jasong

Yeah, north side of the road surrounded by salt brush, and to the west of that other road that intersects at a right angle. It's a big trench that they dug apparantly with the intention to infill it, but then never did. It's been over a decade since I've stopped there though, it coulda been filled in by now, no clue. It was very well hidden in the bushes. There were smaller trash pits around it too, IIRC, think those may have been where I got the bottles actually. I also have no clue how anyone ever lived there, it looks like it would have flooded yearly, probably why they all just up and left. There used to be some similar time capsule places in AZ too, people just left and never came back. I remember an abandoned house that still had like 60's 2001:Space Odyssey-looking chairs with velvet, tiki heads everywhere, leisure suits in the closet, highball glasses and 60's drink mixers laying around, lounge music records. Those places got totally hit and destroyed though by Mad Max style scavengers when more people moved in the area.

Good job. Right to the point, no "ummms", well spoken. You could make your own Youtube vids. Looking forward to seeing how the speed settings alter the target recovery speed when I get one in hand. The "other" detector leaves something to be desired there when working in trashy areas, causing lots of holding the coil still and waiting for recovery. Also curious how the timings work in alkali. Like, is Salt timing kinda overkill? Fine or Normal work ok with a bit of grunt/groan?

Same thing happened to me when I made vids. A few people went to extreme lengths. And when they found my spots they raided them in the dead heat of the summer when no one was around and took an excavator in to some places, in others it looks like they had a team of 4 or 5 people judging by boot prints and they placered down entire banks and washes they recognized straight from my videos. Like literally, those exact spots and no where else. It's not possible to make real prospecting vids if you show good finds unless you literally do nothing but show the hole. No identifying features, no nice cinematography. Nothing. Just a hole in the ground. People can, do, and will track you down if you get enough exposure. I literally had people find me in person and say they considered it a challenge to locate me, like I should be impressed or something.

I just encountered some BIF today prospecting, took a picture for this thread. This one is a bit more rusty than the original photo, but same general stuff. I picked up another piece that looks almost identical to the original photo but then I forgot to take a pic of it, doh. The stuff on Google images is usually more decorative. What Margot has (and what I'm trying to show here), is what common BIF looks like. It's often confused for either schist or petrified wood in the same way slag is confused with meteorites. Interesting fact: BIF can also get silicified just like petrified wood, making it confused for petrified wood even more often. This is jasperized BIF, not petrified wood: It's far and away, 100%, the most common ID request I get in person from friends and friend's kids.

Did you see that massive old trash trench at the old Jungo townsite? That thing is pretty interesting to walk through, even though it's been picked over. Surprisingly a lot of people don't seem to know it's there even though it's almost in site of the road....like 1/4 mile long trench. It's like a time capsule, walking through all eras of trash up to 1960's - tricycles, fridges, old tables, and then bam! Nothing. I got some kinda cool 1950's bottles out of there, but that was like more than a decade back. You can tell looking at things that it was a happening place with families and stuff, and then everything just up and died one day and everyone walked away just like that. The dirt hovels that people lived in in some of those old placer areas are pretty interesting too. Just holes in the ground with like candle stick holes in the wall and an old backseat from a Model T or something as a bed.

None, I prospect so much that I watch literally anything except gold prospecting on Youtube. Youtube surpassed TV for quality content years ago IMO, it just takes a lot of separating wheat from chaff. I'm not really too familiar with who makes detecting vids these days though. I learned a lot about smelting, crude assaying, and processing lode from MBMMLLC though. And I thought Dan Hurd had some interesting and educational vids on general prospecting occasionally when he'd cover oddball things like the pyrophoric iron prospect. Haven't watched anything prospecting related for a few years though.

You'd be surprised how many "dealers" there are. Being unfamiliar with Garrett and wanting to see an Axiom in person, I checked for Wyoming dealers with no expectation of finding one. Imagine my surprise when I find what appears to be a major internet detector dealer based only a few miles from me! How could I never have heard of them? I called, they had European accents. I kept saying it was amazing they were based here and I'd love to meet them in person, that I thought I was one of the only detectorists in 100 miles or more and was happy to see a dealer based here. They kept changing the subject though. Finally got them to admit they have no real presence here. They said they only drop ship from Nevada and Texas. Sounds like they are actually from Europe. I won't mention their name, but I'm sure you can figure it out if you are curious. They sell Minelab too.

If there are other goldfields along the way then I'm guessing they made some more videos for later release? The one US video is just a guy mostly in his basement with a microphone... Said something about an AK trip, but he didn't seem like an actual prospector, I don't recognize him from anywhere either. They must have something else planned for release because there isn't much else left to talk about right now, I'd think they'd want to keep momentum going...

Ahh, dang, that stinks. I just assumed every dealer sold at MAP, not MSRP. I mean, you'd probably be better off buying from a US dealer selling at MAP then!

Isn't the 6000 going for like $8000 AUD in Australia? $4000 USD = $5717 AUD. Seems like the Axiom should be a decent bit cheaper than the 6000? Or do people get the 6k's for quite a bit less than the listed prices on websites there? Or do US products get tagged with additional import duties/taxes/etc?

Ok thanks, yeah definitely what I would classify as "mild" mineralization there, even if Fine Gold is a pretty tame timing. His saturation on his camera must have been cranked up if that's the same dirt as your vid...

Thanks, definitely looking forward to trying one! One more question, do you know what coil availability will look like? For instance can we buy a 3rd coil at release with the Axiom, or will extra coils be offered at a later date only? Curious about coil prices too, but I'm guessing that is still unknown.

Thanks (and to Aureous), I figured something like that must be at play if none of the Aussies were commenting. That's really the only video of real field detecting that was published. Just for a rough idea since I've never been to Australia, is that basically ground you could normally expect to run a mono in Sharp/Sens Extra in on the 5000? Or would require Enhance?

Is there an ability to choose the two coils we want in a package? Or is it preset/prepackaged into standard arrangements in the box already?

My mailbox is still open if Garrett wants to send me one to test and compare to the 6000 and write about it on forums. I don't have much else to say myself now though other than I hope this machine lets me get rid of the 6000. Or, if it will prompt Minelab to now magically have a stability/speaker fix and allow more aftermarket coils. It's not like I and others haven't been saying both need to be done loudly, so... There is no avoiding drawing comparisons to the 6000 at this point really. It's the primary question on my mind and I know many others. For me, just being able to have a detector that doesn't die from EMI is massive, but I also detect in places like AZ/NV where the 6000 works ok. So I want to know if it's a replacement or a compliment before I drastically sell my 6k. Anyways, back to getting some real work done. It's been interesting.

I dunno, looking at those Aussie vids, the Axiom seems to handle hot ground a heck of a lot better than the 6000 does. Not sure what sensitivity level he was running though. But - swinging a mono over hot ground like that, if it's like hot ground in the US, would be painful with the 6000 (or 7000 with any coil in normal). But again, no clue how hot that ground is relatively speaking, still impressive since I was having issues with the 6000 and the 11" mono in what I'd call US hot ground in Arizona. I'm surprised it's like 10am in Australia and there aren't more Aussies commenting on what appears to be some exceptional ground handling with a mono coil. Is that particular place just not very hot?

Air swinging over a 0.07 gram sluggy nugget in some medium to hot mineralized looking ground, with a mono. Looking good.

I'll be interested to see what relic hunters and others like jewelry/beach hunters think of it. I honestly have to admit my ignorance here since I'm just 100% obsessed with gold hunting. But if I were making a competitive PI, I'd definitely be taking relics/jewelry hunters into account, and the 6000 doesn't seem to. So it's going to be interesting to see just how big of a toehold the Axiom can get, it might end up being larger than expected if it has appeal outside the prospecting world. Exciting times. We still have the Nokta PI machine to look forward too as well. And isn't there still a FT pulse machine being developed? This Axiom seems to set a new bar across the industry by initial specs and first looks. Gotta wonder how many plans are changing in how many different companies now?

Don't get too excited, so far all the videos the amateurs have posted have been pretty un-instructive and uninformative. This guy inexplicably doesn't provide any threshold or any indication of performance. The US video (can't even remember their name now) was even less useful as the guy was mostly just behind a DJ's microphone in a basement...and didn't appear to really be a prospector either. Nothing personal to these guys, but man, not even sure what the point of making video is if you don't use the video medium for it's strengths - show us the detector actually working in real life. It's an audio based tool - excluding audio is like releasing a new record on mute... If I just wanted to see someone show me nuggets I could watch any other video.

Thing is, lots of relic hunters use 5000's. I may be misunderstanding the market, but in my mind there are only really 2 growth (keyword: growth) markets right now for PI's due to the ever decreasing number of nuggets in known goldfields: Real prospecting (exploration), and relics, jewelry, beach etc. So the relic/jewelry performance of the Axiom may well determine the course of some future things too more than we expect. Especially if gold doesn't make any moves up. Hard to know, I'm really not in tune with anything except raw prospecting.

A lot of the older guys were around when there were still choices and competition. But this is literally the first time in my gold detecting life that another company looks to have given Minelab a serious competitor in the prospecting arena. Totally new concept to me. It'll be interesting to see Minelab's response, if any. I'm pretty curious to see how this experiment plays out, beyond just the detector. I'm guessing the 5000 is going to drop drastically in price, that thing is a dinosaur. Probably the 6000 drops too. But I'm curious if they accelerate some other new product too, depending on how this Axiom performs in the field with users. I know Steve isn't a fan of comparisons, but if the Axiom goes deeper than the 6000 on 1/2 gram+ type stuff, and still gets 2 grainers, can run aftermarket coils, and is $2k cheaper, then it's pretty hard to see a compelling case for the 6000 with it's bad stability, lack of discrim, (slightly) heavier weight, useless speaker, bad battery life, apparant lack of addressing/fixing problems by Minelab, and the list goes on and on. It's a bit like watching a kid poke a sleeping bear with a stick. Does it keep snoozing, or does it stand up and roar? Curious times.

Good to hear Steve, companies need to hear real input from real prospectors like you and Gerry. Glad to hear Garrett availed themselves of the opportunity to work with both of you. Looking forward to trying this out whenever I can get my hands on one. It's a 600+ mile drive for me to get to the nearest dealer, so I'm just waiting now to hear when these are available for mail order. I don't have many more questions that aren't better answered by getting my hands on one and trying it out, looking forward to it. So nice to see a real 2nd option finally. And stoked to see a US company stepping to the plate!

Nice work Steve and anyone else involved with getting a detector tested that checks a lot of boxes off the much needed list. I had a real concern in the back of my head that it was going to be hobby detector, but this has every hallmark of being a real prospecting machine from first looks. I have no dealers anywhere even remotely within driving distance of me so I'll have to buy one to really see it work. The EMI thing is the major reason I am in the market for another detector right now. It looks like a big improvement in the noise arena, but I'm hoping for a bit more info there coming out. I'm guessing you have a pretty detailed field report coming when you can post it, so waiting for that before asking too many questions potentially already answered.

6000 weight: 4.6lbs w/11" Axiom weight: So, about the same, except with a larger coil (13x11). Probably lighter than the 6000 when using the 11x7".