phrunt

It's looking like an inductor, hard to tell as I can't zoom the photo enough to keep the quality, Jason could well be right with the 3 inductors he's posted a picture of. It is probably not the choke, plus it'd suck for them if it was, a pain to replace that ?

Good spotting, I didn't notice the little ones as I didn't zoom in.

Ok, to end the speculation it is not a replacement mainboard. Most likely these are the components being replaced with better ones. Certainly number 2, and either 1 or the one marked possible.

My CTX has a clock, haven't paid much attention to it, it must set itself with the GPS or something as I never set it and it's got the right time. I don't care about a clock on a detector, I don't care about time, I eat when I'm hungry and I go home when it gets dark. ?

Yep, send it off! No point having a faulty machine when you don't have to.

It's been around for decades, I remember seeing it in "Into the Blue" with Jessica Alba and that's from 2005. Their boat towed metal detectors are pretty cool

You would think for the price the cheap mongrels could include the 8x5.5 coil in the package, they even include 2 coils with the Vanquish that's extremely cheap compared to the Mandible. Talk about taking us for a ride, oh well, getting one anyway ?

Were they though? Sure, the old detectors were not made obsolete, they still work as well as they ever did.... but for most people now they just sit in the cupboard rarely used replaced by multi frequency machines thanks to the Nox kicking it off, and owning the market. Other companies have been forced to jump on the band wagon making their detectors SMF too or they knew they would struggle to sell detectors with the Nox being the dominant force in the market. Obsolete may have been too strong of a word, but one thing is for sure the Nox shook up the market to an extraordinary level. Good things come from that though, it woke up the sleepy competition, XP had sat on the Deus since 2009, over a decade, Garrett popped out with the Apex after sitting there on the ACE series since 2004 so the Apex was a big jump for them in that series. Their flagship AT series were no better really, they had and are still sitting on them since 2010.. all these are well over a decade of absolutely nothing. Now Nokta Makro are a different story, they seemed to pump out a new detector every 6 months to a year, but never a simultaneous multi frequency until the Nox forced their hand, they had to make one and out pops the Legend. Obsolete maybe questionable but one things for sure, the other manufacturers seemed to be worried enough about it to act on it after decades of doing nothing as if their detectors were obsolete, and perhaps they were.

Mines in at the repair center now getting done, I'll be able to report back in a few days how the "fix" performs.

As we all know the GPX 6000 coil ears have cracking problems, quite a number of people after hearing of it and inspecting their coils found they had cracks they didn't even know about. It's been said they revised the plastic they use to make the coils to prevent the cracking, but has anyone been able to find out the date this took place? Is it very recent I wonder or did they do it some time ago? Much like the speaker EMI problem every coil before a certain date is going to have the dodgy plastic formula. I've had my coil replaced recently under warranty for being noisy but it wasn't replaced with a new date code coil, in fact the coil I got it replaced with is likely older than my 6000 as I only bought my 6000 in May of this year and I was provided a replacement coil from 2021 by the looks of the writing on the coils package. If anyone finds out the date of the plastic change that'd be appreciated although I guess Minelab likes to keep this stuff secret to stop people wanting their stuff fixed/replaced.

To me it looked like he didn't even balance out the hot rocks, he balanced the ground and with it in fixed ground balance then went over the hot rocks. I'm not sure why he didn't try do the ground balance over the ground and the troublesome hot rock to see if it would balance out. I wouldn't write off the Axiom on tiny nuggets based off that video, and it will be very interesting to see what the aftermarket can do with coils for it to improve that too with methods like spiral and concentric coils, there is a world of possibilities there without chips in coils. The SDC has that little 8" round so has the coil size advantage over the Axiom in that video. As I said earlier the GPX 5000 with the 11" Commander is quite poor on tiny gold, put the right coil on it and the performance changes significantly.

That's right, in Australia if you take a faulty product back to the retailer you purchased it they are responsible and obligated to get it back to the manufacturer for repairs and then the manufacturer is responsible to get it back to the retailer for you to collect. For me that's no good, both the retailer and service agent are in the same city over 6 hours drive each way away ? I was tempted to drive there to get it done so then I don't have to worry about couriers using the box as a football. The drive up that way through the lakes and mountains is awesome, only problem is it'd be cheaper to fuel my car with Vodka than it is to buy Diesel at the moment.

It would be excellent if everyone getting it done can leave feedback on improvements, especially around improvements with using headphones too as a few reports out of Australia so far even though very few have had it done yet are of overall improvements even when using headphones, if this is the case then there are performance improvements too, less EMI = better performance. Mines off on the plane tomorrow, going to overnight it to the service agent. The faulty GPX 6000 survey would be off the charts now with the coil ear cracking and EMI fix that's happened since then ?

All good ? Yea, the SDC for those in the right ground seems a killer machine, hot rocks and difficult ground are it's specialties and I guess you could say prickly specimen type gold where the GPX 4500 lacks the SDC excels, with my milder soils the GPX 4500 seemed like the better choice at the time I was deciding between the two, crank its settings right up with a small coil and off it goes. It's true JW doesn't like the SDC, based upon him comparing it to the 4500 at the time he was using them he found the 4500 performed better in our ground finding the small gold. He still has his SDC though, just doesn't get used, it'd make a fantastic creek detector I think and a few guys in NZ use it for that purpose. Reliability and quality and as you point out just being a little annoying to use are the 6000's flaws and hopefully that looks like being resolved at the moment. The SDC has remained elusive to my collection though, and it's certainly not because I don't like it, it's more I don't need it. I certainly understand your love for the thing though, sounds your perfect detector and you do very well with it. Hopefully my and others whinging is what prompted Minelab to fix the GPX EMI problem, if we just complained about it once or for the timid just kept it to ourselves and shutup forever after they'd be far less inclined to do anything about it, pressure from disgruntled customers sometimes can force their hand. The Axiom to me looks to have huge potential, runs nice and quiet too. A small good spiral coil on that thing and it should be great. Garrett being open to aftermarket coils with no chipping hopefully encourages manufacturers of coils to go nuts on it making a good range of coils. It was often said the older GPX series were the last of the detectors with a massive range of coils and all the benefits that brings, well, Garrett could be that next detector to take that role on with Minelab preventing and restricting it and Garrett allowing it there is big potential there. Hopefully the Garrett sells well enough for the coil makers to think it's viable.

Thanks for the video, both the SDC and Axiom did pretty poorly I think on the small gold he was testing with, I didn't realize that the SDC was that bad on small gold as I've never used one. I can hit gold smaller than that with my 4500 and 5000 going down to 0.05 of a gram or less although certainly not with the stock coils they come with. With a good coil on them 0.05 of a gram isn't out of the question and even less is possible and that 0.07 would be pretty easy of a target. Obviously my 6000 and 7000 (with the right coil) go below those sizes down to about 0.03 of a gram or slightly less. What's not known though is if those particular bits of gold are difficult ones for a PI to pick up, I have some bits .1 of a gram that the GPX 4500/5000 struggles to pick up when it will pick up another bit that is 0.05 of a gram fine. That's where I think the Axiom will benefit greatly though, a smallish size spiral coil like I use on my legacy GPX detectors with the 10" spiral would make a good difference on smaller gold with it. Hopefully aftermarket manufacturers take note of the Axiom and produce coils for it, looks to have really great potential and I'm sure the right coil on it would improve those results significantly. As someone that chases small gold if I saw that same video when the 4500 came out with him going over those nuggets with the 11" Commander mono I'd be saying the same thing about it, wow, that 4500 did poorly on the small nuggets. Hot rocks were interesting, I guess the SDC was always going to be the winner there, it's touted as the best for that. Axiom did pretty well though and I do wonder if he had tried to ground balance the ground and do the L shape trick of balancing the ground and sweeping over the hot rock with the balance button still held in would have made that hot rock signal much less or disappear. All I saw him do was balance the ground and then start testing sweeping over the hot rocks which isn't ideal on any detector unless tracking, but he was in a fixed mode.

I've never used my WM08 but I wonder if something like this might help if the plugs just don't seem right? https://www.amazon.com/MyCableMart-Adapter-Female-Stereo-Connector/dp/B00U1SSLYS

Wow, they want your battery and coil too? here they specifically only want the back control box, perhaps in the US they're going to test everyone's coil for faults and ear cracks too while it's there, that's good service. I'm shipping mine off tomorrow.

That's an excellent example of one of the EMI problems GotAU. How they could ever not consider that a fault I don't know which is why I was so annoyed at their first product notice blaming it on being a sensitive detector. I'm glad they've come to the party and are fixing them all up.

The problem with Nugget Finder is they kept setting dates on the website and never meeting those obligations, it's changed numerous times, this same thing happened with the 12" Z-Search for over a year. I believe they did it full well knowing they won't be ready in time but didn't want to lose so many sales to Coiltek. If they said the real date from the start with Coiltek already on the market many more people may have just bought the Coiltek to get out there swinging, now it's been many months already since when they were first saying they'd be released and nothing! just news of more and more delays. There have been numerous excuses now by Nugget Finder as to the delay, the excuses are compounding with delays causing further delays. Garrett are fine, they've said end of year, we are not there yet so there is no delay, dodgy dealers have done things wrong in that case, not Garrett. Nugget Finder is delayed, and it has to be costing them a lot of sales with people giving up and buying the Coiltek. I only bought Coiltek as they were on the market first, if both were out at the same time I would likely have bought the Nugget Finder coils as I prefer their build quality over Coiltek. I ended up deciding I'd just get both, now I'm growing tired of the wait and happy enough with the Coiltek's so my NF order has been cut in half, and if this continues too much longer I'll just give up and not even bother for now and wait and see others reports if I think they're even worth buying and the 11" when you get a good one is still the best coil available, other than having a range of sizes which can be beneficial the 11" is still the most sensitive coil on the market for the 6000. What's more the coil I want the most is the one that is even further delayed, the little Sadie style is going to be last off the rank. Don't believe the marketing saying the smaller coils are more sensitive, bundle wound!!!! yes their edges are but not the coil overall, and I think NF is also bundle wound, and most certainly will be in the Sadie so it's up in the air if it will be more sensitive than the 11". Quieter running yes, bundle wound, but not more sensitive. I'm sure they'll get there in the end and the coils will hit the market and they will be great coils, but in the meantime more and more people will buy the competition.

Yep, tried that. thanks for the tip though, can easily go forgotten.

hot tip, they're all in the affected serial number range unless they're under 2 months old ? Great they got back to you quickly. I just noticed we are in the wrong thread with this conversation. Whoops! Minelab service in Australia is outstanding, they're always quick to respond to queries and very helpful.

It's going to take time, this sort of thing floods a service center for work, I don't know how many people they have working in the Service department at Minelab in SA but it's probably only a three if that due to workload, no point having staff sitting around twiddling their fingers, I've always had either Brendon or Jason at ML Australia when dealing with them. Their new Miners Den service agent has one person doing it, Nathan and so far people are reporting he's pretty good. The US service agent isn't likely to have many either, they just have enough doing it to keep up with normal day to day repairs. We have one guy in NZ doing it. When something like this comes along they have to do the normal day to day repairs along with all these extra machines flooding in. Expect delays and big ones especially as word gets around. It's really not easy working in a service center when something like this happens, and you can't just pull new staff to help out of nowhere so go easy on the people doing the repairs, don't expect too much out of them I am sure they'll be doing their best.

How does the Axiom go on different types of gold, I was recently experimenting with my GPX 5000 and 4500 and trying them over bits of gold I'd found recently with mostly the 7000 and some with the 6000. The 7000 and 6000 both seem to hit on difficult types of gold, most types of gold that I've encountered really whereas the 4500 and 5000 which I primarily used sensitive extra are weak on this sort of gold, to the point sometimes of not even being able to detect it touching the coil even though its a size bit they should be screaming on. Where my experiment shocked me was switching to fine gold which doesn't exist on the 4500 but on the 5000 and fine gold was able to pick up these bits much better, not near as well as the 6000 or 7000 but at least it was hitting on them and possibly would have found them in the wild, where as sensitive extra would completely miss them. This really disappointed me as I'd only ever stuck to using Sensitive extra when using my legacy GPX's believing it was the best timing for me here, and I was clearly wrong when around half my recent small nugget finds were entirely missed by sensitive extra yet fine gold was reasonable, not good on them but reasonable. The nuggets I'm talking about aren't porous, they aren't specimen types of gold, just normal everyday NZ gold. I can put photos of the nuggets up and even a video of my little testing efforts, I was doing it for myself really and it was a windy day so the video isn't the best but it was a bit of a lesson for me. Happy to upload it if anyone wants to see. I should probably re-do it on a nicer day. The thing I very much like about the 6000 over the 4500/5000 is it's more broad in the gold types it will detect with only one setting, the 7000 is the same from what I've seen, both have little trouble with these otherwise difficult bits of gold for a PI. Would the Axiom be more like the 5000 needing adjustments yet still quite weak or more like the 6000 and 7000 picking up all types of gold well with just the one setting and picking it up decently? Some marketing I saw for the GPX 5000 was saying it's like having multiple detectors in one because of the different timings, that's clearly marketing fluff as now the 6000's out and doesn't need all the different timings, does it all without needing that when with the 5000 you'd need to go over the ground multiple times in different timings to get the best results.

While I don't own a Legend so don't know how it works, if its just one screw is it possible you could just replace that standard screw with a thumb screw for easy removal? We used them all the time in the IT industry, saves having to use screw drivers as they're quick and easy to do by hand.