Aureous

I hope you can turn off the microphone option off? I havent bothered to study the instruction manual too heavily but I would expect so? My many years as a full-time professional prospector taught me very quickly NOT to use speakers at any time. The habits I gained from the 80's and 90's have continued to this day. Plus in all my years of detecting, the only times Ive seen snakes is when they're going in the opposite direction to me...except that one time 😉 My years spent in the military gave me a solid sense of spacial awareness so that its a very rare thing for anyone to be in my vicinity without me being aware. If I do decide to try an E1500, it will definitely be with a wireless headphone setup.

In one word....YES. I dunno how the discussions between them started, but he's been in contact with Alex (Roo) & Co for a year or two.

My 'disappointment take' on the new E1500 is a rationale of what 'could have been'. With ex ML engineers being involved, I would have thought that a more variable detector would be sensible. Some minor hardware additions (bigger dump capacitors for example) and coding to allow for a truly deep-seeking detector using big coils would have been a sensible option. Its simply a mode change. Their 'large' mode doesnt recommend using anything bigger than a 14x9 coil FFS! If their idea is to launch their brand with a small gold detector and sell a big gold detector in the future, then they may miss the boat if Nokta beats them to it. Possible bad decision. On a side note, I cant even tell from their quick start or user manual downloads how you even select the different modes.... The modes are mentioned, but nothing directly on how to select them 🤔 The lack of ground tracking may also become a big issue, especially in Australian goldfield conditions. Tracking and locked should be a 'no brainer' I would have thought. But, disappointments aside, it may still be a useful detector.... I still want to try one, just to see how it compares to a 6000 on small gold. The target ID with a mono coil is also an interesting development. Massive potential for lots of users, not just us gold prospectors....

I got quite excited about this detector...but then I saw Nenad's post and echoes of QED started to appear. A 'tiny gold only' machine and grab-only ground balance.... 🙄 Sounds like another typical 'egg head' genius electronics engineer with zero real-world understanding of the machine's use in the field, nor what gold prospectors actually want. It may still provide some benefit if it can detect tiny gold (sizes or shapes) that other PI's cannot hear, provided the ground balance system can cope. Its cheap price and sensible adaptability for coils and power supply is a nice step though. I think I was praying that the holy grail detector was now on the market, but instead it sounds like a tin cup. Think I'll hang onto my 6000 and continue to patiently wait for Nokta to either surprise or disappoint.

'Public Servants', giving the public a serve. Trying to justify their paycheck and existence. 🙄

My Minelab spy told me a couple years ago that Plexus stopped making the PCB's for the 5000 when Covid hit so no actual new 5000's have been assembled since 2020. All they are selling is old stock. Once they are all gone, there will be no more. Unless a big new gold rush happens and demand dictates new manufacture of an older, discounted detector.....unlikely.

Ive let Luke know that many years ago, when this heritage act was being formulated, the PMAV (Prospectors and Miners Association of Victoria) got an agreed legal exemption from the act whereby all finders of said 'artifacts' now had recognized 'custodianship' and were exempt from the penalties of the act. Hopefully this is still valid. Ive suggested he contact the PMAV for details.

yeah that would be handy...i'd use that feature eventually. 🤔

On my 6000, all I really want is a manual frequency tune, a threshold control and a special timing to ignore most lead shot 😉

Don't worry about that, worry about the thing that bit this croc's head clean off!!!! 😮

I also never found one available for a sensible price either. It was the one coil I could have used a lot if I had one 😞

I reckon if someone else (or a company) took over Howards concept and made it triple channel with ground tracking, it could match or beat anything out there. Especially if there were several timings coded for it. But, it seems extinction is the likely scenario 😞

XP detectors have always been just a serious coin/relic machine to us here in Oz, so they're always 'off the radar' when it comes to VLF gold prospecting. If you praise the Orx Jeff, perhaps its worth a serious look. Here in Oz, they are $200 cheaper than even the Nokta Legend!

What the Russkies have done with their coils is absolutely nothing special, just a lotta hours of trial and error, experimentation and common sense. I could start making those coils easily (coz they have done all the initial hard work TBH) with the injection of just $50K to get a production line started. You'd be looking at a wholesale markup of around 300% with no coil being over US$500 each retail. If Minelab started the same thing for the GPZ8, it would be farmed off to the lowest bidder in Malaysia with the resulting poor quality.....as we've seen with the GPX6000 coils.

Could not agree more..... and you're not the only one to lose $$ trying to help him Reg. 😑

The 3 biggest issues with the QED are single channel (limited to either small-medium targets or larger only), complicated, multi segment setup and most of all, a ground-grab fixed ground balance. Soon as you get into more mineralized ground conditions, the Minelab machines beat it easily. Numerous side-by-side & test patch comparisons have proven this over and over. It certainly finds gold and for the money, its a great option for those wishing to get into PI prospecting on a budget. Light weight and coil options give it Kudos as well. But serious operators give it a wide berth in exchange for better performing ML machines.

Most Everyone is well aware of Rohan's difficulties in running his business which he does remarkably well, considering the small workforce and the quality he produces. What I was referring to, is the Minelab chip stuff-up. That issue set NF back many months. Its a total clusterf%$k that ML went down the track of chipping the coils to start with...totally unnecessary and detrimental to the uptake of the 6000. Add to that, the sad illness and death incidents, it certainly a bad year for them. I am a big supporter of NF and have bought numerous coils from them and have always had zero issues. Hope 2024 is a much more positive year for Rohan & Co.

100% correct Simon.... I think we both know the dramas that occurred early last year. I believe the word 'Clusterf&%k' has been used more than once.... 😁

Steve, your DP guide is still amazingly relevant, and a lot of work has obviously gone into it. As you may recall, I started a book (haven't finished it, now I'm homeless and starting life No.4) and my top rated detectors for gold still haven't changed. In pure High Frequency VLF's the top 3 are still the 24K, the Gold Kruzer and the Gold Bug 2 (if the user can handle a manual ground balance). The Gold Monster wouldn't even make the top 10 with me... In Multi-use VLF's, the Nokta Legend and the Equinox 800/900 & prob the Manti deserves to be there too. In PI's, the 7000, the 6000, the 5000 and the 2300. Plus of course the Axiom deserves to be there....somewhere in between the 6000 and 5000. Anyone serious in getting into detector prospecting need not look anywhere else but the machines mentioned. Everything else is just 'fluff' 😉

Ive used and owned the stock 11, the stock 14DD, the Coiltek 10x5 and the NF 12x7. The 10x5 had a minor edge in sensitivity (best of any coil) but was similar in noise characteristics to the stock 11 mono. The NF 12x7 now rarely leaves my detector.... easily the quietest coil and whisper signals are more easily heard. No wonder NF can't keep up with demand and the other sizes aren't available yet because of it.

Joe Legendre is fighting cancer and might not be putting up videos anymore. Things are not looking good for him 😞

Yeah I trialed both silver multi-strand and silver coated copper which seemed to have the correct specs per foot but like Geof said, they had a frustrating noise issue. Tried Aluminium wire as well (from Microwave ovens) and same issue. So far, Ive found only 4 types of litz and Teflon/nylon coated multi-strand wire that work perfectly every time.

Looks like I'll have to tear-down a 6000 coil just to take a look at that. Very curious..... With your whole-coax-and-chip idea, do you find any bump sensitivity from the external connectors outside the coil?

Yeah, I forgot about Goldfields Goose (Daniel and his Mum) and Nenad (Phase tech), my apologies for leaving those guys out. ML gold went to Western Australia and is probably still there, but videos are not on his agenda anymore.

Just wondering Chet, how far off are the specs on the various coils you are winding, versus the legacy GPX coils? The X coils guys were suggesting that the 6000 and 5000 coil specs are near identical..... say in the 290-350uH inductance and <1ohm resistance ranges. You say that the older coils don't work as well on the 6000 using your adapter set-up???