign in from now on. Below is how you check and change your display name, email, and password. It is important you update that email. It is very hard now to contact me if you get locked out as I no longer have a contact page on the website. I got 100 marketing messages a day and got tired of it. The only way you can normally contact me is PM on the website, but you need to be logged in to do that. If you can't log in, you need to use the password recovery. And if you do not have a current email in the system - you are screwed! Well, not quite. If you are reading this you will see my contact email in the screenshots below. The spammers will probably miss this so I will leave this up unless I get inundated again. But making a note of it someplace will allow you to email me if you have a problem signing in. Please do not email me with metal detector or gold prospecting questions. I'll just tell you to post the question on the forum. The email is for emergency forum support only. For big screen device click on your name in upper right. Click on account settings. You will see your email and if it is not correct, you can change it. Big screen Step 1 Big screen Step 2 On small screen devices it takes more steps. In upper right click the three horizontal bars: Small screen Step 1 Small screen Step 2 Small screen Step 3 Small screen Step 4
  3. One or the other of these? I doubt you can get those anywhere but but special ordering from a Garrett dealer or contacting Garrett direct. Contact Garrett
  4. Hi David, Late with the welcome but as an old retired dealer I thought I’d better chime in. You and Dixie Metal Detectors have a long history and respected place in the industry and it’s an honor to have you here. Do take advantage of the classifieds once you qualify. Just be aware we are jaded here so regular ads… well, boring. The membership is looking for your smoking hot deals, especially any used detector deals. All I ever ask in return is a little help answering member questions with the storehouse of knowledge I know you have. Win, win! https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/433-my-policy-regarding-dealers/
  5. Yes. It's the older bundle wound, now discontinued so on sale at big discount. The new spiral wound EVO replaces it.
  6. When I post I am always posting to everyone, not anyone in particular, unless I am quoting somebody in particular. People with concerns about new product should not buy them for 6 months or a year. Every metal detector of worth released in the last decade has had not just one but often many updates. My iPhone and PC get monthly updates. Cars get recalled. I ran a service department for a large company for years and the list is endless. Be the first owner of a completely new boat, snowmobile or ATV models at your peril. Anybody with concerns about the E1500 should simply wait and not buy one until sufficient time has passed for the earliest owners to find and report issues. That's the way it is with XP, Minelab, Fisher, Garrett.... all of them. Is that right? Should things not be better? Yeah, the list of things in the world that are disappointing and need fixing is endless. Just add all new product vetting and releases to that list. I was and I guess still am pretty excited by this new game in town but frankly find a lot of the commentary about how disappointed people are about various aspects of it to be a bit of a bummer so I'm going to check out of the conversation. When I get one and have at least 100 hours of use I'll probably drop back in with my impressions. Until then, may everyone's pockets fill with gold.
  7. You are one of the optimists Jason. Just because you have been saying something for a decade does not make it true. I’m more in the Simon camp when it comes to a new detector actually having enough of a leap in performance to make an actual real world difference in the gold being found. The GPZ 7000 was a true advancement over what came before and made dead patches come alive again. The 6000 picked up the crumbs. This next go I think we will see improvement more in the ergonomic side than anything else. I place my bet that there will not be genuine performance that outperforms substantially on what we can currently get with the 6000 and 7000 combined, or even just a 7000 with a proper set of aftermarket coils. Metal detectors have a basic limitation in how far they can detect gold items. From http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/200TrCcts/MetalDetectors/MetalDetectors-1.html “the sensitivity is roughly proportional to the cube of the object diameter (as expressed as a function of the search coil diameter). Sensitivity is also inversely proportional to the sixth power of the distance between the coil and the object. All this means is that if the object size is halved the sensitivity is reduced to one-eighth. Also, if the depth is doubled the sensitivity is reduced to one sixty-fourth. It’s easy to see why all metal detectors which are designed to pick up small objects use small coils, (150 to 300 mm diameter) and really only skim the soil surface. If the search coil is doubled in diameter for greater penetration the sensitivity to small objects falls to one-eighth. You rapidly encounter the law of diminishing returns.” Famed metal detector engineer Dave Johnson reiterates this in a different way at https://web.archive.org/web/20230719232930/http://fisherlab.com/hobby/davejohnson/davejohnsonjohngardinerinterview.htm “Getting extra depth out of a VLF, multifrequency, or PI machine is very difficult, because these machines follow an inverse 6th power law relationship between signal voltage and depth. If everything else is maintained equal, doubling the depth requires 64 times as much signal. If this is done by increasing transmitter power, doubling depth requires 4,096 times as much battery drain. That’s the basic reason why depth increases come so slowly in this industry.” That is where I think we are now and why the GPZ 8000 has been slow in coming. Much to Minelabs credit they don’t release a machine unless the engineers can point to data showing some real performance improvement differences - you know, those 30% things. But there is actual real world data in hand to back up those claims when they make them. I think in this case the most they might eke out will be a marginal gain they can point to in detection depth on multi ounce nuggets. That’s enough to sell lots of detectors but in the end I think it will be greatly debated whether this new machine is any better in big gold at depth than a modded GP/GPX or 7000 with a big X-Coil. And for anyone but those few still finding the big ones deep on a regular basis nothing that will change anything. Most U.S. patches in particular simply don't have those monster nuggets at depth that people dream of. The 7000 and 6000 have already bled them close to dry. We have hit the wall not only in electronic terms but even more importantly in geological terms. Peter Charlesworth picked a very good time to retire. Go out at the top of your game. I have a ton of respect for Peter and his retirement is a message of sorts for those who follow the business of business. Long story short, next generation my prediction is a small gain at best, so small it won’t make any real difference over returns being seen with machines that we already have at our disposal. I actually hope I am wrong, and I hope I am eating crow and apologizing to you, and acknowledging you were right and I was wrong. Nothing would make me happier!
  8. We've seen this play before. New product announcement near end of this year, going into winter here but heading into spring elsewhere. In time for dealers to take orders going into the holiday season, but no machines probably shipping until early 2025.
  9. The V3i coils had to be made to a higher tolerance, so all V rated coils will work on the DFX M6 MXT VX3 V3i etc. but older coils for those machines that are not V rated may not work on the VX3 and V3i at high gain levels. From the VX3 User Manual: The VX3 uses induction-balanced loops which rely on a “null” between the transmit coil and the receive coil. The quality of the null may determine the point at which the detector overloads, especially when running high Rx Gain settings. Null quality varies loop-to-loop, so some loops may overload at lower gain than others. In other words the quality of the loop null can also push the input amplifier toward overload. White’s V-compatible loops are designed to minimize null limitations, but third-party loops typically have wide variances in the quality of the null which can require a lower Rx Gain. Again, V rated coils are just made to better tolerances, it's the older coils or aftermarket coils that may experience overload at high gain if used on the VX3 or V3i. Even then they will probably work - you'll just have to back the sensitivity down. Models other than the VX3 and V3/V3i it does not matter.
  10. Never met but I have read a lot of his posts, obviously knows his stuff, and willing to share. I hope for a quick and full recovery.
  11. Probably an evaporated milk can, they used a different sealing method than most other cans so have a distinctive look. Very common around old mining camps. Can Middens
  12. Best of luck with your new detector Bugler, and thanks for a great post detailing your gold prospecting journey. I hope I can keep going for as long as you have!! My best advice for the Axiom is use a DD coil to start and keep the sensitivity low initially. The worst thing a new Axiom owner can do is crank up the sensitivity right out of the starting gate. Ease into it. Timbus suggestion on my quiet settings is also well worth keeping in mind.
  13. Some people might see a company that is very willing to listen to new customer feedback and immediately implement suggestions as a good thing.
  14. My posts often have more than one purpose. In this case not everyone, in fact the vast majority of detectors owners in the world, own more than one detector. It’s the easy answer in these forums - just own both. That however is of no help to the large number of people for whom these are expensive investments of money needed to pay bills. Or who don’t want 6 detectors cluttering up the place. For a lot of people it is a choice between this one or that one. Sure, I can afford to have both, but I always have an eye to those who can’t or choose not to, so sharpening the commentary by providing that edge is helpful in more ways than one. That’s for helping provide some clarity on this choice with your own experiences Chuck.
  15. This is a brand specific forum and like all brand specific forums is for people with an interest in the brand. Like all the brand specific forums they are created for people who don’t like being reminded constantly that some people think their interest is stupid and they should really be interested in this other brand. People who persist in this behavior are called trolls, and I take a very poor view towards trolls. If they persist they get banned. I have a forum specifically for this versus that brand comparison commentary where you can compare away all you want. So this is not me censuring anyone, it’s me saying take it to the appropriate forum. Anyone who thinks this or that brand is better than the E1500 is welcome to start a thread on the comparisons forum and lay out their case for that. I’m all for critical comparisons as long as they are honest. But persist on any brand specific forum with comments on how some other brand is better and you will be tagged as a troll and ejected. To be clear just a casual mention or even two is not an issue. It is when any one person repeatedly keeps doing this, especially in the face of little push backs I might drop in now and then. It’s this type of repeated, persistent, and frankly boorish behavior I’m talking about here. On the other hand it’s a given that members of a brand specific forum might rag on and look down on some other brand. So members of the Minelab Forum might be derogatory to other brands and that’s not unexpected. People on the Fisher Forum might take a dim view of Garrett detectors. That is what brand loyalty is all about, liking this brand but not the other. So pay attention to context, which specific forum you are on, and consider how what you are posting fits in. Again, the Comparisons forum is gloves off, and by and large so is the main DP forum. Brand specific forums, not so much. People who insist that the E1500 should outperform much more expensive detectors need to just get over it and move on.
  16. Yeah we are tripping over semantics. When I and the other guys sit around the campfire and talk PI detectors and the detection "hole" what we are all referring to is the gold that is lost in the "holes" in different timing scheme. From our perspective every GPX 5000 timing has a hole of some sort, in that gold you miss in one timing can be detected in a different timing. The gold "falls in the hole." So when people are talking here on this forum that is what we mean by the term "hole" - a layman's definition as opposed to an engineers mathematical definition. I am sure I do not know the exact reasons why this happens but it is easy to show in the field with a GPX 5000 and it's multitude of timings. The problem historically is most 5000 users really did not know the timings scheme well enough to do more than half guess at what they should be running, and often a favorite setting got used everywhere. The only way to do it right was to hunt a patch multiple times with multiple settings. For me personally it feels like an over filtering issue. In bad ground with hot rocks I can apply progressively higher levels of ground compensation. As I ramp up the ground cancellation the machine gets quieter, but at the same time my gold responses drop off. My tuning methodology usually involves riding the edge as close as possible and dealing with some noise and some hot rocks. If I kill the ground completely, kill the hot rocks completely, I will inevitably do a full reset and start over. The Axiom in particular with its hot rock window I can force higher levels of ground and hot rock rejection, but then all the sudden I know I have gone to far, and do a reset. I just know for a lot of years of doing this that the more aggressive the ground cancellation, the more gold that gets missed. Gold grades imperceptibly with depth and mineralization into the ground signal until they are one and the same. The GPZ 7000 was a direct answer to that in attempting to get a machine that would find as much gold as possible in a single pass with as few settings as possible. Garrett referred to this issue on the 5000 and earlier GPX models in their ATX advertising...
  17. Yeah, pretty much sounds like cruise control for 2024 so you have to figure something new for new year. I can't imagine them skipping two years in a row. I love this. It tells you how we all rate compared to Africa.... "Our metal detection business delivered a strong first half with each of Minelab’s businesses, RoW*, Minelab Africa and Countermine delivering increased revenues, collectively up 49% on the pcp.” * Rest of World, excluding Africa I am a RoW! I guess we can all change out Location in our profile to RoW.
  18. I agree on Gold Modes not being right just because gold is the goal. I'd use a Field Mode on the Equinox 800 for similar reasons vs Gold Mode in locations like that. I am pretty sure Condor is not a fan of Gold Modes in general. I'll see if I can get him to post here.
  19. Me chasing big nuggets in Alaska I always started Sharp and maybe backed down to Normal if I had to. "Sharp is similar to Normal but creates a more powerful detection field. It is capable of an improvement in depth, but is more susceptible to interference and will increase the severity of false signals in difficult grounds. This timing is best used in quiet conditions and can work well in combination with Deep Search Mode with a reduced Rx Gain setting. Sharp is an excellent tool for pinpointing faint signals due to the very "sharp" signal response. Sharp will work best with DD coils in most gold field locations." Again, the ground rules all. This chart shows how Sharp outperforms in milder ground but falls on it's face in severe ground. Normal is better than Fine Gold in any ground where it can be run, which is all but the worst ground. People should be aware severe mineralization is actually pretty rare. The banded ironstones of Australia and Mother Lode serpentine belt of California are examples of severe ground.
  20. Only when you are comparing the two in the really bad ground. That's the key, the ground, not the gold. I think if you air test Sensitive Extra vs Fine Gold on a range of gold targets you will be surprised.
  21. Fine Gold is a misnomer and it will absolutely miss gold that you will hit in Sensitive Extra. Fine Gold should have been named Banded Iron Rejection as that is what it was made to do. It does really well picking up the gold it does pick up and that combined with the name made it a magic setting for a lot of people, but it has very aggressive ground cancellation and should not actually be used unless the ground demands it. It's a good dummy mode though and that is why it was used as a basis for the SDC 2300. Per Minelab: "Fine Gold is sensitive to smaller targets in highly mineralized ground. It provides a sharper signal on small gold compared to Enhance, and improves the detectability of rough/flaky gold and specimens, while ignoring most hot rock signals and false ground noises. Shallow, highly mineralized ground where gold has been found previously should be re-examined with Fine Gold, and best results will be had by using the optional 8” and 11” Commander Monoloop coils. Note: Sensitive Extra will provide superior results on small gold in milder ground." Emphasis added.
  22. I beg to differ. The SDC is based on the GPX 5000 Fine Gold timings and will absolutely miss certain gold nuggets due to it's extremely aggressive ground cancellation. Even with dual channel holes exist as eliminating ground or hot rocks at any level eliminates gold also. But maybe we are just talking semantics. What you think of as a hole and I think of may be different things. To me a hole occurs when a detector will not pick up a nugget it should pick up due to whatever ground canceling method is in use also knocking out the gold target. That was the entire reason for the GPX multiple timing scheme - one timing getting gold the other timings missed. From my perspective there is no such thing as a ground cancellation method with no holes. You can reduce the issue as much as possible but you can't eliminate it entirely in my experience. From a user perspective I'm not sure there is a discernable difference between timings and channels per se when both produce results that appear the same in the field. We have come a long way from Eric Foster and the Goldscan/TDI PI with a single knob adjustable ground rejection point. Now there are more ways to address the issue to get better yet similar results. For you it is the difference between two different motor types when for me they both get me from here to there in a similar fashion. To be fair to Brent his interview was in January 2015 about 4 years before the SDC 2300 was released.
  23. Disagree how about what? Edit - found it. On Algoforce I don't think anyone is claiming ferrous discrimination per se. Ferrous will overlap across the entire non-ferrous range, just like aluminum overlaps gold. So the key is basically statistical differences between target types in any given location, pretty much what we have already. But attaching a number to identically repeating similar targets is surely a step forward from where we were.
  24. Thanks for the detailed and well thought out response Hugh (and others). I will point out for the record though that gold is just another non-ferrous metal, not magical. Think $1 gold coin instead of gold nugget. From a straight up number of targets under coil a 5x8 coil should be superior to a 9" round coil from an electromagnetic perspective. My expectation would be that a 5x8 coil would have the edge over a 9" round coil finding a $1 gold coin in a nail pit. What you guys seem to be saying is you think that the Deus 2 processing and audio is superior to the Manticores to the point of negating the inherent edge a smaller coil size has. In a nail pit depth is not the issue - it is all about separation. For those that are unaware as mineral concentrations become intense the depth advantages normally conferred on larger coils not only are negated but actually can be reversed. Everyone always assumes that larger coils always go deeper and I can promise you that with any VLF that is not the case in my ground. I'm talking ground where PI detectors struggle. A larger VLF coil can go into overload and stop actually detecting. You know that ability of the Equinox in Beach Mode to automatically lower transmit power to deal with extreme magnetite? That was me. That said, Condor and I have observed that the Deus 2 has exceptional extreme ground handling capability that combined with the 9" coil makes it a formidable option compared to a PI detector in bad ground. Similar to what the Tarsacci was touted as having but in a much more useable package. So yeah Hugh while I am more comfortable with Minelab the fact is I may have to be an old dog learning new XP tricks. I am at a point where I want to pick one machine and be as expert as I can be with it as opposed to bouncing between two. Still looking to hit that magic combination of one good VLF and one good PI and being done with the new detector merry go round. That decades long goal of mine is well within reach now due to the latest options we have.
  25. Depth may not matter in a bed of nails. Have you actually used the Manticore with 5x8 coil versus Deus 2 with 9" round coil or are you just opining as I asked people not to do? Assuming the 9" round coil gets better separation than a 5x8 seems like a very big assumption to me unless you know that for sure. Processing can only compensate so much for the undeniable fact a 9" round coil will have more targets under it at once than a 5x8 coil in a dense trash situation.
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