Rick K - First Member

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the different distribution and sales arrangements FT has both in the US and overseas. Having said that it's awfully confusing to people like us who are reasonably knowledgeable about what detectors are available here and what their various capabilities price levels etc. are. You kind of get the impression that with first Texas their primary interest is in selling detectors and designing and manufacturing that is kind of a necessary evil. They have at least two extremely capable metal detector designers and a large engineering team otherwise. It's reasonable to expect them that we will see a steady stream of true the new products developed. But as to how when and where they are marketed what they're called what labels they're sold under and very importantly what their quality control processes are for ensuring that the product at least the factory is reliable that we know nothing about in previous experience suggests will continue to be pretty confusing on the brand ID front and pretty spotty on the quality control front. A pity really.

Metal detectors, matresses and hearing aids. Three things which are overpriced, and hard to get real imformation about. Now we see some more sensible tendency in pricing and a reasonable degree of openness from a manufacturer of a metal detector. First that and now there is a new matress company which sells direct and gives you three momths to return it at their expense if you don't like it (casper matress). Now that I can't hear crap, I just await the break up of the crooked hearing aid racket! So far however that bunch is "turning a deaf ear" to my complaints ... LOL.

I think production volumes and economic ordering quantities of parts have a lot to do with it. Making changes is a lot easier at a volume of a few hundred units a year than at a volume of a few thousand units a month. As far as "thinking outside the box" goes, there have only been three major manufacturers who have made ground balancing PI detectors. Minelab was first and has a "thicket" of patents on their methods of multi sample target analysis and ground balancing. Whites used a design which pre-dated ML and used a simpler two sample GB method developed by Eric Foster. Garrett's infinium seems to operate much like the Foster system. The ATX may be different somehow, but using it, it seemed to me to be like the infinium but just improved. The difficulty in doing better than ML lies mostly in the fact that a two sample method leaves a Hole in the detection of targets which give a return at the same time constant as the ground signal. Tough to fix this and ML's patents make using their method impossible. If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on a fall 2015 release of a new gold machine from First Texas. That assumes however that whatever they are busy working on actuall works out and is at least as good as the ATX. The market where all the money is is Africa and they don't have to beat the GPX for that market, the GPX's price is already killing sales there. Pulse Induction isn't the only technology possible however and Minelab's new GPZ may not be a PI machine at all!

My SD-2100’s threshold is very slightly smoother than my SDC s, but target signals are crisp and clear with the SDC, a bit more distinct than the SD.

As a recovering victim of four years of Latin in high school, let me bore everybody to death. Deus - Latin for god. Latin has noun "cases" - the form of the word changes if it is the subject or object or to indicate "belongs to" And so on. It also changes if it's singular or plural. Deus (pronounced "day- oos") is singular, and is the form used when it is the subject of the sentence - called the nominative case. The equivalent plural form is Dei (pronounced "day-ee") Are you bored yet???

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.