Steve Herschbach

You mean for the external battery pack? Mine was still in the wrapper as I never have needed it, but pulled it out to look. OMG Garrett, could you not find a smaller torx screw? I have a set of jewelers screwdrivers but it has no torx in it. My torx set sure does not go that small. Must measure in microns! Sorry, I tried.

Like Andy said rain resistant and fully submersible to pod if you want to wade, but not fully dunkable. I'd use mine in pouring rain with no cover without concern.

I'm not a fan of the Garrett phones - too spoiled by high end models. The Garrett are ok and probably fine for lots of people but I have hearing loss and really need high quality sound and dual volume controls. So while the Axiom does come with wireless phones I use either my Sun Ray Pro Gold directly plugged in or with the WR-1 receiver.

But even better news is the external speaker is so good and with enough volume that in most locations these days I use no headphones at all. The Sun Rays only come out if it gets windy or I'm real close to other people.

There is actually something satisfying about recovering an incredibly tiny bit of gold, kind of a "I can't believe I found something that small" sort of thing. It does take some proficiency to be good at it.

Efficiency of recovery with a scoop is as important as the finding - many people leave little bits after they find them because they can't find them! "It's not worth it" really means "I've been trying to find that bit for ten minutes now - I give up!"  It is not worth ten minutes but if you get it down to a minute now we are talking. There are 480 grains per Troy ounce and at US$2082.00 right now that is $4.38 gold. If you are hot you can hit gold to 1/10th grain (0.0064 gram) and even 1/10th grain is worth almost a half dollar. Would you leave a half dollar lay if you saw one? No? Me either.

Some Gold Bug 2 gold

28 little guys. The largest bit, in the lower right hand corner, weighs 6 grains. The smallest is about 1/10th grain. The total weight is 41.7 grains, or 2.7 grams.

You register your Nokta detector online. All you really need is the receipt, but lacking that or registration you could lose a lot of warranty if you buy a detector that has been on a dealer shelf for a long time. So do take the time to register.

https://www.noktadetectors.com/product-registration/

From https://destinationgolddetectors.com/blogs/news/nokta-warranty-update:

18 minutes ago, RONS DETECTORS MINELAB said:

Work till the day you die is what I always say.

Wow Ron, we have the exact opposite outlook on that. My goal my whole life was to work super hard and be super frugal to hasten the day when I no longer had to do either. I was the hardest working lazy person you would have ever met. Now I'm just lazy and loving it. 

On 2/26/2024 at 6:54 PM, mn90403 said:

Is there a thread here that compares these two?

Actually without an ID, I'm interested in size and depth.

Besides this one? No. The Manticore with M8 coil can hit tinier gold than the E1500. The E1500 will easily hit bigger gold at better depth in highly mineralized ground than the Manticore. In low mineral ground or very trashy ground the case can be made that the Manticore might be the better choice for some people, just like the Equinox 800 has done well for some prospectors. Think deep tailing piles with deep nails and cans or the middle of an old mining camp. And while the E1500 has a discrimination system of sorts it is conductivity based not ferrous vs non-ferrous, and requires target by target analysis. The Manticore you can set for two tone ferrous vs non-ferrous, far more efficient and helpful in true trash scenarios.

It's the same old VLF vs PI story - nothing has changed. People expecting the E1500 to be some new magic wand are barking up the same hopes are going to be dashed tree that grows up every time we see a new model come out.

My view from the hill….

Hybrid is the new sales buzzword set to trap detector dollars.

What Simon said. You can’t fairly compare the price of the Axiom with coil and two day battery to the price of an E1500 with no coil or battery. The price decrease was probably more about addressing the fact an Axiom is far less money in the states than a GPX 6000 yet that situation was reversed in Australia. That should never have been allowed to happen.

42 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

The land in question is in a very productive historical and current mining district and has been under mineral lease to a large mining company in the past. It's a purchased property - It's never been claimed and the original patent was not mineral related.

Is it? I saw nothing about that in the post. Whatever, consider me properly chastised. 

Maybe I'm wrong but I’m pretty sure the original poster is basically asking if they can metal detecting for gold nuggets on private property if they have permission from the property owner. I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say yes.

Sure, you could define that metal detecting for a gold nugget as a minerals exploration activity requiring legal ownership or permission from the owner of the underlying mineral rights. And that maybe somebody else other than the property owner has those rights and you are violating them. Maybe I’m out of line, but that seems like a bit of a stretch looking for a conflict over what is probably going to be a day spent digging bullets.

Chances are very high that if the private ground is of that much interest to a guy with a metal detector it’s probably patented mining ground, so the property owner most likely does have the mineral rights. Metal detecting for gold is generally defined as casual use by BLM and Forest Service so no permits normally required etc.

So if I know for a fact Bob owns the ground and he says I can go do my thing I’m not going to lose much sleep over anything beyond that. If Bob is aware of some serious conflict about the mineral rights I’d hope he’d mention something about that. Seems pretty low risk to me. If I want to bring in my excavator and drill rig that’s another matter.

And just a note. I never give your email to anyone without permission. If people try I contact you and give you their email (with their permission) so you can contact them or ignore them. I never give the emails to marketers. I never send out bulk emails. If you get emails from the forum it is because you have something in your settings saying you want a notification email about a thread or something. If you are getting emails and don't want them - turn it off in your settings. The main thing to know is I am a super private person and I hate being bugged and so I try to never bother others. I take security and privacy very seriously. So getting you to update your email is not part of some plot to send you junk mail or something. It is just so you can sign in here and do a password recovery if need be. And notifications about forum activity if you chose to follow something or somebody. That I have nothing to do with - that's in your settings (the Notification Settings seen in the pics in my last post).

When you signed up you gave an email to authenticate your account and also to act as a password recovery email. You also created a display name. When you sign in / log in you have been using your display name and password to sign in. This is going to change to you signing in with your account email and password.

It is a good time to be sure your email on account is still one you have access to. Some people get new email accounts and never update it here. That can be a huge problem if you need to reset your password for any reason. In the help post at the top of every forum there is a link to password recovery. It sends a recovery email to the email you have on file here. Wrong email, you are not going to get it.

New Member Signup - Click Here!      Lost Password - Click Here!    <- Password Recovery

Forum Tips & Tricks     Advanced Search     Tag List/Index

And again, you will need to enter your email to sign in from now on.

Below is how you check and change your display name, email, and password. It is important you update that email. It is very hard now to contact me if you get locked out as I no longer have a contact page on the website. I got 100 marketing messages a day and got tired of it. The only way you can normally contact me is PM on the website, but you need to be logged in to do that. If you can't log in, you need to use the password recovery. And if you do not have a current email in the system - you are screwed! Well, not quite. If you are reading this you will see my contact email in the screenshots below. The spammers will probably miss this so I will leave this up unless I get inundated again. But making a note of it someplace will allow you to email me if you have a problem signing in. Please do not email me with metal detector or gold prospecting questions. I'll just tell you to post the question on the forum. The email is for emergency forum support only.

For big screen device click on your name in upper right. Click on account settings. You will see your email and if it is not correct, you can change it.

Big screen Step 1

Big screen Step 2

On small screen devices it takes more steps. In upper right click the three horizontal bars:

Small screen Step 1

Small screen Step 2

Small screen Step 3

Small screen Step 4

One or the other of these?

I doubt you can get those anywhere but but special ordering from a Garrett dealer or contacting Garrett direct.

Contact Garrett

Hi David,

Late with the welcome but as an old retired dealer I thought I’d better chime in. You and Dixie Metal Detectors have a long history and respected place in the industry and it’s an honor to have you here. 
 

Do take advantage of the classifieds once you qualify. Just be aware we are jaded here so regular ads… well, boring. The membership is looking for your smoking hot deals, especially any used detector deals. All I ever ask in return is a little help answering member questions with the storehouse of knowledge I know you have. Win, win!

https://www.detectorprospector.com/topic/433-my-policy-regarding-dealers/

On 12/7/2023 at 4:42 AM, Roger said:

Is this the NF 14"x9" coil you refer to Steve?

https://arizonaoutback.com/nugget-finder-advantage-14-elliptical-sl-mono-coil.html

Yes. It's the older bundle wound, now discontinued so on sale at big discount. The new spiral wound EVO replaces it.

When I post I am always posting to everyone, not anyone in particular, unless I am quoting somebody in particular.

People with concerns about new product should not buy them for 6 months or a year. Every metal detector of worth released in the last decade has had not just one but often many updates. My iPhone and PC get monthly updates. Cars get recalled. I ran a service department for a large company for years and the list is endless. Be the first owner of a completely new boat, snowmobile or ATV models at your peril.

Anybody with concerns about the E1500 should simply wait and not buy one until sufficient time has passed for the earliest owners to find and report issues. That's the way it is with XP, Minelab, Fisher, Garrett.... all of them. Is that right? Should things not be better? Yeah, the list of things in the world that are disappointing and need fixing is endless. Just add all new product vetting and releases to that list.

I was and I guess still am pretty excited by this new game in town but frankly find a lot of the commentary about how disappointed people are about various aspects of it to be a bit of a bummer so I'm going to check out of the conversation. When I get one and have at least 100 hours of use I'll probably drop back in with my impressions. Until then, may everyone's pockets fill with gold. 

You are one of the optimists Jason. Just because you have been saying something for a decade does not make it true. I’m more in the Simon camp when it comes to a new detector actually having enough of a leap in performance to make an actual real world difference in the gold being found. The GPZ 7000 was a true advancement over what came before and made dead patches come alive again. The 6000 picked up the crumbs. This next go I think we will see improvement more in the ergonomic side than anything else. I place my bet that there will not be genuine performance that outperforms substantially on what we can currently get with the 6000 and 7000 combined, or even just a 7000 with a proper set of aftermarket coils.

Metal detectors have a basic limitation in how far they can detect gold items. From http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/200TrCcts/MetalDetectors/MetalDetectors-1.html 

“the sensitivity is roughly proportional to the cube of the object diameter (as expressed as a function of the search coil diameter). Sensitivity is also inversely proportional to the sixth power of the distance between the coil and the object. All this means is that if the object size is halved the sensitivity is reduced to one-eighth. Also, if the depth is doubled the sensitivity is reduced to one sixty-fourth. It’s easy to see why all metal detectors which are designed to pick up small objects use small coils, (150 to 300 mm diameter) and really only skim the soil surface. If the search coil is doubled in diameter for greater penetration the sensitivity to small objects falls to one-eighth. You rapidly encounter the law of diminishing returns.”

Famed metal detector engineer Dave Johnson reiterates this in a different way at 

https://web.archive.org/web/20230719232930/http://fisherlab.com/hobby/davejohnson/davejohnsonjohngardinerinterview.htm

“Getting extra depth out of a VLF, multifrequency, or PI machine is very difficult, because these machines follow an inverse 6th power law relationship between signal voltage and depth. If everything else is maintained equal, doubling the depth requires 64 times as much signal. If this is done by increasing transmitter power, doubling depth requires 4,096 times as much battery drain. That’s the basic reason why depth increases come so slowly in this industry.”

That is where I think we are now and why the GPZ 8000 has been slow in coming. Much to Minelabs credit they don’t release a machine unless the engineers can point to data showing some real performance improvement differences - you know, those 30% things. But there is actual real world data in hand to back up those claims when they make them. I think in this case the most they might eke out will be a marginal gain they can point to in detection depth on multi ounce nuggets. That’s enough to sell lots of detectors but in the end I think it will be greatly debated whether this new machine is any better in big gold at depth than a modded GP/GPX or 7000 with a big X-Coil. And for anyone but those few still finding the big ones deep on a regular basis nothing that will change anything. Most U.S. patches in particular simply don't have those monster nuggets at depth that people dream of. The 7000 and 6000 have already bled them close to dry. We have hit the wall not only in electronic terms but even more importantly in geological terms.

Peter Charlesworth picked a very good time to retire. Go out at the top of your game. I have a ton of respect for Peter and his retirement is a message of sorts for those who follow the business of business.

Long story short, next generation my prediction is a small gain at best, so small it won’t make any real difference over returns being seen with machines that we already have at our disposal. I actually hope I am wrong, and I hope I am eating crow and apologizing to you, and acknowledging you were right and I was wrong. Nothing would make me happier! 

On 2/21/2024 at 7:35 AM, Lynk said:

In the call an analyst asked about new products.  Management said they are "heavily" focused on the next generation of "probably" the gold products.   They said they need a refresh in gold and that we will "probably" see those in FY2025 (July 2024 to June 2025). 

We've seen this play before. New product announcement near end of this year, going into winter here but heading into spring elsewhere. In time for dealers to take orders going into the holiday season, but no machines probably shipping until early 2025.

The V3i coils had to be made to a higher tolerance, so all V rated coils will work on the DFX M6 MXT VX3 V3i etc. but older coils for those machines that are not V rated may not work on the VX3 and V3i at high gain levels. From the VX3 User Manual:

The VX3  uses induction-balanced loops which rely on a “null” between the transmit coil and the receive coil. The quality of the null may determine the point at which the detector overloads, especially when running high Rx Gain settings. Null quality varies loop-to-loop, so some loops may overload at lower gain than others. In other words the quality of the loop null can also push the input amplifier toward overload. White’s V-compatible loops are designed to minimize null limitations, but third-party loops typically have wide variances in the quality of the null which can require a lower Rx Gain.

Again, V rated coils are just made to better tolerances, it's the older coils or aftermarket coils that may experience overload at high gain if used on the VX3 or V3i. Even then they will probably work - you'll just have to back the sensitivity down. Models other than the VX3 and V3/V3i it does not matter.

Never met but I have read a lot of his posts, obviously knows his stuff, and willing to share. I hope for a quick and full recovery.

Probably an evaporated milk can, they used a different sealing method than most other cans so have a distinctive look. Very common around old mining camps.

Can Middens