Mike_Hillis

Sad days.

I just accept that fact that I am a treasure hunting pirate. Once I find it, it belongs to me. What I choose to do with it after that is my own decision to make. Regards your treasure question.....ownership is part of the project research, just as you need to research the source of the treasure, you also need to research the potential ownership claims on the treasure. Then you decide what would be the best outcome for your project should it succeed. HH Mike

Looks like the took the Mixed mode from my Impact, linked the STA mode display feature with the GEN mode motion all metal with a fixed threshold, fixed I SAT, fixed iron disc....probably at either 25 or 10 out of 40 and a fixed tone. Probably targeting the Gold Monster market share arena. HH Mike

If you follow the progression, the Gold Racer and Gold Kruzer are actually the AU Gold Finder circuit stuffed in different packages with little tweaks to make them different. The Gold Racer is the AU Gold Finder stuffed in a Gold Racer Package. Makro wanted one too, so they took the AU Gold Finder and stuffed it in the Kruzer package. But they are all basically the same detector so you can expect the same performance from all three. Want knobs.....AU Gold Finder. Want a display and like the Racer package....Gold Racer. Want want a display and like the Kruzer package....Gold Kruzer. I just wish the Gold Kruzer had the same aftermarket coil selection availability that the Gold Racer enjoys. HH Mike

That is a nice simple little unit. Wonder where the iron break is set in relation to the Gold Racer/Gold Kruzer. Wonder why I would want to pick it over the Gold Kruzer?

Hi TahoeGold. Good post. Couple of things: In Discrimination mode, the size of the gold you can detect is directly related to how far down into the iron range you are willing to go. What part of the chain are you actually detecting, a link? the clasp?, the loop the clasp connects to? When chain hunting you are really hunting one of those parts and you have to setup for that part. Wrap your head around this: I found a nice looking 10K bracelet that has a VDI of 43/44 on my Gold Kruzer. But the Kruzer will not respond to it in Disc mode unless I have the disc set down into the twenties. All my detectors act the same way on this bracelet. I have to be really down far into the iron range to hit it, even though it gives a non-ferrous ID number. I attribute this to the solder used for the links and the really sharp angles where they fold over. But it further illustrates my point. Smaller gold requires a really low iron setting and some sites don't really support it. The key about tiny/small jewelry is that the target is tiny/small so the response from your detector should also be tiny/small. If you hunt in All Metal for tiny/small jewelry you have to set up so you can key into the tiny/small sounding targets. The hard part is how much sensitivity is required to hear the tiny stuff in the first place can nix the ability to hear the small stuff in the blast of all the larger targets that respond. I recommend learning to use the minimum about of sensitivity that will give you a intelligent response at the depth you are most likely to find the item. That is what I like most about gold prospecting when it comes to jewelry hunting. It really teaches you how to setup your detector to best hear the target. HH Mike

My wife's health is going to require me to take a break from treasure hunting for a few years so I'm packing everything up for storage. What's the best way to prep my headphone muff's for long term storage? For that matter, Do I need to do anything special to my detectors other than removing the batteries and a good cleaning? Thanks, Mike

Thanks, NIK. I just get steamed because I've had it happen to me, too, only I also had missing parts. It all gets resolved in the end but it just burns me up when I see this. Good luck. HH Mike

When I buy new I want the new experience I paid the money for. I want to be the one to open the box the first time. I want to be the one to do the first un-packing. I want to enjoy the pristine condition of a brand new blemish free unit fresh from the box. An open box isn't new. Its a return or a demo unit the dealer is offloading, hoping you won't care. Want to share the dealer's name so we don't inadvertently do business with them, because I don't want to buy from a guy who thinks its ok to open boxes and try out detectors and then try to resale them as new units. HH Mike

New CTX's with a $1200 price tag would be attractive to me. The current price turned me off of it and the ETRAC does very well for me when I need its feature set. I don't have any desire to spend more than that on a metal detector. As I've said before, the lack of enhanced discrimination turned me off the Equinox from the get go but even it they update the discrimination to the point where its actually useful for hunting non-ferrous objects in non-ferrous trash I'll turn it off if the price is over my threshold and $1200 is about my limit. I personally find it hard to justify standing in a park with something even that expensive digging trash and clad coins, no matter how much gold I find. HH Mike

Its my understanding Fisher makes it specifically for metaldetectors.com now. The F5 is probably my favorite detector behind the F75 LTD with DST. I like it because the gain and threshold settings are independently adjustable. It gave me the ability to hunt at very low gain settings with very high threshold settings with a weak target audio boost for very small jewelry targets at grassroots level. Very effective at controlling coil footprint too. The F5 also has a very unique overload feature. You can place it in an overload condition and it will reset while still in the condition that caused the overload and essentially null the coil to the overload until you put it in motion again. Very effective for large object masking. It also has probably the largest ground balance range of any detector I know of. It is one of the few metal detectors that I can ground balance spot on in my ground, to the point where a single point is perfectly balanced. The feature set is effective for most any kind of hunting. I've posted lots of information about it. I sold my last one to help fund my V3 purchase as I wanted to try and replicate the F5 with the V3. Very hard to replicate the F5 and now that they have the 4" coil out for it I'll probably get another one this spring. HH Mike

I just want to add....before the advent of the FE0304 meter...my only clue to how strong the ground mineral signal was the depth high conductive coins wrapped around to iron responses. Now I can look at a meter reading and know what to expect. HH Mike

Kac, They are independent. Ground balance number is the phase of the ground signal. FE sensing is the strength of the ground signal. That is really the only relation between them. Ground balancing may silence the ground response but it doesn't affect the strength of the ground signal. The FE meter is a handy tool if you know how to use it. On the F75,,,higher FE values mean I need to sweep a little faster and notch in some low iron values for investigation or maybe go to all metal mode and take out some filtering. On the Impact, higher FE values tells me I need to look at my target ID values, maybe lower my frequency and/or change my iron disc range (from 15 to 40) and maybe notch in some of the very low numbers or go to one of the all metal modes to reduce filtering. Without the FE meter I wouldn't be able to adapt as fast. HH Mike PS....The FE meter can also tell you when its a good time to go to a smaller coil. Small coils see less dirt so they can keep you in the Disc mode longer.

The FE0304 meter doesn't have anything to do with the ground phase number. It simply tells you how strong the minerals in the dirt are. The minerals could be magnetic like black sand or they could be conductive such as salt, or some combination of both. You can have dirt that ground balances in the teens and give you a high FE0304 reading because its highly conductive like wet salt, or it could balance in the 50's and 60's and give you high FE0304 readings because its highly oxidized like some red clays and you can have dirt in the 90's give you high FE0304 readings due to black sand. And you can have some combination of both. What is important is understanding how ground with high FE0304 readings affect target signals on your detector. At some point ground mineral strength starts to affect target signals. It will either start masking it, or start interacting with the target response, either raising or lowering the target's phase numbers. In my environment, as the ground mineral strength increases, the target phase number rises and based upon the target conductivity it can quickly wrap around to the iron range, or in the case of tiny targets, completely mask them. The FE0304 meter responses give the operator a heads up about his ground and allows him to make appropriate setting changes to deal with it and/or better interpret his iron signals. HH Mike

Hi Tony. Yep..they moved to a location at the corner of San Mateo and Manual. I used to go in there and handle and play with all the Whites detectors. They just moved again couple of years ago to a new location but I forget where. HH Mike

Yeah....I didn't ask why, I just went down the list and then got bummed out. HH Mike

I was thinking about maybe picking up another Fisher F19 but when I called the Mom and Pop dealer guy I like to do business with, and whom I had bought my last one from, he told me he no longer sold Fisher. Ok... well....I'll go to the next dealer I like. Went to his website...no Fisher. Looked up a third guy but it looks like he is gone. Notice the major online dealers still carry Fisher but the few guys I like to do business with don't. Probably goes along with the inability I have had in even buying Fisher from some dealers who only wanted to sell me XP or Minelab, even though I expressly asked about and was interested in a Fisher model. HH Mike

Zortan, I'd say you are borrowing trouble if you pursue it. Mike

F75+ model or the F75 LTD with DST.....I'd never even look at a Simplex with one of those two. My opinion is that the F75 is a true multi-purpose treasure hunting tool and the Simplex is just an entry level metal detector designed to acquaint you with the Nokta/Makro series of metal detectors. The F75 has so much more under the hood and I doubt many folks even use 1/3 of what is available under there. I looked at the Simplex and as a F75 owner user I didn't see anything that caused an itch to experience it. But that's just me and my opinion. Far be it from me to cause someone not to buy and try for themselves as I am all for buy and try. HH Mike

Oldest one I currently have is the Tesoro Golden Sabre II. Is that considered Vintage? I dunno. HH Mike

I don't guess you can blame the guy. Even though its a lot of work it is nice to be affiliated with a detector and say you helped develop it and bring it to market. I know I've gotten to say, 'we' a few times myself. My one big wish for Tom was that he lived somewhere where there was dirt. HH Mike

In many detectors you will hear this called 'bottle cap' reject. If your detector has a bottle cap reject filter you have a FE bias setting available to you. If you have both bottle cap reject and a hot rock filter you basically have a dual FE bias/FE mineral filter that you can tweak for iron bias at both ends of the 180 degree spectrum. Tom Dankowski thinks the normal FE Bias filter on the Equinox 800 was too high and didn't let him go low enough into the iron...so he worked with Minelab for the FE2 setting. He polled the FE / FE2 user settings people were using all last fall. HH Mike

I have three regrets. Regret #1, the one I regret the most was a new toned Tesoro Golden MicroMax. I had some money burning a hole in my pocket so I rummaged via a phone call at Clevengers and found he had a new in box Golden MicroMax he'd sell me for $400. So I got it. It turned out to be a new toned model and at first I was upset and was going to return it, but I kept it for an extra week and it turned out I loved the new tone arrangement. Well...eventually I needed some cash for a new buy and try itch and I ended up selling it, the rationale being I'll just buy a used one later and send it in to Tesoro to update to the new tones. About 6 months later I bought a used old tone Golden uMax and called Tesoro, listened to Rusty tell me how awful the new tone models were and that they had some kind of bug or something...and bottom line they could no longer update to new tone arraignment and I could call his number and he would try to sell me something else. Pretty much bummed me out. I ended up leaving the Golden uMax series and going back to the Golden Sabre II, which I still use to this day. Regret #2 was a brand new V3i. I had lucked out and got a deal on a pristine V3i and was quite happy with it. Then one day I got a phone call about a family emergency and didn't have enough cash on hand so I looked to my toys to see what I could sell the fastest for the most and the V3i floated to the top. I have since replaced it with a used V3 and have vowed to someday get another pristine V3i before I retire but I highly regret selling that one. Regret #3 was selling my Rutus Alter 71. I had bought it used and it was version 1.0. It was after version 2.0 was out and I didn't play 20 questions to fully understand I was buying an older version. Lesson learned. I was little bummed out about that but nonetheless I put some time on the machine and saw it's potential. I ended up selling this one also to scratch another buy and try itch. HH Mike

I rotated through my stable in 2020 like I normally do.... F75LTD V3, ETRAC IMPACT, Gold Kruzer 8500 Eurotek Pro Compadre Golden Sabre II Cortes

I wish Fisher would make a digital CZ Quicksilver. Keep the same 5 & 15 frequencies with three options: 1) simultaneous dual CZ frequency, 2) a selectable 5 kHz single frequency, and 3) a selectable 15 kHz frequency. Four tone with adjustable tone break points for all the tones and the ability to change the tone pitch for all four tones. All four tones can be used anywhere within the TID scale. Keep the CZ modulation audio control. -99 to 0 to +99 TID. -99 to 0 is ferrous range. +1 to +99 for nonferrous. Non - normalized TID. 5 kHz runs 5 kHz target id, and 15 kHz runs 15 kHz target id. Dual is an averaged TID target id. Full range notching across -99 to +99. Sliding scale recovery speed. I'll dream up some more in a bit. HH Mike