Tony

I (like Simon) was under the impression that the smaller the mono, the more prone they were to mineralised ground ?

The 15" coil is all I use on the beach, but I use a DIY counterweight on the end of the upper shaft. I like to hunt 6 hours or more and the stock setup is too nose heavy with the 15" coil. I don't have the best shoulders, so for me, a balanced setup is a must. Any of the Manticore coils aren't cheap but I guess Minelab price them relative to the cost of the detector......annoying to say the least as the Manticore coils probably cost just a bit more to produce than "cheaper" coils for the Equinox, X-terra Pro, etc. Minelab know that we will pay the price of admission.....and we do (begrudgingly).

That last photo was when Simon used to detect without a pin-pointer 😛

Sweet as bro' Make sure you bring your: 1. Jandals 2. Chilly bin 3. Scaffolding ticket .....only Simon and a few others will get my "humour" 🤪 You will have a great time. Hopefully Milford Sound isn't snowed in like it did for me many years ago 😞

You only have to look at what Eric built (Aquastar), Jim Pugh built (Barracuda), White's built (Surfmaster PI).....and even Garrett with their old Sea Hunter XL500......some common factors with these machines. Thick and clear walled Polycarbonate cases (Ikelite back in the day) Proven "Marine Grade" Potentiometers with stainless steel shafts Two or three external controls only Serviceable case and pot O-rings Pulse Delays from about 10uS to 30uS Internal Battery Robust and beefy cables It's not really that hard. *** Sigh *** If I had had the money during those golden years (circa 2000).....I would have bought two or three of each ! This is the starting point......I introduced Blue Robotics to Eric and was subsequently Eric's first choice for the Aquastar 2.

Best to you Bill......sounds like you have a lot on your plate. "One day at a time, one bite at a time" and you'll be fine.......get that AQ purring on the beach and it will find the gold. Treat it gently.....avoid submersion if you can. Protect all battery, coil and headphone cables from mechanical duress. Get some appropriate electrical contact cleaner / protector and use it under the Potentiometers as best you can......if you can remove the knobs then so much the better (are they secured by a set screw or just friction.....possibly can't be removed) ?? Happy hunting, Tony Kudos to Fisher for including a free nail 🤪

Roger, Everything you need to know is here.....better start reading. Warts and all.

I think pride (Fisher/Alexandre) got in the way of letting this happen......Eric would have gladly helped out (his words). The desire at all costs of running ridiculously low pulse delays in a marine environment was detrimental to the overall function of the detector.......achieving proper damping / residual ringing at those settings means something is loss somewhere else (part of the reason the AQ had a short pulse width). Everything else in the electrical chain becomes ever more critical and no room for design flaws.....let alone mechanical ones. They should have totally abandoned the Tone and Volcanic Sand settings......they had enough on their plate already to perfect.......hence my vision some years ago of an AQ "Lite" version. In your hands Joe......you can make the AQ produce gold but for other mere mortals then they'd better know what they're dealing with 😬

$787 Aussie dollars landed to my front door.....free shipping and no import taxes either (Under the $2000 threshold into Australia). Exactly $1000 less than buying locally 😲 Just highlights how much local markup there is down here.

The AQ would punch even deeper if it had a longer pulse width........with a longer pulse width comes more battery drain and we all know that the measly battery capacity on the AQ meant Fisher were going to skimp on this feature. Eric built the Aquastar (and maybe the Deepstar) with an adjustable pulse width control.....this was a great feature if you wanted to go looking for the bigger and deeper gold. It cut the run time in half but was still good for about 5 hours. There is a possibility that the AQ's pulse delay control is "drifting".....what shows on the dial may not accurately represent what's going on "under the hood". I mentioned earlier that Eric picked up "code errors" that I think may have been part of the pulse delay problem. Does switching off the detector reset the pulse delay to where it shows it should be? I'm trying to find the email where Eric talks about this. Fisher need to offer a "recalibration" service that sorts this problem out......maybe they did on later models?

Simon....of all the people here on DP, I expected you to support my conspiracy theories and wild speculations🤪

I wasn't going to mention this publicly but can't see the harm.....I enquired about the shipping costs to Australia and Fisher offered me free shipping on their current eBay listings. 🙂

Makes sense......I just want to see the "Gold/Silver" ratio favour silver a lot more.

Some good information here.

Oh well, we can dream............of three new products from Fisher 🙂 A GB3 has got a nice sound to it.

Okay, I'm keen to work out what Fisher might be up to ? Their website has a section for "New Products" with three spaces set aside. I'm probably reading too much into this but what the heck......Fisher may redeem themselves 😍 I was set to go beach detecting but several Tiger Sharks were reported off my local beach.........and not the ones from Tesoro.

I'm fairly sure that the performance is the same. The main change was from the old style fine/coarse pot to a single GB pot. Obviously the LCD display is new and the threshold control is now on the front panel. I think the changes were mainly received well. Edit....the GB is a dual control knob.

Should I dump my 1000 oz of silver bullion that I got many years ago at $15 / oz ? What to do, what to do........if I sell then sure as heck silver will go to $50 / oz 🤑

Yes to this ⬆️ To sleep at night, I could only ever use the AQ as a wet sand / low tide detector and be super vigilant cleaning it really well afterwards. Damn you Fisher for giving us a half baked potato 😡

Police negotiator to Steve Herschbach.........."Sir, step away from the credit card"

I see now, missed that part. They sure made it confusing. Probably best to ignore the dial readings and just set it to suit the conditions.

I'm sure Fisher would adjust the shipping cost to what it actually costs rather than those crazy eBay generated ones. I recently shipped a heavy detector package to the USA for about $120 Aussie dollars. Simon.........Are you tempted 😈

$999........that's probably a fair price all things considered. Respect to you Joe......if you buy a third AQ then there will be no stopping you 🤪

The stated resolution on the Delay potentiometer is not that accurate (this is from Eric himself)....the minimum and maximum values are reasonably accurate but the settings in between are just a guide. I think your post illustrates this very well (especially as you say you notice quite a difference from 11 to 11.5). And yes, in moving salt water, 20uS is the goldilocks setting......I've been saying this for many years. 20uS tames the salt noise but can also allow a longer pulse width which is needed to energise both higher karat gold rings and bigger ones as well.

Absolutely he will be. Something that will never be realised is that Eric was working on a new Aquastar PI detector. He had a basic schematic somewhere and it was going to be as tough as his original Aquastar but in a much smaller case. 15 volts, 10uS - 30uS delay.....drawing about 750mA. Rated to 100m in a custom polycarbonate case. It would have been totally awesome. I think the case was going to be cylindrical.......and most likely from Blue Robotics. All controls and switch gear marine standard and rated as per the case. https://bluerobotics.com/product-category/watertight-enclosures/locking-series/