Jeff McClendon
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Posts posted by Jeff McClendon
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Hi,
The Fisher latest version of the Gold Bug Pro and the F19 are the only semi-modern detectors in their line-up. They are very good detectors, are not very prone to EMI depending on the coil (the 11" DD can get noisy) and are only lacking two important features in my opinion: built in wireless headphone operation and full waterproofing. Also, they are being sold new for less than $500 by many US dealers not the ridiculous price in the catalog.
Jeff
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Hi Phrunt,
I've said this before on this forum: in my opinion the Xterra 705 was not a good general multi-purpose detector. It was not a good coin machine at least for US coins in highly mineralized soil using any of the pre-set discrimination modes. I always felt there was too much filtering of the signal before I experienced it and a lot of valuable information was not transmitted to me. The target ID numbers were usually all over the place on good targets past 4". It was OK as a dry sand beach unit but sometimes struggled in wet sand. It was a fantastic prospecting detector in prospecting mode with the 10 X 5 18.75kHz coil. That is why I sold mine. I already had a perfectly good specialized gold detector at the time which was just as good at prospecting. Had the 705 been good to great in all of it's detecting modes I would probably still own it and the Equinox might not have been produced.
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There is already a small amount of delay even with low latency wireless headphone systems. Wireless headphones can also suffer from interference and dropouts. It seems to me that wireless coils would be even more susceptible to EMI and more inherent delay and they would not perform submerged unless there is some new technology available that I am not aware of. That technology would come a quite a price too.
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Hi Chuck and all,
I couldn't agree more with your assessments. The Deus, Deus Lite, Equinox 800 and Equinox 600 are amazing mid-level detectors, period. There is no way I would pay the same or more money for a single frequency mid-level detector that is for general use, waterproof or not. Whites, Garrett, FTP and Nokta/Makro are really stretching reality when they price their detectors over the price of an Equinox 600. I have many hours on the MX7, Multi-Kruzer, F19/G2+ and AT Gold so I feel confident about this. None of those detectors should be priced over $500. I noticed that the F19 and G2+ prices have dropped below $500 on some sites. There really is no comparison between them and the Deus/Equinox. They are in another realm!
Jeff McClendon
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On the advice of lots of people on this forum I bought both the Equinox models. Love the 800!!!!! I like the 600 so much I just can't part with it and my grown up kids love to use it when we hunt together. (I guess I just keep spoiling them). Other than the squirrely pinpointing I have absolutely no complaints. They have both helped me find plenty of coins and jewelry and some gold nuggets too.
A GPX4800 came up for sale in my area for about the same price as the new TDI SL I bought last year. It came with three coils and everything else and I am so glad I bought it! Maybe it's just me but it feels quite a bit lighter than the GP3000 that I had for several years until I thought I was just too heavy. The 4800 goes a lot deeper much more easily than the 3000 and it blows away the TDI too. So goodbye TDI.
I know I'm crazy but I bought a Quest Q40 just to see if it was any good since the slightly used price was REALLY good. It is an amazingly fine detector for the money I paid for it and I can only hope that FTP and other US manufacturers can come out with something similar that has a much more modern design, with internal Li Ion rechargeable batteries, and bluetooth or 2.4 gHz wireless, and, and, and, and, and, that anyone no matter how old or what size or how strong, can use!
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Hi,
Limonite is a mineral that forms when an iron rich mineral like magnetite, hematite, marcasite, pyrite and even some iron rich garnets begin to decompose through exposure to water and air. There are several more iron rich minerals that can decompose that are more obscure. Generally there is still some of the original iron mineral left towards the inner parts of the specimen. The only one of the five above that is strongly magnetic and will easily set off your detector and pinpointer is magnetite. So, if that is an actual mineral specimen it is probably limonite and magnetite. It would be pretty odd to find a magnetite specimen in your area since magnetite is usually associated with higher temperature igneous/metamorphic rock and mineral formation and not low temperature sedimentation. Also, it does not have the same outer appearance as the meteorites I am familiar with. They are usually much more compact and hard in appearance without so many uneven and eroded surfaces as the specimen you found. That makes oldmancoyote1's guess a very good one. Limonite looks a lot like rust on man-made iron and the two have similar characteristics in other ways too.
Jeff
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Hi Drake,
hopefully others will be able to give you some advice on deep coins soon. I can only tell you what I have experienced. I live in eastern Colorado. Our soil is full of naturally occurring iron, volcanics, and lots of other trace minerals from decomposing granite. So, detecting anything coin sized at a depth of 13Cm/5" is really tough for most VLF detectors. The Equinox 600/800 are one of the detectors that work pretty well here. I can at least get some kind of signal and target ID from deep coins but like I said there is so much trace iron that it is hard to tell if I'm detecting deep iron or a coin. You will have to experiment on those one way beeps and see what you find. Assuming you are in Park 1, American 25 cent coins usually have target IDs between 27 and 32 if they are not too deep. The deeper they are the more likely they will only beep in one direction and I will get nothing or a drop in the threshold in the other swing direction. I can also get slightly higher numbers (or lower sometimes) in one direction and really low numbers in the other sweep direction. I hit the horseshoe button and check for iron. I am almost guaranteed to get some iron low tones because of our soil. I also move 90 degrees from my original sweep and sweep the target again after I turn up my sensitivity some to see if I can get a two way beep. You can use a really small sweep for this. If I keep getting 27 to 32 in one direction I will probably investigate especially if I am fairly certain it is a coin sized object because of its size when pinpointing. Hopefully you are allowed to use a shovel where you are. Here in Denver I can only use a screwdriver which makes deep coin popping fairly time consuming. So I usually save those targets for later and dig the shallow stuff first so I can hear the deeper targets more clearly when I come back to that site on a future date. Most of my friends here that have found really old coins have always had to make the decision to dig or not based on one way beep targets that sounded really iffy.
good luck,
Jeff
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Hi,
I don't own a 24K. They look great and seem to work very well. I do own a Gold Monster 1000 and like phrunt I have never had to pump and sweep my GM1000 more than 5 to 10 times to give the automatic ground tracking a chance to sample the ground. I really like how it is lightweight, versatile and easy to set up. I hate the way it falls over all of the time!!!!!!
Jeff
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Hi Drake,
You said you have the 600 right? For practice and to gain more confidence try Park 1 when hunting coins/jewelry with sensitivity around 10 to 15 and use the default 5 tone mode for a while. You can only change the frequency of the lowest tone and you can't change where the other tones occur on the scale. Those 5 tones are pretty good though.
Big targets like cans and pipes will have a big detection area when pinpointing which will be way larger than coin size. Most coins will give a short abrupt response when detecting and especially pinpointing. If you get a really loud signal that indicates near the surface and you dig that far and find nothing, recheck and make sure it isn't a really big target. When coins are on or very near the surface they can sound more spread out and can be hard to pinpoint with the 600 and 800. A good handheld pinpointer will solve that issue. Coins may only read in one direction at depth +13CM, and have sketchy target ID numbers. Bottle (crown) caps will often give double or triple hits with jumpy numbers and will be slightly longer signal in duration than coins depending on their orientation in the ground. Screw caps really suck and can sound great unfortunately.
The 600 will detect .5 gram ( at 5CM where I live) and larger gold nuggets quite well in Park 2 and Field 2 especially when using the semi all metal mode with the horseshoe button activated for even a bit more depth on low conductors. Keep the threshold barely audible in Park 2 and Field 2 for prospecting. You can try 2 tones also for prospecting and look for target ID numbers between -2 and 20. You can set your low tone 1 to end at -3 and dig anything above that up to 20 or so. You want to make sure that minus 2 is not disced out in the Park 2 and Field 2 presets.
good luck
Jeff
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Hi Dubious
I've read the article you referred to also and as others have said here MD-Hunter is not my first choice for factual information. To me they seem to sensationalize a lot of their stories or maybe something gets jumbled in translation. I have to admit that I do enjoy reading some of their stuff! Here is a quote from Dave J. who I think is Dave Johnson of First Texas referring to the founder of the original Quest Pro Maoquan Deng in February 2018:
The story of Mr. Deng is an unusual one. I'll tell it as best I can here, and if someone thinks I got it wrong (including Mr. Deng himself) they're welcome to post their disagreement.
Mr. Deng is a metal detector enthusiast, and resident of California. He wanted to get into the metal detector business. He had business contacts in China who furnished him with T2 clones disguised as something else. But with a trademark sounding kind of like "Teknetics" and virtually identical behaviors, the intent was for customers to know they were getting a T2 clone since the T2 has a good reputation.
Now in the USA, all that would be regarded as unethical. An honest businessperson wouldn't do it, and I don't recall anything like that ever happening in the past. However China has no history of the concept of "intellectual property", only of fraudulent representation which is fraud no matter how you cut it. So in Chinese culture, what Mr. Deng did would not be considered unethical at all. They were good honest clones, Mr. Deng packaged them in a design of his own making, no fraudulent misrepresentation that I'm aware of. The dispute was over IP. Mr. Deng made a business decision that seemed legit to him, and learned a hard lesson about differences in business cultures.
I don't regard Mr. Deng as a "bad guy" -- as far as I can tell, he's a decent chap who made a miscalculation out of ignorance. I haven't paid much attention to his products or company, but if his company survives he'll probably turn out ot be a respected competitor.
And at this point, with his own designs, his opinion of knockoff artists is probably about the same as ours.
--Dave J.
It's my understanding that the original Quest Pro and the new series of Quest metal detectors were physically designed by Maoquan Deng and bear no hardware resemblance to a Teknetics T2. The original Quest Pro definitely had patented intellectual property software code that resembled the T2 and the FTP lawsuit stemmed from that issue. The newer Quest detectors do not have any pirated software or components as far as I know. I have seen many listings on the big internet auction site for clones of the T2 and the G2+. There was one or more on almost every page for awhile! I think First Texas had a successful lawsuit stopping that cloning for the moment earlier this summer. The number of Garrett clones currently is really ridiculous!!! The MD-Hunter article did not do a good job of separating the nature of these two totally different lawsuits by First Texas.
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Hi,
I'm not trying to start any trouble here. A Quest Q40 pretty much fell in my lap for 1/4 of the retail price. I have had the former Deteknix pinpointer and the small ear cup wireless headphones with the plug in wireless module for several years. Both of those products have been trouble free and excellent in quality after loads of use. So, when this Q40 deal came about I thought: what the heck, FTP and Quest seem to have come to an agreement, Quest is partially an American company and I like their other products. Well, the Q40 is a very nice detector indeed. It feels and operates very well. It has plenty of adjustments and is customizable for discrimination and for tones. It really locks on to coins well so far. Most of all for me, it has a very comfortable hand grip, feels much lighter and better balanced than my Equinoxes, has wireless audio, Li-Po USB charging for the detector and has a very adjustable shaft system. It does not remind me of any particular company's detector but it does have many separate modern features that all of the other manufacturers have. Its like a combination of every company except maybe Tesoro. I would not feel hesitant about taking it anywhere to detect for coins, jewelry and relics. Until FTP and Nokta/Makro come out with their new models sometime soon (I hope,) the Quest 40 is a very viable option for someone looking to use a modern designed, single frequency 13kHZ VLF, with lots of features (the pinpointing is outstanding unlike my Nox) that the big boys have for a lower price and it can hunt. I can only imagine what the newly designed Quest Pro is like...
Jeff
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Hi,
phrunt said it well, I had a discrimination program set up that I could switch over to for target ID and hot rock identification when needed.
I could sometimes ground balance on the hot rocks too and that would take care of most of the problem.
Jeff
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Hi,
great topic since I really depend on the tones more than the display.
I set up a user profile on my 800 for semi-trashy park hunting that would probably work at beaches too. I have the first notch at 10 with iron disced out up to 4 and 5 through 10 have the lowest tone 1. All of the 10K gold I have found so far has come in between 5 and 10. Second notch is at 13 for tone 2. Most of the 14K gold so far has come in between 11 and 14. Third notch is at 18 for tone 3 and most of the 18K gold so far has come in that range 14 to 18. Fourth notch is set at 23 for tone 4 and most of the 24K gold I've found has come in between 18 and 23. Tone 5 takes care of the copper penny, dime, quarter and silver range. I tried to set the tones so they sound very harmonious like a major chord with octaves since I am a musician and I can't stand listening to dissonant tones (like some of the factory presets on the Nox 600 in 5 tones) for very long.
Jeff
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Hi Gibson,
great work on finding those two awesome nuggets! They look beautiful!!!! I'm retired so I would be all over spending my day prospecting where you are. Here in Colorado I would be lucky to find half of a gram of fine gold in 2 hours of panning or sluicing. Most of the time I happily settle for less. Keep listening for those faint signals too. The 705 can punch pretty deep. Good hunting.
Jeff
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Chuck,
the TreasurePro is powered by two AA batteries and runs at 8kHz. That is not really the problem. I have a Teknetics Minuteman that punches way deeper than the Treasure Pro and has the same power source and 8kHz frequency. I think the main problem with the Treasure Pro is more to do with it coming from the Coinmaster/Prizm line of detectors and retaining some of the older circuitry. Just my guess.
Jeff
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Hi Chuck,
I can really relate to your situation. I tried an MX7 and a TreasurePro for a while because like you the display was really appealing. The MX7 felt really heavy to me on longer hunts and I got a lot of wrist and neck pain. I was not particularly impressed with its recovery speed or trash/target separation even though it was an outstanding coin and jewelry machine. The TreasurePro was much lighter but just didn't have the higher kHz/ power to punch through the mineralization here in Colorado very well and I could only count on 2 to 3 inches of reliable depth! I still have my M6 which I use at least once a week and have no weight issues since it is much better balanced and has plenty of power and 15kHz. If it only had a big easy to read display.........
I also hope that Whites can fit their great MXSport/MX7 display and most of the features in a much lighter detector someday for us old folks!
Jeff
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Hi Gibson,
you asked about settings and I am going to assume that you are fairly new at this, so here are the settings that worked for me in Arizona. -Turn on the 705 and press the pick/coin mode button so that you see the pick up at the top of the display. -Press the menu button and go through the auto noise cancelling process. -Also go through the auto ground balancing process. (Don't use tracking unless you absolutely have to since you can track out a good target by swinging the coil over it repeatedly.) -Set your gain somewhere between 18 and 22 as long as the audio is stable. -Set your threshold for a low background fairly steady hum. Basically you are ready to go once you hit the pinpoint/detect button and you see the number 5 along with the pick symbol on the display and you hear the threshold hum.
Prospecting mode is audio only. The big number 5 is the default iron mask setting. Leave it alone and listen for faint or loud repeatable tones. Once you detect a good sounding target you can dig it or you can toggle to preset coin mode 4 and check the target's numerical ID. (The other preset coin modes have several low conductor numbers disked out including small gold.) You can also make your own custom preset coin mode for quick low conductor target ID by just having -8 -6 -4 and 48 disked out) For gold and a whole bunch of other low conductors you should definitely dig if you see a number between -2 and 22. Ground balance again after really big targets or if the prospecting mode threshold gets chattery suddenly. Again, avoid using the coin mode except for TID numbers quick check, since many low conductors are automatically discriminated out in those modes and depth is really lessened.
You can get a great signal on 1 gram or heavier gold/lead targets at around 4"to 6" and possibly more if your ground is not too heavily mineralized.You should also see low numbers in the coin mode you setup for ID numbers that can jump around a bit sometimes. Smaller gold and small low conductors will give softer repeatable audio responses but may not give a target ID number in your chosen coin mode
Minelab has a very good gold tutorial on their website and on youtube by Kevin Hoagland that goes through this basic process for the X-Terra 70 and applies to the 705 too.
Hope this helps,
good luck,
jeff
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Hi Andy
a couple of weeks ago you asked about the Nox and the Kruzer. Daniel TN gave it to you straight. I had a Multi Kruzer and Nox 600 at the same time and was able to do similar testing with the stock coils and the smaller ones. My results were the same. I live in an area where digging plugs is a no,no so I have to be pretty sure of what is under my coil and how deep it is before I go after it with my screwdriver! I now have no Multi Kruzer and both Equinox's and can't wait for the bigger coil.
Jeff
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Hi,
I think those videos were a comparison of the Deus HF 9" coil and the Equinox 6" coil.
As far as I know (Steve H. may know but maybe can't say) Minelab is and will be for the foreseeable future the only manufacturer of Equinox coils: stock 11", awesome 6" and soon 15"(? in production.) All are Double D.
This should probably be in the Minelab category.
thanks,
Jeff
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Hi
I can only echo what Simon said about the Gold Monster 1000 and the Equinox 800. I have not yet seen or used the new White's 24K
For just gold nugget detecting, especially smaller gold the Gold Monster 1000 is a fantastic detector. I started out my detecting life as a nugget hunter with a Tesoro Lobo ST. So actually having a display and the other features of the GM1000 are a great improvement. You will find gold with the GM1000. You will also find lots of other stuff large and small in the gold fields as the GM1000 makes you learn what various targets really sound like. Tin, lead, copper, aluminum and even big iron are going to go into the non-ferrous scale. The ferrous/nonferrous display readings and the discrimination on/off features help but are by no means accurate above 40% of the time. The detector operator needs to develop their skills to improve that percentage rate. As Simon said, one drawback is the lack of waterproofing of the control box housing which is quite substantial in size and awkward to cover. I can swing this detector all day and it has worked well for me in the Colorado mountains and the Arizona and California deserts. It is simple to use and can be "mastered" fairly quickly.
The Equinox 800 can quite simply do it all if you are looking to detect targets at less than one foot deep. Any type of metal detecting you want to do can be done by this detector as far as I know except for detecting maybe semi-molten lava!!!! The 800 will also find gold nuggets in Park 2, Field 1 and 2 and of course the two Gold modes down to as small as .02 grams at least from my experience at two inches depth. Any larger gold will increase the probability and depth of detection. The small coil is in my opinion a must for nugget hunting.
The features, flexibility and adjustability of the Equinox 800 can be overwhelming. Those who have recommended starting out in stock Park 1 and 5 tones or less for the first 40 or so hours are offering outstanding advice whether you are an accomplished detector user or just have a little experience with an entry level detector. If you are new to detecting this might not be the detector for you. (Sorry, I just noticed that you are not a newbie by your profile!) My only complaint with the Equinox 800 is that its hand grip is just too big (since the batteries are inside) with no padding and the detector is not balanced well. All the other complaints I had were corrected by the recent downloadable software update. It is fully waterproof, rugged and will challenge my detecting skills for many years to come.
I did use both the Whites MX Sport and the MX7 for awhile which have the same ergonomics as the 24K. They were excellent detectors although a bit like the Equinox, they felt very nose heavy to me and gave me quite a bit of hand and arm fatigue in the beginning.
Forgot to finish this, so if I was taking my son (relative newbie) to the gold fields say in Arizona I would hand him my Gold Monster 1000 and tell him to dig everything that makes a tone in disc mode and anything that goes into non-ferrous in deep mode even if just once. He is 21 and would have no problem digging 50 to 100 targets in 8 hours and maybe find a couple of nuggets. You could do the same thing with your GBP in all metal basically by reducing the iron tone volume and by setting up discrimination mode to reject iron and maybe the highest target range for hot rocks. It is not a hard detector to use if it will ground balance in your area without too much difficulty even though hot rocks can be a pain with the GBP. Then you could get the Equinox or 24K for yourself!
Jeff
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Absolutely Chuck,
If I wasn't so crazy about gold prospecting I wouldn't own an Equinox and the MX7 would probably be my favorite detector. It is a coin monster plain and simple and does really well with relics too. For anyone wanting an excellent USA made multi-use metal detector with lots of great features the MX7 is really hard to beat.
Jeff
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Hi,
I had an MX7 for four months and really liked it for the most part. My reasons for not keeping it are: it was not balanced very well and caused some fatigue on longer hunts, the 8 AA batteries didn't help the weight problem and the detector seemed to be a power hog especially with rechargeable batteries, the recovery speed and separation on adjacent targets was average at best. I am a part-time prospector and I was not impressed with the MX7 on small gold. My old Compadre was better at target separation and small gold detecting. Go figure???
Just for fun I borrowed a Whites Treasuremaster for a while and really liked it for coin shooting So did my daughter. The TreasurePro with manual ground balancing might be something that I look at in the future. I love my TDI SL.
Instead of the MX7, I opted for the Equinox 800 for my main detector and have not looked back. It's excellent target separation, recovery speed, frequency flexibility and all around amazing performance on an incredible array of targets and detecting environments make it an almost perfect VLF detector for my needs especially with the 6" coil and after the recent software update. I don't care for the size of the grip handle but since the batteries are inside I'm stuck with it.
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Hi,
I was having lots of weird issues with my Tek-Point like constant falsing and retuning, instability and super sensitivity to any large metal objects even 3 feet away. I was about to send it back but instead I read the manual a little more carefully. I noticed on page 5 - Do Not Use Zinc-Carbon or Heavy Duty batteries. Duh, I had been using some Harbor F. heavy duty batteries. I took them out and put in some standard name brand alkalines. Now my Tek-Point works absolutely fine. Took it gold prospecting last weekend near T. Hoffman's Colorado site and it helped me find plenty of black sand/small gold concentrations crevicing and detected small birdshot at 3 inches! I'm so glad I actually read the manual.
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Hi
Surface area is critical when detecting small nuggets. My 600 with the stock coil has no trouble with .5 gram and larger nuggets and lead fragments down to about 3” in mineralized dirt. Anything much smaller and that is porous or not fairly flat might be iffy to undetectable at more than 1” with a 600.
Jeff
Fisher Metal Detector Lineup Fall 2018
in First Texas - Bounty Hunter, Fisher & Teknetics
Posted
Hi GB_Amateur
you are correct (I think?) that the F44 is Fisher's latest new detector and it is very competitive price wise. I think it has a lot of great features like a backlight, manual and auto ground balancing, iron tone, VCO and multiple tones, multiple modes, some customization and a big display. It has one feature however that severely holds it back (at least for me) and that is its' ten digit notching blocks. I just could not work with that feature at all as a coin/jewelry hunter. A modern almost mid-priced detector should be able to notch in single digit increments throughout most or all of its detecting range. The Land Ranger Pro can do that.............! The F44 has a niche in the $300 to $400 range and competes well I'm sure with some other products made in Texas and Oregon but for being modern it still has a ways to go. The "weatherproofing" is very iffy according to some users and the buttons are really poorly placed and are easy to foul up. I have used one and I was not impressed. Adding to my other dislikes was the detector's transmit frequency of 7.6 kHz. It won't go very deep accurately in the highly mineralized dirt where I live. In less mineralization I'm sure it would do very well. In my opinion, the recently updated F19/Teknetics G2+ is lacking just two things (besides multi frequencies) that would make it almost completely modern: waterproofing and wireless audio and maybe (could only be me and Phrunt!) an easier way to switch from all metal to discrimination mode. Just don't take away those cool retro knobs please..............
Jeff