Steve Herschbach

What do I like? My Big Foot coil. Unfortunately endless lobbying on my part with White's failed. Too labor intensive, not a volume type thing. My argument over and over is people will pay big bucks for them, just look at eBay used prices for them, and that they are the sort of coil that will make people buy the brand that makes the machines that run them. Kind of a prestige item if you will. Still a no go with the powers that be. The other coil not currently being offered for the MX Sport that is a bit of a no-brainer is the 4" x 6" Shooter coil. Frankly, I wish White's would ditch near their entire coil lineup and start over. The new 10" round DD looks like a modern coil. All the old thick foam filled been around for years because we still have the same old mold we have been using for decades coils need to go away. I mean the Shooter is a decent coil but compared to a 20 year old Fisher Gold Bug 2 6" elliptical it is a bit embarrassing. Pretty much the same story with every White's coil so if they are going to make me start over and buy brand new coils, at least give me brand new modern thin profile coils. And a Big Foot!

If you are comfortable with White's no reason to look elsewhere for a VLF. It simply does not make that big a difference in the outcome when looking at VLF detectors. The TDI and Garrett Infinium/ATX are only worth looking at if you are encountering bad ground mineralization and hot rocks. Those detectors frankly do not go much deeper than a good VLF in all metal mode, so what you are really buying is ground handling capability. At the same time you will give up an edge on smaller gold you can get with a VLF. To me those units have more value in California where there is some really nasty ground. Nevada not so much. In the end you can't say one will be better than the other because it is all about the nature of the ground and the gold you are hunting. My opinion is not any better and probably not as good as people who have been hunting Nevada for longer than I, but given what I have seen I would just as soon use a VLF as a Garrett or White's PI in Nevada. Unless you go to the next level and get a Minelab, but that is going to run more than you want to spend. The CZX may or may not see the light of day in 2016. My bet is yes but I simply could be wrong. As far as what it brings to the table, that is a highly guarded secret at Fisher. I am hoping mainly for decent performance at a low cost and with good ergonomics but I do not expect performance exceeding anything currently on the market per se. Again, just my opinion, I could be wrong. All I can say is I never wait for new detectors coming because there are always new detectors coming. Last tip again - never be in a hurry and consider used with transferable warranty. White's for instance has a two year transferable warranty. Buy a used one with no less than one year remaining on the warranty, and yes, if you take your time you can find one. The Makro Gold Racer being new will inevitably get the buy and try guys that give it a spin, and some will be up for sale soon used. It is inevitable with new models, and they also carry a two year transferable warranty. I buy used detectors all the time, in fact I am shopping for a used DFX right now. I use the eBay "sold listings" to determine low end resale value and stick to my guns and wait until I can get one for a price I am sure I can recover nearly 100% of later. I can make you even more confused if I wanted because truly there are a pile of good detectors on the market. We can go round and round and talk ins and outs forever, and everyone in general backs their chosen machine because they are all pretty good. I think highly of the Gold Racer myself, but when it comes to recommending detectors I tend to be very conservative and tell people to stick with the most popular well known, well proven units. You can't blame the detector if it has been used successfully by lots of people for lots of years and resale is easy if you decide it was not for you. Take your time, tons of old posts on this forum and others to look over. At the end of the day just do whatever feels comfortable. Best wishes on a difficult decision!

Well, you can't be in hurrying if you want to find a good deal on a used detector. $2300 is way too much for a used SD2200. SD units are considered obsolete by Minelab and so you are dependent on third parties for repairs. If it really is an older unit, ask specifically about the battery as the old lead acid batteries on the models went bad for numerous reasons if not cared for properly.

If all you wanted was a good VLF nugget machine the GMT is a very good choice for Nevada. As you saw, there are a ton of good units and it gets overwhelming. My list has grown over the years, and in an attempt to just cut to the chase I added my Steve's Picks last year. There are two theories I have seen on detectors. Theory one is all in, go for broke, go for the best, because anything less and you hurt your chances of success, and so will ultimately fail. This theory is especially prevalent in Australia due to the tough ground there and decades of heavy detecting. You hear it a lot here also, and it has very valid points. I tend more the other way for people starting out. I know for an absolute fact I can grab any decent VLF, go detecting next week, and have gold to show for it. No doubt, 100% certainty. That being the case, I think most people need a relatively cheap starting point to find if they even really have the interest or aptitude for nugget detecting, and no reason that can't be done with a $500 - $800 VLF metal detector. The GMT has every feature you need in a good VLF prospecting detector and is hot of the small or specimen type gold that can be found here. It does give up the multi-purpose aspects of the MXT however. I figure a person can't ever find any gold with a good VLF they need spend no more money on detecting. Find some gold in a confident fashion first, then invest in a big bucks detector. Even then most guys keep a VLF around and for good reason. I can promise you one thing for sure. Spending big bucks on the "best" detectors is no guarantee of success. The key is researching and putting yourself on good ground and lots of patience and hard work.

Do you still own the MXT? If so not a bad place to start. And for what it is worth I think there is a lot of pretty mild ground in Nevada where a VLF works just fine.

Hi Kenny, Well first off welcome to the forum, glad you could make it! One thing to know is there is not a lot of difference between detecting gold and detecting aluminum and lead. Prospectors want two things in general. First, the ability to handle bad ground and hot rocks. That usually means avoiding detectors with preset ground balances. No problem there with MX Sport. Then small gold capability, usually tied directly to frequency when talking VLF detectors. Anything over single digit frequency is good with most decent gold machines clustering around 13 - 19 kHz. The exception being dedicated prospecting detectors, which can run much higher frequencies. Again, at 13.8 kHz no problem with MX Sport. You can substitute lead or aluminum for gold, and basically the smaller the pieces you can detect reliably the better. Going foil detecting is a good way to practice and get good with a prospecting detector. For big gold I use a U.S. nickel to approximate the depth I expect to get on a roughly 1/4 ounce nugget. You really have no need to have big test nuggets as that nickel will suffice and big nuggets cost big bucks. You might want about a 1/2 gram nugget for a test piece but I am curious to see what other people think on that issue. If I am testing hot high frequency machines (40 khz and higher) it is more like 1 grain. The stock coil will be ok but the 10" x 5.5" is a better nugget coil, half because it has a solid bottom and will not hang up on stuff. I hope they come out with a little 6" x 4" Shooter for the MX Sport. PM me your mailing address and I will send you a 1/2 gram nugget.

I saw that post but frequency is the same as the MXT so I am not sure what Andy was thinking. Maybe the DFX reference threw him, but the MXT and the DFX do share coils. He is right of course about the eight pins, as I go into at length at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1533-whites-mx-sport-waterproof-metal-detector/?p=18793 but that in itself does not preclude an adapter. I would not buy the MX Sport thinking it can share MXT coils but with all due respect to my good buddy Andy I do not think it is a foregone conclusion yet that it will not.

Hello Alex, So far you have ignored my last two responses to your posts, so I will try again. Have you considered joining a local club to meet people you could go with?

The thing that made the White's MXT a huge hit was the knobs. I sold a ton of MXT detectors and it was because I could point a novice at the knobs and it was easy for them to see and understand each control. No doubt the same will apply here. There is also the fact batteries and everything are in one self contained pod - no underarm batteries as in the Racers. I don't think that helps the balance out but it does raise the possibility the pod can be removed from the rod. What is that knob sticking out of the bottom? Is it a control (strange place for one) or a knurled screw that attaches the control pod to the rod? If the pod can be easily removed it can also be easily mounted on other rod assemblies. If Nokta offered coils with longer cables, or better yet a cable extension that would work on all coils, then a person could hip or chest mount the control box. The dual LED ferrous/non-ferrous readout is cool - I have floated that as an idea for a long time to folks. Forget the target id stuff, just tell me if it is ferrous or non-ferrous, and this does it as simple as it can be done visually. Be nice if one was green and one red, and you could get both in play at once. Solid green, dig. Solid red, take a pass. Flickering green and red - how lucky do you feel? This is just another detector that makes me think Makro/Nokta has effectively replaced Tesoro as a player in the market. This reminds me of what Tesoro could be doing if they were not asleep at the wheel. More information here on Nokta AU Gold Finder.

Hello Alex, Have you tried going to any local club meetings?

I have used the AT Pro and AT Gold. Excellent bang for buck detectors. I would say that the FORS DI3 is pretty much what you have in the example in the middle above with Iron Audio off. Three preset tone ranges, with the disc or id filter control determining the stuff that gets eliminated on the bottom end. Boost or DI2 eliminates that third high tone area and instead uses a two tone scheme. The target id ranges are almost the same for the AT units, FORS units, Fisher Gold Bug Pro, Teknetics G2 and T2, and others. 0-99 with break between ferrous and non-ferrous at 39-40. The AT Pro I thought the display area small and recessed waterproof connectors to be a bit of a pain. The new Garrett AT 400 looks to be a dry land version of the AT Pro eliminating the waterproof coil and headphone connectors plus adding a larger target id number to the display. That should be a great little detector for under $400

Hi Dean, Well, no, not what you are doing on the CoRe and you seem to have found your answer while I typed this up, but here goes anyway. Technically "Iron Audio" is a trademarked term by Garrett describing a specific function on the AT Pro metal detector. Once upon a time we had the single knob discrimination control. As it was turned up, everything below the setting was silenced, and everything above the setting went beep. Since iron was the first thing on the range of the control, turning the control up a small amount caused iron to be silenced, and everything else to go beep. In theory! This suppression of signals has a few issues we can set aside for now, other than to say that some detectors rather than cause the rejected item to go silent, instead split the tones into two tones. The rejected items give a low tone, and the accepted items a high tone. The control would normally be set to cause iron to be a low tone, or this setting could be preset at the factory. The White's MXT Relic Mode is a very popular use of the adjustable version of this setting and the Boost setting on the FORS CoRe is a good example of a factory preset version. Now, if the tones are factory preset so that iron gives a low tone, and everything else a high tone, you can go back to using the knob to silence items. The very simplest discrimination range looks like this: -2 BIG FERROUS * * * -1 SMALL FERROUS * * * ZERO * * * +1 SMALL NON-FERROUS * * * +2 LARGE NON-FERROUS So the ferrous gives a factory preset low tone, and non-ferrous a high tone. You can use the disc (id filter) control to eliminate just the -2 big ferrous sounds. Or both the -2 and -1 ferrous sounds. Or go even higher and eliminate the small non-ferrous. That is what turning up the ID Filter up or down would do for you except that by going under a setting of 10 on the CoRe you are actually getting down into the ground mineralization range, and may start getting ground noise. What Garrett does with the Iron Audio feature is allow the zero point break between ferrous and non-ferrous to be shifted, or in other words turn off the factory preset and allow the "break point" to be adjustable. Just like the MXT Relic Mode has done for a long time with two tones, but it is a "new" Garrett feature on the AT Pro and with three tones. Here is the Garrett sales pitch: Iron Audio™ Scattered iron objects in the ground can mask good targets and even create “ghost signals” that appear to be a good target. Garrett’s selectable Iron Audio feature allows the user to hear discriminated iron (normally silenced) in order to know the whole picture and avoid being tricked into digging an undesired target. Iron Audio also allows the user to adjust the mid-tone’s range to include all targets above the point of discrimination. The user is effectively adjusting the cut-off between Low-tone discriminated trash targets and mid-tone targets. This Garrett feature works in both Standard and Pro Modes on the AT Pro. (See illustration below) Graphic illustration of Garrett "Iron Audio" Other detectors can do this so no big deal but they can't call it "Iron Audio" since Garrett trademarked the term. The V3i for instance lets you set unlimited tones in any range and in any order you choose and the Garret system looks simplistic by comparison. Sometimes simple can be better however. What I think is more interesting and available on only a few detectors is adjustable iron volume. When set to have ferrous tones if you get into a lot of ferrous trash the sounds can get overwhelming. Being able to set the ferrous volume allows you to set the volume of the ferrous sounds independent of the main volume setting. Nice and what I assumed you were asking about actually until I started looking into it.

Nothing to be sorry about Chuck! Maybe we will see an XVenture but it looks like the trademark process is stalled. Lots of name trademarks never become products. Name or not there is no doubt in my mind we will see more new products from White's soon. A low hanging fruit is something to replace the dual frequency BeachHunter model. That machine was pushed out the door early and should be an easy mark for some horsepower improvement. The control box and battery door design just plain sucks so stuffing a pumped up version into the MX Sport housing makes good sense.

Download the latest portable version of IrfanView at http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/irfanview_portable Full install versions at http://www.irfanview.com

Was reported here on the forum last September http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1207-whites-xventure-metal-detector-trademark-application/

You are welcome Paul, just studying up and finding out what I can about it prior to getting one myself. Sold my V3i to make room - much as it was fun to play with just feature overkill for me anyway. They are saying about three weeks until we can get our hands on the MX Sport so we can compare notes once we get ours. MAP is $749 so time to line up a deal. At least with the MX Sport we will be able to get our fingers around the coil and headphone connections. Those recessed fittings on the AT series are an annoyance for me. Wish the MX Sport headphone connection was underarm however instead of on front of pod. Oh well, there is always something!

Hey Paul! OK, regarding your concern that any given two tones in the 8 tone or especially 20 tone mode may be too close for some people to hear the difference, making two tone areas blend together. There appears to be a solution on the MX Sport in the form of the previously mentioned Rejection Volume. On most detectors notching out or rejecting a certain target segment causes items that fall in that segment to make no sound at all. With the MX Sport, you can set the Rejection Volume to a percentage, for instance 20% or 50%, and instead of being completely eliminated those items would be heard at 20% volume or 50% volume levels respectively. The solution then if you get two adjacent tones would be to set one of the tones to reject, and then also set the Rejection Volume to, for instance, 50%. The accepted tone would be a full volume tone and the other tone at 50% volume would be very easy to distinguish.

In sort of a sign that the Makro Racer has "arrived" NEL coils have announced that the entire NEL lineup of coils will now be available for the Makro Racer. These coils will not work of the Makro Gold Racer due to its much higher operating frequency. This means there are now eight more accessory coils available for the Makro Racer. Visit the NEL website for details.

In my effort to try and limit myself to only one model detector from each brand (as much as is possible!) I just sold my White's V3i to make room for the MX Sport. And Fisher F75 is up for sale now to make room for whatever Fisher comes up with next. Like you I am putting a lot of hope in this one.

4.41 - it is free so why have anything but the latest? But earlier versions also have it I think so maybe you are not looking in right place or opening a file lacking the information in the first place. Go to menu bar when an image is open, chose IMAGE and then first option INFORMATION. Or just hit the "I" key as a shortcut. The info box pops up with EXIF and IPTC selections in lower left corner. If there is no EXIF or IPTC information (normal if you open a gif or bmp file) then those options will not appear. Since I have your ear - any tips for this guy? http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1558-infinium-ls-detecting-gold-question/?p=18413

A closer look at the MX Sport standard 10" DD coil internal wiring and epoxy filling. This is what the bottom of the coil will look like without a scuff cover/skip plate. My V3i just sold so I am in line for an MX Sport as soon as I can lay my hands on one.

It is a good thing somebody finally used that 17" coil. Continued good luck and thank you Rob!

Coil Interchangeability On The White's MX Sport There are currently around 20 accessory coils that work with the White's DFX, M6, MX5, SST, V3i, MXT, and MXT Pro. It it nice not only having so many coils available but ones that work on quite a few models. A lot of people already have money invested in these coils. It sure would be nice if they worked with the MX Sport - but will they? There is the obvious issue of the MX Sport using a waterproof connector, and a simple adapter would seem to be the solution. It unfortunately may be more complicated than that. The existing coils all have a 5 pin connector. The MX Sport has an 8 pin connector, and all eight pins appear to be in use. Here is the inside of the MX Sport and a close up of the coil connection wires, eight in all. Here are the three MX Sport coils available at this time, including the stock 12" round DD on left, optional 9.5" round concentric in middle, and 10" x 5.5" DD on right. What are the three extra wires for? My guess is White's is employing smart coil technology to identify different coils to the detector. Cynics will think this is to control the manufacture of coils. Regardless of any motivations there allowing the machine to know what coil is on it allows for adjustments to be made in parameters like the depth reading. This is normally calibrated on a detector to a US dime using the stock coil, but the minute you change coils the calibration goes out the door. With smart coils you can adjust for each coil. There can be differences in concentric versus DD performance that can be accounted for, so this is a good thing from a performance perspective. If the idea is to control who can make accessory coils then the three wires can sense some sort of id chip code also. The problem if that is the case then existing coils are not likely to work, even if an adapter from the 8 pin waterproof connector to the 5 pin dry land connector can be fabricated, unless that adapter also defeated the id check. Or if controlling who makes coils is not an issue, then perhaps the extra wires can just be ignored and the coils will work, albeit without the extra smart coil functionality. Lot of speculation based on three wires! Personally I think White's would be hurting sales by not allowing faithful White's owners to leverage existing coil collections somehow so I am still hoping for an adapter. Otherwise at this time there is only the existing stock 10" round DD coil plus two accessory coils available for the MX Sport, the 10" x 5.5" elliptical DD (be a nice nugget coil) and the 9.5" round concentric (be a good low mineral beach coil).

Probably European, possibly Italian, and I do not guess that old. Lots of online resources; here is one http://www.hallmarkresearch.com/ Congratulations, always a thrill!

It is possible that what you do never rises above the level of casual use Tom and so none of this may apply to you. However, knowing and operating under the mining laws can afford you many benefits. If you wish to educate yourself on those laws, you can start at http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/regulations.html