phrunt

yay!

I find the 15x10" to be a really good size which for me is considered a bigger coil. They've already made that size for the GPX 6000, it was the first size made. I understand in Australia wanting the big round coils with the big deep gold. That's why it's good to have a range of coils available though, something to suit everybody.

Another video taken the same day, I am sure I could benefit from the pinpointing ability of the 10x6" and getting gold up in rocky spots.

If it gets released I'll be pleasantly surprised. It is senseless to announce a new replacement product for your flagship long before releasing it with no set release date keeping people hanging, watch the sales of the older model fall off a cliff.... how did that work out for Nokta I wonder? Did they get 2 years of dwindling sales while people waited? ? Who's going to go out and buy a Deus right now?

The 10x6" Prototype coil finds more gold, this time in an area with no wind so you can hear it operating better, you'll see the sensitivity setting of the detector in the video but it goes pretty quick so I've done a screenshot of it. And the video If and when I get a GPX 6000, this would be my coil of choice. Perfect size/shape for my detecting areas.

Especially when all they're doing is rebranding existing headphones, all that does is add cost for them and then big cost for us ? I now have 3 sets of ML80's that I'll likely never use.

My Equinox gives less stable target ID's on very shallow targets, I just lift the coil a bit higher off the ground to clear it up. I've not used my Garrett AT much at all, well for about an hour in total so I'm unsure about your issue, hopefully someone else knows but I do know my Garrett Ace detector doesn't have that problem.

Well, if it is corded with an option of cordless that's a big bonus for me, I'd only ever go corded. I honestly see no point in cordless when there is a shaft there anyway holding the coil on ? Each to their own, I know many have argued the fact they like the cordless design and stated the benefits to it, I just don't like it and it's why I've avoided the previous model. I just hope it's not another long winded release like Nokta's talking about it years before it hits the market, if that's the case I'll lose interest quickly. I prefer to be surprised than teased.

Our gold hunting areas here are riddled with shotgun pellets, one of the things I liked about my 4500 when I first got it was I could cruise over a majority of the small lead birdshot with little or no reaction from it yet still find gold, until of course I discovered the flat wound coils. It was pure joy after spending my time prior to that using my Gold Monster and digging a million pellets a day and struggling to find any gold as I spent all my time digging pellets, the GPX allowed me to bypass many of the pellets and still find the gold nuggets except the tiniest ones of course but they're more for the fun of it, if you're doing it for money you really don't want to waste your time digging them anyway. Sometimes super small target sensitivity really isn't desirable. ? I'm not sure what the shotgun pellet situation would be like in Africa, I don't think it'd be much of an issue but maybe they consider a 0.03 of a gram nugget as just as much of a frustration as a shotgun pellet ?

Thanks William, my preference is the Equinox although it's obviously more expensive than the Simplex. The Simplex will do the job nicely for you though. Glad to hear you've got a coil on the way. Here is a rundown of the firmware versions and their changes, personally I prefer 2.77, 2.78 gives no ID at all on deep targets when 2.77 gives a really jumpy messy ID on them, both give reasonable ID's on shallower targets. You'll see with all the changes below, it's a good thing there is the updates and you'll benefit greatly from installing the update. The new Park 1 is vital too, Park 2 lacks depth, Park 1 is the standard mode I use on mine. Sensitivity Level 7 has been added to provide extra depth Please keep in mind that the device may run noisier at this level depending on conditions and that this is totally normal. An extra mode has been added – Park 1 The Park mode on the previous versions has been named as Park 2 on this update and a new Park 1 mode has been added. Park 1 is relatively deeper but a bit slower than Park 2 mode. In this mode, the device produces a low tone for ferrous targets with 0-15 IDs, a medium tone for gold and non-ferrous metals with IDs 16-69 and a high tone for non-ferrous metals with IDs 70-99 such as silver, brass and copper. Changes have been made for the All Metal Mode It has been removed from the first spot in the options and moved to the end. Threshold setting has been added to this mode. In the All Metal mode, the threshold setting for each sensitivity level is optimized to provide the best performance on different terrains. You can adjust the threshold setting between -50 +50 based on ground conditions. Mineralization bar has been added to the screen Timeout lengths have been increased BACK function (up arrow) has been added to exit from settings to go back to the main screen without waiting for the timeout ID depth has been increased 4 levels have been added to Automatic Brightness shown as A1-A2-A3-A4 on screen Audio for the pinpoint mode and wired headphones has been optimized Manual Ground Balance function has been expanded If the device receives a lot of noise and/or emits false signals and you cannot eliminate it by reducing the sensitivity, first set your sensitivity back to its original level. Then increase the ground balance value between 90.1 – 91.0 one by one until the noise is eliminated. As the ground balance value is increased, the device’s sensitivity to high conductive (silver, copper etc.) coins will decrease. Mute Function has been added Press the Pinpoint Button once to mute your detector without going into settings. This will help eliminate the interference noise from pinpointers that operate at the same frequency. Audio levels for wired headphones 2 sets of audio levels have been added when the device is used with wired headphones. Choose between Low (L1-L4) or High (H1-H4). There is also an optional update to 2.78 from 2.77, although my testing has shown performance is better in 2.77 than 2.78 so personally I'd stick with 2.77. Firmware version 2.76 and 2.77 introduced a new search mode, Park 1, which increased the search depth. Users may experience jumpy Target ID's, which is a normal result when identifying targets at extreme depth and under certain conditions. Some novice users may find these jumpy ID's a bit confusing. Firmware version 2.78 has been introduced in order to bring "stability" to the Target ID's when hitting deep targets. In short, it does this by not displaying a Target ID for deep targets. Don't worry, search depth is not affected! If you don't mind jumpy Target ID's for deep targets, then we recommend you remain on Firmware v2.77. However, if you find jumpy target ID's on deep targets to be a bit disconcerting, then update your Firmware to v2.78. Another option is to upgrade the Firmware to v2.78 and give it a swing. If you prefer v2.78 then great, if you prefer v2.77 you can always downgrade back to v2.77. This software update will NOT affect the overall depth and sensitivity of the Nokta Makro Simplex+.

The X-coil manufacturers have been out using the 10x6" coil, these were the nuggets from a 3-4 hour hunt in an area they'd detected before with many detectors, including the Gold Monster. There is a video of one of the finds too, it was very windy on the day so difficult to hear. Once snow clears they'll head into the forest area to find more gold where it won't be windy and do another video.

The American market is a hobby market, the African market is a people doing it for a living and lots of them, that could be reflected in price somehow. How much are people willing to pay to tinker around finding a few dinks for a hobby on a couple of week trip a year and a few day trips here and there compared to people scratching out a living to feed and home their family using it 7 days a week every day of the year.

Well, it all comes down to sales really, if sales are not what was expected it's not a good sign. Sales for the Equinox and Vanquish far exceeded expectations, they said so themselves. If you see the price they are trying to get for it in Africa which I understand is the leading buyers market you can guess why it's probably not selling as expected. I purchased my GPX 5000 from Africa as a guy in NZ has a friend that is a Minelab dealer in Africa and he indicated the GPX 4500 and 5000 were very good sellers in Africa, the GPZ wasn't near as common, price probably... the GPX 6000 is priced far too high I believe to make itself a good seller in Africa, here is two African dealers prices, one of which being the biggest official dealer in South Africa. The Africans doing prospecting aren't scared of a hard days work as they do it to survive, to make a living, they're often young and would shop by price more than worry about a detector being lighter I believe. Convert that "sale" price to USD and the Afircan's pay 9,746 US Dollars for their GPX 6000, they can have a GPX 5000 for around half the price. It appears Minelab learnt nothing from the massive sales the Equinox achieved by being an "affordable" detector, if it was CTX 3030 pricing I doubt they would have sold near as many. The cost to make the detector would be tiny compared to the price they sell it for, yes they spend a lot on R&D, but their profits indicate they have a lot of room to move on price ? The CEO announced a few months ago he's retiring too and he offloaded a lot of shares, this caused a significant price drop at the time.

Mr T is going to be angry! Congratulations on the crazy good find!

Yes, it's a bit odd and new products generally give them a boost, after the Equinox release the price went sky high, after the 6000 release it's been falling, sure it's not been a smooth release with shortages and then the failure rate issue. Not sure if they're meeting expected sales targets. That chart is so different to back when the Nox was released. Maybe realistic pricing does matter after all.

Interesting question about the Nel coils, I've not tried a Nel on my Simplex, I can't justify buying one for it as I don't use it much but I would guess Nel coils were made to original Simplex specifications so they'd probably just work without the firmware update, could be wrong of course. I would say it's best you just upgrade the firmware anyway, the other benefits of the newer firmware aside from just the new coil options make it worth while. Nokta even have their own update tutorial video showing you how to do it

I know it was all about weight with the 6000 and if it had a heavier longer lasting battery it would be edging even closer to the GPX 5000 weight so at release they wanted it to be as light as possible, however do you think it would be possible over time that they would just release a long life battery for it as an optional extra, obviously it will be heavier but the marketing side of the weight advantage would have done it's work by then anyway and the many users will have told their friends how light it feels so having accessories that add weight wouldn't matter as much as the advantages they bring. My detecting days are usually 8 to 10 hours, normally longer in summer when the days are far longer and I would be a speaker user if I had one that worked so I'm at that point where 1 battery is not enough but a slightly bigger battery would be.

That one is a bit caveman already with this sucker coming out

I think there was probably a misunderstanding that its an older model Simplex and he needed the newer model to run the coils, the firmware is something you can upgrade yourself at home, you can turn your older firmware Simplex into the new one quite easily ? This guy does a bit of a rundown on how to install the firmware from a Windows computer Any questions just ask, a number of people here could help you with the process if you get stuck. If you're really concerned you could take it back to where you bought it, it's likely the dealer will put the new firmware on for you in a few seconds.

What would FMF mean? Full multi frequency? Certainly an XP Deus II though. I enhanced the image a bit to make it more readable. You can also see the two charging points on the coil below the red light.

Oh boy! Things are getting exciting. This has clearly been in the works for a while.... they're good at keeping secrets. While I'm absolutely not a fan of a cordless coil I may have to jump in on this one.

Detecting in heavy junk like that would drive me crazy. If you plan on doing that sort of detecting a lot the Nel Snake might be a worthy investment, you're one of the lucky ones with a modern detector capable of running one. It should do ever better than your 5" coil. I use it as a prospecting coil as it's sensitive to small gold but when reading their site it was never designed for that, it's their coil to sift through iron trash ? It's cool you had the time and patience to run through the area with all three detectors to see the strong and weak points of them and their coils. http://nel-coils.com/index.php/en/production/nel-snake-9-5x3-5?id=1492 Their little sales blurb NEL Snake for Nokta & Makro Racer, Racer 2 The Snake Coil is designed to search on land heavily littered with iron and other debris. The shape of the coil helps to separate non-ferrous metal from iron. The coil is light and has excellent maneuverability, it is recommended for use on the beach, foundations of destroyed buildings, settlements littered with debris. The coil has good sensitivity to large, medium and especially small targets and combines good separation and capture area. It is recommended as an additional coil. On a special-order basis NEL Company can make this coil with cable lengths up to 3 meters. Coil is fully submersible, filled with epoxy resin and additionally has a black protective coating that is used for the protection of marine boats, and it makes it possible to use the coil without coil cover. The coil copes excellently with high and medium soil salinity. Thanks for doing the post though, while I've never had to face a wall of trash/iron the day will come sometime so I always take the time to read posts on people that do to ready myself.

Thanks, I appreciate the clarification and sorry if it sounded like I was disagreeing with you, there is no doubt in my mind the GB2 is the best detector First Texas currently make, aside I guess from the Impulse AQ but I know nothing about it and intend to keep it that way after reading enough about it now ? The entire lineup is a bit long in the tooth and dated but it seems that it's going to stay that way. I guess I'm a bit disgruntled they made a Gold Bug 2.1 instead of a Gold Bug 3 in a model that's so long overdue for a new version. It'd be good if they could address it's shortcomings like it's poor recovery after hot rocks and having a ground grab along with auto tracking and other modern features we've all come to expect on a detector purchased in 2021 but then maybe the reason they haven't is because it wouldn't really change the fact that sales of the detector would still be slow, competition has the market now, it's hard to get it back. Up until their Multi Frequency machine all Nokta has done is what First Texas should have done, and could have done and they've made an entire business around it selling a significant number of detectors that are just feature packed detectors similar at heart to the FT detectors.

Then watch piracy kick in at full force, dumps of the software upgrades all over the place people installing for free. They'd need some sort of license key situation that a key can only be used once and on one detector, they could have an algorithm that when you purchase the upgrade it uses the serial number of your machine to generate the upgrade code which then only works on your machine and is checked online. Sure there are always ways to get around all sorts of protection but I just don't see metal detectors as something that anyone serious would bother trying to break the protection, especially if it's very difficult with online verification and serial number matching for machines. It'd be best done like some software where features are unlocked by the license key you enter rather than requiring customers to firmware update machines and just have the license key "activate" to the detector online so it can't be used on another detector. It'd be funny to see key generators for metal detectors ? It all sounds good and would be nice and convenient for customers to be able to upgrade at home with a few simple clicks.

I'd love to hear from someone who's bought this detector and can give a bit of a review on it, it seems like it'd do the job well. I wonder if it has bump sensitive coils.