Steve Herschbach

OK, thinking more about it I see you are talking about the actual notification system whereby you get notified when you receive a PM or a like. I checked mine and it looks like it holds history back 90 days and drops stuff older than that. Only the totals get retained. You would have to do a "find all content" on yourself and look at older posts to see how many likes they got. Or at least that is it as near as I can tell at the moment.

I don't track or do anything, it is all part of the software. Maybe the upgrade changed what you have been looking at as part of leaderboard thing? I have always just looked at a post itself to see how many people like it. As of right now the first post in this thread has two people liking it.

Part of my main complaint about the ATX as a prospecting detector. It was designed into a housing left over from a Garrett project to build and sell military land mine detectors. The housing is robust, waterproof, folds up nicely, but is also very heavy (6.9 lbs.) and needlessly expensive for dry land prospecting. The design incorporates an expensive telescoping rod assembly into each and every coil. In other words the rod is part of the coil, not part of the detector. You are paying as much for the rod you must buy with the coil as the coil itself.

Good question Harry. It could be like the stock coil internally or more like a standard DD coil. A little testing by somebody that had one would tell. I don't see much point in spending a lot of money to buy a coil l so similar to what I already have however so that won't be me.

I was not talking these three books specifically by Clive Clynick, but the 16 he has listed on his website at http://www.clivesgoldpage.com/ You can click on titles there to find content information. They are all great books, you can't go wrong with any of them. Anyway, just go there and check them out to see what I mean. Many of the books talk about shoreline detecting with different models. The model information will be specific to the book but many of the actual hunting methods and techniques are the same regardless of the detector you have, so that stuff tends to repeat.

It is how many people like posts you make. The whole idea is to encourage quality posts as judged by other forum members. A key is how many posts a person makes versus how many times those posts get liked. Some people have lots of posts but few people like them. Other people actually get more likes than the number of posts they make due to the fact that multiple people can like a single post.

I used to have cases of the Zip Zip books on the shelf. I wish now I had bought a few cases myself and stashed in my basement! All great books Mike, have read them or have them myself. Highly recommended. The only thing people need to look out for is that Clive has a lot of titles but many of them repeat most of the same information in different ways.

Supposedly more knock resistant also. Sliding center mount, knock resistant, closed design won't collect debris, and 11" x 13" mono should get better depth than stock 10" x 12" DD. Might give up a hair on sensitivity compared to that hot inner ring design on the stock coil. My intent was to use the ATX more this year in salt area and places where hot rocks get so prevalent as to make using my GPZ an exercise in patience. I do think I will get one of these but it may be quite some time before I could use it enough to report on it. I am looking out my window at 6" of fresh snow!

The problem with proprietary headphones is no choice. The V3i wireless headphone is a fail for me because you have exactly one choice of headphone. I vastly prefer a system like this that has a speaker built in and the option to use any headphone I want. Or something like the Garrett which lacks the speaker but again, any headphone I want, and more important, with any machine I want. The pricey V3i headphone only works with a V3i. Same reason I am not getting the Makro Racer 2 wireless headphone option. Money spent for headphones I probably won't like that will only work with a Racer 2 or Gold Racer.

OK, you caught me, and believe it or not I have a 2017 New Years list in front of me which consists of finishing unfinished projects including the ATX. One of my personality traits is I hate not finishing stuff so this one has been nagging at me. Another trait is bouncing around a lot from project to project getting back to some sooner or later but on this one later has got out of control. Anyway, I am on it, results this month - I promise!! Funny, I intended this project as a stick in the eye to Garrett goading them into making a lighter weight ATX. Looks like even with all the delay I will still beat them to it.

You lost me Harry - view all where what? If you look in your post here you see you have made 275 posts and have a "reputation" of 87. Same figures show on your profile at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/profile/207-lipca/ Reputation can be a combination of many factors but on this forum it is just the number of times people have liked your posts as far as I know. It is not impossible there is more to it than that so I might investigate further but I have to admit it is a low priority project.

That is actually inspiring Bryan, thanks for posting. It is good to see that persistence still pays off, even for detecting old coins in parks, which is getting to be as challenging as nugget detecting. I am curious on your take on the CTX 3030 given your collection of Tesoro detectors. Opposite ends of the spectrum on both weight and operational designs. The success speaks for itself but I am wondering just how much you think the CTX may have contributed to that, or is it just a wash. Tesoro units are very good in the right hands.

Garrett allows dealers to advertise items at no more than 15% off the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). US$529.95 x 0.85 = Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) of US$450.46 Sorry but I do not know any more than you when and where this coil will be available.

I do see reviewing the instructions again that putting the batteries in backwards can permanently damage the unit.

About time - thanks Beav! Might have to get that mono for myself. Though with an out-the-door price of $450 I will have to think about it. I wonder if scuff covers will be available immediately or if that is another one of those afterthought things that drives us all crazy.

Not negativity - observations are observations, and yours and others are greatly appreciated Jason. All ground balancing metal detectors employ various ground balancing methods. Whatever method you choose eliminates responses from certain types of ground and rocks. There will always be types of gold that overlap those rock and ground responses. Therefore any ground balancing metal detector will, repeat, will miss certain types of gold targets. Once you get your head around this fact and accept it then you stop thinking all the gold under the coil is being detected. Think of the timings on the GPX series. Each timing scheme is designed to eliminate certain ground and salt responses. Anyone that plays around with the GPX can see that changing the timing - in other words changing the ground balance scheme, changes the way the detector responds not just to the ground but to different types of gold. The GPZ attempts to fill in the "holes" in the GPX timings but does indeed have its own "holes" also. That is just a fact. The only way to eliminate this is to use a non-ground balancing detector. Unfortunately then the ground and all the rocks go beep! Both GPX and the GPZ also have holes that the SDC 2300 fills and so the SDC can find gold those detectors miss. And a Gold Bug 2 can find gold all those models miss. All you need is a GPX/GPZ/SDC/GB2 and you are all set.

Not that it helps much with this issue but here is a copy of the owners manual for anyone that has lost theirs.

The B&Z booster is an audio signal booster that can be used with nearly any metal detectors. The amplifier produces a a clean signal response regardless of target size, without producing extra noise. It comes with its own battery but has the option to switch to bypass mode. It is a very popular booster to use with the Minelab SD, GP, GPX or GPZ series as well as the SDC 2300. As noted however it simply boosts the audio signal and so can be used with any detector that needs some sort of audio boost. They are listed on JP's website at http://aurumaustralis.com/b-z-booster/ and stocked by many U.S. dealers. You can contact him via PM on this forum or through his website but my guess is he is out prospecting right now. Otherwise we would have heard from him on this already.

The best posts are the ones meant to help others...

Well, get a nice piece of specimen gold. Put it on your buddies GPX coil and show him that no matter the settings it can't pick it up rubbing on the coil. Then show your GPZ pick it up at a foot. Turn about is fair play! There are no perfect units and in my opinion the Minelab GPX 5000 is still a bang for the buck leader. It can handle salt ground and some hot rocks that the GPZ struggles with and has a coil selection second to none. Nobody with a GPZ should be lording it over a GPX owner. Yet where I hunt and for the gold that remains to be found out there I have every confidence the GPZ is doing the job for me.

It does prove the GPX might have an edge when detecting for freshly buried 9mm slugs. If I am doing serious testing there is only one way I do it. For two detectors: 1. Take detector number one, go find target. Play with settings to get best signal on this found target. This insures you are tuned up properly for this ground. 2. Check same target with second detector. Again adjust settings for best results in this ground. 3. Make notes on responses, dig target, more notes on what it was, depth, etc. 4. Swap detectors, and go find target with the second detector. 5. Cross check with first detector. 6. Repeat for as long and as many targets as it takes to reach reasonable conclusions. 7. Always realize results are only valid for the particular ground and on the particular types of targets found. A totally different location with different mineralization and types of target (gold for instance varies greatly in different places) may yield different results. This process can take many hours if not days, and can't be rushed. The only thing we want detectors to do is find targets in the ground that usually have been buried a long time. Air tests, test gardens, buried targets etc. all provide some information but in my opinion never substitute for extensive cross testing on found targets. I am not making excuses here for the GPZ and in fact I have no doubt that for some gold targets a GPX may do a better job. No detector is 100% across the board perfect on all gold nuggets in particular because they occur in almost infinite variety. As a generality the GPZ excels on porous and gnarly, prickly gold. The GPX excels on solid, rounded gold. Ricks question about jacketed or not is very important. Lead bullets might be a reasonable substitute for gold nuggets but jacketed bullets are more like coin detecting.

Great review of the Nokta FORS Relic by Bill Paxton in the January 2017 Western & Eastern Treasures. I grabbed it from the Nokta Facebook page so I assume it was cleared for distribution by W&ET.

Look at the forum tabs up top and you will see a new option - Leaderboard. This was added in the last forum update. The Leaderboard leverages the "Like" button to reward people for posting content people like and in turn making it easy for you to find highly liked content. If lots of other people like a post, you might also. From the IPS website: We are excited to announce the Leaderboard as the latest all new feature of IPS Community Suite. The new Leaderboard is designed to better highlight your most active members and content based on reputation and other metrics. The Leaderboard will greatly enhance both member and content discovery on your community. Leaderboard Home First you will notice the new feature of member leaders based on a specific time frame. In the example above it is set to All Time showing those members with the most reputation overall on your community. It also shows the content with the most reputation for the same timeframe so you get a snapshot of both popular members and popular content in one view. Past Leaders The Past Leaders tab shows the "winners" of each day in a history. The system counts all reputation made each day and logs the members who had the top reputation counts that day. Using reputation rather than post count encourages your members to post quality of quantity which is really important to any site. Winner Profile Badge Those who win the day also get a badge on their profile page to highlight that they were the member with the most reputation for a particular day. Top Members Top Members shows you a list of all members sorted by various metrics. By default you will see members sorted by reputation but you can also easily sort by total post content Suite-wide or per-app. All of these views can be linked directly to so if you wanted a menu item to show members who post the most files in Downloads you can just directly link to that sort view. Leaderboard Settings There are various settings to control the default behavior of the Leaderboard. You can define the default view and how many members to show which is helpful to tailor it to your needs. We hope you enjoy this initial launch of the new Leaderboard feature. We are excited about the new content and member discovery abilities this offers and look forward to adding new options to the Leaderboard as we continue to develop!

White's is doing much better these days Tom, and no doubt you have had a lot to do with that. You are right about that. However it was also true White's was 100% against dealers leveraging the internet when it all took off. Dealers were allowed a dealer page on White's own website, and that was it. Other than that, you were not allowed to even mention you were a dealer or advertise White's products on the internet unless you were one of the few special regional dealers. It made dealers into a police force turning other dealers in for perceived violations. Lots of destructive politics in those days. I am not wanting to dwell in the past but those memories are fresh for some and no doubt where it is coming from. It is good White's is moving forward now. I do appreciate your efforts in that regard and your presence on the forum.

In Whites defense as a multi line dealer for 35 years no manufacturer ever fronted me product. The U.S. is full of non-stocking dealers drop shipping product after money received, etc. The real solution would be for manufacturers to have tighter requirements for being a dealer. Instead anyone with a broke down van parked in an empty lot can be a dealer. That leads to people selling product for near cost, undercutting legitimate dealers trying to do it right. Worse yet, people want to handle and try display models, then walk out the door to "think about it" and order it for $20 less online. People say they want full stocking, full service dealers but they vote otherwise with their wallets. It has got so bad I sometimes wonder why some manufacturer does not just give up on dealers altogether. Go factory direct and sell detectors direct to the public, splitting the difference between current retail and dealer cost. Most people these days simply do not have a good stocking dealer nearby and after a couple wasted trips trying to find goods nobody stocks just give up and order everything online anyway. White's made a huge strategic error (in my opinion) in preventing/controlling internet sales. Believe it or not the rationale was to protect dealers from unfair online competition. Certain models like the TDI were denied to big box online dealers in favor of only face to face sales. Again, to protect small dealers. It eventually backfired by making it very hard for customers to buy detectors. People could buy other brands from places all over the Internet and Whites was near invisible. Perceptually they did not exist online and reality ended up following that perception. Now White's is scrambling to catch up. Anyway, please remember Tom does not run White's and is one of the few manufacturer reps even trying to help people via the forums.