Geotech

White's had a program whereby you enter the serial numbers and it spits out an override password. Either Garrett has it, or no one has it.

LMAO, yeah, engineers are certainly "different." Flydog, quite a few people tell me they never get the confirmation email. I don't know why.

What White's produced was a reflection of what the owners wanted, not necessarily what the market wanted. The Whites loved the metal boxes and, to be fair, White's could build 'em like nobody's business, and all done in-house. I jokingly called it "metal box technology" and pushed hard for modern plastic designs that were smaller. At the time I was not envisioning something as small as the Equinox or Simplex but something more like the Apex. Just before I left they were developing the MX-Sport package. Again, large and heavy, and I opposed it strongly. But they also loved 8-AA batteries and insisted on it.

This was something I worked on at White's, here is a patent I filed on a more practical version of the technology: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9285496B1 I had it fully built and working with manual ground balance. It was deeper & quieter than a TDI. I was working on autotrack and discrimination and had both crudely functioning, and that's when I left White's. I saw no big technical hurdles left to overcome. Over the years I stayed in touch with people at White's but no one (to my knowledge) ever tried to pick up where I left off. Don't know why. I'd love to finish it but I don't own the patent.

If you mean J20, it's right next to the micro which means it is probably used to set the micro in a particular mode or state for factory cal.

No difference.

I suppose compared to what else was available at the time the 66TR could once have been considered a competent gold hunter. Not today. There is nothing you can do to it that will make it a fraction as good as even a mundane modern nugget detector. If he wants to use it then I suggest taking it out for some coin hunting. A few years ago I ran into a lady hunting a park with a White's 49er TR (same circuit as the 66TR) and she was still popping out coins, just not very deep.

What was missing from this was a baseline test. They should have first let the dowser (Brett?) dowse the boxes while knowing which box held the gold. Typically the dowser will score 100% on this portion of the test. When I've done this test with people, they get a strong response and very quickly reach a conclusion when they know which box holds the gold. When the test goes blind, they report a much weaker reaction and a lot of uncertainty, and it takes them a lot longer to make their selection. I've never had anyone hit 30%, one got 20%. Most give up after a few blind runs because their dowsing reactions are so weak and inconsistent, especially compared the baseline test.

Skeptics emit what I call "SkepticWaves." Not only blocks dowsing, but also ESP, telepathy, psychokinesis, and pretty much all other paranormal abilities. Powerful stuff.

General rule-of-thumb is that the higher the sensitivity, the less closing range you get. That's because close targets overload the front-end analog circuitry and once that happens you only get a solid beep. The F-Pulse can ratchet down to about an inch on a coin before it becomes a solid beep. I played around with a few ways of extending this but they created some really weird effects. So it is what it is. The TRX can ratchet down all the way to a coin touching the tip so for what you want it would be the better choice. If you can find one.

Not at all. Science is a methodology for getting to truth, nothing more. So far it is overwhelmingly the best method we have. It is far superior to edicts, guesswork, and beliefs. Look around you at all the man-made items within arm's reach and consider all the science behind those items. It is truly amazing. Far more amazing than any beliefs in paranormal powers. Paranormal powers make for cool movies, but are otherwise useless; if they were real the world would be a very different place.

Now that I think about it, the GMZ may have used a Classic board design. I was thinking it was GMT-based but it was not. Dan Geyer designed it just for kicks and it worked pretty well, so White's decided to sell them. I think he took a Classic, bumped it up to 48kHz, and added a manual GB.

The PCB doesn't look like a GMZ, I think it's a Classic-SL.

I had an unenforceable (badly written) 2 year NDA but even if enforceable would not have prevented me from designing a similar product, meaning a VLF pinpointer. Just not the same design. And since I did not write the TRX micro code, it would have been guaranteed to be a different design. But it still might have looked a bit dodgy so I chose a PI design to avoid any semblance of dodginess.

It's a good story, but not reality. I worked there, and still kept tabs after I left. Sales were falling continuously. Every time I dropped by, there were fewer and fewer cars in the parking lot. Yes, there was a couple of years quite a while back where sales in Africa exploded, then the Chinese counterfeits put a stop to that. The owners were irrelevant because they did very little in the company. Once upon a time there was talk of an employee buy-out but in the end there wasn't much for them to buy out.

What you see for sale is a bunch of older generic stuff that practically no one who might buy "the company" would want to mess with. What is not for sale is all the key equipment for making detectors. I suspect they are still trying to strike a deal on an overall sale. For the most part, there is nothing preventing a company from making the same detectors as White's was making. Replicating the circuit design is easy, but they would also need the micro source code. Source code repositories are on the company server with limited access so it's not a matter of anyone's "know-how," it's a matter of having the source code. Everything else is simple. If an "overall sale" never happens then White's may piecemeal-sell the designs, and then FTP might show an interest. When I started the F-Pulse design I considered re-creating the TRX. I did not because (a) I had only recently left White's and felt that would be a bit unethical, and (b) the TRX was an incredibly difficult project (I designed the circuit, but did not write the micro code so I would have to start from scratch on that). So I went with PI instead. One day I may design a "PRX" pinpointer, but not for now.

Lee Harris owned it last, and I think he ran it for a very long time, maybe back to '79 when it switched from Long John Latham's. I would assume he got the rights to all the LJL articles since he often recycled them in later issues. In any case, most everything prior to 1978 falls under the 1909 copyright act which provided 28 years of copyright protection. You could renew for an additional 28 years but most likely none of the magazine articles were renewed. Back then they had to be physically registered and that would have been a lot of work for a magazine.

The "Sensational... 12T" -- I have one of those. There was another Texas company called Jetco that competed with Relco in cheap BFOs. "Jetco" was named for the owner, John E. Turner. Does anyone know where the name Relco came from?

Actually, the last pulse delay (11.5) is actually 15us. It was a last second change to better accommodate full submersion.

"Centreville Electronics Northwest" is actually Todd Marshall who ran the factory service dept for many years.

I expect Todd can, but not Centerville.

That has more to do with recovery speed than number of frequencies.

Yes, he will.

Todd's in his 40's (I guess) so he should be around for a while. There is also Centerville Electronics but, for now, I think they are not doing warranty work. Todd will have a pretty big haul of parts to work with but, yes, when a part is gone it's gone. The ones to worry about are plastic housings, coils, and PC boards. Of course, if there is a buyer for White's then those might continue. Joe, the software and all the injection-molded plastic are proprietary. The electronics are made with generic parts, but the PCBs have to be manufactured and probably Todd would not have the resources to do that if he ran out.

I suspect they were just selling out what was in the warehouse. I went over to White's today for a last-second repair of my V3. Todd (who has run the Service Dept for many years) has struck a deal with the White's to run a repair center from his home for at least another 2 years and he will be reimbursed for all warranty repairs. So warranty repairs are fully covered for at least 2 more years.