Rick K - First Member

Not all breakthroughs are the result of totally original work which can be patented. Patents are a form of "rent seeking" where you are able to keep competitors from using a specific patented invention without paying you royalties (or keep them from using anything like it if your lawyers are sharp enough and your pockets are deep enough). Dave J. tells an interesting story of when Minelab's lawyers contacted Tesoro over patent infringement in respect of the Lobo Super Trac ground tracking technology. Here it is - it is part of a post he put up on Treasure Net, paying tribute to Jack Gifford of Tesoro who passed away early this year. _________________ "My favorite "Jack story" was shortly before we were about to release the Lobo ST. He got a call from Minelab, their lawyer told him that we better scrap the project because after all, they had the patent on "ground tracking" and would have to sue us. Jack told the _____ (was that four letters?) that we didn't infringe their patent. The ____ told Jack, "Our engineer says there's only way it can be done, and that's what we've got patented." Jack told the ____ that we'd call back shortly. [bTW, I don't believe that Bruce Candy actually told the cuss that, it was a bluff.] ...... So Jack and I pow-wowed for about half an hour pooling what we knew about ground tracking. And then he called back. "We know six different ways that don't infringe the Minelab patent. If you want to know which of those six ways we did it, as soon as it's released just buy yourself one and knock yourself out." That was the end of that. " _______________________________ Moral of the story is that there is very often more than one way to a particular result, and some of the most successful and hard to copy products rely on trade secrets rather than patents. The road from a patent or other "invention" to a product is often very long. I believe that Dave's quote from 2009 was on the level. I also believe that his quote from 2015 is serious. Does that mean we will see something totally new from FT next year or the year after? I don't know, but I'm not going to bet against it. Just my opinion.

Saw this somewhere, a quote from Dave Johnson, currently Chief Designer at First Texas. Here's the quote. _____________________________ We’re not a company who stands still. Over the last several years we have introduced a whole series of new products on several new hardware platforms, and have constantly advanced the science of target signal processing. In the future we plan to introduce new processes which, although they may “feel” like a member of the T2 process family, will operate on different principles and will produce results of a kind which are not attained by any metal detector presently available. -Dave Johnson Dave is dead serious. When he says "...will operate on different principles and will produce results of a kind which are not attained by any metal detector presently available" - i believe that he is saying that it is NOT a traditional Induction Balance or Pulse Induction plaatform, but something else. Can he do it? We don't know. But before we assume that this new platform will be the answer to everyones wish list, here's another quote from Dave - from March of this year. __________________ "The good news is that I'm designing the perfect detector. The bad news is that almost nobody will like it." Now that's a quote to ponder. Hopefully it's Dave's way of saying that it will not be a detector which the average detector enthusiast will like, perhaps because it will be tightly focused on a particular "job to be done"? If that's the case, hopefully the job it is focused on doing is the job this forum is about.

Nice color - gold, i just posted a link to this ad in a new post, but you might get a kick out of the Merc in the ad. P.S. - hope you didn't have to sell the Merc to fund the GPZ - lol https://www.facebook...982717301747076

Great ad - the company is the agent in Dubai responsible for MidEast and Africa. The African Gold Rush is alive and well and the runaway bestselling tool is the Fisher Gold Bug.

Not a gold detector per se, but anything that they can cram into this new shell will be water resistant. How about a Gold Bug Pro?

The only serious drawback is the price. If it were $6000 that would be a lot less complaining. Minelab has priced at how they have priced it for reasons that only they know. They have thought long and hard I'm sure projected how many they will sell at that price versus how many they would sell at some lower price – what affect pricing it lower would have on the rest of their product line, etc. The price is a drawback for everybody – I'm sure nobody likes paying 10 grand for a detector. For significant number of people however it's not a barrier to acquiring one. If they know or believe that they will find significantly more gold with it than with any other detector then it's an investment, not an expenditure. Also folks who simply want the experience of having what is doubtless the best gold detector in the world right now - and can afford to pay what that experience costs - will buy one. For me it's a bridge too far but I'm not going to criticize the machine for that.

I love your shaft adaptation – one of the things I really hate about ML is their refusal to really come to grips with the ordinary ergonomic issues around or detectors – you're about the 10,000 guy that is had the handle break off. When detectors were $500 that was one thing when the $10,000 that's quite another.

King Tut's codpiece?

Of course gold detectors are swell – but here's what I really want. I wrote this a while back and actually sent it off to a guy who designed metal detectors and got a very nice response back. I can't claim that he wrote "great idea Rick will get right on it". But I got the distinct impression that he didn't think I was nuts. Here's what I wrote him __________________________________________ Where this needs to go. Ok, let's perform a small thought experiment. What if I walked out on my 3 acres or so of AZ desert with a truly intelligent detector. I would ground balance and "initiate a session". As I got visual or Aural feedback from the detector, I would imput the results of my "analysis" of the signal in terms of whether I thought it was just ground noise (low value assigned by the machine - simce I Had no direct observation to input) or whether I kicked it out of the way, determining that it was a hot rock, or whether I dug and ID'd it (high value assigned to the data by the machine because of my direct observation). After a bit of this, the machine starts modifying its operating parameters to take account of the data it's gathering as well as the data I'm inputting. So,instead of me having to notch out .22 LR cases manually, it would do it for me and if I found more of them outside the limits of the notch, it would analyize and compare GB and other factors to compensate. For gold, if I was lucky enough to find it, it would consider the reading for a nugget in the context of other current and historical (formthe site) data and tune operating parameters accordingly. oK, where and when can I Buy this and why does this make me sad that I'll soon be 68?

The only thing I can figure with Garrett is either they figure they will only sell so many ATX's anyway so why not stick with the high-priced armadillo model. Either that or to try to get the price down in competing for governmental anti mining gear they ordered way too many of these sets of moldings that they're now using for the ATX and they just have to get rid of them somehow. On the other hand they likewise stubbornly refused to make a land only version of the Infinium – so go figure. If a reasonably priced new technology detector appears it will be on account of one thing – the African market.

What we don't have is the perfect gold detector and chances are we probably never will. If we did have it however what would it be like and what would it do? Here's my list. Weight - doesn't need to be a featherweight – perhaps around 3 pounds maximum. Power – lithium ion battery pack rechargeable in place or out of the detector – with spare batteries costing less than $100. But what does it have to do? Depth – of course more is better – but performing as well as the ATX overall would probably be enough. Sensitivity to small gold – as good as the minelab SDC. Ground tracking – combination of AutoTrak and ground grab - with no ground balance system induced "holes" where certain targets can't be detected because of the ground balance setting. Mineralization – should ignore it as well as a GPX 5000. Hot rocks – same as above. Discrimination – positive identification of ferrous material to depth. Price – now I am really dreaming – $1500 for the non-waterproof lightweight field model and $2500 for the waterproof ruggedized one. So can this miracle machine ever actually be developed? It would take some new and different technology since induction balance VLF machines can't do it and conventional pulse induction machines can't do it (the GB "holes") and the GPZ can do a lot of it but it costs an absolutely silly amount of money and weighs a ton. There would be no particular reason to hope that this will never be developed except for one thing – $$$ - currently in Africa they are buying thousands of gold detectors a MONTH. My imaginary miracle machine could make its developers an enormous pile of money. I will bet the price of a decent dinner at the best Mexican restaurant in Globe, Arizona that several companies are feverishly striving to develop just such a device. I know we all wish them luck.

What's the "cover patch?

Gpx and Sdc - the budget "dream team" OK - I am im bed, but the light is still on,

Remember the pic I posted of the guys in Africa. A row in front with metal detectors, and a bigger row in back with picks and shovels. After the madness of a few years ago where 4500‘s were selling for $15k, the locals wised uo and decided that if you find shallow gold with a detector, get your four cousins to dig a big hole and find more gold in the hole. FT's vlf detectors are "killing it" in Africa. A $10k dep seeker won't dent that market. With the GPZ – for the first time - Minelab is pricing it higher in the US and Australia – why? I suspect that they set the price is high as they dared in Australia – where the GPZ he really makes a lot of sense probably because of the big deep gold which can be found there – in hopes of selling a lot of them at the highest premium they thought the market would bear. For us in North America – frankly it's a vanity product. The kind of guys who bought a GPX 5000 put it in the closet and never use it again after the first couple of times out - might be tempted because of their endless bankrolls to buy a GPZ. Also, really serious gold seekers like Steve who will actually use and can justify investing in the very best will buy it no matter what it costs - within reason. With the combination of the two markets, why not price it in the US at a premium over the Australian price? This is neither good nor bad and it is certainly not evil – it's just business. But as Bob Dylan said – oh well I said that already! Now I AM going to bed. I have 3 subcontracts to work on tomorrow, bus transportation, Environmental Permit studies and laundry of work uniforms - what a glamerous business!

Follow up – yesterday I checked eBay for used SDC 2300s. there were still a couple of folks offering more or less new inbox ones for around $2900. The GPX 5000 prices seem to have pretty much sunk to between three and $4000 often with a large collection of coils. ML had the big combo deal at the end of 2014 where you could buy a 2300 and a 5000 really cheap I doubt seriously that that represented a big discount on the 2300 but in fact a very deep discount on the 5000. Lots of units hanging around unsold and the end of the year coming up and they had to go. Oh well this has nothing to do with finding gold – so all of you get back to busily trying to find gold and leave me, stuck here in Abu Dhabi, doing purchasing and price analysis on a Government contract, and putting my spare brain cells to work meditating on the wonders of minelab pricing. Bedtime

Seems like the GPZ 7000 has sucked all the air out of the world of minelab interested folks. All of a sudden I see no new stories about how the SDC 2300 is opening up all those sites where there was high mineralization and small gold. Now I don't doubt for a moment that that detector is still capable of doing that. Likewise I haven't seen a lot of questions lately on what coil I should get for my GPX 5000. If you have money to spend on a new minelab gold detector – it seems like the only relevant question is do you spend $10,000 or hang around and try to recover from the psychic shock of the introduction of the new model and it's quite frankly shocking cost I suspect that sales of the GPX 5000 will dry out for a while especially given the very attractive price is asked for good clean used machines with an assortment of coils. Whether sales of the GPX will ever pick up again somewhat depends on what prices new detectors are going for and how superior the GPZ actually turns out to be. As far as the SDC 2300 I suspected folks like me who have something like an SD2100 will think that it might make a nice combo given that the total investment in the pair of them could be well under $4000. As Bob Dylan once said "time will tell who has fell and who's been left behind – when you go your way and I go mine"

And a pony! I demand a pony! Right on Steve, using Michaelanglo's brushes or Ansel Adams' camera will not make you an artist. Only dedication, application of your intelligence and judgement and a lot of sweat, blisters and thorns will find you gold. And if you work that hard, you can find it with a shovel and a frying pan. Which, come to think of it, is probably why I haven't found any, except at the beach - I find bikini-clad maidens an inspiration - go figure.

Lots of first-hand report starting to pop up on one of the Aussie forms – including some comparisons with the SDC2300. http://golddetecting.4umer.net/f91-gpz7000

Not to beat a dead horse but if you check a $10,000 Detector as airline luggage you better be very very sure of your insurance coverage - the airline's liability is VERY limited.

Just what I was talking about!

I was "in" at $1600 or so for a new TDI and I had a lot of fun learning about PI detectors and what they couldn't and could do. I got about $800 when I sold it, so my lessons were expensive. I was "in" again to the tune of just under $3000 when I got a "smoking deal" on a SDC2300, not sure how much that experience will end up costing me – kind of depends on when I sell it and what I can get for it. There's no way on earth however that I will spend $10,000 or even $8000 for a metal detector. I can take my wife on a really nice vacation in Italy for that money and remember it for the rest of my life with much more enjoyment looking back than I would have looking back on all the holes I dug over a foot deep and hard caliche looking for a pipefitting. But that's just me. I have found 300,000-year-old stone tools made by Homo Erectus in the Saudi desert - opened a sealed tomb in Arabia – only to find out that it was the 4000 year old ritual burial of a goat! So I guess finding a gold nugget or two would be nice. For real money you need to find a lunar or Martian meteorite – they sell for thousands of dollars – A GRAM!!! For finding these all you need is an endless expanse of light colored flat ground and then spend a few hundred hours staring your eyeballs out looking for dark things that aren't rusty tin cans or camel turds. Thought I had one once – sent it off to Washington University in St. Louis - they were really interested in looking at it since it greatly resembled a previously identified lunar meteorite found a site about 5 miles from where I found mine – but unfortunately it was just a rock. No I think I'll pass on the $10,000 detector and pin my hopes on my hero Dave Johnson and the boys at First Texas – waiting for their super gold detector. I doubt it will go as deep in highly mineralized ground as the GPZ – but frankly I'm not interested in digging two foot holes - no matter what's down there. There are easier ways to make money and easier ways to make great memories. To each his own and I really do look forward to hearing about all the great finds that folks make with their new mega detectors and certainly don't begrudge them making the commitment financially and otherwise to get the right tool, the right knowledge and do the hard sweat to find the gold!

Metal detecting and more particularly Gold nuggett hunting – it's different than other hobbies. You don't ask some guy riding around on the Harley or driving a quad or a bass boat how soon he plans to break even on his investment. They look at you like you were nuts – what a silly question – this isn't about money it's about having fun! Ou hobby is different. Treasure hunting is about treasure and discovering treasure is about the thrill but it's also about the money. A $10,000 metal detector is criticized on the grounds of how many ounces of gold you would have to find to pay for it. The satisfaction of owning the pinnacle of gold detecting technology – or the pure pleasure of hunting for and finding an elusive target – seem to mean less to us than they do to the golf club, quad offroader, bass boat crowd. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing – but it is a noticeable thing. I believe to some degree it's also a reaction against the fact that metal detector prices have long been based on the hope that the buyer has of financial gain and therefore - his willingness to pay a premium for a rather straightforward electronic gadget. It is the kind of tax on hope.

Happy Birthday and thanks for the practical confirmation of the bottom line of all this detecting business. "A detector in the closet finds nothing." Your GP 3000 found it easily, but that nugget at that depth would likely be found by any gold detector and probably by a $49 Bounty Hunter. We get so wrapped up in the gear that sometimes we need reminding that knowing where to go and actually getting there is 90% of the deal! Thanks

Again, ifyiu have homeowner's or renters insurance, younshould check the coverage. You may need to "list" a $10k detector in order to have full replacement value coverage on it.

Don't put anything you can't afford to lose in checked baggage.