Rick K - First Member

Codan's original FCC filing for approval request confidentiality for the users manual till 28 Dec. 2014. Well, I have some time in the evenings to poke around looking for stuff online and no manual yet. I just checked on the FCC website and the date has been extended till 28 March 2015. Guess we have to wait a while. Edit 1/4/2018 - Latest official version of Minelab GPZ 7000 Instruction Manual

Dual sim card phones are easy to get in the rest of the world. But again, except of Verizon and South Korea, the rest of the world used GSM (using sim cards) not the wacky Qualcomm standard.

Beach detecting can be great fun, but it is not without it's dangers. For us married guys one of the disadvantages of beach detecting is the way attractive young women keep coming up,and asking if you have found anything - hoping, I suppose - to be shown some nice bit of jewelry. Not so much fun are the brats who toss pennies in your path!

One of the nicest things about the beach is the combined effect of sunscreen and cool water. Put on a little sunscreen, let the warm sun make your fingers a bit moist along with the oily sunscreen, then go play in the surf. Cooler water, shrinking fingers, mechanical action of the waves - another treasure deposited! Another pet theory of mine is that some folks mark the end of a relationship by tossing the ring which marked it into the water as a gesture of their feelings - sad but useful.

Look forward to the new machine - I hope the "young Turks" expand their dealer network in the US. I have no complaint about Kellyco, but choice is nice. Perhaps the Makro brand will get its own distribution channel.

PI detectors miss gold too. In this case, it is a result of their method of ground balancing. What follows is my limited understanding of how that is. They don't use phase shift to detect targets like VLF IB detectors do, they use the decay time of the target signal. The GB point is set to eliminate the ground signal based on it's decay time, but sadly some target signals have the same decay time as the ground signal. This makes a "hole". ML uses multiple pulses so that the hole in one pulse is at a different value than the hole in another. This information is combined to try and eliminate the effect of the holes, but it is clearly not perfect, thus the multitude of "timings" on the GPX-5000. TheTDI doesn't have this patent protected feature andit is easy to demonstrate the hole effect on it my manipulating the GB knob. Why this is interesting right now is that ML's new Super Detector, details of which are due to be released late this month, is apparently not a PI machine at all (or at least not anything like current ones). Also, according to leaked information which may or may not turn out to be correct, it is All Metal. This won't help it solve the problems discussed in this thread, but if it can ground balance while offering depth in highly mineralized ground without the "holes" which plague current PI detectors, then it may be a SuperDetector indeed. Time will tell.

OK. ML's warranty service is great. New detector arrived this afternoon with charger, etc. It's still in the box, but sadly, I won't get to use it. On the 27’th I depart for the Mideast for a 3-4 month stint for my old employer. It would be a waste to let it sit here through AZ gold hunting season. It's for sale - CHEAP - please see my ad in the classifieds.

So far, so good. ML got my machine Monday afternoon and shipped a replacement (I hope) this morning. Just for the record, my problem was a SOLID target signal when brushing any green growing stuff. Dried up,plant material didn't do it.

At this point, the confusion seems near total. Folks who have upgraded their F-75’s are either pleased or disappointed dependingon how they compare the results to what they had before. Apparently Fisher has no coherent story to tell at this point. Keith Southern's machine is a depth monster but others report reduced depth especially in all metal. Remors of further software tweaks and possible re-do of upgrades are circulating. A Fisher rep was to be on the Relic Roundup podcast this evening, but the audio was screwed up and you couldn't hear a word. I think you hit the nail on the head Steve when you talked about how only field testing dozens of units in the hands of enthusiastic and experienced users in many different environments can really wring out all the quirks of the complex software in today's digital detectors. I recall my Whites V3 got promptly altered to a V3i to deal with various issues. My iOS 8 software has been through four revisions since release in October. The problem with all the detectors out there is that with the exception of the CTX and the Deus, a software rev means a trip to the factory!

No manufacturer can check every unit of a product before shipment unless they can charge a high premium for it. I worked in high tech and low tech Purchasing for 35 years. Consumer grade articles are produced and shipped without each item being tested. High tech, high risk and military items are the only ones that get 100% inspection of finished goods. The $1000 toilet seat and the $500 hammer of government procurement mythology are only "sort of" true due to the inspection paper trail which has to accompany every item. That takes manhours, shophours and $$$$$. Good manufacturers have qualified processes and use statistical Process and Quality control,to hold "escapes" to the minimum. Sadly, our detectors are produced in an environment which falls between the two peaks of quality. The manufacturers can't charge enough to have 100% inspection and the production runs are too short to allow satisfactory statistical,quality control.

One other factor perhaps worth mentioning. As detectors moved to surface mounted components and even multi-layer circuit boards, repair has become mostly a matter of swapping out boards. This can get VERY expensive. I only have first hand experience of paying for repairs with Whites and Tesoro. Both of these companies are extremely reasonable on their charges - pretty much anything can be fixed for $150 or less.

I can't say of this is Lidar and if so at what resolution - mainly because I'm too lazy to do all the work necessary to look up all the stuff I would need to to find the answers to all that. Having said that, I'm posting an image from a detecting group I belong to in Denmark. This apparently is in an area which was submerged in a giant inundation caused by cyclonic storms hitting the low coast of Denmark in the 1400s. My pals will be out there detecting soon!

I guess it depends on the concentration. The stuff Intel and others use will dissolve your bones. I'm sure that's not the concentration Chris is recommending, but this particular acid is a nasty agent which results in a number of severe industrial injuries every year. The scary part is that initially, you don't feel a thing when a concentrated solution of it meets your skin.

Nice stuff HF - i'll rush right out and get me some. My pal the Chemical Engineer has bad dreams about this stuff - it is used in huge quantities in microchip fabrication - one of those "clean industries". "... In addition to being a highly corrosive liquid, hydrofluoric acid is also a contact poison. It should therefore be handled with extreme care, using protective equipment and safety precautions beyond those used with other mineral acids. Owing to its low acid dissociation constant, HF as a neutral lipid-soluble molecule penetrates tissue more rapidly than typical mineral acids. Because of the ability of hydrofluoric acid to penetrate tissue, poisoning can occur readily through exposure of skin or eyes, or when inhaled or swallowed. Symptoms of exposure to hydrofluoric acid may not be immediately evident, and this can provide false reassurance to victims, causing them to delay medical treatment. HF interferes with nerve function, meaning that burns may not initially be painful. Accidental exposures can go unnoticed, delaying treatment and increasing the extent and seriousness of the injury."

I was all set to use my incredibly well developed "being nice on the phone" skills - and didn't have to. Props to Minelab, I barely said the words falsing and greenstuff before i was told to send it in for exchange. I also give full credence to John at ML's statement that relatively few units were affected. I did try to get an account number so they would pay for the shipping, but was told was basically only done with true DOA units. Fair enough.

Whole machine, send in everything, unit, headphones, batteries, charger - and get a new complete boxed unit. Seems the issue is known. John in Customer service (who is very thourough by the way) said it was a known issue affecting a small number of units. Guess they want to "capture" them.

Called ML about my greenstuff falsing issue. Immediate response was - "yes, send it in and we will replace it." Got an RMA in 10 minutes and I will drop it off at FedEx this AM.

I remember the Flight Surgeon in Thiland saying something about raincoats, but that was 45 years ago.

The folks Downunder are busy with the SDC-2300. Keep up with it here http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t20312-coil-size-used-on-gpx-before-the-2300-cleaned-up-old-patches#193870 For my part, I have a call in to ML in Chicago. Mine is falsing over green plants and there is the small matter of gross stupidity - MINE. REMEMBER MY BRILLIANT IDEA ABOUT PROTECTING THE BOTTOM WITH gorilla Tape. Worked great - when I peeled it off, off came the clever anti-counterfiet sticker on the bottom. After spending 20 minutes seperating it from the tape - I stuck ot back on. Hurray, except now - through the magic of holograms or something - it reads VOID - about ten times. Guess the FBI will be knocking soon!!!

Forget the gorilla tape I,guess, I,peeled it off and it took,the nice Genuine Minelab sticker off the bottom with it. I stuck the sticker back on but there is somekind of voovo in it and now it says void! Live and learn.

Much as I like Brigette, she works better when her brain isn't soaked. I was with a couple of dozen Deus users in Denmark in September. They are all very careful to keep the all-to-common Danish rain off their control boxes with a baggie.

JP, just came across this from down your way - seems like what you are talking about. Didn't want to "cross post" so here's the link. http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t20301-the-type-of-gold-the-2300-is-good-on

Thanks, JP - lots of good imformation. My EMI complaints are pretty much of the mains power supply type. Around my neighborhood the domestic power distribution net is 100% underground, with the transformers in boxes on the ground. It's totally abuzz with AC noise. A really tough environment where none but the most insipid detectors of the 20 or so different ones I have used here are unaffected. I was just surprised at the SDC being just as susceptible to it as my lovely old Sd-2100. As I said before, I am quite pleased with the depth the SDC displays against the usual targets I encounter - now if they were only gold instead of the growing collection of lead I have. I may have to take up muzzleloading shooting again and cast my own bullets!

Thanks for the feedback Chris, Unfortunately some patches have powerlines, including the ones I was out on this weekend here in AZ - and EMI immunity was widely reported in the forums. Also, I was struck by the comparison with the SD-2100. Basically, my SDC is no more resistant to EMI than my SD-2100. So do you reckon that that is generally true - or is my SDC worse than average or my SD better than average. If yours doesn't react like mine to things like a 3" high green Palo Verde sprout, then perhaps I need to send mine in for a checkup. I did, after all, carefully note what occurred. Perhaps I will do that, after all, my unit's performance seems to be significantly different from yours. As far as depth, I sort of have the opposite conclusion than you seem to suppose. I have read many hundreds of posts on US and OZ forums and got the clear impression that the SD-2100 was not in any way clearly inferior to GPX series detectors when it came to depth on larger nuggets. Given that, the fact that my SDC comes within a small margin of my SD-2100 when that detector is using a well regarded 14" mono coil is pleasing to me. Given that, and acknowledging the differences between air tests and real ground depth, I was very pleased with the depth of the SDC. I,am pleased with the detector overall,

Condor, I have no gold to show for my SDC efforts (minimal) so far, but i will offer the resilts of air testing here at "Casa Sonora" in Gold Canyon - where there is no gold. Using a nickel as a target, i get: SDC on preset - 12" plus a little -on setting 5 - 13" SD-2100 14" coiltek mono - 14" and a bit - with 8" ML mono 12" plus a bit. One thing worth mentioning. My house is EMI hell, mild mannered Whites machines protest at having to work here. My TDI never gave me a nice threshold and the ATX I had was never entirely smooth. The SDC warbles a lot even after noise cancelling. In fact, even at preset 3, it is more warbly than my SD-2100 with a 14" mono coil. I'm not especially pleased about that after reading many reports about it's EMI resistance. Having said that, it is very quiet over the ground, doesn't have the usual sort of touch sensitivity. However it gives a solid good sigmal every time I brush the top of any green living desert plant, for example a palo verde sprout.