Geotech

During my tenure I defined a new 2-frequency product that would be hi/lo switchable. The low was 6+18 kHz and the high was 18+54kHz. When I left the engineer designing it seemed to have it working pretty well (on the bench) and the SignaGraph was especially impressive. Sometime later he also left the company and the product was obviously never released. I've never heard what happened with it.

All true.

When the V3 was released the China hobby market was almost zero. I think it is still almost zero as metal detecting in China (as I recall) is illegal.

Reorganizing means finding a buyer. Probably someone will buy it, either in pieces or as a whole. Whether that means the name will live on depends on the buyer(s).

True, I will maintain both an F-Pulse and a TRX in my arsenal, but I'm biased. And if I wanted a diver unit I wouldn't use either of these.

https://geotech1.com/images/PP_OperationR2.pdf

Simon, if you got the test shot I sent you then you can compare with these tests I made: TRX -- #9 Minelab 35 -- #6 F-Pulse -- #4 Makro -- #4 Garrett (orig) -- almost #2 The best to small stuff are the VLF units (TRX & ML35), but you need to test them in salt to see if they are stable. The PI units (Fisher, Makro) lose the tiniest stuff but handle salt better. The Garrett is neither PI nor IB/VLF; I don't have the orange Garrett which, I believe, is a little more sensitive. The F-Pulse saves settings, even when you remove batteries. The settings can be a little difficult (I have a better manual if you need) but they are preferences intended to be set just once. I designed the F-Pulse and did the hardware design on the TRX and, yes, the TRX was more difficult to design and manufacture. It was so difficult I didn't want to do it again, plus that particular design belonged to White's.

I stopped by White's today. It made me sad to see it so empty. But I spoke with Steve Howard and he confirmed there is quite a bit of interest from entities wanting to buy the place. Whether that means the whole package or bits & pieces is TDB. They are working up a portfolio of assets and valuations for interested parties. Then see what offers come back. I'll give it even odds that the White's name will continue in some fashion.

Strictly personal. I will leave it to White's what I can and cannot say.

The TRX will typically detect under 1 grain, usually down to about 1/2 grain and gets coins at 3-4 inches. The Bullseye II is good down to 1 or 2 grains and coins to 1" or so. You may get lucky and find a Bullseye that will hit under a grain, or unlucky and find a TRX that will not. On interference, luck also plays a vital role. Any model pinpointer is capable of interfering with any model detector. All detectors and pinpointers run at a frequency that has manufacturing variance, and it's the variance that makes one TRX interfere with one MXT, but not another. I specifically recall testing the TRX with several MXTs and saw no interference, but I knew then as now that wasn't a guaranteed outcome for everyone.

If directed at me, I hold no grudges towards White's. As I've said, in 40 years of employment it was the funnest 6 years I've ever had. My first real detector was a 6000/D and I still use a V3. I always had hopes that someone would get things turned around before this happened and I wish it had been me.

I'm gonna head over this week and try to get that answer.

I know what you meant, I feel much the same way. The SL was supposed to be a re-boot of the TDI effort. The TDI was difficult to manufacture, it had (I recall) 14 trim pots. The SL had 1 trim pot. The SL suffered a slight depth loss but was more stable. The board was designed to be put in either the SL box or the big TDI box with Lithium power. The intent was an upgrade that had both depth and stability. The board also fit the Beachhunter waterproof box and I built protos for this but it was rejected by mgmt. I hinted at this on the forums and eventually someone (Tom?) picked up on it and released it. There were also extra components on the board to implement ground tracking and a couple of other features. So there was a plan, it just didn't have priority. And the retirement of Dan Geyer left me as the only guy who could (or would) work on it.

The TDI-SL was purely a development for Africa. The intent was a simple AA battery system and sub-$1000 price tag. Some were built and sent to Africa but it didn't catch on, so the SL was released for domestic sales. I argued hard for a sub-$1000 price tag but lost. If you look at the PCB on the SL you will see some unstuffed parts that were for future development, including auto ground track. But then I got onto truncated half-sine and the performance was so much better that I completely abandoned the TDI platform. The reason half-sine never saw the light of day is because, for 3 years, I was diverted to developing a security walk-thru which, after I finished the project and even built a production line, was canceled. There is more to the walk-thru story I may tell one day; it is probably the key reason White's failed.

Thanks for the insult Reg. I wasn't questioning Howard's technical abilities, from everything I've heard about the QED it is a very capable detector and Howard did a good job with it. But I do question his business acumen. Sitting on a forum, bashing the competition, and repeatedly daring them to sue you was poor etiquette at best and outright stupidity at worst. And he reaped his reward. I suspect that White's could have done an admirable job selling the QED and Howard could have made a nice chunk of money while moving on to his next great idea. I'll note that Bruce is not sitting in his garage building detectors to sell, probably he's in his walk-in vault counting his money. It's ironic that things could have worked out differently for both Howard and White's with some better applied judgement.