Rick K - First Member

85¢ each at Jameco http://www.jameco.com/1/1/52214-12bh341-gr-4-aa-battery-holder-snaps.html

What a beauty! This is not the busiest Forum in the world, but there seems to be a certain focus developing of thoughtful, inquiring folks who want to share and learn without a lot of noise and nonsense. Thanks for sharing. I suspect that there are a number of outlets for beautiful specimens like yours. It's not only the finding which requires a bit of digging, it can also be the marketing which can add great value.

Because I thought they didn't come with the coil cover – I didn't find the darn thing inside the front panel of the case until a couple of weeks after I had spent a happy hour plastering gorilla tape all over the bottom of my coil. Sad part is the gorilla tape is a heck of a lot harder to get off that was to get on. Life's tough when you're stupid!

Was the closed cover a standard part of the ATX? I got one second hand and the closed cover was packed inside the zippered pick in the front cover of the soft case.

Touché! I did once find a lost gold earring in my library however!

Oops, following too many forums. Need to do a little search before I post. I had a funny feeling that Nokta sounded familiar for some reason - should have checked it out - I would have found Steve's informative post. Apparently the name means "Dot" in Turkish. Oh well. Hard day of Pickleball today. Got hit right in the eye with a ball in my first game and some burly guy from the next court crashed into me chasing a ball and knocked me silly in my last game.

The competition for the scarce dollars of artisanal gold miners in the 3rd World is heating up. Nokta is a turkish (I said Russian before) company. All those clever engineers who don't have either US tech industry or US Defense industry are busy designing metal detectors. Notice the form factor - remind you of a certain PI detector. It's a VLF, of course.

I just read this ad on Craigalist and it was GREAT! Read to the end. http://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/pts/4368423576.html 2001 Toyota Tacoma SR5 4X4 Extra Cab 2.7L 5sp - $1200 (Wickenburg) © craigslist - Map data © OpenStreetMap (google map) (yahoo map) Complete truck. All or none. First come, first serve. Recovered from a canyon for insurance company to save them a littering fee. I have the title signed off by the husband who co owned the truck. It is not notarized. If you are going to do something stupid like try to rebuild the truck, you will need to contact the wife and have her sign off and notarize as well. I am not chasing it. I am selling the truck for recovery and storage fees as dismantle only for a fraction of what a parts yard could make parting it out. I have had the truck in my yard for a year. Please ask any questions before asking to see the truck. Saves me and you time and money. Stupid offers will be deleted. No trades, not interested in services. If you make me spend $40 in fuel to show the truck, and offer me $600, needless to say I wont be happy. By the way, there could be seven one ounce silver coins somewhere in the truck. There was 4k worth of coins in the truck. All but 7 of them were recovered with a metal detector at the crash site. six 0 two seven 9 six 2 seven 4 eight - Ted

I got an SD-2100 a few weeks ago along with 3 coils, an 11" mono, an 8" mono and a 14" coiltek mono. Not sure how the original owner ended up with that package, but that's what he got. Anyway, I tried it a bit and found the dreaded threshold warble a bit much to put up with. I did a lot of reading on various forums and found various references to steadier threshold with increased supply voltage using various battery packs. I posted in one forum's classified, looking for a Coiltek Pocket Rocket system used. Nobody came up with one, but it lead to my meeting a great local prospector type who had an older Reeds Li-ion battery system/amplifier. He kindly passed this on to me since he no longer had his SD-2100. There were a couple of snags along the way, like a dead charger, but I eventually got it all sorted out. This box is about a third the weight of the original battery and the input from the battery pack is 11.4 volts with the output adjustable up to over 8 volts. Mine is currently set at about 7.4 volts. I am delighted at being able to maintain a really smooth threshold, even though my EMI environment is pretty bad. Checked side by side with the original 6 volt battery, the difference is pretty great. All in all, it is almost as smooth as the Garrett ATX, and I believe it is more powerful. I will be playing with these two more to investigate sensitivity to small gold and larger objects at more depth.

Some problems in the back of beyond. With the unrest in Sinai, the need to restore civil order in the towns, etc. The Egyptian Security Forces are not doing much in the "Eastern Desert" where the gold is. Besides gold seekers, there are people smugglers, dope smugglers and other bad actors. What there isn't is any infrastructure, water, food, electricity, etc. If things settle down in a year or two, there is a possibility for a well regulates artisanal mining effort. "Inshallah" as they say there - "God Willing".

New post on Fisher's Facebook page - notice the 6x10 elliptical coil. Fisher Research Labs about an hour ago Our new Fisher F19 models on display at IWA in Nuremberg Germany! The F19 will come in pink camo, green camo and fisher gold. Stay tuned for more information, these things are going to be AWESOME relic hunters!

Just like winning the lottery or hitting a huge jackpot in Vegas or at the track. It's income (maybe in this case Capital Gains) you owe tax on it, just like all of us do on our earnings. It's been around since 1917, you think folks might have gotten used to it by now! LOL.

Apologies again for a cross-post. TAMING THE SAVAGE ARMADILLO - Or as Steve once referred to it - a duck out of water. I posted already that the sling provided wasn't much help for me. Today I received my ML Pro Swing 45 harness. Oh bliss! It works very well to take the dead weight of the great Armadillo off my arm and shoulder. There is a nice shoulder strap and hip belt arrangement and a very clever adjustable bungee to hold the detector. Another feature that really works is the plastic J-strut which transfers weight from the shoulder strap,down to the back of the hip belt. Garrett should immediately rip off this idea, thereby returning the favor for ML's rip off of the Garrett Pro Pointer. IMHO. Meanwhile, I await the $2000 Garret LTX - a lean, mean 3 pound version of the Armadillo for skinny terrestrial bipeds like myself - we can call it the Roadrunner. If they do that I will become a dealer and sell them door-to-door!

Dave Johnson is an extremely talented engineer and a pretty amazing guy. Here's a quote from him that I found on a site where he posts non-metal detecting stuff, the quote however is about his philosophy of engineering - and life. "Our engineering dept at work has the equivalent of 3 engineers doing consumer product metal detector design work. We arguably outproduce the rest of the entire industry, because our philosophy is "screw up as fast as you can, and always stumble forward". Our challenge is never "but what if we make a mistake?" "

Fred, I know nothing about West Africa, but in East Africa where the other recent gold rush is, there is no metallic rubbish. First of all, the gold bearing formations in Sudan are in the back of beyond, secondly, every scrap of stray metal in countries that poor is plucked up immediately for re-use or sale. When I lived in Abu Dhabi, for example, there were poor East Asians cycling around the city picking up cardboard to recycle for a few pennies so that they could afford to eat that day. Under those circumstances, discrimination is unnecessary. I'm not even sure that depth is a big deal, nor do I know if mineralization is a factor limiting VLF use. The gold rush in Sudan which pushed the price of ML 4500’s to absurd heights did so in an atmosphere of ignorance as to the correct match between requirements and tools. It may well be that for those poor artisanal miners in their flip-flops, a Tesoro Compadre might have been a more rational tool considering cost/performance. Now we have Garrett and ML each leveraging their "Armadillo" mine detector package into a gold detector. I have to believe that the 3rd world with its possibility for sudden explosions of detector sales is the real market. The pity is that if the actual requirements could be studied, then a battery thrifty detector like the Tesoro Diablo μMax might hit the sweet spot!

Apologies in advance for cross-posting. I think that probably anyone who has used the ATX on land realizes that for "non-combat" dry land operations, the whole armadillo thing is way overkill. By the way, does the "A" in ATX just stand for "Armadillo" - just askin' 'cause I grew up in South Texas. But what to do? Why would Garrett spend a bundle to develop a land only version - only to undercut the sales of the ATX at a lower price point? Doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, the accessory coils cost a huge amount because they are built like Queen Victoria's sewer pipes! I have a modest proposal. Give us a series of elliptical mono coils for prospecting use. A nice 6 or 7" , a 10" and a 14". Make these to fit either a light rod with the ATX hip or chest mounted, or give is a light stem assembly of "non armadillo" type similar to what Paul (CA) has developed. They can have their cake and eat it too. No new $1500 land detector now, to cut into the sales of the $2000 or so ATX, and lots of lovely aftermarket coil sales. Also, by the way, the sling doesn't work worth a darn for me. I am 5'11" and slim. The part that goes under my arm cuts off circulation in two minutes. The bit that goes across my shoulders and neck has an unpadded connection right where it bites into my scrawny neck. I just bought a ML Pro-Swing harness which should do just fine. Just so nobody gets the wrong idea, I love my ATX and am very excited about the new possibilities it offers.

Goldenoldie - No doubt, and air isn't ground!!! I have a random bit of lead - maybe 15 grams or so buried in my moderate mineralized AZ dirt, and the ATX does about as well- maybe better - than the SD-2100 on that. What is really interesting to me is that my location is pretty much EMI hell. None of my VLF's like it here on discriminate, they warble and spit. My TDI has a steady warble no matter what I do, the ATX will not usually tolerate more than 10-11 on sensitivity. With all that, my SD-2100 - with it's terrible reputation for the warbles, runs smoother than my TDI. Mind you, it is fed by a regulated 7.5 volt battery pack and this is supposed to smooth out these SD machines. My pack is an older Reed's Prospecting model in a solid billet Aluminum box - not the new cute clip on ones. My next purchase will be a ML harness. The ATX is heavy as lead and my old joints need all the support they can get. I have tried a simple harness I got with the SD-2100, but it puts too much weight on the right shoulder. The Garrett sling is hopeless for me. If you are a Large or Extra Large in a dress shirt and if you don't mind something cutting off the circulation in your offside armpit, it might be OK. But I digress! I hope to get out soon to test my trio in the goldfields.

I figured Harbor freight would have something so I went to their webpage and plugged and battery tester in the search box. There's the cheapest one I found $2.49 http://t.harborfreight.com/household-battery-tester-96377.html

Sadly, I have no 12 oz gold nuggets to test, and don't feel like digging a 2 - 3 foot deep hole either. Lacking a lump of lead the right weight, I scrounged up a brass door lock assembly, round brass mounting boss and all, about 2.5" diameter and weighing nine oz. In air, my ATX with sensitivity on 13 picked it up out to about 20". My SD-2100 with an 11" mono coil got it out to about 25". That proves nothing, of course, but the ML is definitely deeper than the ATX by some noticeable margin.

I found this post over on the Big Boys Hobbies forum. How much of it is applicable to prospecting is open to question – but it's a thoughtful and detailed summary of one guy's experience with the ATX looking for relics. I think this guy is a dealer but I don't think that invalidates what he had to say. Of course one of the beauties of this forum is that Steve isn't a dealer, he doesn't – as far as I recall – have any problem with links to other forums even if they're commercially sponsored. http://forum.bigboyshobbies.net/forum/metal-detector-accessories-discussion/garrett-detectors-discussion/atx/963-several-hunts-in-and-loving-it

The GM-3 wasn't as hot as my GM-4, plus I liked the push pad GB on the 4 better. Besides I had an offer I couldn't refuse for the 3. I know it's considered to be the cream of the pre-GMT crop, but I liked the 4b better. The Tesoro was nice, but I kept forgetting which position the switch to choose between the 2 Gb settings was in. In a "hot rock hell" I prefer the discrimination of the GB-2 to flipping back and forth on the toggle switch of the μMax. At least on the GB2, the absence of a threshold tone reminds me that I'm not in the "primary" - in this case, all metal - mode. Also another case of an irresistible offer. Probably should have kept it - just because they are so hard to find. I don't claim that all of my choices were optimum, but I learn as I go along. Because I have been fortunate to find detectors that interest me at bargain prices, I have been able to experiment with them at low cost by selling them on pretty quickly without loss. I have high hopes for the ATX. Small gold, bigger gold to reasonable depth, beach and fresh water, packs nicely for foreign adventures - we'll see. For other than gold hunting on land, there is nothing in AZ which makes demands beyond what my venerable Whites Classic III SL with Mr. Bill's mods can't handle. I also eagerly await the next round of offerings from First Texas.

Yes, it is a sickness. Having tested and sent on their way for various reasons a: GoldMaster 3 Goldmaster 4b Original Lobo Lobo Super Trak AU-52 Diablo μmax And having on hand until further notice a: Goldmaster 4b chest mount GOLD bug Pro Gold Bug 2 MXT TDI Sd-2100 Whites DF PI I am receiving on Tuesday an ATX, I am now ready to take the field and look for AZ gold. Now any normal person would have set off years ago with his first gold detector and found out whether he really had what it takes to find gold. But then, who said I was normal. The current plan is to find out if the ATX can replace all of the above stuff except for the GB2 and the SD-2100. The former because NOTHING can touch it for finding crumbs. The latter because I just got it and I need to scratch the Minelab itch a bit, plus I have met someone who loves this detector and is willing to help me learn it - especially for meteorite hunting. In my own defense I can only offer the fact that metal detectors fascinate me as devices. I have derived endless pleasure puttering around on my 3 acres or so of AZ desert trying to hear what the various machines are saying to me about the ground and it's contents. So Thursday we head up to a club claim and start the "Survivor" process.

Wow. Read your report and promptly bought what might be the first used ATX to come up for sale. Some guy didn't like it and traded it for a couple of Tesoro detectors - a Sand Shark and something else. His loss and the dealer's gain (and mine!). Now I need so sell my DF PI, a Goldmaster 4b chest mount, an MXT and possibly my TDI to pay for it! Look forward to hearing more. Hope you also continue to use the ATX for nugget hunting so we can hear more about its ability to find "crumbs" as well as how it handles hot rocks and bad ground.

Steve is absolutely right that the developing world market is where ML needs to make this detector a best seller. If it works and says "Minelab" on it it will sell as well as the local market demand for gold detectors dictates. The market for ML's current products has cooled dramatically as reflected by their revenue and especially inventory figures from late 2013. How much of this is due to a slow down in overall demand and how much it represents sales of other units in lieu of ML detectors is impossible to judge. In other words, did ML's sales fall off a cliff because The gold rushes are over - due to unrest or other factors? The gold detector rush is over - i.e. All effective detector demand met? The Minelab rush is over - i.e. other detectors are being substituted? If Minelab knows, they are not saying - their public statements chalk it up to political unrest. As to my statements on the other forum, I committed several errors - I posted on a forum where I normally only lurk and have no earned credibility - nobody likes a seagull - they fly in, make a lot of noise, crap on everything and fly away. My bad. I referred to the new detector as having the "guts" of the SD2200 - guess the term guts is too much for some folks sensibilities. I based my statement on a tear-down of the F1 mine detector by John Kah, one of the founders of Coiltek. That was quite a while ago and this machine may not be as similar to the SD2200 as the earlier one. In any event I did not properly acknowledge the stated new stuff, namely the MPF. I said it would be DOA in the US market - I have no way of knowing whether that is true since I don't actually know the US price, although the Australian price is apparently$3500. For all of this I was quite justifiably taken to task in polite but no uncertain terms by JP. Fair enough, lesson learned. As far as the US, it needs to work as well as the ATX. If it is clearly better in some clear way - in that case, even a premium price like $3500 won't stop it selling vs the ATX. The problem for ML is how many GPX sales will it cannabalize. For US dealers, a cheaper Minelab with few if any accessories ready to sell with it might not be so welcome. For me, I am not in the market for a GPX5000, not because I think the price can't be justified, but because I can't justify it with a legitimate use case where I can extract value commensurate with the price. On the other hand, a detector which would replace my current TDI or my recent SD2100, plus my surf PI DF, plus a couple of VLF's I have - and which could be funded by the couple of thousand I could get for the replaced machines is very interesting. Minelab's marketing strategy - early teasers to cover the SDC being late to market is working, at least in my case. I will wait for the dust to settle and see if either The ATX or the SDC are what I want - namely a PI detector I can take into the field with confidence and a minimum of control twiddling.

The SDC is very likely based on the F3 Compact mine detector in much the same fashion that the Garrett ATX is based on the Garrett Recon mine detector. Folks that have owned the Recon and now have an ATX make it clear that there have been significant improvements in the ATX to make it more suitable for detecting gold. It's reasonable to expect that Minelab have done something similar with the transition from the F3 Compact to the SDC. if you look at Minelabs information online for the F3 compact - and the F3 which it was derived from - you will see that they talk about multiperiod sensing or MPS. This is the technology that was introduced with the original SD series detectors right through the ST 2200. The STC announces Multi Period Fast sensing or MPF. This probably means that the pulse delay is shorter than in the F3. Here's a nice ML power point slide showing the evolution. Per this, the SDC is pretty clearly refined SD technology, not GP technology.