jasong

It was like the largest cyanide spill in the history of the US or something. The water there was particularly nasty but the water in the San Juans in general is often red or yellow though because those mountains are crazy mineralized (and spectacular). You can see the steepness there and understand why detecting Colorado can be quite a challenge. This pic is not Summitville but another area in the same range I tried detecting (not my photo).

That's awesome you know him! It's a part of Colorado mining lore. One of the first places I tried to metal detect when I first bought a GMT was Summitville after reading about that boulder. It has a guarded perimeter like 10 miles around it though, designated Superfund cleanup site. I panned in some of the creeks outside the perimeter where they drain into the Alamosa headwaters and they stained my arms red and yellow for a week afterwards! That place would be pretty cool to detect if they open it up again ever.

Thanks for replying. The reason I asked originally was what several posters also commented on, except I was thinking specifically in terms of jailbreaking my Android phone and how it related pretty similarly to this issue with the chipped coils. This is what I considered before I bought my X Coils: In the case of my phones, I never felt there was an ethical issue jailbreaking them. I paid for it and I paid for the service. The OS and hardware were both designed with features and upgradability which were later specifically disabled by Verizon, who themselves never released any software to access it, but then prevented 3rd party apps from using it. A similar (though not identical) parallel to the coils. The primary purpose I bought my phone was to get internet in the field, I paid for the service, and the only way to get that service they sold me was to bypass their security. Verizon fought this for a decade until they finally just allowed data tethering through their own service so they could at least make some money off what people were going to do no matter what, rather than try to prevent it and fight it. I no longer have to jailbreak my phones, and Verizon makes more money off me too because I'm willing to pay for it. Perhaps another parallel there which Minelab might learn from. They could disable the chip authentication in the firmware, charge a small fee for a user to download this patch, and still make money off X Coils even now. However, if the DOD design itself was patented and no other manufacturer was allowed to use it at all then that seemed like a seperate issue from the chip discussion. That's why I was curious about wether it was a concern with the chip or the DOD design.

We just had a grizzly kill a guy here in Wyoming a few months back. It was a guide with a few hunters and they weren't able to stop it, it just busted out of the woods from afar and charged them and mauled and killed the guide for no reason. That was the survivors story anyways. Psychological or not, having a dog with me everywhere makes me feel pretty safe and I'll go anywhere to prospect with mine. Guess that doesn't help much with snakes in Australia though... Venomous snakes in bushes might just stop me from venturing into said bushes.

This is my concern too. I think the Liquid Tape is a great idea, but I'm not sure if it'd immobilize the wiring enough. If I had 2 cable/chip ends I'd try one in Liquid Tape though as it might not end up mattering, and in theory as Phrunt said it should be easier and potentially better when it comes to shorts. However, with my 4500, tiny movements in the wire, even those up towards the control box, would cause the detector to have fits and make me think the coil was bad. I think the idea with the patch cord should be getting as close as physically possible to making it so that, in effect, the detector doesn't see the cord there at all, which means 100% immobilization.

I bought a shaft each of my X Coils. I cleaned US Ebay out of the cheap ones then got one more from a dealer here for full price. I might sell the shaft for Z14 later on if I decide that coil is no longer of any use to me. Depending how these coils do here, there might be a demand for used ones by then. I just wanted a shaft for every coil mostly because I'll be switching them back and forth like crazy to do testing.

That's a good post JP. A couple general interest questions here - are these standards set by Minelab something you can share so we can have an idea which standards they haven't met? If confidential, does falling short of these standards mean the coils are measurably different from a coil which complies with the standards? Or are the standards mostly related to quality control issues, something like FCC regulatory issues, and not performance issues? I'm curious because I've worked in engineering and standards can be relative in the engineering world and don't necessarily mean a product has a flaw. But in other cases that can be exactly what it means. In engineering specs are often derated, like a rope/cable may support 2x it's rated weight, etc. Or the way Intel derates various chips of the same design from the same wafer depending on the frequency it fails at. I'm just trying to understand better what you mean by the standards not being met. Is the issue with IP related to the chip patch or is the DOD design being used in the X Coil the issue?

Here's an article I found searching out of curiosity, this was a 70 ouncer taken from "Dolan Springs". But looking at the gold and the fact Dolan doesn't really have many nuggets, it was almost certainly found in Lost Basin, AZ. https://www.antiquetrader.com/featured/natural-gold-nugget-weighs-in-at-70-ounces-could-top-300k/ So, I think the coin dealer is probably spinning a bit of a tale to get a little more for his nugget.

Interesting, never seen that before, thanks for the link. The description lists the discovery location as the Huachuca's, but then owner says it was found outside of Oatman at a placer mine. There aren't many placer mines around Oatman that had screener plants on them. Personally, judging from the matte finish of the gold and semi-brecciated character of the quartz I think it didn't come from either of those areas. I'm really surprised though, I figured the 2nd largest nugget in state history would have been much larger. I've had old timers tell me about 10 to 20 ouncers they found in Lost Basin and Q in the 70's and 80's. I don't know much about Rich Hill but I gotta think there's been some close to that found out there, I figured even larger up until now.

Flak, I haven't made a patch lead yet, my coils are still in transit from Russia. I'll make the patch once they get here and I know I have them in possession before cutting the cord. I have all the materials though. The connectors are (or were) available off Amazon for anyone out there like myself in the middle of the boonies.

The detector industry has a long history with dishonest ads posing as "reviews". And I know it's still happening because I've been approached by companies to do the same thing in the past and declined. This is real, this happens, and it causes people to be suspicious, rightly so. Anything that bends when exposed to truth should probably break, IMO. Products that can stand on their own will rise above that fray, just like the GPZ did after the dust settled. I'm going to put that very issue to test when I receive my coils. I have a spiral 12" and a spiral 17" coming which I bought (and a 10" normal wound which I will address in a moment) and I will compare all to the Z14. Obviously direct comparisons are not possible due to size difference, but if for instance the 12" is outperforming the Z14 on depth for nuggets over 1 gram, well then that says something to me, same as if the 17" outperforms the Z14 on nuggets under 1 gram. Data can be measured, it's how its interpreted that often matters to us. Anyone is free to suggest to me things they would like to be tested - lookie loos, customers, manufacturer, competing product reps. Ultimately I will decide what I test though and how I conduct them. Disclosure: I was bemoaning my lack of cash to buy a normal wound coil to test against the spiral wounds on this forum. So, X Coils sent me a normal wound 10" also to compare to the spiral, with a clear statement that I was in no way required to say anything good or bad and I could do what I choose with the coil. I am not required to write anything for them to use on their social media (like a well known detector company wanted me to do, for instance). And for the record, I have been approached in the past by 9 companies who wanted to send me a free product to use (from detectors to magnets to UV flashlights), all of which I have declined because they did not want to agree to my caveats that I could do and say as I please with the product. In this case, I didn't even have to bring it up, X Coils just said flatout there were no expectations. So, there is that. Seeing as I've been one of the more critical voices asking questions, it says something to me they are willing to let their product stand on its own, so I will see if it does. I have no relation to any manufacturer or dealer and I do not sell anything myself, the only thing I do is detect for gold and make videos and I do 99% of that alone. I believe this sort of disclosure should be sentence #1 in every review. Steve requires dealers to provide their real name in their signatures here, presumably so we can know who is a dealer and judge wether their posts may have economic interest or double as ads. It's not unreasonable for reviewers or testers to also disclose product relationships when they are using social media to promote their review (forums are social media BTW). If any reviewer/tester is offended by that, then I would politely suggest they reconsider doing public reviews and tests. If you post something public on the internet you open yourself to criticism and yes - trolls. I wake up to 2 insults on my phone, I see 2 more by lunch, and I go to sleep with 2 new ones. Every day. Just for sharing my personal nugget digs. It's the reality of the internet, I just ignore it. It's certainly not a reason to decline to hold reviewers to a minimum set of standards that all product reviewers in any product sector in the world should be held to.

Well, if nothing else I guess this shows Minelab they could have been making some $dough off selling these patch cords if they wanted to get some cash from the X Coil release. Can the service center here sell the coils they warrantied out and would otherwise be tossing, assuming the chip was good and kick Minelab it's nominal profit cut? If so, get a hold of me and sell me your trash.

We've had a ferrite inside our coil all along it looks like. It's not in the photo you posted of the coil being tested in the Minelab bench, wonder if it's just an FCC compliance thing as some mentioned in earlier threads. It seems to be covering a wire junction or solder point in the middle. Anyone know what that square thing in the GB2 coil is? Also, I hope my Deus coil goes bad at some point just so I can take it apart without worry about breaking it and figure out how they crammed a whole detector into that tiny amount of circuitry. There must be more shielded in that tube thing.

That's one of the top ten coolest posts I've seen on gold forums! Thanks for sharing.

Random question for Davsgold or anyone, is there a robust gold detecting scene in Russia with people using these coils too? I'm curious how it ended up that they came out of Russia of all places, being a part of the world I don't normally hear much about when it comes to gold detecting. Can we know any more about the company or person making these coils? Is there some kind of forum that isn't English language with users reporting usage of these X Coils in parts of the net I wouldn't normally stumble across?

Yeah, I actually asked Steve to delete my request for more info in the X/saturation thing probably right as you were writing your response to me coincidentally. I'm just going to stay out of all of that. I figure I'll just test it myself and see what results I get. My results will probably be meaningless to people in WA or other places because my ground is pretty mild. But thanks for your input on the X. I agree, in my ground I have not had to use the ferrite either. I also normally stay in auto tracking too though, which is probably part of that.

This was my thought too with getting the 12" instead of the 10". And a few more reasons after thinking about which sizes to get for a couple days: it's the smallest coil that is spriral wound (I wish I had enough money to test spiral against normal wound, but I don't). It's lighter than the Z14 so can swing longer without breaks. It's smaller than the Z14 so should do a little better in salt. It's not so small it's laborious to prospect with, but it's small enough to use in rocky washes. And it's small enough to get a good sensitivity boost over the Z14 and the X Coil 15 potentially on sub 1 gram stuff anyways. Ideally, I would love something slightly ellpitical, like 12x10, but round will be fine. That and unlike a lot in the US I'm just not patient enough to swing really small coils outside of patches, the smallest coil I ever owned that saw somewhat regular use was the NF 14x9. Area wise, that is basically equivalent to a round 12". So, I can still use the 12" for exploration too and it'll be lighter than the Z14 for that. If the 12" spiral is more or less equivalent and/or more sensitive to the Z14 on sub 5 gram stuff (like 95% of my take), then it seems like it will be the ideal coil for me and will replace the Z14. Got the 17" on top of that for deep patch hunting, hoping its about the same weight as the Z14. Between those two, if they both work as I hope they do, I don't see myself using the Z14 anymore. I think the 10" might be better for a lot of people here in the US, but the 12" sounded perfect for me if I'm limiting myself to just 2 coils.

Cool, will be curious how it does down there, some area around Wickenburg have bits and pieces of some of the hottest ground I've detected too, outside of places that are literally just on solid slabs of basalt or iron bearing serpentine. If there is some issue with these coils in saturable soils then you should see it should show up down there.

What is the ground like where you detect Andy? I can't recall if I've seen you mention areas you detect before, so just trying to get a rough idea - hot, medium, mild, salty? Seperately, there appears to be a direct correlation between Taco Bell sauce packets and detecting ground classifications.

Unfortunately it won't be too quickly - it will be interesting to see how long strange electronics coming from Russia take to get through US customs. I've never received a package from abroad, so that part is new to me. Likely some others in the US will be reporting back before I do as I live 25-30 hours drive roundtrip from the goldfields, makes it impossible to take a weekend trip when work is still going. I have to wait to finish this house I'm on and squeeze in a quick trip before the next one starts so that means I'll only have a couple days to test in the field. That also means I won't be able to prospect with them, I'll just have to hit up some old patches and see how they do. Side note for anyone who wants to see how these coils do on your dead patch in NNV, PM me, I might have time for one or two if it's specific small areas, you keep the gold, I get to video (can just show the ground for privacy). Otherwise I'm going to areas I found on my own and it was mostly only me detecting there, which few here will recognize. I'm not planning on Rye Patch which seems to be where most of the general public goes, since I've only been there twice and know basically nothing about it, so if people want a reference for places they detect there, and it's a place that's been flogged thoroughly by experienced operators with GPZ's which would give these coils a good test (and you have permission to detect there), PM me.

Lack of a man parachuting from the sky bearing a cornucopia of fruits, corn, and GPZ coils for every man, woman, and child on the green Earth would lean towards suggesting a 3rd party offering (if any of this wild ass guessing had substance), thus one explanation for the lack of the typical media blitz we are used to from ML. On the other hand - if there wasn't another coil being made by a 3rd party, I don't see any reason Minelab wouldn't just disable the security authentication in the firmware for a fee and make some money off the X Coils at least. One explanation: if they've already licensed security codes to a 3rd party then doing that would be much harder because that 3rd party would now be paying for something which users could simply just disable entirely, so why pay for it at all? Further guessing - Not having to pay a licensing fee and not having to deal with ferrite and other issues, X Coils could capitalize on being first to market while the other competitor delayed the licensed coil release to address those bugs JP reported (hence the "greed" comment). X Coils are potentially more sensitive than a coil having to dumb itself down to work in highly saturable soils (again, a WAG on my part), thus the legit manufacturer is now having to delay a second time in order to figure out how to both address JP's concerns and also still compete on a sensitivity scale. This would explain JP's anger at the lack of user reports on issues that they all felt were important enough to end up delaying a product release. I feel like I'm at the end of a Scooby Do episode now.

Pretty sure that isn't an x ray man... To me the location and solder points on that board look simply like a way to terminate or connect the ends of the wires from each lobe, keep them immobilized, and send it on up into the shielded cable. I don't see an IC on there. No idea though, photo is small. I agree they could just disable the firmware security check. Charge $200 for that update instead of a patch cable that might induce noise, and then Minelab could make money off the X Coils at least a little bit instead of no licensing fee at all as it stands now. I mentioned that a few days back in the large pile of posts related to this subject that get rapidly buried. I was hoping it might elicit a response from JP inferring it might be on the drawing board before I cut my cable for good, but no such luck. If ML ends up doing that after I cut my cord I better be getting a free coil for the idea.

Interesting...have you X rayed an X Coil to see if there is an IC in it out of idle curiosity?

Phrunt, losses and error handling is much easier to deal with in digital communication. There is no circuitry in the Z coil (or is there??) so it must be analog only going in and out (other than the security chip comms). Analog is notoriously susceptible to noise, and there is no real way to correct it or resend, there are no checksums, nothing. You have filtering. But filtering generally reduces sensitivity and/or resolution. It reduces noise but it reduces signal too in a lot of cases. Any time you add a connector you add a potential source of noise both from inductive or capacitive sources or via mechanical motion unless it's somehow perfectly shielded and immobilized. That has nothing to do with detectors, just electronics in general. One way coils get touch sensitive when the windings, solder joints, or connections come lose as one example (hence why I only used potted coils on the GPX). Another way coils can be touch sensitive is if they are weak and the winding flexes slightly when bumped. I too am curious about the inner construction of the X Coils for these very questions, and if it comes apart easily I'm going to see what's inside.

You aren't the only one JP, look at my posting history and you'll see I've asked every tough question about the X Coils I could think of asking even if it ruffles feathers, for a month ongoing now. And I'm buying my own coils in order to answer the questions people are not interested in answering for me. I also mentioned the business model in a post a few days ago. And I've pointed out a number of times that the only real conclusion here with the silence from ML and other companies is what I think you are also hinting at yet contractually unable to say: ML themselves or another 3rd party ARE working on a range of legit licensed coils and this Russian company put their coils out quickly before proper testing in order to make money before the legit coils were released. Feel free to correct me here if I've read between the lines too deeply and come to a wrong conclusion. I think I'm probably on the right track though and I don't like that I'm probably going to cut my coil just to find this out for certain down the line when I wouldn't have had to do it if I waited, but c'est la vie. I'll be more than happy to test some of these concerns and put them on video. The saturable soil thing is going to be an issue though as most the ground I work is probably as mild as it is in NZ. But i do have a yellow ferrite to test on. But if there is anything in specific you think needs to be tested, tell me how you think it should be tested here and I have no problems putting it on video. If you think it's not getting enough exposure, this is a good chance to change that. I have some 4 millions views using Minelab products and if just include the keywords "GPZ 7000" in a video it will usually find it's way to the front page of Youtube search on the GPZ for a while, sometimes Google too. I'll post here too which also get a lot of exposure.