Steve Herschbach

Ok, time to out myself. I am self declared promoter and cheerleader for all things metal detecting. I may appear at times to promote a certain brand, but simply Google me and study a bit and you will see I promote all reasonably good brands. It has nothing to do with brands. Ultimately, I am a consumer advocate and do what I can to foster competition and innovation in the marketplace. It is all for very selfish reasons - I want the best metal detectors possible to be put in my very own hands before I get too old to use them anymore. I have always tried to the best of my ability to treat all the manufacturers fairly and with an even hand in commentary because I very much want to influence them if possible. Being too much on any one team would hurt me by limiting my access to the other team. Bashing anyone at all in an unreasonable way is self defeating, so the trick is to try and offer critical commentary without being rude about it. You are all part of this. This forum had a specific goal by design of trying to attract the most knowledgeable detector users possible. Hand in hand with that is an insistence on polite, reasoned discourse. I can tell you for a fact most manufacturers look on the forums as a Wild West show at best, and it you are honest the behavior exhibited on many forums should embarrass us all as a community. Why should manufacturers listen to a bunch of bickering children casting insults at one another? Or those who say that they, the manufacturers, are stupid dull idiots? I am sure this forum gets watched by more manufacturers now than most, purely because there are some smart people here providing some smart commentary. That means that you, the forum member, have a certain degree of influence, but only if you present yourself well as a person who can put two sentences together to make a logical argument. Do certain things about metal detectors frustrate you? Are there things you want improved? Competition is now heating up to unheard of levels and the only manufacturers that are going to win are the ones who start listening to their customers more than they ever have before. Be part of my plan and get on my team as being a person to provide and offer commentary on what detector products do well and why. What do you like, what don't you like? Do it in a professional - that is the key - as professional a manner as possible, and I believe I can promise your desires and concerns will get seen by people who can make a difference. You do have a little power here. Please use it responsibly.

I know people who do use DD coils on GPX detectors to increase their odds in thick ferrous trash, especially in tailing piles. Yes, it may be unreliable, but it is certainly more than 50% effective. One can argue the ins and outs of that being a good idea, but the idea that nobody anywhere uses a DD coil on a GPX to employ discrimination is simply not true. In particular, large numbers of relic hunters in the U.S. would disagree. Nugget detecting is not the whole world.

Sadly due to the way coil harmonics work it is almost a certainty that the old frequencies will not be applied to the new Deus coil and vice versa. In theory you could apply the "off" frequencies to the coil but the mismatch would probably result in performance degradation such that there would be no point. Ultimately not everything can be done through software only.

I would assume Deus V4 will just add functions to what exists - there should be no need to go back to 3.2. You will just use the existing coils to access the existing frequency choices. And new coil to access new frequency choices. There are a lot of 19 kHz machines and they are some of the most EMI resistant made in my experience, so I would not read too much into this. It is very dependent on an exact frequency situation existing in specific areas. Just another reason though why having frequency choices is a good thing.

That explains why the White's V3i had so many EMI issues for me in Anchorage, Alaska. One of its three operating frequencies is 22.5 kHz and Anchorage has a stealth fighter squadron based there.

Chris, don't forget the new icons !

Rico, welcome to the forum! The XLT is a very good detector and in the right hands (no doubt like yours) it runs with the best of them. I having been to the UK myself and getting rained on nearly every day of my visit can see the appeal of a machine like the MX Sport right away. It would be nice to not worry about the rain, and to be able to just hose the mud off the detector periodically. The finds people like you make in Europe are just amazing. Coins you think are too young to bother with are older than anything possible in the U.S. Those are some great finds - I hope to get back over the pond one of these days for another go at ancient treasure!

Thanks Rick, I fixed the link. Seems a lot of prospectors don't do Facebook! Most coin detectors these days are shown at gun shows or other sporting goods type shows. The Shot Show in Las Vegas has been a big venue for some detector manufacturers as of late. Anyway Chuck, Chris Ralph will probably at the GPAA Phoenix Gold Show but I have no plans to be there myself. I will however be at the GPAA Las Vegas Show next weekend and of course the ICMJ Mining Summit in April. Word now it's the Racer 2 will begin shipping to distributors on March 4th, and dealers here in the U.S. after the distributor is able to get the product to them. So it would be pretty tight for there to be any at Phoenix show but not impossible.

So Chuck, you talking the GPAA Phoenix Gold Show on March 11-13? I would think you have a good shot at seeing both the MX Sport and Racer 2 at the show, at least on day one. Thing is Rob Allison and Chris Porter are both Makro dealers, and so far no comment? Part of the problem is neither machine is being marketed as a prospecting detector and you will note the lack of interest on the "prospecting forums". My interests in detectors are wider ranging so I latch on to new machines like these with great interest and use the forum threads as self study sessions. I posted the VDI chart above for me! Yet if these machines are not generating phone calls at the prospecting shops I can understand that. However, I happen to know any 14 kHz made the days actually makes for a pretty decent prospecting VLF and the MX Sport and Racer 2 will serve just fine in that department for owners that have them. As a retailer you face a challenge in that by offering too many options you can actually confuse people and hurt sales. It is also hard to train salespeople to know many machines well. I am a rarity in that department, eating and breathing detectors like I do. So most retailers are wise to focus on a set of machines that provide simple answers to simple desires. Tossing more new machines into the mix at a steady clip is nothing but an inventory headache developing for many dealers.

It is not that I do not want great depth, it is that I am sure White's or anyone else can make a single frequency VLF detector that hits close enough to the maximum depth limits achieved by this technology for well over twenty years now. Hoping the MX Sport gets great depth is like hoping the next new car Chevy releases will be able to go the speed limit. Standard VLF detectors have reached raw depth limits for a long time. I very much want more depth, but I am not going to get my hopes up in that department unless machines have new patent numbers attached. The only real advances in VLF as of late have been in target id accuracy and recovery speed. I am surprised at the legs this thread has had and I attribute it to White's still having a powerful brand name. There is a long standing desire for something new from this once major mover in the industry. Looks like White's is on the move again finally, and that has people excited. I can't wait to see the rest of what will obviously be a line of several machines based on this housing. For better or worse, I think White's has finally retired the old metal mail boxes. Competition is going to get fierce the next few years with dozens of great machines vying for our dollars. That can't help but be good for us, the detector public. We are the folks I am rooting for!

Makro Racer 2 Target ID Chart (Preliminary 2/21/16)

I am sure it gets great depth just like dozens of other VLF detectors on the market. If depth is paramount I won't be using a VLF so what I am more interested in is the effectiveness of the discrimination system. How well will the MX Sport do in a park infested with modern trash at seeing between that trash to make good finds? How well will it do around an old burned down 110 year old home site? How well in a fresh water lake full of old rusted stuff? How well will it do in Europe pulling tiny cut coins out of 2000+ years of ferrous stuff? If dealing with trash was not an issue I would have stopped owning VLF detectors many years ago. There are far better options if all that matters is depth. There are things the AT Pro can be picked on for but one of them is not its ability to pull non-ferrous targets out of difficult situations at a bargain price. Given that the MX Sport costs more than an AT Pro I would assume White's has done their homework in that department. Because eventually enough people will use both for a consensus to develop regarding the relative performance of the two and White's can afford to do no less than match, and better yet, exceed, the AT Pro in capability. Anything less and all the bells and whistles in the world won't matter.

Original Makro Racer and Makro Racer 2 display screens compared:

I am mainly interested in the Racer 2 as a jewelry and coin detector, but having used the original Racer I know it will also be a good nugget hunting VLF. Actually a bit better than the F75 in that regard as when you get right down to the edge the F75 is more prone to incorrectly identify a very small or very deep non-ferrous target as ferrous. The Racers flip it around and are more conservative, so you may tend to dig a little more ferrous trash with one but have less chance of missing the gold.

Good look at the guts of yet another Garrett pinpointer clone at http://md-hunter.com/opening-the-gold-hunter-pinpointer-photos-whats-inside/ Lots of circuit there, kind of like a phone blows away computers made years ago there is an entire metal detector in a pinpointer these days.

OK, now we are talking. I was afraid we were going to lose the audio nuance and end up with pure gated digital tones. Not the case however - sounds like the MXT Relic mode "goose honking" I am so used to, and the ferrous if anything sounds more modulated than on the MXT, more of a VCO effect going on. Thanks for posting khouse, that one is short but told me a lot.

You are right, first it was there, now it is gone. At $21 paperback and only $8 Kindle I know which I would have got. Must have been some issue because it is not like you run out of stock with Kindle! I edited the original post to add link to paperback just in case the Kindle version does not come back.

You are racking up a nice pile of gold already for the year - good job! Something tells me the FORS is suiting you better than the Gold Racer.

Anyone get to attend this? Sounds like it would have been very interesting!

Half dollar - can't wait to see it!!

I thought about model specific icons and it can be done but it kind of turns into a where do I stop thing. I like the idea though and could do at least the most popular machines as revealed in my nugget detector survey last fall - GPZ, GPX, SDC, GB2, GBP, GMT, TDI etc. Testing.... and our favorite....

I spent a good chunk of time today rounding up a new set of post icons (emoticons or smilies) for the forum today. Click on that little smily face in the editor menu and up pops some most used icons plus ones you use a lot. In the upper right there is a category button, and selecting the category button brings up the entire selection. I made the best logo set I could plus a better gold nugget icon. Enjoy!

Hey Chuck, I thought nothing of the sort. I was just giving Andy a pat on the back, that's all. Plus, I hate for anyone to post and it go without comment by anyone. Never happens here. I have a copy of Andy's book on the XP DEUS, he just goes into incredible great detail. Fantastic stuff.

Want to hear the funny part there? First, you are correct - good catch and I fixed the graphic. Second, I grabbed the image from White's website at http://whiteselectronics.net/pulseloops.png The original is incorrect! I actually had a Bigfoot TDI coil at one point and it was single field. I did not know the T Foot was different. I do not like inaccurate information and want none on this website if at all possible. I appreciate you pointing that out Tom

I suspect that the GPZ 7000 at $9999 will have set a high water mark for pricing in consumer metal detectors. Declines in the gold price and market saturation are having their effect, as will - in my opinion - increasing competition. I would hate to be in Minelab management these days as they went through a detector bubble much like the housing bubble, and when bubbles pop business is no fun at all. Nothing but a struggle to stem declining sales and declining margins and the pain that comes along with that.