phrunt

I think they'll quickly have a bigger piece of the pie than the one missing from the gold pie. Still can't see how the piece was taken from the pie with the crust left behind...

You should have a look at the botanical gardens if you have time, quite a nice spot, and wander around the city centre, still plenty of buildings left that are yet to be knocked down from the earthquake, you can take a tram tour around to make it easier. A lot of the city has been rebuilt now and you'll see the new tougher way they've built the buildings to handle the big earthquakes. Christchurch has a cool museum but I think it's closed for renovations at the moment, the big old building its in was one of the few big old ones to survive the quake. Hamner springs outside of Christchurch is nice for a little trip, go soak in the hot pools. The International Antarctica centre is another good thing to do, the kids would like that.

Nah, Nokta were outstanding with my warranty on that, top notch in fact, could not ask for better service. None were in my country so they shipped direct.

That's human years, in detector years that's a few days when models stay on the market for a decade or three 🙂

Keep in mind things like tone options are what separate entry level machines from high end machines, they can't throw everything at the lower end machines as they have to justify the much higher price of the high-end models 🙂 Apex was designed around being a beginners or casual hunters' machine being put into the Ace lineup, not many in this thread would be buying as many here tend to buy the high-end models of various brands as they appreciate the higher end detector features. To someone coming from an earlier Ace who enjoyed that detector then the Apex would seem like a Ferrari, and that's how Garrett positioned it. Now suddenly their Ace 200 upgrade can allow them to hunt beaches with wet sand, they have all this new ability they didn't have with their Ace 200. I guess by releasing their first SMF as an Ace has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works as it encouraged people that were not normally interested in buying an Ace model into buying one, and of course that's not going to go well for everyone.

It's audio seems like an upgrade from my Ace 300 doorbell audio, and sounds like a big upgrade from the earlier Ace series in general. I wish the Apex wasn't cost prohibitive in NZ as I would be a proud owner of it, and in my mild soils I'm sure it would do fantastic and there are many people just like me out there, in milder soils where most detectors thrive. People like me can buy an Apex and like its design with excellent build quality, nice screen, good enough feature set and its performance generally would be perfectly suitable to do well. It always puts a smirk on my face when I take out my Ace 300 and pull up some silvers, it adds to the thrill of the find knowing a detector many frown upon brings up the goods and with a nice big coil on it like my Tornado it's one of the deepest VLF's on silver coins I have, must be its frequency helping. A 6 to 8" NZ $1 coin prior to digging, perfect ID, easy Target, it can find a lot deeper than this. This was when I first got my Ace 300, you'll see my Target ID cheat sheet stuck to the top of the detector for my cherry picking 😛 Look at my notching, I've noticed out just about everything only wanting to find $1 and $2 coins and of course big silvers, I was cruising over a an old sports field cherry picking coins I wanted to find knowing they were about. This is how I set it up for my daughter too, she only wants $1 and $2 coins, doesn't care about finding old coins she can't spend 🙂 I'd really love to own an Apex, but I can't justify paying the price of an Equinox 800 to own one, Garrett's NZ Pricing is way out of line unfortunately, as their detectors appear to work very well in our soil conditions and if were priced right would be very good sellers in NZ.

You may have missed this Mitchel, "The volcano's last outburst occurred around 250CE and was one of the largest recorded explosions in history, and the largest in the last 5,000 years." The most recent eruption in Taupo’s explosive history, around 1800 years ago, unleashed a pyroclastic flow of ash and lava that swept through 20,000 sq km of land around Taupo at speeds of 600–900 km/h. It also blocked the outlet of the lake, causing its level to rise by some 35 m so that when the natural dam finally broke, the Waikato River flowed at 200 times its current rate, carving a new course for itself across the North Island and discharging into the Tasman rather than the Pacific. Taupō is a global star – the world’s most active supervolcano. It’s studied by scientists everywhere.

Looking at social media a lot of people are getting very annoyed at Garrett and their marketing method for the Storm, people really don't appreciate these hype up marketing then nothing type releases. It's turning people against them, people are choosing to buy competitors machines as they've waited and waited and it hasn't arrived, a lot of expectations were around the Anniversary celebrations for the release, that never happened so now expectations are it's a long way off or they would have done it then. What we do likely know though, is its name is the storm, with a nice little coil for the O in the name. The hats are a bit of a giveaway. I don't think the detector is going to be bumble bee yellow and black, it's blue for sure. I think the long lead up to releases is very damaging for a company to do, they may see it as it stops loyal customers buying another brand in the meantime knowing the Garrett is coming while they get the detector ready for release, but it looks to me like the opposite is happening as very few like the marketing method, and it's pushing them into buying other brands and some other brands are taking advantage of that sentiment with very good price reductions going on now. It went from initial excitement to annoyance about waiting.....

I wonder if Aurora's make the PI detectors go crazy? We are getting a lot of them at the moment and that's set to continue, it's probably something a GPX 4500 or similar would be affected by. I know they make my Cars radar detector go a bit funky. Just because we can only see the Aurora at night doesn't mean it's not there at daytime too, could be a potential source of unexplained EMI problems with detectors. My 6000 was running beautifully the same day of an Aurora a few days ago but I'm not so sure something like the 5000 would cope as well.

Awesome Dave, a game changer for sure, now you will have all the confidence and be able to go back and do it yourself.

The problem is they thought they'd promote it before releasing it by their Storm is coming marketing, this may have backfired on them with heavy discounting by the biggest competitor on their best machine. Once someone buys a machine like that, they're very unlikely to buy another one a month or two later. They need to get this storm out the door, the longer they wait the worse it gets. We saw it again recently, Nokta had been talking about a PI years, Algoforce hits the market and takes it by surprise with no clues it was coming at all, now Nokta suddenly do a naming contest for their PI that looks like it's finally coming, but not necessarily, it took years after their Legend naming contest until it hit the market. Maybe the Algoforce release shook them a bit. Manufacturers would be smarter to take the market by surprise like XP with the Deus 2 and not leak a new model is coming when it's not ready to release, it just doesn't seem to work in their favour. I really hope the storm hits soon, and it uses the Apex design, love that big screen and overall design.

The spa was running as it has to heat, which means lots of bubbles moving around and why I had to use the rock to hold it in place 🙂

I've read occasionally the speaker, and other times the battery area, especially with people that changed to aftermarket shafts, not sure how valid that is. Mine spent 3 days at the bottom of my spa pool with a rock holding it down, left turned on, it went flat obviously but after 3 days I took it out and charged it up, and it was fine. I did that while under warranty. The water was 38 degrees c too, 100 degrees f, which I believe warmer water like that may cause leaks more than colder water as rubber shrinks when hot. I did it a few times throughout its warranty.

Can it catch it up to the Manticore for depth though as this video makes it look terrible by comparison, seems a lot of messing around when you have other detectors that natively hit the same depth without doing anything, especially switching into a tricky to access mode to check a target? whenever you get a suspect deep target. I read a lot of people saying the Legend is a bit of an 8" max detector and many comment on it's not very deep compared to others, the same thing I found with my Simplex and a guy I know in NZ sold his for that very reason, although that was very early on in the firmware updates, he didn't give it much of a chance. Every time I think I'll jump onboard and buy one I read stuff that puts me off! Although as soon as I can get my hands on a Nel Snake for it I'll buy it regardless for a waterproof creek gold detector, albeit second hand as even though we are a tiny market they're regularly available second hand, usually they're on multiple owners though. The Deep Target feature sounds more viable to use than Beast mode. I think the naming of Beast mode was a poor choice as it makes it sound like it's something super powerful and perhaps got people's expectations too high.

Understandable, very hard to see NZ in that amount of time, you'll be in a mad rush, I could spend 2 weeks just in my area and not run out of stuff to do as a tourist and many do, that's a pretty normal stay time around here. Always check the sky at night, especially when outside of cities on the South Island, the Aurora is very active at the moment, 2 nights ago taken from Queenstown Botanical Gardens.

I think the brain will be under the arm cuff too, this seems vital to fitting the capacitors and other gadgets required to make a deep seeking PI

yea, the pellets I'm used to dealing with although worse now than ever at that spot, and the GPX I was using picks them up just as well except the tiny little ones, it was more the endless hot rocks that was driving me mad, can't go a swing without it going crazy on them and then there is the question of if I was missing gold because of the hot rocks on the VLF, I believe less likely with a PI that was silent over most of them except the worst ones. This is a particularly bad spot to use a VLF though, I'd never enjoyed using a VLF in this area, probably my lack of patience with it.

You know me too well, perhaps I should have worded it I will resist with all of my might not to buy one. I'd like to support Nokta for putting the effort in to bringing it to market though, and for keeping with the tradition of their better pricing model. With my wide array of detectors, I only reach for a small handful though and even then, sometimes I use ones out of that handful with the hope of keeping their batteries alive. I might cull them all off one day, that would be a milestone event. I could drop back to 3 detectors and be fine.

You won't want to use it at many gold locations here, between the shotgun pellets and hot rocks you'll barely have 5 seconds when it's not reacting to something, especially at the new golf course spot, they're shooting like mad there to get rid of the rabbits as it won't be any 18-hole golf course for long, it'll be a few thousand holes. I tried it out yesterday, big mistake, went back to a PI quick smart and it was night and day.

Well, they had a winning formula of suggestions on this forum, let's hope they didn't listen to Youtube and Facebook influencers too much and neglect the suggestions here unless they were in line with each other. I'm puzzled why they're doing two models other than for more sales as surely one detector could handle both jobs and give people even more bang for the buck. Hopefully it's just the supplied coil options although I have a very bad feeling they've gone down the path of their own coils not compatible with GPX coils and if its chipped like the Legend then there is another reason for its uptake to be slower than hoped. I guess their Relic one will have the Algoforce Target ID's and possibly DD coils and blanking, features that would also be good on a prospecting machine. They missed the beach part of the market, always neglected, I guess that's the Impulse's fault having trouble selling 100 detectors. Good to see they're indicating it will be cheaper, perhaps not than the Algo but than the Minelabs. Unfortunately, I have too many detectors, so having another gold machine in my cupboard is very unlikely unless it betters what I have, and that's unlikely but we can hope and dream!

I can imagine you were their target market with this sale, they want to take the shine off the competitor before it even comes out, that's the problem with announcing something that's not ready. XP did something simialr to Nokta too, Nokta were hyping their Legend up for a very long time before it came out, XP came out of nowhere and released their Deus 2 leading the pack.

Sometimes these sales become price adjustments, as they stick around or never go back up to their full price. I thought the Manticore is overpriced, well still is here. I can buy a Deus 2 WS6 lite whatever it is kit for half the price of a Manticore. Minelab always aim high for pricing, and gradually adjust when they work out they have overshot. The Deus 2 is the competitor to the Manticore and has pretty good popularity, and the Legend competing with the Equinox 800. So, for the first time in some time Minelab has real competition. It will be interesting how Garrett's new detector when it finally comes out adjusts the market uptake but may have been another reason this sale is US only, as the Garrett detector will be virtually USA only too unless they sort out their pricing. My biggest problem with Nokta detectors is their UI is always a poorly thought-out mashup of making too much fit on a screen not suitable. XP face similar issues although not near as bad. The Manticore is so simple to navigate and understand the screen it doesn't even compare in that regard. What was never taken into account it seems was a bulk of people were happy with their 800's, and the changes made especially to the 900 were certainly not enough to entice an "upgrade" unless a water hunter so many will only upgrade once their 800 fails out of warranty. The Manticore was an upgrade but the price increase was far too high for not enough extra for many people. I'm happy with my Manticore though, and glad I bought it, especially now I have the m8 and m15. A very good detector. As Steve said they'll sell a lot of Manticores now during the sale, once the sale is over, they'll be lucky to sell many at all for a long time.

You can get them from China as they use them on their clones, you'd want to pop yours open first to just make sure but generally their clone stuff is identical in the way it fits. I'd get a quote from Minelab first, as these Chinese ones aren't even that cheap, they used to be when a lot of sellers had them but now it seems down to one. You could ask Woody at Detectormods as he's tinkered a lot with these fakes. Just 4 screws and a ribbon cable to replace it, although I'd pop off your ribbon cable and clean it with some electronics cleaner or pure alcohol and plug it in again and see if it fixes your screen, as it might, do it at both ends. I think eventually when Minelab stops services the GPX we'll be increasingly relying on these clone parts but while Minelab still services unless the prices are beyond a joke it's best to just let them repair it with their parts.

Odd, I never post where I am at so I have no idea why you would say that. And of course I mean general area, not their actual mine site.

The F75 would be far easier to setup than the Legend, the Legend has pretty complicated menu system. I even get annoyed at my Simplex for difficulty of adjusting things and remembering all the little icons meanings and its far less feature rich than the Legend, in saying that I rarely use it so I don't get a chance to let them sink into memory. A big reason for the F75 being simple to setup is it has very few options, the Legend is loaded with options, if that's good or bad depends on the end user. I like detectors simple but not missing too many features. The Legend comes across as a bit complicated to use to me, mainly due to it's cumbersome menu system and trying to pack too much onto a screen and menu system that just can't handle it. The F75 having so few options can be learnt and understood in no time at all but lacks a lot of features the Legend has. A detector like the Legend would have really benefited from a screen like the Manticore. In saying that, I'd still pick the Legend, more features and features I find appealing especially the multi frequencies, it's like having a bunch of detectors in one, whereas the F75 is very limited there with its single frequency. The Legend will also have more ways of avoiding EMI than the F75 which seems important to you, as it is for everyone. The Legend is a whole lot of detector for the money.