Mike Hillis

That is a nice hunk of gold! HH Mike

Always nice to find a match set, Mark. Looks like gold plate? HH Mike

On Micro gold jewelry, the F75LTD with the 3x6 concentric and the G2+ with the 5"DD are basically equal with the nod going to the F75LTD for the Boosted audio. My impression is that the G2+ will do better on the below micro jewelry size gold. So if I extrapolate that to the T2+ vs G2+ comparison you get more detector bang for the buck with the T2+ and I would even point you to the F75+ or F75LTD for even more bank for the buck. The Fisher / Tek units have a 5 year warranty period (7-8 years in some cases) and are easily repairable out of warranty. The Equinox have a 3 year warranty period and currently no out of warranty prices are being quoted. The Equinox is new high frequency multi-frequency so its quite popular with lots of people at the moment. HH Mike

Hi Gerry, That looks pretty decent for the regular small stuff. I imagine it would work good for the micro gold, too. Which coil was used? HH Mike

yeah, the F75 LTD with DST fitted with the 3x6 concentric is hot hot hot. For 'tiny' target hunting I prefer it over the Goldbug Pro series. Nice mods. HH Mike

Stay on it while you can, Mark. Pretty neat that you might be finding stuff you lost as a kid. HH Mike

That is a very nice ring. Congrats. HH Mike

Now THAT is a good hunt! Thanks for sharing. Mike

Some of my favorites.... Fists Full of Gold: A complete Guide to the Art of Prospecting: How You Can Find Gold in the Mountains and Deserts. (Chris Ralph) The Complete unabridged Zip Zip (larry Sallee) DFX Gold Methods: Finding Gold Jewelry with the Whites DFX E series TM Metal Detector. (Clive Clynick) Treasure Hunting Manual Vol 7 (Von Mueller) Tom Dankowski's 5th Edition Fisher Intelligence booklet. (Tom Dankowski) CoinShooting 1, II, and III. (Glenn Carson) I have many more but those stand out off the top of my head. I like the Glenn Carson Coinshooting books because he makes you think about your desired targets. Anyway....a quick 'off the cuff' list. Don't forget the DVD's. There are some really good DVDs out there. Mike

Is the new throw away design of the Equinox the new marketing model? Do you think more manufacturers will move to this model for their waterproof designs? If the term 'throw away' troubles you, replace the phrase with "planned obsolescence". It is interesting to think why a company would even think they could get away with something like that. But the market has shown that for Minelab, they can pretty much do what ever they want as people are willing to pay the premium price for their tech. With 'planned obsolescence" they don't need to obsolete it with technological advances, they can force the obsolescence with a non-repairable design. and kill the used market at the same time. HH Mike

"it allows the machine to track more than one ground balance point at a time" Wow! Ground cancelling is coming into its own. Auto offsets, (several models), Hole-less PIs (GPZ), Ground cancel spans (ATGold) and now multiple point ground tracking (GMT 24K) I like it. HH Mike

Very nice! Something special about going out hunting for treasure and actually coming home with it. Makes you feel good the whole week. HH Mike

Very nice! Say Tom, how common do you find it to be where the rings are marked 417 or 585 vs 10k or 14k? Mike

Last time I had to chance to take a metal detector outside was about a month ago. FINALLY was able to plan for some detecting time Sunday morning. I'd been thinking about my G2+LTD audio profiling abilities, so I unpacked it Saturday night and go it ready to go for Sunday morning's hunt. Was hunting gold as always but was mainly into audio target size profiling so I was digging coins too. This was just another stinking zincoln signal. Boy was I surprised when about 3" down out pops a silver ring. 925 silver with a EC hallmark. Don't have any idea if the stones are real or not. Being silver I don't have my hopes up but you never know. Its like a starburst on the finger in the sunlight. I'll get it tested and find out. If they are real its ching ching. If not, it is still a $100 bill. HH Mike

Very nice, Tom.

I like the 'like' button because it lets me let the poster know I read and appreciated their content when I don't have time to make a decent reply post. Kind of a quick, "I read your post and appreciate you sharing it" type thing when I'm popping in and out to read whats going on. HH Mike

I researched the dickens out of GPS before I bought one. There are several nice handhelds on the market that can do different things with maps, even satellite views. But in the end I went with a Garmin Vista HCx. It has operated flawlessly everywhere I've taken it. I use it for driving, hiking, hunting, fishing, just about everything. You really want the color display. There is just more information in a color display than a monochrome. Get good maps for it and it is sweet. At least mine has been. HH Mike

It helps that the tiny Turkey company gets government grant money for their projects and doesn't have to rely on sales to fund themselves. HH Mike

Is there any way to download this and listen off line? Mike

I agree, Steve. I really like the way they showed the coils options by detector. Makes it easy to review your coil selection and think about any adjustments. HH Mike

Thanks Rick. Maybe so. Maybe not. I got a call from someone's shipping department a couple of weeks back wanting to send me something. I was busy and focused on the task at hand only listening with half an ear and declined shipment. I don't even know who it was that called or what company they were with. I think I thought it was a phishing scam to get my info and in any event I was in a hurry to get off the phone and not loose my focus. El Nino77, that is some work you have done. I'll have to take some time to review it closer than I have. HH Mike

Hi Rick, Anything can hunt a tot lot, If you want to hunt tiny targets in a tot lot, just get a normal high frequency gold prospecting unit and have at it. Totlots and sand lots you dig everything just because you can, its easy to dig everything. Turf is where the restriction is at. You can't dig everything in turf and you don't want to dig everything in turf. It will look like the top of Hacksaw Ridge in a very short period of time if you try to dig everything in these turf spots. I had a Whites TDI for a season. The two biggest drawbacks I had with the TDI was 1) it lumped small non-ferrous and small ferrous targets together. I couldn't tell a paper staple from an earring. and 2) the ridiculous coil control it required to keep the ground from responding. As long as the ground was flat and I kept the coil 3 inches or higher off the ground I had a silent detector but in uneven ground every irregularity made it report, which resulted in having to keep the coil even higher off the ground and, if I didn't keep my mind in the game, staying on top of identifying what was sounding off, the ground or a target, I could end up chasing a ground surface irregularity like it was a target. It did work well for high conductors, however. So....the Manta PI would need to have small ferrous rejection, (no staple responses) with some form of ground balance to kill the surface irregularity responses, and some form of discrimination to limit what reports. 8 ns is extremely low and will be somewhat like hunting with a high frequency VLF. Everything is going to report. There will need to be some low conductive non-ferrous discrimination. The only way you can do non-ferrous discrimination like this with a PI is by measuring multiple PI pulse delays: Hits at 8 ns, still hitting at 11 ns, don't give an audio response. Hits at 8 ns, decay is complete by 11 ns, give an audio response or a meter reading or whatever. Last I checked they haven't started making these yet where you can dial in a bottom and a top pulse delay range. As of now the Whites V3/V3i is the only detector on the market today that can kind of do that by comparing the 22kHz and the 3kHz signals real time so that you can see and compare the results at the same time. 22kHz screams on everything, the 3 kHz say mass, no mass. Audio signal gives target size hints However their coils aren't really built with a tight enough null so there is an inherent limitation to signal size beyond frequency limitations. But it works. If Fisher gets something designed that can hunt that environment I would be happy to prove it. HH Mike

Very nice find. I wish more people wore platinum. HH Mike

Very nice ring, RR. HH Mike

I'm probably acting too hastily. I'm looking forward to your report when you can write one up. Mike