jasong

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.

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.

Nice, almost busting into the subgrain range. Elliptical should be killer then too. How variable are the gold VDI's?

I didn't say it'd drop by the dealer margin, but yes I do think they'd drop, especially if it got rid off all the MAP/MSRP/backroom bargaining stuff and the bigger stores could start selling for discounts if we are already going to have to deal with the bigger stores anyways, might as well save a step and buy from them too. When the GPZ first came out and listed for $10,700, there were dealers selling for around $7000 to their buddies and their buddies buddies and their buddies buddies buddies here in the US. That's a huge amount of wiggle room. I understand dealers like you, who maintain a brick and mortar shop, who have a solid and long reputation as both a prospector and tester whom people can actually learn from, I see the value in that for the customers. But the reality here in the US is that most dealers are not like that. Some are nothing more than a phone number for a part time prospector in his house, who might have used the machine a handful of times. The last purchase I made, I agreed to not take the training and not call with problems or issues. Which was fine, because I didn't want the training and I knew I could deal with Minelab directly anyways (apparantly that's now changed). But at that point...I just don't see the point of a dealer anymore if they literally are doing nothing but "box shifting" as you put it. But, it goes further, and there is another reason I don't see the purpose for dealers here in the US: I really had no issue with this weird pricing scheme and dealers who didn't appear to serve a purpose, since for decades the used market stayed high due to the arbitrarily high pricing of the detectors themselves, and I didn't have to like the system as long as I could just resell and recoup whatever I paid and everything evened out. But when ML deflated the price so soon after Z release it really changed my perspective and I'm not afraid to talk about it, even if it ruffles some feathers. Because it made it essential to play this stupid deal making game if you didn't want to get ripped off by a price change, but that means it essentially comes down to being friends with a dealer now and preferential pricing. The customer pays for the detector, we have to play the game, and we get left holding the bag when the prices drop. Yet we are expected not to talk about this "secret" method of doing business or we get trash talked by the dealers themselves for their own game. I don't like it at all. I think it'd be nice to have the "discounted" option just available for those who want it, without having to play all these games where we automatically the get the 15% off or whatever would be found tenable. That still leaves a healthy profit for a store if they aren't offering training or anything else. And then seperately, have dealers who are like you, who are actual full time prospectors, who understand the things they sell, and the customer can choose which route they want to take when they make the purchase. Or, someone could take the money they saved on the purchase directly and pay for training/trips with someone like you and you could continue to sell the story that way too if that's what sells detectors.

One question I have with this whole new global marketplace is why are there still dealers if they don't service anything or provide any other service other than sales? Aren't they just a middle man at that point inflating the price of the goods? If the internet didn't exist I could understand it because they provide local outlets for sales, but most of the sales are done over the internet/phone today anyways, many (or even most) dealers don't even have physical store locations anymore. It seems to me this subject has come up once before but I can't remember if it was here or not and it seems relevant to the subject matter. I understand some provide training when it comes to gold detectors and some customers find good value in this, but with the markup in price that dealers take as profit up to 35% on some models, it's hardly worth it for many of us, especially for those who don't want the training. Especially considering guided trips/training can be bought for much less. Again, one of those things that are tough to say/ask without offending someone and offense is not my intention at all, but if I don't understand then I'm sure some others don't as well too so I think it's a fair question related to the subject if we're heading towards a mega-repair outlet handling everything. Can we just skip the dealer inflation and buy directly if it's all the same in the end? The other direct implication is you end up with "preferential pricing" where friends of dealers all get one price, the people who know that you can wheel and deal on the MSRP get another slightly higher price (the 15% "military discount" as one example, quotes intentional because we all know it's not just military), and then the uninitiated pay full or close to full price. I don't find that to be right personally.

But you did not respond to me. You responded to kellyco, and they never told me they spoke with you so I would have no way of knowing. I just assumed you disappeared just like the kellyco reps did. Maybe it's a miscommunication with english here, but I want that clarified. You did respond to my earlier emails and told me to deal with kellyco and let you know if any problems, but when I let you know I was having problems I got no response...so i was getting no response from kellyco or you at that point. I tried dealing with kellyco alone for another 1 or 2 broken detectors before finally giving up. I think we both understand how this went bad now, but I feel as if I also have to clarify the kellyco thing now too because they didn't represent reality in that email you just showed me from them. The reason kellyco said they spoke with me is because I called them, not vice versa, which they didnt bother to mention. At least 15 times. Thry talked to me, yes. But they werent solving the problem and not communicating with me and thats why i asked for your help. I remember 1 day where I had 3 or 4 calls in alone to different departments and people when I feared my detector had been lost completely and no one could answer me and I was quite frustrsted especially since I was tired of paying shipping for all these broken units. I don't recall ever getting a return call from them over the many months this was happening. I'm sure they have more accurate records, but I recall spending at least 2 weeks after they said they'd send me a replacement unit with no word and no machine during one of the iterations. Any call I placed went unanswered or they simply told me someone would call me back, but never would and they would proceed to forget about me until I got angry enough to speak with a manager. Anyways, I appreciate you and your team trying to get me a detector now, and I know you make a lot of effort in customer service online. I hope you understand im not trying to slog your company, this is my honest experience and i have every right to be frustrated. I was a big vocal supporter and early adopter of nokta, as can be witnessed by my posts when the detector was first announced. Yet, I want to make this clear because after the last response it could be read as if I was somehow misrepresenting what happened, which is not the case. I spent months calling kellyco, I made an effort to contact nokta with 2 different media. There is nothing more I could have done, and thus my frustration. I look forward to hearing from your team and discussing this over email from here on out, I will post online if I receive a working unit so the record is straight,, and thank you for addressing this.

Agree with all that, Rick. Also, since many companies are on this forum: if you come out with another VLF detector in general, look at the Deus long and hard. THAT is the direction machines should be headed. Light, portable, packable. Please leave 1991 back in 1991. Also - LiPo is your friend, and my friend too. How long were we stuck with that big GPX brick that had to go into a backpack when there were tons of options to fix it? Argh...please no more 1991 anywhere on any machine from here on out. You know how you feel when you pick up one of those old detectors from the 50's or 60's and they just look ridiculous by today's standards (although granted, some are kinda cool in a retro way, but not a usability way)? Well, that's how I feel when I pick up a GMT or a 5000, it's like a bit of a joke to me. These models are still sold today with no updating...for offensively high prices. I feel like they should come with a complementary Walkman and fanny pack at least. And finally - the days of the $5000+ detector are done as soon as one other company becomes competitive. Even if another company doesn't take the plate, it's still over in another 10 years. My generation can't foot those bills when we age into the prime consumer demographic, we've had nothing but market crashes, oil busts, real estate bubbles, and recessions our entire working lives just one after another with no ability to build or save. Most my friends have degrees/are professionals, yet few have savings or own a house. It's not like when our parents and grandparents grew up. Our children will have even less. The only reason I could play with a GPZ is I was able to model my prospecting as a business and I took a loan out, which I had a limited time to repay. Aside from myself, the only two people remotely my age I ever met in the field with a GPZ were both employees of a dealer. I know a few other guys my age have bought one now, but still, the demographic is clear to me. Anyways, a gauntlet was thrown. My bet is on Fisher to win and White's to place, Tesoro slept through the race. Based on nothing, just good fun. Am I wrong? Prove it, let's hear some plans!

Fascinating, it's like watching a forum version of Gold Rush Africa, except with just good parts, the mining. Keep us all updated! If you ever are looking for volunteers let me know. Especially if you need anyone to operate a detector, which I guess probably is not something needed if you have that much mudstone. But if I could get away from work for a trip long enough, I'd love to see all the mining in Africa firsthand, that stuff just isn't happening over here much anymore.

Right on, good to know there is some research and engineering going on here in the US. I have a soft spot for domestic detectors maybe in the way some people do for domestic automobiles. I hope you guys are brewing up some competition for big blue, would love to see the market get healthier. And also, no matter what I think of, someone else already did before me. That why I am not an inventor.

When I dealt with Minelab, I spoke with them directly and they sent me parts directly. Also, with Fisher I sent my GB2 directly to them and they did the repairs. I've never dealt with Kellyco for any repairs except with these CoRes. Just my experience, I have no idea which companies have deals with what service centers. I wonder if Kellyco "repairs" LRL's too? I find that concerning. Kinda like going to a doctor who prescribes pixie dust, doesn't inspire confidence. That said, I'll be patient once again and see how this gets dealt with - I responded to Dilek last night and forwarded our old email chains where I had already explained this as it was happening in 2015, with no resolution. I'd love to finally get a working detector, but the reality is it's been so long that I've already planned to buy a Deus. It's a bit like finally receiving an outdated computer you bought but never got to use 2 years ago, all the reasons I bought it for are gone now and if it had been functional I would have sold it already to fund the next purchase.

Whoa...I just guessed that exact thing as my guess for what Garrett was coming out with. Hybrid VLF/PI at the flip of a switch. Another approach that might be interesting, if only marginally functional, is a VLF/PI at the same time. Something I wanted to try building for a long time, but I'm never going to have the time to try I might as well admit to myself and type the idea here. Basically, waves are additive. There is no reason you can't modulate a sine wave on top of a pulse, and we have computing power to do the signal processing on something like that nowadays with an ARM chip. You should be able to look fast enough and see shifts from the sine wave, then listen again for the pulse delay. Maybe this is an old idea, I've never seen anyone talk about it though so mentioning it here. At least, seems to me it'd be something worth trying anyways, no clue what Geotech is actually building though. But I'm calling that and he can read this and laugh.

Have a map of faults in the area? Might be worth tracking if you find more out of place rocks. There is a large plain near where I live which is flat right now but has sequences of much older rocks in the alluvium due to a huge block that was faulted down. At one time there were mountains, but they "fell" slowly, filling in the valleys and leaving a large flat plain after erosion leveled off the parts of the peaks which didn't sink completely underground. So, there are lots of out of place rocks there, and often they can indicate what lies underneath, or where "underneath" was 100 million years ago, which is now somewhere else.

Interesting stuff, keep us updated. Is it hilly? Hard to tell from the photo. The rock probably travelled downhill.

I seem to have the opposite experience - Minelab customer service has always been top notch to me and I wish more companies would do what they do. They literally overnighted me parts when I called since I was leaving town in 2 days and had no address in the field (and sent me an extra just to be safe), and always resolved my other issues right away. They called me back once just to check on me too. Apologized instantly the one time they made an error. Nokta on the other hand - well, I still don't have a working detector after 2 years. All that happened is I was referred back to Kellyco when I contacted them directly, the same Kellyco that had already botched up, and kept passing blame (and charged me for their errors in shipping) twice already. Who then proceeded to keep sending me broken detectors with the exact same problems (I suspect they sent me the same detector back on at least one occasion). Now, 4 detectors later, still don't have a working one. Gave up. Posted about it twice, after trying all other avenues since Nokta seemed to respond to public posts - nada for me. Just a total and complete waste of $700 and being entirely ignored. A frustrating and baffling experience all around for me and I will go out of my way to recommend avoiding them, especially since even now no one has tried to make it good, just...nothing. Did people actually get customer service from Nokta or just shovelled off to Kellyco? I'll take the engineers any day...

Thanks for the report, good to see some actual field prospecting use with this machine. Have you ever taken it over hard rock tailings piles? I'm giving some serious thought to pulling the trigger on the ellitical HF and getting rid of my GB2 and Fors CORE finally. The hard rock stuff is about the only thing I use the GB2 for anymore though so I'm kinda curious how it does on the real disseminated type gold?

When you start seeing ads featuring epic family picnics in the city park, beach volleyball, and lots of closeups of manicured, grassy yards in suburbia, watch out! I'm guessing that's when we can finally expect a new gold prospecting machine.

I'm not sure it's irony, it's just a fundamental misunderstanding and/or blatant misuse of actual science by certain individuals in the treasure hunting community who would seek to take advantage of other individuals by misrepresenting their products for monetary gain. Which is a textbook scam. That said, I hope people realize that just because snake oil salesmen sold bogus cures for what are today easily curable diseases, it never meant that smallpox or polio couldn't actually be cured or treated or vaccinated against with enough medical research eventually, or that it wasn't a worthwhile pursuit, or that we should settle for industrial age medicine and call it quits there. Misappropriation of science doesn't mean that the underlying concept is faulty via guilt by association. Just to be clear on that... That's why there is more difference between what I said and what they say. What I said can be verified by anyone who's taken a basic E+M class or read a book on the subject, and do their own testing.

LRL's are scams (and I believe the manufacturers should be criminally prosecuted as such), but the idea of long distance detection is not beyond the realm of scientific reality. Magnetic fields decay to infinity, so technically you could detect a nugget at infinity with the right set of conditions, equipment, and an infinite amount of time to listen for the signal to return. Physically, long distance detection is not impossible and it's not so much a distance problem (we can pick up signals from trillions of miles away with radio telescopes, we can detect weak signals like cosmic background radiation, etc) - but a noise problem and attenuation problem. If you lower the noise floor enough you can hear anything. If you decrease the attenuation enough, you can hear anything. Ground causes attenuation far more than air at most frequencies of interest. We are interested in buried objects. And we live on Earth, the planet with the busiest (known) airwaves in the universe. Noise is something we can work on, the ground is sorta a big limitation right now with conventional detectors but I believe there are solutions to both that are better than what we have now, just different than what people would consider a "metal detector".

Right, I don't think anyone would disagree if such a machine existed. But my point is that once companies start down this path, often the focus only becomes the user experience itself and any other innovation halts because it's easier and cheaper to do that instead and keep selling new models with minimal research invested. It's a rut that few companies ever get out of, happens all the time in the tech world. In the end you rarely end up with a machine with 1 setting that "just works". You end up with 1 setting that kinda works in some situations and doesn't work at all in others where you really need a 2nd knob, but each new release just gives you a redesigned knob style and a new color rather than making it actually work better. Because it's cheaper and people will buy something because it's now stainless steel and not black plastic, and next year because it's black plastic and not stainless steel, and simply doing this over and over is more profitable than innovation. Anyways...not saying that's what's happening. It just concerns me because it seems like there are echos of this being considered, especially considering I've only ever seen 1 truly new detector (the GPZ) released in my entire gold detecting career. Who knows, maybe this detector will surprise me, I'm just grumbling waiting for something to be profitable enough to go back detecting again.

The inevitable push for tech products to go backwards and lose functionality in favor of appealing to a wider audience... I personally hope that isn't all we see as far as innovation goes with detectors now. Are we getting to that point, like we are seeing with computers where of the updates and new releases tend to be concentrating on "user experience" rather than raw power and configurability? Of course this is just one release, but there were echos of this philosophy in the GPZ and certainly the SDC design too. Maybe it's a good thing when it comes to detectors, I guess I'll sit back and see. I just hope we still see some effort in developing more power rather than just concentrating on a good UI experience from here on out.