phrunt

The problem is the detector needs to be financially viable, you don't keep throwing money at something that isn't going to sell well. I'm certain they could fix all of the problems and bring a great detector to market, but First Texas must be concerned if they will sell enough to even cover costs. Do they keep throwing money at it hoping it will succeed or do they abandon the project and cut their losses? The Impulse Gold can still come out in the future as a side effect of the design and in many ways should have been the focus from the start. A much larger customer base and an easier detector to manufacture not needing any waterproofing at all. I think they did it the wrong way around, if the Impulse Gold came out and was successful it'd be easier to release the AQ later on and justify its higher price being waterproof. When the AQ beta came out and Rick was flogging it off it was said to be at a heavily discounted price as much as half price as it was a special version prior to the official release but with full functionality. You were privileged to be able to buy one and even then they struggled to sell, doesn't bode well for official final product sales figures, especially after the fiasco and the higher price the final product would be listed to sell for. I came so close to buying one but Rick and I decided that it'd end up too difficult to repair it if it failed and he wasn't confident I wouldn't have any issues so he did the right thing by me, it wasn't just about making a buck.

Dilek has released a video talking about the new ground balance but addresses the speaker in it. She's saying they're looking at changing brand of speaker and are testing a new one now. I'm thinking I'll finally give in and buy a Legend as I'm impressed with their willingness to find and fix problems and love their continual firmware updates with bug fixes of course but also some improvements but I'll give it another few months, it's winter now anyway so I'm rarely detecting at the moment. Hopefully by the time I buy one everything is ironed out.

This is going to be a costly screw up for Nokia, 3 year warranty for these early units with the bad speaker, I wonder how many of them die in that period needing replaced

Thanks for the photos, these are the guys I've got my hopes pinned on for an Impulse Gold. Fingers crossed!

Nice to have you here Mike, Yes, you may get a better response to your question in the XP Deus 2 section on the forum, this main part is largely missed by the VLF treasure and relic hunters, they're generally on the other side of the tracks 🙂 If you drop your question here it you'll likely get a response quicker https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/forum/61-xp-deus-ii-forum/ For those that don't have a clue about Mike's crazy cool find you can read about it here https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-46294000 and here https://www.minelab.com/anzea/community/success-stories/celtic-chieftain-chariot-burial Great find by the way Mike!

Whoopi Dancing??? whatever works for you! 🙂 Not an image I wanted in my head. Congratulations on your 500 Eric!

This wasn't really a thread about Minelab, I think it's well established their quality has been a bit lacking of late for whatever reason, hopefully they've resolved their 6000 problems now and it sounds like it by dealer reports. It was more about the other brands joining the party. I always thought Minelab were excellent quality until recently, my GPZ is a solid build, my 4500 and 5000 I think are very tough reliable designs, I always had the impression XP were very good quality yet the Deus 2 is having some troubles, and more notably Nokta came out and boldly were saying their detectors are much better quality than the competition and then since their Legend release it's been plagued with problems too, many of which have been hardware requiring detectors and coils replaced, it was more pointing out for some reason at the moment no brands seem immune to quality issues, even the ones that thought they were. The difference with those brands too, XP and Nokta is they build in house, their products are their own making, Minelab just subcontract and don't even make metal detectors anymore so they have someone to blame and try pull into line, XP and Nokta make their own in their own production facilities and have full control yet they're having plenty of problems too, especially ironically Nokta that used the "better build quality" as a way of marketing and taking pot shots at Minelab. JP's right about with the days of social media these faults are out in the open a lot more than they used to be so we hear a lot more about problems than previously so manufacturers really have to be on the ball with quality or word spreads quickly. I was more curious if detectors have always been quite problematic or if it's more a recent thing as the Equinox was the first major release during my time of detecting and it had it's share of problems then the other detectors that have come out after it too have been a bit shaky, so I wasn't sure if this is just quite normal for detectors. Out of interest, when Minelab changed over to offshore production did they reduce their prices to reflect their much lower manufacturing cost, or did the detectors remain the same price?

My question wasn't related to any particular brand as it appears all brands are falling behind when it comes to quality, it was overall has quality dropped, to me it seems it has, but I wasn't around for the earlier detectors many of which still seem to be running today.

I can't but help notice how poor quality metal detectors have become, for such expensive electronic devices the quality is frankly pitiful. I like everybody buy a lot of stuff, from TV's to Vehicles and everything in between and the products I have the most trouble with are metal detectors. Most things I buy last fine, I never really cared about warranty and rarely kept receipts until I started detecting, I'd never needed to use it. Almost everything other than detecting gear I've bought in the last 20 years has lasted well beyond it's warranty period trouble free and most things I've bought in that time I've still got now are working fine or I got rid of them while still in a working state because they were simply replaced with newer stuff. I have a LCD TV that's 15 years old and never had a glitch, it's now just used by my daughter as I couldn't bring myself to throw it out, I had a very large rear projection TV from about 10 years before that and it still works fine but I gave it away and the people are still using it, . I have an original Atari game console from 1983 that I had as a kid that still works, and my original Sega Master System from 1986 still works like it was new yet a lot of the detectors I buy screw up in the first year or two and it's not just me, I see it happening to lots of people. I still have my first ever metal detector from when I was about 8 years of age and the thing still works! I've only been detecting a few years so wasn't overly aware of the history of detectors and their failures but looking around seeing people using old whites metal box machines and people still using Gold Bug 2's from the 90's gave me the impression detectors were built to last. I thought the poor reliability was just a Minelab problem with recent machines like the known build quality issues with the Nox and now the GPX 6000 but if I look back the CTX had it's share of issues too and I would guess other models. The GPX 6000 is dismal, worst quality detector I've seen in my time with a crazy failure rate although some are in denial of this until theirs joins the long line of failures at some point. Nokta come out fighting saying their detectors are far superior build quality than the Nox indicating their Legend would be built tough and reliable and it's turned out anything but, with countless people complaining of problems with some examples being the speaker failing which seems to happen all too often, faulty PCB's, updating issues and an abnormal number of faulty coils, to me from what I've seen their failures are just as bad as any Nox ones, if not more so as they've happened so close to the release date and the problems extending into a range of parts on the detector where as the Nox was mostly leaking which may or may not be a valid warranty as who knows if anyone with a leak used it within it's limits. Yes I know the Nox had other issues like wobbly shafts and I'm certainly not saying the Nox was good build quality, neither of the two are. Fisher came out with the Impulse which was a shambles and had endless faults, although at least it was a beta detector, albeit one people paid for the privilege of testing for them. XP have had their share of problems with the Deus 2. It seems no brand is immune to making rubbish, I haven't had any problems with Garrett personally but their Apex certainly had its issues. I have an original early model Gold Bug 2, my antique and it works a treat, solid as a rock! I have an early Aussie Built GPX 4500 and it purrs along like the day it left the factory, in AUSTRALIA. Whatever happened to detecting companies building good quality products, they used to be able to do it.

Out of all the people it could have happened to that Nokta would really prefer it didn't .... Calabash 😛 It does give an indication of how common the problem is though, I've seen a lot of people complain about it happening to them.

If you've got 2.78 on the detector it seems they say you can now no longer roll back to 2.77 or any previous version. I don't know why, back when I was fiddling with my Simpex I was bouncing between versions testing results in different firmware and it flashed back fine. From their website: IMPORTANT! SIMPLEX+ CANNOT BE ROLLED BACK TO 2.77 OR ANY PREVIOUS FIRMWARE VERSIONS. Software Update (2020.06.02) : System Software V2.78

That's what happens when you have to replace a big % of the ones you sell, stock runs out quicker than expected, especially with coils as they'd never expect to sell hardly any 11" coils as everyone gets one with the detector so they wouldn't plan to make the large number of extra coils that would be required to replace all the faulty ones.

It's the speaker failing, it was a problem with the Simplex too but it's worse on the Legend, a lot more people reporting it, could just be the Legend is more popular so the number of failures of course increases with the number of detectors sold.

That maybe a trick click bait story though. That's not how I'd expect it to work. 2.2 gig of free space? unlikely.

yep, it has a rubber moisture/dust cover on it. It would be considered a USB port that's accessible by the end user for updating, not a service only use one like on the Gold Monster which is deep inside the battery compartment and much harder to access.

In the Minelab Service section of their website they have a section for GPZ 6000 Firmware updates, this gives me hope that one day they will provide a firmware update to improve stability of the machine, to improve on Geosense to make the machine more stable. If they do this, I might start to like it more. Other detectors that we know can be firmware updated by Minelab such as the Gold Monster 1000 which newer versions of it have a newer better firmware than the initial release (my one) do not have the firmware updates section like the GPX 6000 does, so that means the firmware updates if any are likely going to be for the end user to install. Detectors with the Software Updates Files category on the Minelab service website are all ones we update ourselves like the GPZ, CTX etc etc. At least there is some hope.

Common problem with the Legend from what I'm seeing on Facebook, send it off for warranty.

EMI is the primary reason, my 6000 is a struggle to use in a number of places where with a DD it would be fine. The stock 14 is just too big for anything but relatively flat ground with no long grass. A small DD would be great for my rocky grassy high emi areas, I’d buy it the second I could as it’d make a detector I don’t want to use into one I would use.

With the screen types used on these detectors they're trying to cram too much onto the screens and making them very complicated to navigate around. I understand why they're using the screens they are, very efficient on the batteries so they can keep the detector weight down by using less batteries but the detector would be a whole lot easier to use if it had an LCD/LED panel like the CTX where they can make the screen draw anything to have far better menu systems that are easier to navigate and understand. They could do away with these button combinations to bring up hidden settings and so on and make the detector far easier to use with an LED panel. It's a difficult decision between the traditional screen and the LED with the LED being easier to use and navigate being able to draw any menu interface they want, better screen experience, colour screen, easier to control far more functions, less need for as many buttons, a more modern looking detector vs the typical detector screen with less battery draw, possibly easier to see in the bright sun but very limited on display options.

Yea if the Chinese counterfeiters make fake GPX 6000 shafts I’m buying one to replace my genuine one, it will likely be better quality 😁

There is nothing like the security of having your own home to go back to, and as you age you surely would like settling into the security and comfort of your house not chasing the dream of nuggets, your body will likely give up long before your brain and desire to find gold does and being elderly living without a stable home is no way to live. I'd never want prospecting to be my source of income no matter where I live and how much gold can be found, I wouldn't enjoy it with that sort of pressure on me to find gold. I guess I took this to the extreme as I'd paid off my first house by 25 years of age after buying it at 18 as I hated the idea of renting paying off someone else's house or having a big debt over my head knowing I'd have to work to pay it off for many decades so my wife and I went with next to nothing for a few years and paid that debt down as quick as humanly possible and from then on everything got much easier. I'd not give up owning property for anything as no matter what I've got security for later in life and you never know what life will bring. If you have to sell up your assets to do your prospecting then it's not the right thing to do as once they're gone you'll possibly never be able to get them again especially the way property prices seem to double every 10 years or so.

You mean nobody likes the Simplex duck being murdered tones? The CTX has beautiful audio.

Thanks Trevor, awesome! Looking forward to it.

Thanks Trevor, ordered myself the 14x9 to start with! Is the release date the date they start shipping from Coiltek to dealers or the date dealers will likely have them in stock? Mine will likely be even later as I'm in NZ so will probably have to wait a week or two for it to arrive here from OZ.

Ricks on their payroll and is virtually a mascot. It's good to hear they're performing well though, I'm sitting patiently waiting for mine to arrive.