Steve Herschbach

I have not but I am familiar with the Gemini-3. To bring others up to speed I added a link to your post for more info on the Gemini-3. These "two box detectors" can be used as an integrated unit connected by a rod. These detectors are in effect a very large coil and can only detect objects about the size of your fist or larger, but at great depths depending on ground mineralization. These are induction balance detectors and a large coil pulse induction model may work better in severe soils, especially on objects that are small enough to be borderline targets for this type of detector. However, you can also use the transmitter and receiver separately to create a larger search field, that can be used to look for large hidden bodies like large veins or ore deposits. This is what Fisher calls a Wide Scan Inductive Search on page 12 of the Fisher Gemini-3 Operating Manual: Wide Scan Inductive Search This mode of operation is the preferred method for searching a large area quickly. Two operators are required and the handle assembly is not used. The Wide Scan Inductive Search mode is practical only when searching for ore veins, pipes or cable 40 feet long or more. If the operators are too close together, “direct air coupling” will result, meaning the receiver is detecting the Transmitter signal directly through the air instead of through a buried conductor. Figure 7 - Wide Scan Inductive Search Set Up Two operators line up at least 20 feet apart, one with the receiver and one with the transmitter, parallel to the assumed direction of the buried conductor. The transmitter and receiver should be in line with each other, facing the same direction. Tuning 1. Set the transmitter: Power: ON 2. Set the receiver: Power: ON Sensitivity: ZERO 3. Slowly increase the SENSITIVITY control until the audio signal is heard, then reduce SENSITIVITY until the audio just disappears. This is the point at which “air coupling” has been eliminated. Operating 1. Keeping the receiver and transmitter sections in line, the two operators can now walk their predetermined search pattern. The SENSITIVITY control should be checked periodically to ensure that the receiver is tuned just below the “air coupling” threshold. 2. If both operators cross the same conductive body (pipe, cable, ore vein, etc.) at approximately the same time, the receiver tone and meter will rise to indicate its presence. The receiver operator should alert the transmitter operator that they have detected a conductive object. 3. The receiver operator should then hold his position while the transmitter operator moves back and forth for the strongest receiver response. At this point, the transmitter operator should stop and place the instrument on the ground with the handle grip on top. 4. The receiver operator can then pinpoint the buried object by moving the receiver back and forth in line with the transmitter. The object should be directly beneath the point of maximum response. 5. The receiver operator may then trace the signal along the length of the unseen object as described in the Inductive Trace section (page 12). The methodology above describes looking for a pipe or buried fuel tank. You can however find a very detailed expansion of the subject as regards prospecting on pages 46 - 52 of the Handbook of Geophysical Prospecting Methods for the Alaskan Prospector under the heading "Electromagnetic Methods". This publication is an older one but this type of detecting is even older, dating back to the original two box Fisher Metalloscope of the 1930's. The booklet is written for the practical layman prospector and so describes several geophysical prospecting methods in a relatively understandable manner. See also the discussion starting on page 4 of Geophysics For Mineral Exploration - A Manual For Prospectors for more up-to-date information on the subject.

I added the Fisher Coin Strike to the Metal Detector Database and while getting info found this tale of deception by a metal detector manufacturer. Read this post and the ones that follow by woof! (First Texas engineer Dave Johnson) for a look at how management can think. I long ago became a cynic regarding this type of stuff which tends to immunize me from the BS. I do have some extra cynicism available for those lacking sufficient quantities!

Now. Dealers in most cases do carry some inventory. The larger ones carry a lot. Right now there is pressure to clear units out. There is year end accounting going on, and sales reports. Anything sold now puts sales into this year and gets inventory off the books. This in turn can be very important for places when businesses pay an inventory or business property tax that includes inventory. If you have a model in mind you have to make phone calls. Tell the seller you are looking for the best cash deals and that you have no interest in all the so-called freebie stuff. Free stuff is rarely free and is usually factored into the overall sales cost. It also adds to the shipping cost if you are angling for free shipping. Dealers cannot advertise metal detectors below certain prices (MAP = minimum advertised price). However, price fixing is illegal, and once you and the dealer are engaged in conversation they can make you any deal they want. This is another reason to avoid email. Companies and even competitors try to reveal and kill off anybody lowballing prices, and may test companies for discounting via email. A dealer is more likely to cut you a killer deal verbally than via email, which documents everything. Bottom line call around right now and find that dealer desperate to clear year end stock. I have personally sold many detectors at near cost in year end clearance sales back when I was a dealer, but they were never advertised... just face to face sales. The sweet spot is after Christmas but before year end to get the best deals.

Welcome to the forum. Great detector you have there - good luck!!

Welcome to the forum - thanks for registering!

Thanks David. I try to keep it even handed as much as possible. I go out of my way personally to post about all the brands whenever news of any sort appears.

Definitely not a trivial undertaking - congratulations!!

Welcome to the forum. We have a number of members here who detect the Yuma area - some nice gold gets found down that way!

Older Dankowski thread on silent EMI... http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,55246,55344

Geotech is Carl Moreland, founder of the famed Geotech Forum. Later a senior engineer at White’s Electronics, where he had a major hand getting the V3i out the door. He is now a senior engineer at First Texas. The people who make Bounty Hunter, Fisher, and Teknetics detectors. You can very much rely on his opinions.

I hate to see Findmall or any of the forums not doing well. This and other signs tell me the market for metal detectors in the U.S. has been quite saturated and is probably on the decline. The real money these days is overseas.

coin spader Published on Dec 25, 2018 - Cold and windy Christmas eve hunt with a great detector. ( pardon the wind noise, did my best to keep it down)

This is all based on an assumption people make - that more frequencies are better. Are they? Why? Other than advertising, what makes anyone think that? There is no reason to compare items at close frequencies. Comparing 10 khz and 12 khz is a waste of time and processing power. What you want to do is compare the targets and ground at a few widely differing frequencies. That way you see what happens that is different at say 4 khz and 32 kHz. That difference or lack of difference gives you extra data to work with. And as Minelab points out in the article about Multi-IQ the more interesting question is how few frequencies are needed to get useful information. And that seems to boil down to two or three. "'How many simultaneous frequencies?' you may ask, wondering if this is a critical parameter. Minelab has been carrying out detailed investigations into this in recent years. Just as you can color in a map with many colors, the minimum number to differentiate between adjacent countries is only 4 – a tough problem for mathematicians to prove, over many years. Similar to the map problem, it’s perhaps not the maximum number of frequencies needed to achieve an optimum result, but the minimum number that is more interesting. When it comes to frequencies in a detector, to cover all target types, how the frequencies are combined AND processed is now more important, with the latest detectors, than how many frequencies, for achieving even better results." My assumption always when dealing with frequencies and what is processed versus what is transmitted goes like this..... Manufacturer claims multiple frequency operation, simultaneous or near instant sequential, I don't care. They state a number of frequencies. I then assume that out of the frequency range mentioned, that at least two or more frequencies are being received and compared at the processing level to justify the claim of multifrequency. Just exactly what frequencies are being processed and exactly how they are being compared.... I do not expect any company to tell me other than in vague terms. That's it. That way I stay calm while others try and divine the magic. And with that I leave the subject to better minds than mine.

Adding select discontinued models now. Added.... Garrett Infinium Makro Racer Minelab Eureka Gold Nokta FORS Gold

The why of it is simple - you are reading things into the careful gaps Minelab leaves in their advertising. I am not reading it the way you are, and so I am not offended because I do not feel I am being mislead. You are reading something else into it and feel unhappy because you feel you have been mislead somehow. It all boils down to debating perceptions of what you think the advertising means as compared to what is really going on under the hood. Since you don't 100% know what is going on under the hood, you just don't know. All detectors are transmitting on at least one primary frequency and many harmonic frequencies. This can be determined with a scope and if you count harmonics it is just a matter of picking a number you want to advertise when it comes to transmitted frequencies. You have no idea how many are being processed unless you know the processing algorithms. This back and forth with Minelab and the others has been going on for years. Garrett picked 96 frequencies for a Garrett Infinium ad as a direct poke at Minelab. How many people thought the machine was really transmitting and processing 96 frequencies based on the ad? It is all about transmitted because a PI detector does not receive and compare frequency information. Meaningless fluff, an industry insider joke. Get your 96 frequency detector right here.... Garrett Infinium ad - 96 frequencies! Carl Moreland weighed in with his frustration on another thread. White's even gave room over in the V3i manual, probably with Carl's input, to comment on the situation. From the White's V3i Owner's Manual, page 6: "There is much confusion - some of it deliberate - over how many frequencies a detector actually uses, and whether multiple frequencies are truly better than a single frequency. What defines a multi-frequency detector? What do multiple frequencies really do for depth and discrimination? A multi-frequency detector is defined as one that simultaneously—or, in automated sequence— transmits, receives, and processes more than one frequency. Some detectors have the ability to operate at one of several selectable frequencies, but they still are single frequency detectors because during operation they can only transmit and process a single frequency. The same is true of detectors that have a control to slightly vary their operating frequency to minimize interference; even though they have the ability to operate at many (slightly) different frequencies, they are fundamentally single frequency designs. Currently, all multi-frequency hobby detectors run their multiple frequencies simultaneously as opposed to sequentially; they are all characterized by having multiple processing channels in the receive circuitry. Therefore, a 2-frequency detector will have two processing channels. Spectra V3i has three independent processing channels; it is a true 3-frequency detector. This all sounds easy, so where is the confusion? It turns out that (currently) all multi-frequency detectors create a transmit signal that is composed of digital waveforms which are designed to produce peak energies at the desired frequencies. As a side-effect, these digital waveforms also produce undesired harmonic frequencies. Lots and lots of harmonic frequencies, 10’s or even 100’s of them. These harmonics have no useful energy and are not part of the signal processing. So while we can claim to transmit many, many frequencies, we cannot claim to process or use them. Therefore, we could easily claim the Spectra V3i transmits 17 frequencies, or 28, or 39, or 55—we could get plain silly with this. And such a claim would be true, technically speaking, but since all those extra frequencies are not actually used, it would be misleading to make such a claim. White’s chooses, instead, to claim the number of frequencies we are actually using and processing. It may not sound as impressive as a 55-frequency detector, but it’s honest and accurate. Pulse Induction (PI) detectors also utilize a digital (pulse) transmit waveform, so they transmit a tremendous number of harmonic frequencies as well. So is it fair to include pulse induction as a multifrequency technique? Not really, because PI detectors process in the time domain, not the frequency domain. So even though they use broad-band signals, they are not frequency-based detectors at all. Calling them “multi-frequency” is simply another attempt to confuse the consumer. Once we get beyond the marketing hype, the real question is: What does multi-frequency do for depth and discrimination? The truth is, any time a detector is simultaneously transmitting more than one frequency, the transmit energy must be divided amongst the frequencies. Therefore, a single frequency detector can usually squeeze out slightly more depth than a multi-frequency design at that certain frequency. But this is an advantage only at one frequency, which tends to favor only a narrow range of targets." These are old debates going back to Minelab BBS and it’s 17 transmitted frequency claim. I reference it all in my discussion at Selectable Frequency And Multiple Frequency Anyway, interesting subject for armchair engineers and armchair attorneys. Hopefully you all get it sorted out while I am out metal detecting!

Everyone who got the December 2018 issue of Treasure Magazine has a collector edition since it is apparently the last one. The magazine has been published in various forms for over 50 years. Unfortunately the company has closed its doors and both the website and Facebook page are gone. Sad to see another part of detecting history fade away.

Nothing has gone missing, but there are so many threads that discuss Multi-IQ that I have no idea which one you are referring to.

All current Teknetics models have been added. I am now going to start listing the most popular discontinued models from various manufacturers that are still in use.

All the current Teknetics metal detector models have now been added to the Metal Detector Database with User Reviews. If you have owned any of these Teknetics models please help others by leaving a review. Discontinued Teknetics models will be added in the future. For an explanation of the Metal Detector Database with User Reviews visit this link Teknetics T2 Classic metal detector