Chase Goldman

You did a great job testing and reviewing this PP.  Looking forward to trying this one out myself.  Thanks.

First off, I disagree from walking away from any site unless you are somehow time limited on access or if you have found NOTHING but junk after multiple tens of hours hitting it and/or if you really do have a real promising and proven alternate site to hit.  Having a place to detect that you have unlimited access to and that will keep you busy for several visits (even if it is not immediately producing), is a luxury and more valuable then even your detector.  Without a viable site, a detector is worthless.  If you have the luxury of time and some patience, then work your way through the aluminum and iron and get it out of the way.  If the place has been previously detected and if there are still treasures to be found, it is most likely amongst all that trash and you may have to pick your way through that trash slowly.  Pick out small 2-3 yard square grids and hit those slowly but relentlessly with that 6 inch coil.  You basically have to take baby steps to ensure your 6-inch coil covers every inch of ground in the grid.  Note that it is only within the past 5 to 7 years that reasonably priced detectors have been designed to quickly process signals under such conditions, which enables them to be less overloaded and be more likely to detect treasure hiding between the junk targets.  If the house has been hit previously, and there is that much trash present, then it is likely the previous detectorists did not have the equipment to handle the junk or were lazy or both.   It's tedious, but is more likely to pay off in the long run and you will really learn the language of your machine.

That approach will get tedious, so you definitely should also cherry pick the edges or the heart of the junk (doing the latter by discriminating out everything but high conductors as has been recommended).  Look for those hot spots that have been mentioned previously (walkways, entrances, gardens, outdoor meal areas, clotheslines (especially).  Look for accumulations of like targets to give you a clue as to what caused those targets to end up there - channel your inner detective.  Multiple coins and buttons might indicate where a clothesline was strung.  An isolated batch of cans, tuna tins, mason jar lids, foil, pocket knives or flatware or other similar items might indicate where and outdoor table of fire pit stood.  Toys (cars, cap guns) obviously tell where the kids played.  Miscellaneous machinery parts might indicate a barn, garage, or shop.  Groups of old nails and miscellaneous brass objects might indicate a long-since torn down out building.  Also, recognizing what is NOT there will also provide information.  If you are not finding old coins, especially silver, then it is a good indication the place WAS previously cherry picked.

Adjust recovery speed up when in high target density areas and also lower sensitivity a bit under those conditions because you are unlikely to hear deep targets amongst shallow cans, nails, and other large pieces of junk.  Lowering sensitivity works in conjunction with higher recovery setting to help keep iron and other large/shallow junk items from overloading the detector giving you a better chance of hearing relatively shallow keepers between the junk.

Anyway, as others have mentioned, you have a golden opportunity with this challenging site to hone your detecting skills, really learn your detector, and perhaps find something really special hiding in all that trash.  Just take your time and break up the monotony of picking through the trash with some "open field" cherry picking on the less trashy edges using your larger stock coil.  If you attempt to do that with your 6-inch coil while trying to maintain coil swing coverage (baby steps), it will take you forever.  The larger coil gives you more coverage per swing and also more depth where you can use it.

Good luck, happy hunting, and let us know how it goes.

On 8/10/2023 at 5:05 PM, jasong said:

 

I think both the 5000 and 7000 platforms should be discontinued in terms of prospecting models as they are both fundamentally flawed platforms IMO and it's better to build something new instead. If they rehash the 5000, I hope they market it primarily as a coin/relic machine and don't count that one as a prospecting release. 

Well it looks like at least part of this is coming to pass.  At least one reputable MD equipment dealer is announcing the imminent discontinuation of the GPX 5000 (and taking the opportunity to put out a buy 'em while you can pitch).  This will be the end of the line for not only for the 5000 but that venerable GPX platform series of prospecting/relic detectors that started with the GPX 4000 in 2006 (which built upon the predecessor GP series).  The GPX 6000 is a "GPX" platform PI in name only as far as I'm concerned as none of its accessory components or coils are interchangeable with the legacy GPX 4000/4500/4800/5000 units due to it's updated electronics and form factor. 

Not surprised they want to mothball the legacy GPX platform at this point.  I'm sure it's a drag on manufacturing, repair, and logistics to keep that technologically long-in-the-tooth product line alive (the 4000 was released in 2006, 4500 in 2008, and the 4800/5000 was released in 2010, with the 4800 being discontinued in 2012).  The GPX 4500 was discontinued in 2021 so it kind of makes sense the 5000 will reach the end of the line this year.

Seen them (Trackers and Pros) go for anywhere from $350 up to about $550, lately.  Pick something in that range and see if you get any bites.

1 hour ago, UT Dave said:

For the record, @abenson has posted pictures before, that I immediately knew exactly where they were taken.  I'm sure I'm not the only one.  And I know I have posted pictures that he knew exactly where they were too.  It's just good policy to be cautious about that stuff.

- Dave

Yep, I can tell by the type of vegetation and soil color clinging to the finds in that first photo exactly where Andrew had been...headed there right now.

Seriously though, make sure any photos you are posting are at least stripped of any geo tag information in the image metadata (or, better yet, don't let your phone/camera tag the photos in the first place). That's the easiest way to inadvertently give away site or private permission information.  Not only do you risk interlopers, you can add insult to injury and lose sensitive private permissions because the landowner may mistakenly think you are intentionally letting outsiders piggy back on to your site access without his permission.

1 hour ago, schoolofhardNox said:

Amazing that people can even lose gold coins but it seems to happen quite a lot.

As you know, $1 and $2.5 mid gold coins were tiny.  For comparison, a tiny trime has a 14mm diameter, a $1 gold piece 12.5 to 14mm diameter and $2 1/2 gold piece had an 18mm diameter.  So if you were lucky to possess one, it was also very easy to drop in grass or brush without noticing and even if you did realize it, still hard to sight find and recover.  Many are found were people rested their horses near water.  They reclined against a rock or tree, and it could easily slip out of a pocket there.

2 hours ago, Ogliuga said:

Infortunately I can’t set D2 with “magnetic accept

Why not?  Because of the nature of the soil?

4 hours ago, Doverkev said:

Hi,

Can you confirm that the Garrett Z link wireless pinpointer works with the Manticore?

Many Thanks

It will work but only in standalone mode like a regular Carrot, it cannot wirelessly connect to the Manticore.

4 hours ago, Elbert said:

Can the XP MI-6 be shipped in the US Mail?

Yes.  You just have to identify to the PO that it contains a battery.  It's similar in capacity to LiIon Batteries used in phones and audio equipment.

On 9/14/2023 at 2:19 PM, George1971 said:

Does anybody know the frequencies in multi-mode that score uses?

On 9/14/2023 at 3:14 PM, Nuke em said:

You won't get that info from Nokta.

It’s also not very relevant information without the context of how the waveform is generated, and the real secret sauce; i.e., how the target signal is processed, including frequency weighting factors. None of the major manufacturers who design today’s generation of SMF detectors (Minelab, XP, Garrett, Nokta, Quest, etc.) divulge much of this information publicly so you have to take them at face value and infer the optimal usage of the various SMF modes based on their high level general user guide descriptions of frequency weighting and tidbits like covered frequency range (Minelab, Nokta, Quest) or maximum SMF frequency utilized (XP).  The other problem with focusing on the specific SMF frequencies (if they are even provided) is that marketing often results in misleading/confusing claims like when ML confused buyers by conflating Multi-IQ information with the detector’s multiple selectable single frequency settings in marketing graphics or when noise cancelling channel designations made people erroneously think that ML’s FBS2 detectors used 27 different frequencies and perpetuated the erroneous concept that more frequencies are better in SMF.  They had to subsequently refute this concept in a subsequent Treasure Talk article on Multi-IQ to keep people from thinking that Multi-IQ was a step back from FBS2, when it was simply just a completely different approach than FBS2.

The fact that Whites and Fisher (CZ) used two or three simultaneous frequencies back in the day was more relevant then when the target signal processing component was less sophisticated and, in the case of Whites, when you could individually select the target frequency of interest and manually integrate the result.

IMO, users should just assume the FMF profiles are consistent with detecting the intended target objectives based on the mode setting descriptions - e.g., high weighted frequency profiles for gold and micro jewelry, low weighted frequency profiles for high conductors, and something in between for relics (wide range of conductivities) and beach detecting (salt stability) rather than getting wrapped up in the minutiae of what and how many frequencies are being transmitted and other arcane FMF details, and instead pay attention to real-world results from people they trust or their own hands-on experiences.

As far as these new Nokta offerings are concerned (provided the pricing is reasonable), they really hit the mark in terms of ease of use, versatility, and value in the niche between the ML Xterra Pro and the Equinox 600/700 and logically bridges the gap in Nokta’s lineup between Simplex and Legend.  They are what I thought the Vanquish should have been (or what ML should have tweaked XTerra Pro to be to logically replace Vanquish).  Looks like Nokta is not backing off from taking on ML directly despite ML’s pending litigation.

Good to see as this is only good news for the metal detecting hobbiest…competition and choice at the value end of the detector spectrum 

On 9/16/2023 at 9:28 AM, V3i/MXT Pro said:

I wonder if the Accupoint will be able connect to the headphones at the same time the Legend is connected? Most Bluetooth headphones can only pair to one device at a time.

The supplied headphones (with the Score series) will likely be APTX LL and multi-point, just as the ones provided today with Legend for compatibilty with Accupoint.  If not, inexpensive (less than $50 US) APTX LL multipoint headphones/neckband earbuds are readily available.  Example below.

10 hours ago, phrunt said:

It's a known issue with early units and a bad batch of speakers, Nokta will certainly look after you.  

I agree with that, but it concerns me that he says his Legend was delivered with the latest update (version 1.11) which implies it was a recently manufactured unit.  If that is the case, then it looks like Nokta still has a speaker reliability problem even after they changed their speaker manufacturer.  Hmm.   It's great that they stand behind their product, but who wants to keep sending their machine in for the same repeated failure regardless of whether its covered...  Hope I'm wrong and its just an outlier.

34 minutes ago, detector said:

smaller coins and jewelry

XP demonstrated such a "hoard" could be detected at 1+ meters depth using the Xtreme Hunter two-box coil.

Does the jar contain a contiguous mass of metal or is it a bunch of smaller coins, targets?

1 hour ago, detector said:

hi guys 

can someone tell me what is the maximum depth of this Deus 2 detector on 20-30 cm target under the ground?

What are the composition, mass, and dimensions of the target?

7 hours ago, Digalicious said:

The sleep mode on the Quest sounds interesting, provided that the sleep process is initiated immediately upon setting the detector down

As stated in the screenshot, the Quest initiates sleep mode within 5 seconds of detecting no motion.  Gyro much more versatile and robust than a merc switch. Seriously though, first world problems.  Like I said, I just flip a toggle right on my phones. Or if I'm using my wireless pinpointer, it mutes the detector anyway.  The Quest magic pinpointer holster is also a great little gadget.

19 hours ago, Digalicious said:

That makes me wonder why detectors don't have a simple mercury switch or gyro, that you can enable or disable, and would mute the detector when it's horizontal.

Already exists.  The new Quest SMF detectors do have a gyro/accelerometer.  They use it to auto initiate GB (operator just starts pumping the coil) and to put the detector into sleep mode if it is no swing is detected after a preset time period.  I use a set of phone where you can just flip a switch and mute the headphones during recovery.  I thought Nokta had a mute feature so that Pinpointer interference could be muted during target recovery.  Easy issue to address multiple ways.

On 9/14/2023 at 9:21 AM, Digalicious said:

Does that mean that EMI doesn't have to be audible for it to affect performance?

"Silent EMI" is indeed a thing.  It typically results from inter-detector interference but any near-field EMI source such as a cell phone or other radio transmitter or powerful EM fields from power lines can result in target signal attenuation without an accompanying audible "noise" effect.

BTW on the copper piece - don’t rule out Native American or Mexican (Aztec) origin.  I have no idea what it was used for or mounted to, though.

Congrats on the silver seated Quarter.  I know a lot of long-time detectorists who haven’t snagged one.

12 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I figure either you F350 or Chase will eventually get their hands on the Xtrem Hunter so V2.0 will be a must anyway.

Not unless a Bobcat backhoe comes along with it.  Not interested in digging that deep.  Would like to know how it does in hot dirt, though.  Might be useful for digging out huts and privies at the known long-term CW winter encampments around Culpeper, VA if it can actually function under those conditions.

9 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I got my wish but looks like Santa is leaving me a Nokta Score instead of a Multi IQ X-Terra Pro. Thanks Nokta!!!!

Yep.  This is what the updated Vanquish should be (abd should have been).  I always thought adding a middle of the road single frequency mode like Nokta has done with Score is a great move.  Adding a single general purpose Multi-IQ mode to the X-Terra Pro would fill the niche as well.

Yup.  I use Steve's for the Beach with my D2, but I use the remote not the WS6 Master.

Thanks, Bob.  The only thing holding me back is that there are definite WS6 bugs which means they will be coming out with an update to fix those which likely means another remote update as well to keep everything synced.  Not keen on re-entering all the custom programs again twice.  I'll wait a little and see if they come out with the bug fix to 2.0 quickly.

CPT - Thanks for the report on the remote.  Let's see what Bob comes up with when he gets a chance to test the magnetic reject on his beach.  Simon - I agree the WS6 pinpoint bugs are egregious but with a common thread of conductive soil subtraction, they obviously botched a specific subroutine associated with pinpoint.  As far as I'm concerned, if the bugs are limited to the WS6 Master mode, then it doesn't prevent me from utilizing the benefits from the update because I don't even use the WS6 puck at all (in Master or Slave Audio mode).  On the other hand, since the bugs are so obvious, its likely that a new update will follow relatively quickly.  So I'll hold off for now until the WS6 is patched so I don't have to enter my custom programs twice.