bklein

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?

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.

I vaguely recall the original AQ videos that seemed to show iron reject and detect a gold ring right on top of iron. I don’t have any black sand but should I be able to get a discriminating tone from a nail or tent stake? I only get tone differentiation in the Reject 9-10 range - and it’s pretty useless. What is the real world scenario where this works. How do I test this? Oh yeah, just for kicks I tried to see if it could detect a 5g nugget….nope.

What do you guys think about the coil connection? I have coax-seal over mine but wonder if it gets condensation and I won’t know about it until too late.

It is my understanding that APTX still has noticeable latency and you want to get APTX LL. I got burned on this once following a referral on one of the forums. you could try earbuds instead of phones. There is one that uses earplugs and inserts the speaker element within it. Have to watch out for earbuds with noisy cables. Noise either due to the dialectic nature of the plastic used or just that noise is conducted well with them. I’d go with a wireless setup using a transmitter from Amazon and earbuds that for sure are Aptx II. Have this on my GP Extreme and a CTX3030.

Needs an o-ring outside the nut that the knob can press against.

What’s with OfferUp? I see EQ800’s for four hundred bucks and now this. How can it stay on the site if bogus?

If a headset spec only says aptx it may have too much latency for our use. Look for aptx ll. This one does not mention ll (=low latency).

Could you send me some part numbers so I can research them?

How do you know what brand of pot? Did you manage to open it up somehow?

Are the X-Coil coils the only coils that work if an adapter is used? Can GPX coils work somehow with the adapter? Mick, what was replaced to make your detector work?

I asked Alexandre and he thinks the stock pack is 12 cells. I got 3hrs out of the stock pack today with no bulging after charge or use today. I’m holding off on cutting it open for now and will continue using it and charging with my RC charger.

Can we have some discussion on user experience when hunting salt beaches with areas of high black sand concentrations? I’m a newbie with the AQ - only about 11 hours total time. I have experience with other PI’s - I have a surf pi, surf pi pro, a DF, and two GP Extremes. I like hunting wet sand and dry and find the AQ the best of all of these. Definitely is the deepest or at least tied with the GP Extremes. Nice smooth threshold. But there is a bit of unpredictability with the AQ. The very first time I turned it on it was wacky - an oscillation that seemed unaffected by rotation of the sensitivity and other controls. I was thinking “oh boy this is a bummer” and then it just popped into gear and worked thereafter. I’ve had it go into this wacko mode just for a second or two since. I’ve also had it go “dark” it lost ability to see a dime I tossed on the ground. It seems in the black sand areas it would make target tones with each sweep. Playing with the delay and ATS would reduce this but I wonder if depth suffers. I think the manual is a little weak addressing how best to optimize the controls. Also I am wondering if the detector circuitry might be retuning itself in a major way depending on how much activity it is seeing and also perhaps the voltage level of the battery. I don’t mind all this that much - I can live with it. I just wonder if it is typical.

I’ve never had a gold monster but here is what I would do: get a can of De-Oxit and spray both coil connections. Blow them with compressed air. If the detector has a pinpoint mode and will output audio you may be able to move the cable at the connection and coil to check for opens. if no luck, let me know what Minelab says. Is this another detector not repairable by design?

I’ve never tried this but shouldn’t your friend be able to use the xchange2 program to make a copy of his setup and email it to you and you install it on your machine with your copy of xchange2?

Is he running all metal or in discriminate mode? You say “time” target, I don’t know what that is. Translation problem.

I used the correct charger. I had two chargers, one for the AQ battery and one for the OBN battery and they were well marked and I charged both batteries simultaneously. Tenergy charger for the OBN and the AQ charger looks just like yours. Oh well, I’ll try using it this weekend and see how long it goes.

After doing a few charge/discharge cycles the case bulge went away! I haven't gotten to the inside of the case yet. I did drill out the front panel screws using a piece of brass tubing in a drill. I would think this drilling would have provided any inside pressure an escape. I don't get what could occur to cause the bulge and then eliminate it. From these charge/discharge cycles it looks like the factory pack is holding 2000-2100mA. I would think that would last more than an hour - maybe 3 hours if the detector uses 700mA(?). I've read several different specs on this. Do you have any data on below: 1) nominal current requirements 2) minimum-maximum design voltage range 3) stock battery specs Pjrough, you made a statement that the AQ's lower voltage is 10V. Joe, you published a factory battery charge/discharge chart that gave ~14.3V fully discharged, ~17.5V fully charged. Usual discharge spec on NiMH is 1.1 or 1.2V per cell. If 11 cells that's 12.1-13.2V per pack. I was using 1.1V per cell cutout and at that voltage the charger stopped and read the pack voltage at 12.87V. So I am left wondering if maybe the factory charger is not as good as my RC charger and there may be more life to this pack than I was led to believe.

I hear/feel nothing but may be because of the puffing cells.

If I remove the faceplate will the batteries pull out from the case? They aren’t glued in are they?

I scraped off the glue and tried to remove the screws from one end cap - the heads just broke off on all 3. Here is what I see as the pin connections. Do the two NC's actually do anything? I'm thinking next I'll cut a section out of the bottom so I can see the guts of the thing. Or do you guys have photos of how it is put together? Already a bit of blue corrosion at the base of the A pin on the headphone receptacle.