jasong

Thanks, I will give them a call and if they don't sell the liners then maybe they can point me in the right direction. Since posting I sorta gave up on the bowl as a lost cause and put it in the backyard, but I'd love to get it running if I can as I had some mining plans for it. Read through that jig page. Looks like what I have are two "Yuba" style duplex jigs. They are 600lbs each, pretty large. I've already rebuilt and refinished one of them about 90%. I also bought an old truck mounted drilling rig that basically needs totally rebuilt so that should be a challenge, I have no idea how to use this thing either once I get it running again (and I was once a directional driller on big oil rig - but not the same). It's totally new to me, don't know anyone with any experience with this stuff. But that's part of the fun, learning it all. If anyone has any experience maybe they'll stumble on this thread, I didn't really find much posted in the past about this type of equipment so figured it might be good to have a thread out there.

Does any place still make and sell the rubber Knudsen bowl liner? Google seems to just lead to a bunch of spam pages. I acquired an old bowl and the previous owner thought there was a store in Reno that made or sold them but I haven't had any luck locating said store. Also semi-related I am rebuilding an old jig, never used one before, and I was wondering what people use for shot? Do you just buy steel shot in bulk like from an ammo place or is there something cheaper and better to use specific to jigs? I see tungsten shot available for jigs but it's the same density as gold more or less so I'm having trouble seeing how that would work, especially if I want to save the black sands too. I'm curious what people use here?

Vesicular basalt

I've found nuggets down 10 inches into caliche. As Steve says, it's invisible to a detector, at least in it's pure form. However, caliche doesn't have to homogenous, depending on how/where it formed. It can have salts in it (you will know when you pop the nugget into your mouth to clean it), and it can have layers of black sands. Those two things can affect detection depth. It just varies by area, usually it's pretty mild.

It looks like Steve's articles are working again, did they get the whole site fixed?

I think that's a pretty accurate representation of the current industry too. But the reason I posted my chart was to show the growth segments. Which are the demographics which currently have interest and are potential customers, but don't yet own detectors and don't attend shows, for what I believe are the reasons I posted. I'm just posting for general interest, not in specific reference to White's. I just think the detector industry as a whole has really passed over a lot of potential customers due to their pricing schemes. Treasure hunting in general appeals to a lot of different age groups after all so the fact that a large segment is absent as product users should be a red flag for any manufacturer.

Also, I agree with Mike Hillis' idea about some kind of app driven marketing plan. This was something I mentioned myself, before the GPZ was released and I was speculating on it's (then unknown) potential to be digitally updated and how it would naturally lend to an app type marketplace similar to phones. It's a proven marketing technique that turns breakeven hardware into an ongoing source of income. Which again leads me back to the same theory: Make things cheap. Increase your customer base. A large customer base makes it possible to do something like that where the app only costs $5 or $10. With a small customer base, it's hardly worth it.

Here is the demographic breakdown of the subscribers to my channel sorted by age. You would think 65+ would be the largest demographic for a gold prospecting/metal detecting related detecting channel, but in fact, it's not even close. This is based on 3500 subscribers and about 1500 unique viewers per day, which is pretty minor in the wider scope of Youtube, small even for a prospecting channel. But it's large enough to see a general trend. I'm sure older creators get an older demographic, but still, the numbers are more than one might think and it shows there is interest. It's easy to underestimate the number of younger people with interest in prospecting and metal detecting because a lot of older people simply don't use the same social media as they do, which makes sense. No one expects their kids to hang out where they do, at least not until they get older. Facebook is dead to most people under 25, too many older people use it for them. It's all about Snapchat and Instagram, etc for them now. I can even see my Youtube numbers slowly going down for that age group as more older people start to use Youtube, just like what happened with Facebook. So, based on the interest I see and the almost complete lack of field presence by those age groups, from a marketing perspective it seems pretty clear to me that the largest untapped demographic, and thus the largest potential growth segment, are the ~25-44 year olds. My general generation(s). And none of us have money, few have the jobs they should have with their degrees, and few think anything is looking better in the future either. So, my theory is lower the prices (drastically) and bring newer models out, and I bet you'll see growth in what has to be a low or even zero growth industry right now. I would suggest this more to Minelab than White's, unless of course White's has something slated to compete with the GPZ/GPX (and I guess ML doesn't care because they have Africa right now). White's could probably benefit more directly by a model that outperforms the AT Pro instead for a significantly lesser price, and getting a number of the bigger people with a lot of viewers to start using it instead of the ATP. If you make a detector like that for $300 or under, which happens to be the most common price people ask me what they can buy something "good" for, then you'll be taking a lot of market share from Garrett. And send me a free detector for data sharing/consulting while you are at it.

If they get it fixed, can someone give us a heads up? I'd like to subscribe now that I have a physical address that I can always receive mail, but I want to be able to read articles online too. Figure I'll wait until it's sorted out first and then subscribe.

Yeah that's true. That's why just having your product out there in common usage like the AT Pro is such effective advertising. There is no ad to block, you already sought the content creator out so there is an implied amount of trust there already. Whereas with ads, we are so used to exaggerations and scam online today that when ads aren't blocked, people just generally ignore them anyways. It would cost a company a few hundred bucks to send someone like Aqua Chigger an AT Pro. They'd get thousands worth of advertising out of it though just by him using it in his videos. And it's good advertising because it comes with an implied endorsement by someone who is not the company and using the product himself because he actually likes it. Similarly, if you make your products cheap enough and good enough, then content creators do this on their own, they expose your product for you because they buy it and use it. You get free advertising as a result, effective advertising. But when the product is too expensive, it goes from watching a video saying "Yeah, that could be me", to watching a video like with someone driving a Ferrari and saying "Yeah right, that'll never be my life". One buys the dream because it's achievable, as JP put it, the other has no intention but to keep dreaming. I've probably referred 70 or more people to your detector guide, people who asked me questions about what to buy. That's another example of trusted advertising that doesn't really conform to the traditional idea of ads. You should probably charge companies for that page haha.

1.) Deeper 2.) Deeper 100.) Deeper 101.) Lighter I'll buy another if so. Out of the game until that point.

I've mentioned this before, but there is a reason the AT Pro is one of the top selling detectors. It's because it's the detector all the largest Youtubers use and that's how most of the younger crowd get exposed to detecting these days. I don't know a single kid who actually watches real TV anymore, it's all Youtube, Twitch, etc. They don't go outside any less than I did when I grew up, they just consume digital media instead of analog when they are relaxing. My parents generation thought my generation went out less then they did too because we started playing Atari. Well, it wasn't true, they forgot how much they watched TV when they were kids. And so it goes... I get quite a few messages from kids (to me nowadays a 19 year old is a kid I guess, feels strange to say) on my channel asking for advice on prospecting on detectors and honestly there isn't much I can refer them to in their price ranges when it comes to gold machines. What about when that kid sees that he can buy the best phone in the world for around $500, but that doesn't even buy him an outdated gold detector from 30 years ago? What is that kid going to think? Well, I know what they think, because they tell me, and I agree with them. You guys (detector manufacturers as a whole) REALLY have to do something about the inflated price schemes if you want any kind of real growth. Don't make the machine junkier, make it good and make it competitive with other forms of technology. Just simple economics and marketing here, you've been able to strive off older people who have more money and more stuff to find. That's changed, those days are gone forever. Anyways, even over the last 5 or 6 years I've noticed few younger people even use forums anymore. It's all about new media for them. I was one of the youngest guys on the prospecting forums when I first started joining them about 15 years ago. And 15 years later, I'm still one of the youngest guys, at least among any of the active posters, so that tells a story there. I'm a middle aged man now... None of this changes the target depletion problem of course. But if you guys want to start appealing to younger people then what I said above is something to consider. 1 ad on Aqua Chigger or Nugget Noggin's channel is going to get you many times more exposure to that demographic than traditional media, and it'd probably be 1/10th the price to do that too. Not to mention it keeps running for as long as the video is up, which could be 10 years. Just getting people to use your technology gets you exposure for free on these outlets when people publish their activities. You do that by making it affordable, and good.

I said I would report back here if I received a new detector from Nokta - they have sent me a new Fors Core directly instead of going through Kellyco after my issues there, which I received today. Haven't had a chance to open it up and test it out yet, but that was good to see.

That review...

Needs more antennas. SEO tactics 101: Post to a forum with high Google ranking in keywords relevant to your product. Make sure to mention an existing competitor product with high search frequency along with the search term you are aiming to corner, as in the first post coincidentally (the "Z" and "gold detectors"). Include a link with text related to the product, specifically, the exact product name. Then reply to your own post if no other replies so the Google index bot sees "interest" and increases relevancy. Certainly coincidental anyways.