schoolofhardNox

That's an odd looking ring. Nice find. I almost want to make it into a tiny watch 😄

Nice tokens and relics. Just a note on the alien probe.... I usually ask them if the probe can be a Garrett and not some cheap China junk 😅 Must be kinda scary to be out there and have your vehicle die on you. Of all places 🙄

I'm interested. I tried to message you but you can't receive messages.

I'm 50/50 on watching his videos. He gets the entertainment part of You Tube, and he is bearable when he sticks to detecting. Some of his informational views on detecting don't align with how I hunt. I usually lose interest when these guys and girls start traveling the world. Being an Ambassador for XP is probably good for XP. It won't sway my opinions of them, as the are (in my opinion) the most influential and direct competition to Minelab. Merrill is only my choice from my second batch (tier) of detecting videos, when I'm bored. I watch him only when I can't find a new video from DetectorComparison or the Hoover Boys. He's in the category with Stealth Diggers, Dig that Beep, Detecting America, etc...) Not bad, but not my first choice in viewing. In my eyes, XP doesn't even need anyone to push them. They make a fine machine and if you watch a lot of videos, the Deus II is replacing a lot of previous Minelab machines. Now they are using a Deus. Kind of like Minelab did to Garrett when they started to take over the detector of choice in videos.

No GPZ for me, unless I want to be single again 😄 I do poke at the 6000 and I'm not knocking it's ability to find small gold (and more). For finding small targets (like the tiny brass beads I was looking for) it smoked my 5000. For me the problem always has been the labeling of the machine as a GPX in the first place. I would imagine that boosted sales a bit, but in reality in isn't anything like my 5000. I bought it thinking it was the next in line and would be better than the previous version, but for what I usually use the GPX for (beach and relic hunting), it is not better. So it sits on one end until someone else is unhappy with their 7000 and mails it to me. 😆 Bookends are better in pairs.

I've had to use electronic contact cleaner on my potentiometers and switches. I never seen those little switch covers. Talk about durable, at one time I could hardly turn the potentiometer to change timings 😬 Sprayed it well and it works fine now. I think I'm going on about at least 4 or 5 years of hunting beaches with the 5000 and it's like a tank. I would buy one of the X coils if it gets me more depth than the DD coils do. Cautiously optimistic to see what happens.

If they are getting ready to sell, and they sell to another investment company, then not much will change. The only way to recover from the spiral is to go back to being a private company. It's being done more and more these days. If technology is at another slowdown or hitting its limits, then we won't be getting much of an improvement in consecutive models. Like others have said, just a new paint job and a tweak here or there. Minelab limiting you to their coils, or having us wait until they decide to license coil production to another company, is another reason to be dissatisfied with them. They can do these things (along with price hikes) for a while and spin the investor reports, but eventually it slows down enough to be a problem for them. What they should be doing is making sure customers have durable and stable operating machines so that they can come on forums, You Tube, etc and show how wonderful and productive these machines are. But if people are talking about price increases during harder times, coil ears breaking, speakers not working.... then the mood to by Minelab's products is taking over the gains they made from the Equinox coming out and making old places new again.

Those silvers ran so fast when they saw that monster coil. I was picking up radio stations from Moscow 😆 The elbow and some other parts were sore for sure. Funny how different beaches are from each other. The silver beach has extreme EMI, while those 2 beaches have low/moderate EMI. It was quieter on the severe EMI beach. Must be the type of EMI is different.

This is a classic sign of a company that is slowly spiraling downwards. When you concentrate on profit first, and making a great product at a reasonable price 2nd (or not at all), you will eventually turn more and more people away from your brand. Shareholder pressure to continuously make more money can kill any company, no matter how big or small. I don't think there are enough customers that will pay the extra price without at least giving Garrett and other manufacturers a serious look. My next purchase will be a Deus II.

Looking forward to hearing about the black sand beach and also the EMI capabilities when you have a chance to put it to the test. Thanks for doing that Simon. The 6000 for me is uninteresting, no matter who makes a new coil for it 😄. I now use it to prop up all my other detectors. Makes a great book end🤔

Beach hunt # 10 was a bust. 😭 (cry baby 😄). I was going to return to the silver beach, but I figured it was done, so I tried 2 different beaches. Never do that !!! 😞. Neither beach was kind to me, but time is short when the sun goes down fast, so traveling 30 minutes to a third beach just didn’t seem worth it. These beaches really need to be torn up a bit from a good nor’easter. Come on nature, take some sand away …. please? It didn’t help that I wanted to try that 17x21 SEF coil out at a new beach. That coil is really not meant to travel back and forth across a long beach. With that snowshoe, you park your butt in a small section and crawl around slowly. Oh well at least that coil is getting some use considering I have probably only used it a handful of times since I bought it. So, lots of junk, some clad and not one silver piece. Better luck next time. Still fun to get out and hunt.

I second Skull Diver's advice to put a magnet across it. Hopefully it does not stick. But if it does you will have your answer right there .

1/8" headphone jack. That will be the first thing to break 😄 Yeah, that shovel scares me too. I can just see the NO DETECTING signs going up everywhere 😔

Right now I'm not a Manticore fan 🙄 I think my coil is degrading, since I've lost a lot of depth on targets. It's been getting killed by a couple of Deus 2's on a project I am on. If it wasn't for the good old days of Minelab 5000 technology, I would be without a quality machine to hunt with. I've tried single frequencies, reduced sensitivity, increased sensitivity multiple programs, did a reset etc.... it all leads to the same thing. It's definitely not the same Manticore I had when it was new. So right now it doesn't compare to the GPX at all 😆 I guess I'm just tired of the Minelab quality control. And yes I know you can send it in.... that's not the point. It will sit in the closet until a non Minelab coil is produced. So maybe someone with the 5000 and the Manticore can compare the two and see how it stacks up. All I can say is thank God I have a backup 5000 to my 5000.

Hey Tony, I run the 5000 with the disc set at 5 for no apparent reason 😄 Most of the iron is out of the range of the discriminator with the exception of the bottle caps. But the main reason I dig everything and pick up some surface bottle caps is because they mask the layer I need to get to. 10" to 16" is the usual range for the silver I am after. Mostly the targets I want are a soft whisper or just sounds like ground noise. I usually have to clear an area of the junk targets most hunters leave, so that I can re-scan the area later and get the deep stuff. The other reason is that I'm getting older now, and I'm a firm believer in the "use it or lose it" mentality. I get my exercise by digging a lot of holes. I usually don't eat for before and during the hunt, so I get a mini fast in. It works for me and even though it is tiring, it builds my stamina. I did that hunt and today did 8 hours digging for an archaeology project I work on. 2 days is enough to make me hate detecting until next week 😆

Thanks. Never a dull moment when you find an area that is close enough to get some deep targets. I'm constantly amazed at how many coins are still buried deep. Every once in a while you have access to some of them. I've hit this area many times and always get silver (and Buffalos) for some reason 🤔 Yeah 16 is mostly the limit. Anything beyond that is just plain luck that what you heard was actually a target. At those depths it's mostly ground noise or just EMI tricking you. But sometimes you get lucky. I don't get those depth in fields that's for sure 😄 I tried rubbing them right away so that they wouldn't turn as black. All it did was expose how terrible they look and I added some more scratches to them 🙄

Beach hunt # 9 is a return trip to the same beach that I did last week. This was going to be a scouring and expanding hunt of the small area (approx. 30’ x 20’). I also wanted to try out some larger coils I have and opted to take the Detech 15” Spiral coil, the 17x21” Detech SEF coil and maybe the Coiltek 14” Anti-interference coil, if there was any time left. I left the Detech 18” DD coil at home, figuring it probably would not add anything to the test. I started by using the 12 ½ inch coil I had on the machine and went straight to another section of the beach where I have never been able to get any deep coins. It is far more sanded in than the area where I found the silver from my last visit. No luck there, so I switched to the 15” spiral coil and went back to the silver patch. I remember it feeling heavy and it is. 😄 Worked about 2 hours in the patch and did not hit any silver. Did get a Buffalo and a Wheat, so it did pick up some missed coins. Then the 17x21” coil came on. Each of these coils ran in the cancel mode as this is the beach with the Accela / Amtrac train that is just about right on the beach. The 15” coil was the noisiest coil, even in cancel but only when the trains were actually passing by you. The 17x21 handled that better. Both coils ran relatively quietly when the tracks were powered down a bit. I was glad that such large coils were usable with the heavy EMI. Depth was solely dependent on the level of EMI that they were exposed to. I ran the 17x21 coil for about 4 hours. I also expanded the hunt length and width wise. These coins were not easy to get at, and most were at the 16” mark. One Mercury dime was a surprise, since I thought I was going to be digging some ground noise, but it ended up being silver. 🥰 The large coils were harder to pinpoint since cancel mode shifts the pinpoint from center to the left side of the coil. Also, it was hard to find the target with that 17x21. Took a bit of time for me to figure out what part of the coil I should use as a guide. Fun times. All in all, I did better that I thought I would do, but swinging them coils is way harder than the 12 ½” coil I am used to. I’m done at this beach and if I get out next week, I’ll be looking at trying a new beach.

I'm mad at those VLF guys for being able to discriminate out those bottle caps and small bits of aluminum. They should be removing them for me 😄 Now I'm stuck digging them to get to the deeper stuff. I'm calling the metal detecting police on them! I'm trying hard not to imagine that. 😵 ............😆

Who wants to see an old (silver) streaker at all? 😅 Sounds like a plan. I like lead 🥰 Silver won't hurt though 🤔

Thanks. The Buffalo was a weird brick red color. Sometimes if you rub it right away after finding them, you can remove a lot of that red. The back came clean, but the front not so much. I cleaned it up a bit more at home. The other silvers get the usual black color after being exposed to the sunlight. If I we not a lazy guy, I would have a container with some chemical to start the cleaning process on silver right there at the beach. But I'm not that ambitious. 😞. Maybe in my next life 😄 If that thing is made of silver, I will find it!!! Put some gold on it and it will be invisible to me. 😭.... 😄

I think you are right about your button. On a project I worked at an old site that the English took over from Natives, I found a very similar button to yours. It has the same look as yours with the dots running around and is crudely done. That site is early, so yours is probably early as well. Nice find!

You looking for one of these? 🧐 I am the proud owner of some of the ugliest GW's you will ever see. 😅

Beach hunt # 8. What seems like an eternity from being able to hunt a beach, I finally had a chance to get out. It’s been a while, so I decided to hunt a beach that I have not hunted in about 5 years. Back then, they had the bright idea of dredging up the ocean and piling up that sand on the beach. What a disaster. 😌 They pulled a huge amount of lead and sharp iron objects onto the beach, along with other trash. I understand they need to replenish the missing sand, but the location they picked to get the sand from was terrible. Hence the reason I have not returned there. But I was hoping to catch this beach with some erosion so I could look for the deep ones. Digging a test hole to 20” I never hit any kind of hard bottom. Along with a sanded beach, I noticed these little bits of cut up wire scattered all over this beach. Finding only one copper cent and a new dime in 2 hours was enough to make me run to the car. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Being only 20 minutes from my second favorite beach, I opted to go there. Great choice. This beach looked like they had already bulldozed the sand level, and a small but decent section of the beach looked fairly low. So, I fired up the GPX and worked this section back and forth. The first good signal was a 9” deep Mercury dime. That’s more like it. 🤗 I spent about 4 hours gridding this patch and was rewarded with 6 silver dimes, a war nickel, and a small silver charm. Also snagged a 1928 Buffalo nickel and some copper cents as well. I don’t know if I can claim the silver streak continues with this much time passing, so I will just say I was very happy to see the first silver pop out. My free time has mostly been spent on the archaeology project. It has been very slow going …. like pulling teeth. I think I’ve only found around 15 round ball in 7 visits, so getting a break to relax and hunt a beach was just what I needed. Needless to say, the next visit will start out there again, possibly trying out some bigger coils. I’m hoping for a few missed deeper targets or maybe finding another patch there, similar to the one I just did. Always nice to see the sun, sand, and ocean.

Alright, doctors orders:...... Metal detecting? = OK, Ladders? I have to go with a NO on that. 😅 Glad you dodged that bullet! Hopefully a quick recovery. Nice looking button for sure. Hand decorated? Old for sure.

That's awesome. 😄