bklein

I’m anxious to hear more about the Excal mods! What is an S-amp? Are you boosting the TX or RX? Is there more detail on another site or best to stay here?

Looked at Western and Eastern Treasures magazine July issue and there are dealer ads still saying Tesoro. Lazy to mod their ad or what?

Reason #6: Out of warranty repair cost. Minelab repair centers do not get schematics because of risk of IP theft from China that cost millions to deal with. Thus, replacement boards cost a *** fortune. That would be fine if we were asking to buy a board. But if we are asking to replace one, no, that’s a ripoff as they know our board is the real deal and their price is 50 times what it cost to make.

Finds bag

Mia, and she is getting bigger or maybe ...longer. Kinda skinny, 6 mo old now. Very loving personality.

I’m thinking I’d like a short interconnect cable from detector to the stock battery. OBN’s battery has a nice short one. Where do I go to for parts make one?

Mine only double beeps on tent stakes at ATS set at 9.5 or higher. It will double beep on a nail at any ATS setting. I can mute the tent stakes though. Yours the same?

I fixed the issue with the Delay rotary switch by tightening the front panel nut under the knob. That may mean a bad solder connection on the board. The shaft flexes either way so that's what I'm thinking. The "Fixed" video also shows me attempting to null out the bad EMI in my backyard, and how the control head flexes on the handle.

I normally was hunting All Metal with your settings. Just tried Tone Mode in my high EMI backyard. It really cuts out pennies, dimes, and quarters if I back off on Sensitivity - but thankfully leaves good sensitivity to rings (and nickels). I guess this is what all the hoopla was about. Too bad it still gets the tent stakes.

I don’t see all that big of difference. To me it’s either it works or it doesn’t. Sometimes it does, then gets screwy, and I have to tweak just about anything to get normal operation back. Curious to see what advice you come up with as I haven’t sat down with it to discover its secrets. I could take a look with a spectrum analyzer or scope to review settings but I don’t think it will help me with using it. I have been trying it out at the variety of beaches I have. I discovered one beach that had targets on the rock bed that other detectors likely would not sense as deep. But due to wave action there was no way to get targets out of the rocks. I screwed myself up trying to pull out big scoops of sand. The AQ might still be a good detector for this beach as it is more immune to its particularly bad EMI, but the discrimination features and ring behaviors of others can’t be ignored. I would expect to see issues with the short delay settings but I don’t. I’m not going into the water much with it though as the majority of people only go in ankle deep. I am concerned with the physical sensitivity of rotary switches, knobs, and even the housing when in some settings. Like something is loose. I haven’t seen the downside in setting the sensitivity to 10. Sometimes sweep end falling gets annoying and I varying settings to reduce it. I haven’t come up with a standard practice for this though - maybe you will?

Fuel costs in Arizona are usually way cheaper than surrounding states. Plus you could drive to AZ in a high mpg rental then rent a trailer they will place at your location for you. But forget going to last minute motels. They are getting crazy expensive last minute.

Any idea how or if this control head can be opened without serious damage ( for repair purposes)? Say your unit is out of warranty (like mine) will it be repairable >3 years from now? I can see mine doing exactly what yours did, so no sense trying it in our So. CA waves, thanks for the photos.

Mine started acting up today. I was trying to determine if one of the rotary switches was intermittent. Seemed so but in doing so I discovered the flex. It’s pretty weird. Rotate the delay for EMI, found only one or two that didn’t have a solid tone. Chose one of those and it was back to normal. In other positions the switches seem flakey (push down on the knob) and even moving the head would change the behavior. Wish I could take it apart and see what’s going on.

Is it normal for the control head to have flexibility on the grip? On mine the grip is fixated to the main shaft but the head flexes in position like it’s held by rubber.

Exactly! Must be a female with bipolar tendencies.