Cal_Cobra

Beautiful country! Looks like you had a great family outing, it's great that you got your daughter into the hobby and good on you for letting her keep the spoils. The gold ring's a beauty!

Great finds, that kind of stuff just doesn't exist on the west coast. I've always found it fascinating that the west coast Indians never learned to make refined metals, nor advanced dwelling building, they essentially were stuck in the stone ages up until the last turn of the century when the Europeans poured into the west coast. Yet further south, pyramids that rival the great pyramids of Egypt were built, metal refined, and amazing artistic objects and advanced building techniques were utilized.

Announced it at Detectival. I'll likely be getting one of their new pinpointers too. I like the wireless aspect working w/the MMK, although I really wish one of these companies would get the wireless working like the Sunray inline probes, that would be awesome.

I finally received mine too thanks to a heads up of from a fellow forumite. Planning a little trip in a couple of weekends to try some tough but productive spots, cannot wait to see how the Equinox and my Multi Kruzer does at these sites

Nice going Andy!!

Hey Carl, Sorry about that, I was under the impression you were the lead designer? I take it your a hardware designer, not a programmer, is that correct? It would be great to see a modernized version of the V3i, but I suspect White's wont be doing that any time soon, then again one never knows.

There's one problem with this train of thought, the guy that designed the V3i no longer works there. The V3i code is complex and massive in size compared to all of their other detectors. IMO the big question is, do they currently have the engineering talent/resources to even do such a project? Steve will likely know, as I don't really find White's to be interesting enough to follow that deeply, but after their latest product refresh cycle, it looks like they've abandoned SMF machines in favor of the AT market. I understand your thinking about Nokta/Makro, and agree to an extent. I think now that their combined, we'll see this oddball trend where a new product would come out under the Nokta name, and then the following year an updated version would come out under the Makro name disappear. From purely an engineering perspective, it kind of made sense I suppose, but the Nokta machine were more akin to a 1.0 beta mule platform, with the Makro machines being the 2.0 refined, general deployment platform. Interesting times ahead, and IMO we already have some great machines to use now from a variety of vendors while we watch how things shake out in the detector world.

Beautiful selection of coils, I think MARS also announced they'll be making MMK coils as well. Doesn't get any better then that!

Awesome, NEL makes some great coils!! I have a few, love the NEL Snake coil on my Racer 2 better then the OOR coil, should be a great coil for the MMK.

They said their first SMF will be waterproof, as it'll use the same waterproof housing as their Simplex machine (beginner machine). I'm not sure what the logic is on using the same housing, could simply be a matter of economics. Their current waterproof detectors are good to 5M/15ft They also stated their working on PI detectors too. Aside from Minelab, I feel like out of the current manufacturers, if anyone can come up with something innovative and push the envelop, it will be Nokta/Makro.

Understood. I'm impressed that a company like Nokta/Makro can spin off new coils at neck breaking speeds, but then again, their certainly not selling the volume of machines that Minelab is with the Equinox.

Good post Steve, I pretty much agree with everything your saying. I think Nokta/Makro dropped the ball by creating a Gold Kruzer, and not simply incorporating the higher frequency into the Multi Kruzer, but you know it's a damed if you do, damed if you don't scenario. Although the forte of the Equinox is it's SMF Multi-IQ technology, the Equinox 800 has the capability to run as a single frequency detector up to 40 kHz, that's impressive, and offers a lot of options for those needing them. You may not always use them, but their nice to have in those cornerstone cases when SMF may not be the best option. Steve I feel the same as you, I really don't need another detector, with the Multi Kruzer and all the coils I have for it, and the EQ800, they'll cover anything that I would ever detect, from casual prospecting, salt water beach hunting, deep silver coin hunting and hard core relic hunting. I still have a Racer 2 with a ton of coils, as well as a F75 LTD2 (admittedly collecting dust), and a Euro Tek Pro for the wifey. Still, as a tech nerd working in Silicon Valley, I enjoy seeing companies innovate, and new technology that could potentially be a game changer putting more keepers into my finds pouch is what I'm hoping will come (both the Makro Racers/Impact/MK and EQ800 have done that).

Actually I think you hit the nail on the head, profit over passion. Why make something new and innovative when you can sell truckloads of bounty hunters to the mass consumer market.

Nok/Mak released the Impact in 2017, then the waterproof Multi Kruzer earlier this year, and now the Anfibio which basically equates to a waterproof Impact with some improvements. So that's only two years, and they said going forward, after the Anfibio they will no longer be releasing selectable frequency machines, they will be SMF detectors. Can't really compare ten years of F75 churn to two years of Nok/Mak IMO. We'll see what happens with FTP, I certainly haven't counted them out yet....White's and Garrett...now that's a different story.

Sure, I doubt they sit around twiddling their thumbs all day, but on the other side of the coin, it's been a long, long time since anything innovative has come out of FTP. Their selling boatloads of bounty hunters (Costco, Walmart, sporting good stores, etc), and they've repacked the F75 a hundred different ways to Sunday, and even the T2 to an extent. They built a new "state of the art" factory. Heck I even saw a video of someone that did a tour of the new factory, and stated that they "were working on great new things that would be out soon" but even that was last year. We've been hearing for ten+ years their next BIG thing was coming, so as much as we all know their capable of great things, here we sit speculating what these great things may or may not be while some of the competitors are actually walking the walk. Yes the Manta is interesting, but let's be honest, it's an acquisition, so they really had almost nothing to do with it. Sure they tidied up the design, and mechanical aspects, but it's not their invention. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see them come out with something that blows the Equinox away, but thus far, there's zero evidence to indicate that will ever happen.