Rick K - First Member

If you need your ferrets different colors, I find Easter egg dye works OK, but the little devils will try to bite you if you submerge their heads in it.

To be fair, I did talk to someone at Kellyco who said,that,they would repair my 2100 if it needed it - depending on what the problem was and whether,they had or could get the part. More modern machines of all brands, use surface mounted components and are much harder to repair by component replacement. I believe that mostly they get a board swap when a board mounted component fails. That has two consequences for out of warranty machines. First, the boards are expensive to produce, so after a machine goes out of production, the stock of spares is likely very limited. Second, the boards might be so expensive to,the customer that repair is uneconomical. It is therefore probably just a sad fact of modern life that electronic devices are becoming less maintainable - Minelab is not alone in pricing spare parts like gold either. A tiny circuit board to control a switch on our stove cost $89. I guess it's just that Fisher, Garrett, Tesoro and Whites seem to look on repair service as a service and not a cash cow. That, of course could,change at any time. Tesoro was known for fixing broken detectors for free under their lifetime warranty, even if you weren't the original buyer and therefor not the warranty holder - no more!

Ok, that was crotchety old bad Rick. Clear headed, objective, up to date Rick replies. If you buy a professional tool, it's not a toy. You have a job for it to do. You put it to work, you use the heck out of it, it pays a return on investment in terms of what work it does and when it has served it's useful life, you dispose of it. I get it. Are you a professional? I am not.

Minelab spare parts are made of pure "unobtanium" - and priced accordingly. I was so happy when I sold my SD2100. Every time I turned it on there was this little delay before it fired up and I'd think. If It doesn't start, I'm putting $900 in the dumpster. I have had multiple Tesoro, Whites and Fisher machines. All of them could be repaired if they broke, usually quite reasonably. Why is that? Because the companies keep bins of old parts around to support all but the most ancient machines. Real sharp, up-to-date, bottom line driven, next quarter is the only future, companies don't do this. I like the old way. I will never own another out of warranty Minelab product. I can't afford the risk.

Life goes on within you and WITHOUT you, let's just get over it, we are just a passing show on the vast canvas of the Earth's existence - oh crap - what was that - pass the DEET,

A rich broth from the hot stove of prospecting. Thanks!

Who's going to be the first to use a drone scout up that wash that you'd love to hike up but crap it's warm your old it's nearly vertical geewhiz I still like to have a look! Seriously Dash anybody thinking of using drones to scout out likely New terrain?

Relic hunters like the bunch who attend Digging in Virginia" will benefit from this since ultimate depth in hot VA soil is their major interest. I take it that when you say reintroduction, you mean that the 4500 will stay in the lineup and that this is not just the disposal of excess inventory. Good news for prospectors.

I think I posted this here before – I certainly posted it somewhere before – but I had an original TDI and I now have one with Reg's mods and the difference is like night and day. Beautiful smooth threshold iand a bit more depth. Thanks Reg.

Great story, and if I understood the "ins and outs" correctly, one bunch had the concession/permission and subcontracted or franchised it out to the hunters who found it. I love that, subcontracting is how I made my living for 35 years - no treasure however - darn!

A pal of mine just sold an SDC2300 for $2000 (asking - don't know if he got that much) on Craigslist in Phoenix. Guess it's not only the price of gold that is dropping. It's not just gold detectors however. I have bought and sold a couple of dozen detectors in the past 18 months or so and the price of used detectors is really "soft" right now. I just got offered four absolutely beautiful Italian Suits in my size at a gas station in Abu Dhabi for $800 - so I guess things are tough all over - but that's another story!

It's back!! GPX4500 - brand new and at a bargain price. Now you can own the former top of the line for a great price. This and an SDC would set you back about half of what a GPZ costs. http://forums.nuggethunting.com/index.php?/topic/11573-minelab-gpx-4500-now-available-again-from-robs-detector-sales/

So Fisher was willing to send you two replacement units (one coil replacement- one complete replacement) at no cost to you for shipping either way; based on your findings on air testing under conditions completely unknown to them. Pretty good I'd say. I'm sorry to hear that you were inconvenienced, I'm sure it was frustrating, but except for the original unit, it appears that none of the others were actually defective, just not up to the standards you had set. It is a sad fact that almost all makes of detectors exhibit considerable unit to unit variation, much like I remember was true for rifle accuracy when I was into that stuff - some rifles of a certian make and caliber were tack drivers and others were not. I am pleased to hear that Fisher went the extra mile to satisfy your expectations. I'm sure whoever buys it will thank you for your trouble. One advantage to dealing with a local dealer is that you can probably do your air testing before you buy!

Actually, "Woof" is one of the "handles" under which Dave Johnson (Chief Designer) at Fisher, etc.) posts on a MD forum. Given the number of gold detectors Dave has designed, I guess he is sort of the champion gold detecting "Woofer"! I have met him however, and he's not nearly as cute as the little rat in the picture!

Glad you are finding that concentric coil useful!

Matt, Thanks for the clarification. I've had mine on and off a number of times and I didn't see how it could likely break. Guess I forgot about the rivets as a potential failure point.

One comment to a post above. The TDI control box is heavy gauge aluminum, it is held my four stainless steel screws to a thick aluminum flange which is firmly attached to the rod. Of course, I guess it could have come loose somehow due to sliding sideways to the ground. Even if it did however, it still has the ability to be body mounted. Just sayin!

Actually, in Denmark there is near universal agreement that significant bits of their common history are the property of all the people and not something to be possessed by an individual or sold for profit to some collector, perhaps outside Denmark. Most detector users see themselves as discoverers and protectors of their National Heritage. Different strokes for different folks.

There's a Deepseeker Package listed,for $1690 on Craigslist in Phoenix.

Pic showing four out of a total of 10 gold bracelets or armbands or the like which a detecting pair found in one field in Denmark. Total weight of gold is 3.5 kg or 7.7 pounds - 113 ounces troy. 3,500 one gram nuggets - ouch! These object are from the Bronze Age - 1500 - 500 BC Only catch. By law in Denmark this is National Heritage Treasure. The finders and the landowner will recieve a payment based on the value of the metal.

Maybe good old US PO First Class Parcel is,the way to go. Only problem like I mentioned previously is you can't insure it. Perhaps the Customs and Excise folks who,handle male are less "agressive" than the ones,who handle parcel services like DHL, UPS, FedEx, etc.

John, I think you will find that the F75 has undergone pretty much continuous development since it was introduced. The original was probably the most powerful VLF detector onmthe market, but that power could not be used where EMI was an issue. Apparently design changes were made on an ongoing basis in software and perhaps hardware to improve EMI resistance. A new model with Boost Process (somewhat confusingly called either LTD or SE) was introduced,some time ago and in 2014 there has just been a significant upgrade of this model with the addition of DST noise reduction. My new F75 is incredibly sensitive and can run at 99 sensitivity in my EMI hellish environment with minimum fuss if I select the quietest frequency. I do suspect, however that mechanical engineering of the detectors has not been their strongest suit. This seems to be improving. KeithnSouthern has tested the new F44 and he raved about the solid air of quality that the detector has. So hopefully the hardware issues are going away.

A couple of recent posts referred to the whites TDI – so I thought I'd pass along the following. Last week I purchased a secondhand TDI from a guy who had sent it in to have Reg Sniff's noise reduction mod done - along with replacement of the op-amp. I had a TDI previously and the difference between that one and this one is like night and day. My old one had a warbly threshold that drove me nuts and made it very difficult to use the sensitivity higher than about 2/3 of full. My house is EMI hell, the neighborhood has underground utility service and the transformers sit on the ground. Even mildmannered VLF's like Whites Classics go nuts here at full sensitivity. This TDI has a silky smooth threshold with just an occasional blip at full sensitivity (12). It also air tests 17" on a nickle with the standard 12" DP coil! That's 4" more than I ever got with my old TDI here at the house with the same coil. I have been playing with the silver coin hunter trick with the high conductor mode selected and the GB offset to kill all ferrous. It really works - with the GB on 4, I hear no iron - and a quarter that I buried down 8" about 5 years ago gets a good signal with 2-3" air gap even using a 10" elliptical Coiltec mono. Now I need to find a dead Bigfoot coil and build a mono PI "Bigfoot". The mods were $125. Reg could probably furnish current details.

Glad to hear it worked! Only drawback with USPS First Class Parcel(what I used to ship it to you)'is that you can't insure the package. Ok for a coil maybe, but for something which cost hundreds of $$$, maybe not.

Loose treasure makes some folks crazy. When gold was the "cash crop" robbery, murder and mayhem were the rule. It was sorted out by better government and better law enforcement. Of course the enforcement preceded the government when the "barons" ran off the small timers. Good government sorted that out. Now we have poor government and selective law enforcement. In my opinion a bad combination.