Steve Herschbach

Premieres in 18 hours......

You caught me John. It’s from a video I saw but it’s not an official video. But I’ll stick with my guess regardless. You’ve got everything else covered with “not Storm”

What RR is pointing out is that the Toltec 100 advertised for sale has a meter marked with British currency.

Well since it is on the coil and since it's "Garrett AT Max" I'm going with Garrett AT Storm as my bet.

The Toltec 100 was a standard model here in the U.S. in the early to mid-1990s. From the catalog (click or double click for larger versions):

No they do not. Garrett ATX has AA batteries as just one of many examples. It is true you may not want newer metal detector models coming out as nearly all top end models including VLF models will have built in batteries. It is not just a PI thing, but the way many electric devices are headed. Exploding phones, exploding lawn mowers, expoding metal detectors - it's a minefield out there!

As far as I know they are not chipped. X Coil made a coil for the Axiom with no issues in that regard. Unfortunately it was a DOD design that did not work out. Garrett Axiom Compatible X-coils

So will it be the Garrett AT Storm or the Garrett Storm AT? From the video....

There have been several over the years. Dave at least did manage to get at least one patent filed. He did know his stuff, had respect from some in the engineering community. Unfortunately in the case of the Pulse Devil he seems to have went down a rabbit hole, with the final step always just out of reach.

For those that do not know, the Nemesis and then Pulse Devil were supposedly PI detectors under development that would combine full VLF type discrimination with full PI type depth. I'd be surprised if Dave is here because we did not part on the best of terms. He may be a brilliant man, but he said too many things that did not turn out to be true and I ended up calling him out on it. He was going to meet people and go places to demonstrate the machine, but in every case never showed. Twice he was putting one in the mail to me... then nothing. The machine was often said to be done and ready to ship, then did not. The excuses, often as flimsy as can be imagined, piled up to the point that he started repeating old ones. If you followed it all as I did for years it became obvious something was not right. When I finally called him out on it his excuse was that he had never taken money from anyone, so why all the upset over his words never proving to be true? Well, where I come from a man is only as good as his word and promises kept. Nobody ever cut me the slack that people repeatedly cut Dave, all because they wanted so much for what he was saying to be true. Nothing he ever said, ever, came to pass as he said it would, and he finally lost all credibilty with me at least. One of the pithier discussions from 2008 is linked below that occured late in the game but before I finally gave up on him ever following through with the things he told me he would do. I was not a peripheral player but one of two people he selected, without me asking by the way, to be dealers. In the end I decided this was just another thing he was doing to try and make it all seem more real and to give his project more seemed legitimacy, by tying himself to a couple trusted players in the industry. He was not one for having anyone question him and finally "punished" everyone by folding up the dog and pony show. No doubt a brilliant man, but like many brilliant people I think his eccentricities got in the way of him being able to complete what he started. https://forums.robsdetectors.com/topic/4830-anyone-have-a-picture-of-the-pulse-devil/

https://sites.tufts.edu/fellsgeology/files/2021/08/Chap7StructuralGeology.pdf part of the full document found here: https://sites.tufts.edu/fellsgeology/introduction-to-geology/

I guess I'll cop to being the guy that has had one of these for several months and loaned it to Andy for a while. I'll be sending it to Gerry soon to give a spin for any comments he might have. I have used the E1500 in the desert, found a gold nugget with it, first in the U.S. I suppose. Also have some time on the Tahoe beaches. My main thing was to check the machine for EMI issues in the U.S. and I can say the machine has none. In that regard it's as good or better than most PI detectors and works fine in urban parks. As far as my general thoughts on the machine I already spilled the beans in an earlier thread. People should know by now I very rarely opinionate without something to back up those opinions. I really don't have much to add to what I already posted so you can check it out below. All in all the Algoforce E1500 is a great addition to the PI possibilities out there. I see it mainly as a first affordable step up for people used to what a good VLF costs and who do not think a good PI should cost much more. Hard core PI users will opt for the more powerful and more expensive options. But for the people out there who are mainly VLF users and who want a PI for a second detector without breaking the bank I can very much recommend the E1500 as a great place to start. The caveat being that for that to happen here it has to become available for sale in the U.S. and there is still zero word on if or when that might happen. That's my excuse for not posting sooner. It is all moot for most people in the U.S. until that day comes. I guess I can add this one thing on coils. I used both the Sadie and Coiltek Elite for nugget detecting and in general prefer the Elite. It's the smallest spiral wound coil you can get and is the one you see in Andy's video. The Sadie is lighter but like most mono coils is edge sensitive and therefore has an uneven response on tiny gold. The Coiltek Elite is hottest in the center so acts more like people expect and overall performs better than the Sadie. For beach use on heavy magnetite I have had good results with the older style Nugget Finder 14x9 Advantage and a Coiltek 11x8 Platypus mono I managed to track down. With these older bundle wound coils the E1500 handled heavy magnetite better than more powerful detectors that tend to suffer from blowback in extreme magnetite conditions. I prefer the lighter Advantage for dry sand use and the Platypus for wading since it is weight neutral underwater. My thanks to Andy for shooting some video and doing some things that I would never have got around to doing. I'm sure he will add further thoughts on this thread.

I had my own dream of running White's at one point and like you think a lot could have been done to save the company. All water under the bridge now and no point in discussing a cold grave. I'm sure some people will be using White's detectors for many years, just like they are still using Tesoro and even Compass detectors. And that means people will be looking for parts, etc. Detector discussions are largely driven by speculation around new models, comparisons of new models, and learning about how to use new models. In other words discussion revolves more around new models in general and obviously that can't happen with White's. Just so people know however, I'm happy with the slow but steady discussion on this forum and it's not going anywhere for those who do have a question or comment now and then.... or who are trying to find that certain part. Luckily White's was very popular and anyone looking for parts has a ready supply via old detectors for sale on eBay. I want to take the opportunity to thank Carl (Geotech) for hanging out here and offering insights from somebody that was actually on the scene. Thanks Carl.

It is not impossible that competition has broken the back of Minelabs ability to charge ever higher prices. $10,000 GPZ and $2500 CTX, maybe those days are gone. Or are they? Gold prospectors in particular would probably line up to spend $12,000 for a detector that proveably goes just one inch deeper than a GPZ on sizeable gold, especially if you toss in ferrous discrimination. What will it take to get people to drop $2500 into a new coin detector now, given where we are with the Deus 2 and Manticore in particular? I'm a little more doubtful there, but there is a contingent of people that like owning stuff just because others can't afford it or refuse to spend money on it, so you never know. CTX 4040 with Multi-IQ FBS 3 would probably sell based purely on the number of people who constantly bring up wanting a replacement. If for no other reason that it is new and we do like our new stuff.

I agree. In marketing terms it's all about price slots, and Manticore replaced E-TRAC in it's position in the Minelab lineup. Minelab tends to bounce back and forth between coin detectors and nugget detectors in the upgrade cycle, so next up is probably a new GPZ replacement next year. A CTX replacement could come in the same time frame or slightly after. This would give Minelab two brand new top-of-the-line flagship detectors, one for coin and relic, one for gold nuggets. Both CTX (2012) and GPZ (2015) are very long in the tooth at this point in time.

From a technical perspective if you go to https://www.minelab.com/usa/knowledge-base/key-technologies# and read the difference between the E-TRAC FBS and CTX FBS 2 you will see that the only thing the CTX added was the chip in the coil.

I'm not seeing anything that makes me think that is platinum. Best bet if you still think it is would be to seek an assay. Good luck.

If having physical product to look at is important, you can see why Minelab would lose interest in independent dealers. They put far more detectors at far more locations going the big box route, even if the people at the store are not as knowledgeable. Most of us simply have no independent dealer in our area but we probably have one of the listed big box stores nearby. Bass Pro and Cabelas probably buy more Minelabs than all the independent dealers put together.

Well it's not like they are paying your way to Australia for the dealer meeting. The meeting is probably there just because it's the cheapest way for them to have a meeting. In the past they sent people here at great expense. Now the expense is on you. So no, that message is not telling me dealers here got more important - just the opposite.

Did you try and break it in half with a hammer? Have you done a streak test? A hardness test? Any basic mineral tests at all? Offhand it does not look like platinum but instead one of many common iron sulphides. The XRF result is not surprising at all. Platinum being as rare as it is it is by far the least likely possibility.

M9 Coil with Skidplate 9" Round Double-D - Accessory (minelab.com)

My V3i is long gone. I had planned using the V3i as a teaching detector in a series of videos I was planning that would illustrate different metal detecting concepts. I realized chasing views on YouTube was probably not going to be good for me so ended up not doing that. It was keep the V3i or the DFX to run my Bigfoot. I kept the DFX. Finally... I'd rather use those newer models. Frankly people with V3i nostalgia have never done extended head to head tests with detectors like the Nox, D2, or Legend. If they did the nostalgia would fade pretty fast.

Bump for a trip down memory lane.

Sorry you went to all the work to take and post those photos when the pdf for this catalog and many others can be downloaded here… https://www.detectorprospector.com/files/category/9-whites-electronics/

The number you see while swinging is the ground mineralization number. To get a target id you must stop and analyze each target using the pinpoint mode: