phrunt

Mono will go deeper, but has no iron rejection and will be more troubled with EMI especially if in an urban area. In low mineralisation you'll have the benefit of being able to crank the settings right up. If in very high mineralisation or hot rocks the DD may work better than a mono but in mild soils mono all the way for depth.

At about the 12 minute mark he says some interesting stuff coming from First Texas for the gold market. I assume the Impulse Gold.

The problem is, if they release a new model of the coil with stronger thicker ears the previous model owners will be demanding the new model coil as a replacement for their possibly weak coil. With the Equinox likely their biggest selling detector ever this is an issue. As a business would you rather swap out the occasional coil that hardcore users are breaking and the occasional weekend warrior breaks by very bad luck or would you rather adjust the design and have a massive PR disaster with many requests for new replacement better coils even without them being broken and with people even breaking their ears on purpose to get the new model? That also means admitting there is a problem that needs fixed? 🙂 Minelab have clearly taken the first option, with replacing coils quickly and easily for everyone who breaks one. They've made it a simple process to keep people happy and say how good their warranty was. It's a shame for them the problem was unable to be fixed with a better plastic formula that looks the same but is stronger but this doesn't seem to be the case with some users breaking the replacement coils also. I've got coil ear strengtheners on my coils and I'd imagine my 11" and 6" are out of warranty by now, my 15x12" likely still has warranty although I haven't checked. I like the idea of people using epoxy to glue the strengtheners onto the coils but I don't like the idea of epoxy to make a permanent change, to get around this I've used some hot glue on mine, I can completely reverse the process as hot glue can be removed with rubbing alcohol. I could make my coils look like I'd never glued the strengtheners on if I wanted to and it should serve the same purpose as epoxy by binding the strengthener to the original ears, so far so good. As someone that's very fussy about cosmetics I used black coloured hot glue sticks too, and when using hot glue you can make it very neat by wetting your finger and shaping and adjusting it as it cools so you really can make it a nice tidy professional looking job.

I am guessing Steel Phase 01. SteelPhase was the nickname and business name of the guy making them.

Well if it's a prospecting PI it must be super light weight as the guy in the video is swinging something that looks very light, perhaps a bit too light so I think I'd rule out a PI, I'd say they're just planning on beating Nokta to the multi game. Good news none the less. As they say loose lips might sink ships.... Nokta gloated about a multi 2 years ago with their naming contest, since then Garrett has beat them to the party and still no signs of it coming in the very near future, now XP might beat them there too.

Well, Nokta are having an end of year promo, a little while until the end of the year yet so they're starting early 🙂 Some pretty good deals really, more so the Anfibio and Multi deal but I guess they're not selling at the moment with the anticipated multi freaker coming, and judging by this promo sale the multi is not coming out before Christmas.... a long wait gets even longer.

The 11" DD Commander is pretty good for coin hunting, of course I'm comparing it to using a VLF but the depth it can get is pretty amazing. I have the 15x12" DD Commander also, that's a good coil also but I prefer the 11" as it's lighter and the bigger size starts to feel hard work and I didn't really notice a depth difference on coin size targets. Spend some time on the 11" and see if you think you need anything else, you might find you're satisfied. It also runs nice and handles EMI pretty well considering. The ultra sensing Detech might be a bit worse with EMI being a spiral coil and will more sensitive to small targets so tiny bits of junk might be more of a problem. The Detech Ultra sensing coil comes in mono and DD, they're a decent price too. I might give one of their DD coils a go one of these days, I'm not interested in buying any mono GPX coils, I've got a great selection of Mono's, it's DD's I'm lacking and I'm starting to get pretty interested in using my GPX as a coin unit with the deep coins around here as it doesn't get used for gold much if at all anymore.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that found the FT DD coils useless, I do however love the GB2 concentric coils, they achieved perfection there. The DD coils for my T2 are what inspired me to try Nel and Mars coils and enjoy the delights of their enhancements over the standard coils and then there was no turning back. Every opportunity I was getting aftermarket coils for all of my detectors that were capable of running them. So I guess I can thank FT for making such bad coils as it introduced me to the aftermarket coils 🙂 I did give FT a good chance with my T2, I have the 5", 11" obviously and the 15" concrete coil, the only reasonable coil is the 5" but the Nel of similar size is still better.

As someone who hunts in a part of the world where in a park or beach situation I'm about as likely to find a gold ring as I am a nail or bit of iron I couldn't care less about iron bias. I set it to F2 0 and I'm all good. Bottle tops are my only problem but they're not all that much of a problem either with not all that many of them to cause issues, the most common sort are alloy off some types of carbonated drinks which are going to be an issue to anyone. I've soaked up the information in this thread just in case I need it someday though if I hunt in a more populated area of litterbugs. In saying that, I bet Metal detector users are the least likely people in the World to throw their bottle caps and pull tabs on the ground after having a drink 🙂

When I lived in Victoria I never really encountered dangerous critters, that all changed when we moved to Queensland. We had a few acres and snakes and spiders everywhere, even had kangaroos in the backyard every afternoon, don't mess with them. I left my shoes out on the deck one night and put them on in the morning only to find one felt really tight, there was a cane toad in it. A toad put my dog on a drip for a week near death from its poison, deadly to dogs that love catching them.

I remember when it was up for sale late last year, 15 acres and 40 buildings or something for 1.7 million AUD, an absolute bargain I thought. Here's the news story when it was for sale, has good footage of the area too Glad to hear the buyer is fixing it up and putting it to use.

Far more critters on dry land trying to kill you in Australia 🙂

I just saw Carl's name on it and seeing he's at FT it gave me hope 🙂

I'm surprised one of the staff at FT's kids or grand kids hasn't volunteered to do them a new website for a free detector or something. It'll be great if they do have a multi in the works, I'd be very pleased if they surprised us all and came out with one soon. Maybe they're going to try get this puppy off the ground

It is a tough decision which detector to buy the coil for, if it was available for the Nox it'd be a no brainer, thanks Minelab. A guy nearby was selling his E-trac for a very cheap price, Vanquish low end sort of money. It only had the stock coil and it had a broken coil ear which is why he was selling I guess. I wasn't too worried about that as I'd try fix it plus as being a detector with aftermarket options I'd be buying one straight away anyway. My choices without buying a new detector to suit are the T2, GBP, Ace 300 or AT Gold. As the coil is likely best for smaller shallow targets and recent drops of jewellery it's probably best I get it for either the AT Gold or Gold Bug Pro. I'm torn on which of those detectors I like best, my modified GBP with the switch to flick between disc and all metal is very handy and it gives good Target ID stability which I appreciate a lot. My AT Gold seems good, nice and resistant to EMI like the Bug, very good on small targets at least equal to the GBP but so far I only have the stock coil for it so comparing to my GBP the Target ID stability isn't as good. I ordered a Mars Tiger for it but it never arrived and I ended up getting a refund from Paypal for that so I just don't know how it compares to the GBP on target ID stability as I haven't got comparable coils for the two. I'm not really comparing like for like especially on deeper coins where the GBP has the Detech Ultimate and does very well and the AT Gold has the 5x8" stock coil are does poorly, worse than the GBP with the 5x10" Fisher coil which is slightly bigger so I guess should do slighter better. The biggest benefit to the AT Gold + Detech coil would be I could use it in the water without worrying about drowning my detector. That's my biggest conundrum, detecting which detector would benefit the most from this coil, maybe someone with more knowledge than me could help with that decision. It's a shame it won't be available for the Simplex also, I'm yet to find a purpose for that detector. I believe Nokta have made it so it's a bit difficult for aftermarket manufacturers to make coils for it, which is why Nel is taking so long to release their Simplex coils.

Interesting topic regardless, not much could be said about them discontinuing a few models other than it was well overdue. Let's hope they're cleaning house as something new is coming, the new 12" coil could be an indication of a new detector coming with it as default perhaps? They still don't have any information on that coil on their website, as far as it's concerned the coil doesn't exist.

Quest have something they call float resin inside their coils, it's super light and floats, a good idea to lower the coil weight while maintaining strength. I know First Texas was also experimenting with a resin with little beads in it or something, I can't remember... They could just run the resin through their Soda Stream 🙂 FloatResin chemical technology is specially designed for metal detector coils filling to make it lightweight thus rugged to last long. It lasts long time! I've never tried a Quest detector, but they're evolving and becoming interesting and they could eventually target the big box stores with super low cost pricing to give First Texas a run for their money. Even the X5 has a waterproof console, built in USB recharging battery, fast recovery, flashlight, modern look and feel and a user friendly interface so could better anything First Texas sell in that price range from a new user customer point of view looking at features on the box while buying at a big box store. Every little innovation counts towards a better product, and First Texas were going to re-release the concrete heavy 15" coil for the T2 and F75 with their new resin technology to lighten it up a bit too from memory which would be good for a future detector release, I doubt too many T2/F75 users would bother buying it. I still have hope for First Texas, they just need to get their act together. Their best selling product to anyone other than a beginner right now is likely the F-pulse pinpointer. Anyone wanting one of their other "high end" models could just pick one up second hand for cheap pricing from someone selling to upgrade to a competitors detector, even in our tiny market that no longer has a FT dealer it's easy to get your hands on a second hand F75 or T2, there is always one popping up for sale for around the price of a low end Vanquish model from someone that's upgraded to a different brand detector.

Nokta did with the Simplex what First Texas could have done with the T2 or F75... completely modernize it, waterproof it and sell a bunch of them. That's now a very commonly owned detector and so similar in performance to a T2 it could easily be mistaken for a modern T2. If they did do that then it's not a paint job, it's gone beyond that, it's a full rehash. How many T2's do you think they've sold in the past few years? How many Simplex do you think Nokta have sold? That money could have been in the First Texas bank account. Something similar needed done with the Gold Bug 2, a full rehash to become a modern detector, sure the motor stays the same but there is nothing wrong with the motor, it just needed modern features, and especially something like a ground grab or ground tracking like all the other modern prospecting detectors. I don't think doing this is beyond them but they just took the lazy way out once again and just released a paint job of it so nobody is inspired to buy it, it just continues the model if parts were no longer available being such an antique detector. The core of a few of their detectors are perfectly fine and have a place in the market, it's just they're now so dated. Many just needed discontinued. Wireless audio has rapidly become a standard and it really makes sense, cords are annoying. They don't even need to think tor themselves, the competition has done all the thinking of the ideas they could put into their detectors to make them modern, they can just use their ideas and then put them into reality. My T2 is a deep detector, as deep as any however it's target ID's are dismal and with the other detectors all performing better and being more feature rich I can't really think of a reason to use it other than to warm up it's engine to keep it from seizing up. They should be able to improve that surely. My newer T2 green is great in EMI compared to my older T2 so they've fixed that up in newer ones, a positive sign someone there still knows how to modify the source code for the detector. Just adding every little software update they can and improve the performance as much as possible. I'm hoping when they eventually find the password to edit their website they make an entire new modern site with a banner across the top saying "under new management" and things start to change. They have potential, they just need the people working there to make it a reality, I don't want them to collapse but if they sit around doing nothing they're just going to be a big box store brand for the entry level customers and maybe that's where they feel comfortable now but that won't last forever... It's only a matter of time until one of the big brands chase that down market with aggression and Nokta might be it or the Chinese just come into it with force and pricing that can't be beat selling their own detectors. We went through this with Tesoro and Whites, everyone could see it happening and First Texas was the other obvious one. I have five of their detectors, a bunch of their OEM coils and the F-Pulse so I've done my bit to keep them alive but I can't see myself buying another of their detectors unless something dramatic changes. I would certainly buy a rehashed modern Gold Bug 3, and I would likely buy a modern F75/T2 if the price was right..... Simplex sort of pricing where it belongs.

I doubt the numbers they see are too crash hot, possibly flashing red 🙂 A rehash seems viable as long as it is not a paint job. It would need to appeal vs the competition to sell to anyone other than the enthusiast or former user though so would need the mod cons like wireless audio.

Ctx seems to be another chipped detector, I can see it in the coil cable which explains it being ignored. I've never seen a company before that people love their product yet are so discontent with it at the same time. Would it really kill them to let us have access to coils? Just release a firmware for all the detectors disabling the security checks and make your customers happy. It's got to the point we are either buying other brand detectors or older models with no chips to get around the problem to use coils like this Detech that supporters of other brands can just use. Even entry level Ace detectors can just throw one on. It's just crazy.

Right. Time to get an Etrac. I wonder which would be best to get one for out of my GBP, T2 or At Gold.... This is good news, good on Detech for bringing us the goods

I would not want to go into a fight in the low end market with the Chinese manufacturers or even Nokta. If they decide they want to go into Costco and supply big volumes of cheap but reasonable quality and performance detectors to take over that market I'm sure they would come in at a lower cost than First Texas can. Costco would take the product they can make the most money on. Oh but warranty you say. Nokta have that sorted in the US. The Chinese have that sorted worldwide, they just do a replacement warranty. You get a fault you get a new one, cheaper for them than dealing with warranty. When they can sell a clone T2 for $100 and include shipping you can see their production cost is very low and you can bet they still get a decent profit as evident by the number of resellers selling them. If they spent the time to make their own units from scratch to take that entry level market they will dominate it quickly. If I was FT I wouldn't feel comfortable I have that market. Even the big boys have been showing the power they call entry level... Pretty much high end FT.

Thanks, I know nothing about it so I was wondering how it would stack up with other offerings on the market if they rebooted it.

If that did happen would you buy one? Is it a detector that I'd want? Would it be a good seller? Just trying to work out if they would be wasting their time.

I think ditching a large number of their models was well overdue, even retiring brands wouldn't hurt. Teknetics isn't really necessary. Bounty hunter is their entry level brand which is 90 percent of the models they make anyway as evident by the Gold Bug Pro and F19 ending up as a Bounty Hunter. The T2 is really just an old model basic version of the Simplex without the fancy features and waterproofing. I think having less models may improve sales in the entry market as its less confusing and they just need to keep the better ones to remain close to competitive. The Apex must be hurting. As for the 24k at the beach, it would be a killer jewellery detector, especially at an inland lake beach.