Steve Herschbach

If Minelab pulled this off and actually did it right, I think a new name would be in order - the Minelab Ultimate!

I agree about the small holes. And honestly, I don’t think price equates to durability. This thing is built like a tank. Heavy duty stainless, all one piece with only welding back and top. The handle support is overbuilt if anything. I think it will prove to be a very durable scoop. Not to mention you can buy two of these and still have money leftover compared to the more expensive models.

Minelab has five key products under development. It should be a pretty good bet that with the CTX 3030 being so old it does not even appear on the timeline below, that a product refresh is in the works. We also all know Multi-IQ was a big success. And one thing I know about Minelab, is the V2 version of anything is the one to die for. They usually come out with something totally new as proof of concept, and then the next version or two refines that into everything it really can be. The main question I have is the hardware. Will the new model still use the existing CTX housing? It’s a little heavy, but well balanced, and does allow for much more battery capacity. Or do they use the Equinox design? Hard to imagine in an upscale model, so I’d kind of doubt that. Something brand new, with the best features of CTX, but lighter weight? A new design would help keep the price down, which is a key now if you really want a best seller. New Minelab Ultimate The most requested thing in Equinox is more target range, so mating a CTX type display with Multi-IQ would seem a bit of a no-brainer. All I know is that if a Minelab can successfully put the best of CTX and Equinox together in a single detector, something that would make owners of either of those detectors want one, it could be another major home run for Minelab. And yes, it is the next detector that I personally am waiting for, now that I finally got an Impulse in my hands. Well, and whatever follows the GPZ 7000. Impulse plus CTX replacement plus GPZ follow up is what I’m shooting for as my future personal lineup.

The thing is, they would have nothing to lose. White’s does not sell software, they sell hardware, and this would drive hardware sales. It would never happen with the old White’s, but I’m going to hold just a flicker of hope somebody buys White’s, and has a more open mind as regards such things.

The replacement video is on the XP website today. I’d totally say you have no idea what XP has figured out or not, and that if what you speculate were true they’d pull the video. http://www.xpmetaldetectors.com/metal-detector/videos-05-deus-battery-kit/

A mixed blessing for sure. The main complaint with a lot of underwater detectors is lack of volume. Not an issue with AQ! While wading and using Tones I am running the volume all the way down at minimum.

Yeah, the DFX is well behaved for a reason. It’s no powerhouse. I’ve found the V3i on the other hand to pull up a good target id at depth as well as anything I have used. The V3i for what it is really is an incredible detector, if you are into settings and customization options. If you can’t program a VCR and don’t read manuals, not so much. When I got the V3i the future was revealed to me as clear as a bell. Electronics as a rule gets smaller and more powerful. V3i was the first true multifrequency with true single frequency options, unlike the DFX with the workarounds employed. The V3i also innovated with integrated wireless. It clearly represented the future of detecting. White’s unfortunately never had the vision to see what the original Vision represented. Obviously the same could be done in a lighter weight package with a simplified interface. I started lobbying for such a machine from the moment I got the Vision/V3i. My idea for a V4 was not an enhanced V3i, but a V3i in a pod with a simplified interface. About a year before the Equinox was introduced I met with Carl Moreland, a key person in getting the V3i to market, and once again described what I thought people really wanted. Multifrequency, plus the ability to choose single frequency, in a light weight detector with a simplified interface. Carl was no longer with White’s at that time, having moved to First Texas. He never got a hint however from me that somebody had listened, and I had a working prototype at home. We all know now what became of that - one of the best selling detectors ever made. White’s had it all first with the V3i, the full recipe. All they had to do was take the proven concept, and bring the design forward into the 21st century. White’s basically showed Minelab what needed to be done, and so Minelab did it instead of White’s. White’s not following up on the V3i will go down as one of the greatest missed opportunities in detecting ever. If you want to learn about metal detecting and how metal detectors work, getting a V3i, reading the manual, using the detector, and reading the manual again, is a college course in metal detecting. The detector is basically a programmable build-your-own-detector kit. You can customize everything. The color screen and customization options for the screen alone could fill a book. The V3i never reached its full potential in my opinion due to the ability to save and exchange programs being deleted from the original game plan. If people had the ability to save programs and trade them on the internet, a programming sub-culture would have developed around the machine. You would have seen some amazing interface customizations. As it developed unfortunately, the only way to trade programs was to fill out a page of settings for somebody, that they could then key in on their V3i. It’s just too much work, and so people focused only on what needed to be employed in the way of tuning to get the job done. If we could export and import programs, there would be a huge library by now, with some pretty crazy stuff. If I could have one wish from White’s or whoever takes over, it would be that they open source everything available on the V3i, so it could be hacked, and program exchange capability possibly added by some intrepid programmer. The machine could have an amazing life still if they just had faith in the magic of open source. Maybe an impossible dream, but it can’t hurt to dream.

I’m glad it sounds like you might be able to get your issue with the 24K addressed Jim. The problem is not whether Whites wants to do warranty or not. The problem, with the factory closed, is parts supply. The number one issue with the MX Sport/GMX housing was pods that cracked and battery compartments that broke. Given these are a new series, and the obvious fact now that White’s was suffering, how deep is the stock of repair parts? You can’t repair a cracked pod if the parts run out. Same thing with bad coils. They are generally replaced, not repaired. Is there a big stock of 6” concentric and 4x6 coils to draw on? I very much doubt it. More likely after a little time passes owners of some of these newer models will find that if parts are needed they are just out of luck. Old models like the MXT, perhaps not so much. That could change if somebody buys White’s and gets back into production while assuming warranty obligations. Even that you never know. Fisher used to have lifetime warranties. When they went under and First Texas bought them, the first thing they did was stop honoring the old warranties. Given the options from companies that are going concerns, there is no way I’d buy a new White’s right now and just assume the warranty is not going to be an issue. I’d at the least be expecting a serious clearance discount price, but bottom line right now is if I personally wanted a new full warranty detector, I’m not interested in a Whites right now any more than I’m interested in a Tesoro.

That’s what my magnets looks like after I clean the magnetite off! As has been said before, in locations with heavy concentrations, a single swipe through beach sand will double or triple the size of your magnets as it is totally encased in a spiky ball of magnetite.

I know people that do. I don’t. With headphones on I can set the volume I need, so I don’t need hearing aids also.

That’s mostly where I hunt and all this scoop has seen.

The handle on my trusty old stainless steel scoop finally broke. The scoop is fine, but the handle is a custom curved 7/8" aluminum tube. I made a trip to Home Depot - nothing like that in stock. Looked at a piece on Amazon - shipping is killer on stuff 40" long. It was going to be like $50 delivered. I figured I could find something locally for less, but did not want to bother with it at the moment. I decided that I had $50 I might want to spend on a new scoop instead. Has to be stainless steel, and my new criteria is that I want to be able to bolt any straight handle on it that I want - wood, metal, fiberglass, whatever. I've looked at highly recommended scoops like the Stealth 720, but I have to admit $250 seems a bit much for a scoop to me. A bit of Googling and I saw one that looked fine, and the price was more to my liking. The $99.95 Scoopal Sand Scoop. I had a 10% off coupon from Serious Detecting, and after free shipping this scoop showed up in two days for $89.95, U-bolts included. I like that! It is well built, looks plenty stout enough to me. I happened to have an old wood handle already in my pile of pick parts, and so I bolted it on. The scoop has been on two outings so far, and I am quite happy with it. The holes are a little smaller than my old scoop, so it gathers more gravel, but is also way easier to recover tiny stuff like .22 shell casings that slipped through the old scoop. Anyway, if you are looking for a scoop without spending the big bucks this scoop is worth a look. I have zero regrets on this purchase.

Unlikely since the Equinox update was derived from Vanquish in the first place.

I’ve got the Tony Eisenhower, been happy with them so have not looked at anything else. These seem to be a more recent model? I’ve not seen them mentioned before.

The green is what makes this a real copper nugget, not a fake. It’s just a corrosion layer. To build up that thick, it implies the nugget was in the ground for a very long time. Like thousands or tens of thousands of years or more. A man made copper nugget, just like a copper coin, would have no more than a thin green patina. When I was panning copper nuggets at Dan Creek, it was easy to eyeball them in a gully. You don’t look for copper, you look for bright green nuggets. They stick out like a sore thumb in dark soil.

For federal land in Oregon that is open to mineral entry, in other words, on which mining claims may be filed: Forest Service http://www.fs.fed.us/emc/nepa/oged/includes/leasing_regs_36cfr228.pdf (1) A notice of intent to operate is not required for: (i) Operations which will be limited to the use of vehicles on existing public roads or roads used and maintained for National Forest System purposes; (ii) Prospecting and sampling which will not cause significant surface resource disturbance and will not involve removal of more than a reasonable amount of mineral deposit for analysis and study which generally might include searching for and occasionally removing small mineral samples or specimens, gold panning, metal detecting, non-motorized hand sluicing, using battery operated dry washers, and collecting of mineral specimens using hand tools; BLM Casual Use http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2010-title43-vol2/xml/CFR-2010-title43-vol2-sec3809-5.xml "§ 3809.5 How does BLM define certain terms used in this subpart? As used in this subpart, the term: Casual use means activities ordinarily resulting in no or negligible disturbance of the public lands or resources. For example— (1) Casual use generally includes the collection of geochemical, rock, soil, or mineral specimens using hand tools; hand panning; or non-motorized sluicing. It may include use of small portable suction dredges. It also generally includes use of metal detectors, gold spears and other battery-operated devices for sensing the presence of minerals, and hand and battery-operated drywashers. Operators may use motorized vehicles for casual use activities provided the use is consistent with the regulations governing such use (part 8340 of this title), off-road vehicle use designations contained in BLM land-use plans, and the terms of temporary closures ordered by BLM. Code of Federal Regulations / Title 43 - Public Lands: Interior / Vol. 2 / 2010-10-01780 (2) Casual use does not include use of mechanized earth-moving equipment, truck-mounted drilling equipment, motorized vehicles in areas when designated as closed to “off-road vehicles” as defined in § 8340.0-5 of this title, chemicals, or explosives. It also does not include “occupancy” as defined in § 3715.0-5 of this title or operations in areas where the cumulative effects of the activities result in more than negligible disturbance. Note that although the BLM mentions "may include use of small portable suction dredges" may is the key word and in fact all states now require a permit to run a suction dredge. While BLM may administer the land and not require notice for running a small dredge the water falls under other state and federal agency jusrisdiction. In general assume anything with a gasoline motor or that discharges water into a stream may be subject to some level of permitting. It’s a good idea to have a copy of the above information with you when prospecting. And of course no prospecting on mining claims without the express permission of the owner, period. Oregon State Law https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors517.html PROSPECTING, SMALL SCALE MINING AND RECREATIONAL MINING 517.120 Definitions for ORS 517.120 to 517.133. As used in ORS 517.120 to 517.133: (1) “Mining” means the removal of gold, silver or other precious minerals from aggregate or a vein of ore. (2) “Mining claim” means a portion of the public lands claimed for the valuable minerals occurring in those lands and for which the mineral rights are obtained under federal law or a right that is recognized by the United States Bureau of Land Management and given an identification number. (3) “Prospecting” means to search or explore, using motorized or nonmotorized methods, for samples of gold, silver or other precious minerals from among small quantities of aggregate or ore. (4) “Recreational mining” means mining in a manner that is consistent with a hobby or casual use, including use on public lands set aside or withdrawn from mineral entry for the purpose of recreational mining, or using pans, sluices, rocker boxes, other nonmotorized equipment and dredges with motors of 16 horsepower or less and a suction nozzle of four inches or less in diameter. (5) “Small scale mining” means mining on a valid federal mining claim operating under a notice of intent or plan of operations while using whatever equipment is necessary, as approved by the notice of intent or plan of operations, to locate, remove and improve the claim. [1999 c.354 §1] Note: 517.120 to 517.135 were enacted into law by the Legislative Assembly but were not added to or made a part of ORS chapter 517 or any series therein by legislative action. See Preface to Oregon Revised Statutes for further explanation.

Basically any detector is going to see the aluminum and nothing through the aluminum. It’s all about exposed surface eddy currents. Granted, a Pi can’t give a target id number, but that’s kind of secondary to what is really going on here. A PI with a fast pulse delay will see the aluminum but not the coin under it. Increase the pulse delay enough, the aluminum becomes literally invisible to the PI, and now it can only see the quarter.

Owners manual, page 3...

I’ve never seen another detector that could do that except a PI.

The same way gold nuggets do... by being washed and tumbled in streams. Copper nugget... I’ve got a jar full of them somewhere that I panned over the years. Always wanted to go detect here for copper and silver nuggets.... https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0448/report.pdf Page 80: Native copper is associated with silver and gold in the gravels of Chititu and Dan creeks. It occurs in pieces that range in size from fine shot to masses weighing several hundred pounds. Two or three tubs of fine copper are secured at each "clean-up" of the sluice boxes on Chititu Creek and give much difficulty in cleaning the gold, since the finest of the copper has to be removed by hand. Many of the nuggets contain native silver, which shows that the copper and silver are here closely associated in origin. The remarkable similarity in form and appearance between the copper nuggets of the Nizina district and the larger masses of copper taken from the stamp mills of the Lake Superior region is evident to anyone who compares the two, since the chief differences are that the placer copper has a slightly smoother surface and an oxidized coating. The copper and silver are derived wholly or in part from the greenstone. Assays of chalcocite from the Bonanza mine and from other copper ores of the Nizina district have shown the presence of both silver and gold in the copper deposits. Small particles of native silver were found in a freshly broken specimen of greenstone from a bowlder on Chititu Creek, and an assay of the rock also showed its presence. The silver was associated with calcite in small fractures. Silver nuggets up to 7 pounds in weight have been found on Dan and Chititu creeks, but where silver is associated with copper in the same nugget copper predominates, and in general silver is seen only as small particles in the copper. Copper is found only in those tributaries of Dan and Chititu creeks where greenstone pebbles and bowlders form part of the stream gravels; consequently it occurs only where the gravels have been formed in part by streams flowing through greenstone areas or where there is a foreign element in the gravels that Avas derived from a greenstone area and brought to its present position by glacial ice.

All I can say is I barely read the instruction manual, only used the detector twice, for a few hours each time. Found gold both times. I’m ok with that!

Thanks Keith. Like I said, the pinging was a non-issue for me. I was plenty happy for a first run. I simply mentioned it for completeness in the report. I'll take any and all suggestions under advisement for future trips. There is a good chance I'll be visiting with Dimitar soon, and may even get him on this location, so we will see how he thinks he should set the machine to deal with it.

Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. I have to admit I am not one to do a lot more than get to settings that make me happy, and it would be a mistake for anyone reading my report to think the pinging was bothering me. I seem to have a very efficient mental filter that has my ears focused on what I want to hear and the rest rapidly becomes a sort of threshold sound for me. I run my volume a lot lower than most people probably would, which is how I turn noisy settings into a pleasant experience. It also does not hurt that the MDT high tone falls into my high frequency hearing loss range, so does not jump out at me like the mid tone does. Long winded way of saying I found settings that worked for me pretty quickly and after that just got on with the business at hand. I’m the first to admit that I am not a settings wizard and I usually hesitate to tell people my settings. They invariably tend to be noisy. A dead quiet machine kind of freaks me out. It’s like I crave some sort of continuous feedback. My only criteria is that I’m seeing the kind of targets I like. In this case targets are not lacking so I just don’t worry about it a lot. But I will take a look at this on the next outing. Thanks!

Yes, I amended the report to note that.

I took the MDT 8000 up to Tahoe this morning for a few hours of wading. Beach is heavily loaded with magnetite sands. There is a lot of deeper sandy material, but also some scoured out areas with gravel and rocks. The sand tends to have few targets. The gravels are the base and thick with targets in some areas, including lots of deeply rusted ferrous stuff, some of it quite large. I like hunting the gravels due to the target density. It however is not very VLF friendly stuff due to hot rocks and magnetite sand. The MDT struggled to stay quiet in the gravels. Due to the target density I decided to run in 18 kHz DISC for this session, but the high tone pinging was pretty continuous. The good news is I was after mid tone targets so this was not a huge issue. The mid-tone false signals were far less prevalent. Still, I wanted to see what I could do to make the machine run quiet. With Sensitivity 6 I could get a good manual ground balance at 614. I tried Salinity 15, no improvement. I turned on Black Sand mode. No improvement. I lowered sensitivity to 2, so DISC Mode, GB 614, Black Sand On, Salinity 15, Sensitivity 2.... no real improvement on this high tone pinging. However, at DISC Mode, GB 614, Sensitivity 6, BS Off, Salinity Off, the unit was well behaved on the sandy material. It is just the gravels where it was noisy. The reality for me, since I was not hunting coins was.... I don't care. Rather than dumb the machine down I just ran the higher settings in the gravels and ignored the high tone pinging. Simply chased mid-tones. There was some mid-tone falsing but not enough to be an issue for me. I'm used to running machines hot and noisy and hunting by ear so was actually happy with the resulting setting. Like I say though, a coin hunter might get frustrated. The results below, all the recovered targets. Nothing was super deep, but that is no surprise here as this is normally the kind of stuff I'd run a PI in. Was getting the right kind of targets and only a few items tricked me, three bottle caps heavily encrusted with rust being of note. There is also one dime and one quarter than came up mid-tone, but I recovered nails with both so I think that skewed the target id. As far as target id numbers, I have no idea. I was just digging any halfway decent sounding mid-tone. Like I said, I am happy with the mix. I like to see tabs and nickels and unfortunately corroded zincs - all gold range targets. And a 14K white gold cross pendant, breaking a gold jewelry drought I've been experiencing lately. I'm still a MDT newbie, but basically find the machine easy to run and quite capable of doing what I want it to do. If my mention of the ground noise is off-putting, do not let it be. This is some really nasty stuff, and any VLF is going to suffer here. I thought the MDT did quite well.