phrunt

That's what I was going to say but couldn't work out a nice way to say it. 🙂

Yes, send it in for warranty, don't put up with flaws on such an expensive product and who knows the coils integrity maybe compromised and it become bump sensitive or noisy because of it very quickly.

You can unscrew the vent and let the pressure out if it's that.

Just the GPZ although I’d try sneak in the Nox too

I think I need put in an institution. I am very sick! 😛

This is why these "top metal detector" lists you find all over internet are absolute rubbish! To me that's a random shuffle of detectors, not a ranking.

I've already had the series, Garrett and Minelab are both sponsors. It's not a very good show 🙂 They're swinging Ace detectors along side a GPX 6000 looking for treasure!

It's certainly living up to it's reputation of the land of extremes, it's either too hot and dry and on fire, or in this case the past 12 months or so too wet and flooding. A family member recently got back from a couple of week trip to sunny Brisbane to see other family, and as their number plates say "Queensland - The Sunshine State". She didn't get a sunny day the entire trip and a rained almost the entire time, couldn't even go out some days as the roads were flooded. Good luck with the weather on your trip Paul, you're going to need it this time! Someone left the tap on.

Interesting, maybe they have future plans for an Ace 320 and 420 with wireless audio and are just using the screen layout already, I checked My Ace 300i and I can't see that audio icon on it but its over a year old now and likely sat at our dealer for a year or two. It might be only on recent builds.

The public beta testing didn't help with that, yes there was some positive exposure, but a huge amount of negative exposure. Ironing out the problems before selling them is clearly the better path, especially when these beta testers had to pay to do the testing and were in many ways scammed, they're not going to mind showing all the warts online and going into detail about how they feel ripped off. Normally the testing phase is kept internally so we don't hear about all the screw ups. I wouldn't think they shouldn't sell beta versions of the gold and wait until its ready before trying to sell it and release it like a normal detector they'd release and just cross their fingers the damage the AQ has done to public opinion doesn't affect the Gold also. If they want testers provide them with test units like a normal company would.

I thought I'd drop the question into Professor Google and see if they do get sick leave. It appears to me they're not as primitive as some might believe and possibly better conditions than in the US? Sick Leave The number of PAID sick days in Malaysia also depends on the duration of employment. Thus, those employees whose illness doesn’t require hospitalization are entitled to: 14 days per year if employed for 1-2 years, 18 days per year if employed 2-5 years, 22 days per year if employed longer than 5 years.

" I could have fabricated some extreme situation and made them all look bad " Far too much of that goes on and its rather easy to do also.

yes, that's something I wasn't factoring in as I've not had it but I can imagine the effects on a workforce and it causing inconsistency in build quality for the man made and assembled parts of the detector. I'm not sure how things go in Malaysia and if people would fake they don't have it to go to work if they needed the money and don't get enough sick leave time or something or go back to work too early at least and with this brain fog I've heard people talk about anything could happen. The paint was just a demonstration of something that is so simple that could explain inconsistencies quite easily, there are likely others too.

The GPX box is shielded using conductive shielding paint, I used similar stuff to improve the shielding of one of my Gold Bug Pro's and also modified a Teknetics T2 using it. It actually does work although I doubt it works as well as a nice solid aluminum box like the older GPX series has. If you look at this photo especially zoomed in you'll see the black paint in there. I'm wondering if inconsistencies with some GPX's over others are how well this paint is applied. All it takes is some person in the factory having a bad day and not caring how well they apply the paint. By how messy the edges of the paint job are it looks like it's applied by hand. Multiple coats work better than one too so human error could easily play a part in how well one detector performs over the next in relation to EMI. Small things like this could be why we see inconstancy between detectors though and play a part why some people are happier than others.

There is nothing better than having choices, each and every one of these detectors is obviously good so now people can choose which suits them best by features or attributes they like not having to worry one lags well behind the others in performance. We are in a really good place for general purpose VLF's now so it's happy times. i agree about Nokta, what an achievement and they should be quite proud of themselves leaping well ahead of well established rusted on old detector manufacturers, hopefully they can do the same with their gold prospecting PI.

I think I'd like to own an Impulse Gold, there are a few things that matter to me though one of which is coils, it would need a good range of coils seeing it's not likely to be a GPX coil detector with both smaller and larger sizes. It'd need to have no protection from aftermarket coils being made for it as of course I'd be begging X-coils to make coils for it so it would be a well traveled detector, from USA to NZ to Kazakhstan and back to NZ 😛 If it ends up just a better build quality QED and handles EMI well also I'd be interested enough to see it viable for me. I was never unhappy with the QED's performance, yes it's no GPZ or GPX but it does a decent job in the areas it excels. It makes sense for First Texas to focus on the gold detector over the beach, yes the beach people won't like that but how big is that market, and how many of those that wanted one have one of the beta versions already and if 40 more of the beach versions are coming that'd satisfy the demand I would think. It's a shame for them the final product may not come to be but it was always going to be a very niche market small sales volume model. The Gold version should be able to be used as a relic detector too so captures a good market size and if its anything like my QED it was great on the beach, beaches my Nox struggled on with black sand the QED worked well and gave good depth, just gotta keep the price realistic for what people are getting and it should be a good seller. The QED had mode 11 to turn off it's ground balance, for me on the Impulse Gold this would be essential, the difference in performance between ground balanced modes and GB Off (on QED called beach mode) was huge, so much deeper and in my soils I could use it like that fine as long as there were not too many hot rocks around. So essentially, it should be a general purpose PI, the more it can be used for the more appealing it will be to the market. First Texas need to keep in mind a Nokta is coming in the future, so the quicker it comes to market the better, they've got a big head start over Nokta.

You know someone finds a decent amount of gold when they find something like that, and smash it up 🙂 I'd treasure that thing!

If only gold prospecting PI detectors had this same level of competition, sadly I don't see it ever happening although there are attempts in the works by a couple of manufacturers so fingers crossed things start to happen. For me a 4th contender is in the list of these 3 good VLF's for general use and that's the CTX, I've never found a better machine for silver coins in my soil, so perhaps a CTX 4040 might come in and take the shine away from some other detectors in the future if they can improve on the technology especially the recovery speed and ground handling I guess, two things I don't notice being a problem but others point out are its flaws.

The QED could ground balance in any mode, it just had what I consider a failed attempt at a ground grab using the AGB button that got you somewhere in the general vicinity of balanced but you really had to adjust it further to get the balance right, often it was just easier to balance yourself completely and not even try use the AGB button and it caused people quite a bit of confusion. I think it's pretty exciting that the project is coming along, the key to success is going to be pricing, hopefully Fisher isn't going to try get too much for it.

The reason I think tracking or at least a ground grab would be good on this detector is the market it needs to go for. The weekend warriors or occasional use prospectors, it's clearly not going to be a Minelab killer so the appeal of it to the "professional prospector" might be rather limited. It's target market needs to be more the new to prospecting types and the occasional users along with the people that simply just can't afford a GPX or GPZ and I'm sure this market would be really big if it was done right, good pricing and good marketing on a good performing detector. Sitting on the shelf next to a GPX 6000 to someone that knows very little the GPX will look so much more superior with it's Geosense complete automatic operation or even the SDC which is also a simple to use detector, I wish I could turn the Geosense or at least the tracking off on the 6000 though, it's nothing more than a pain in the backside to me 🙂 One of the biggest problems I see with QED users especially new to detecting ones or new owners is they get confused how to ground balance it and find it too hard to use and understand, so making it a bit more simple than the QED would probably be worthwhile if it must be completely manual. I think for people that have been doing these things for years it comes as second nature and they don't understand how difficult it can be for someone new to it all and Minelab is taking advantage of that on the 6000 saying they turn everyone into easy experts. So that's the problem I can see, the target market needs simplicity, yes there will be exceptions to the rule where some experienced people buy the detector but it's not likely to be the norm and I can't see people selling their Minelab's to buy it, it needs to appeal to the masses and turn people that would normally just buy a VLF to tinker around on some weekends attempting to find a nugget or two into buying a PI, and a step up for existing gold prospecting VLF owners into the PI world.

That's awesome news Geotech, sounds similar in many ways to the performance of the QED and with the same manual ground balance method only available. QED's struggling to ever get auto ground balance off the ground. Now when you say manual ground balance is it like the Gold Bug 2 where you have to configure it completely yourself or is there some sort of ground grab to get the balance like the Gold Bug Pro for example? I think with something like a ground grab then tracking isn't as necessary at all, if it takes quite a while to adjust to get it right like the QED does then tracking is more beneficial. By the sounds of it the detector needs its own coils and will not run GPX coils which is a bit of a disappointment and could possibly hinder sales a bit although if priced right that shouldn't be a product killer.

No, I hadn't seen that, yours appears to run much nicer, I was happy with my DD as compared to my mono threshold that DD threshold on mine is fantastic but now hearing yours I'm not so sure, could be the different power networks though. I've never had such little confidence in a detector as I do my 6000 I just see it as an unstable detector that finds gold if you're willing to put up with it. 🙂 Hopefully I start to like it more when I get my aftermarket coils I've ordered.

Have you tested it elsewhere after that Jason, maybe it has died or it's coil? The symptoms you're describing are similar to other people who's have their coil die on them. I'm sure everyone will win the GPX lottery at some point. The things are dropping like flies. As EMI is one of my biggest challenges where I go looking for gold I am really hoping the smaller coils will improve the stability of the detector as its completely illogical to use it now when I can use my GPZ perfectly fine in the same places without the need for measures like using the GPX DD coil, lowering sensitivity or doing anything at all to mitigate EMI. The 14" DD while it does virtually completely resolve EMI problems it's so big and awkward it's not really suitable for me to use it much, it seems very good on the small gold though. It's a shame they didn't release it with an 11" DD and 11" Mono. I hope at least one manufacturer comes out with something like a 10x5" DD. Here is the 14" DD under some high voltage power lines from some windmills I wish the 6000 had the DD threshold with mono coils. I like the build quality look of the NF coils, and they have the little gore vent, stronger looking ears and just appeal to me more than the Coiltek's which is why I decided to get 2 NF coils for my 6000, I'm considering dumping my plan of the 14x9" Coiltek and getting the larger NF instead for my big coil as in videos I've seen of the Coiltek its not looking impressive to me at all, although it could just be the way the videos are made finding small shallow gold and describing it as deep for the size putting me off and the detector running quite unstable in the videos, especially the latest one it was going off with EMI all the time sounding terrible. Nenad's NF video was much better and showed the coil running well and stable while performing well. To me the GPX is a small shallower gold detector and that's where it excels the most so I mainly will only ever use it with smaller coils, the GPZ with 15" CC is what I'd be using if I was using a detector in deeper ground.

Yes, I tried reset to factory defaults on the faulty first one, it didn't resolve it, it just had about half the depth of the other two. The second and third one are fine they do go off in the air though if you swing them around on highest sensitivity, Carl told me this is normal. The sometimes can start falsing on the ground in the same way but they're perfectly usable. When it starts you just press the button and continue on using it. If the ground balance on them was improved enough to handle the ground in the gold areas yet retained its sensitivity they'd be a great prospecting pinpointer, they're just a bit too sensitive to the ground in highest sensitivity. I think it's a shame they're no longer being developed as a TRX v2 would likely have been a really good pinpointer.