phrunt

Ok, I've had correspondence with FT about the issues with their website, and the manuals, they've now given me the correct F19 manual PDF, without all the bizarre OCR or drunk PDF creator errors the one currently hosted on DP has like in the picture below So, here is the new manual with correct formatting. F19 Manual Download Link @Steve Herschbach may want to update the one stored locally here to the new fixed version too. They are now going through and checking and fixing all links on the website, including fixing up the incorrect battery information on models.

That's true Norvic, you were fine with the noise, others were not, they fixed the noise, now the detector is better for everyone 🙂

This is why Nvidia is suddenly one of the big guns! Went from making video cards to help us play some games to making video processing for AI purposes.

Thanks Chuck, but I wouldn't take on being a tester for anything, well under qualified, the way I see it is if I was buying a detector would I want to have me testing it? I'd say no. Testing products should require a lot of knowledge about the electronics and detectors in general, something I don't have. I also think it would require thousands of hours of in field and off field reporting, detailed documents of findings, something I'd not be willing to do for a free detector, the free part doesn't appeal to me that much. 🙂 I also wouldn't make a good "marketing" type tester, I'm not pretty enough 🙂

I put captions of the manual at the start of the post for a reason, as most wouldn't have read or remembered the manual. A company can't expect buyers to sand and adjust their lower shaft and washers to fit 🙂

So, you're saying their GBP manual is wrong as it clearly states just to use one? The F19 manual doesn't specify, it doesn't even show you need a washer 🙂 I think you're right, two seems best, but odd their manuals are so strange on the topic. The same washers are at the local hardware store, in red colour in the plumbing section, the ones with my F19 were black.

Target ID, VLF type discrimination and more sensitivity to smaller targets than a PI offers, the 6000 has nothing on a VLF on small gold, it's more equal to a Gold Bug Pro than a higher frequency unit, but even then, a GBP can pick up a #9 lead pellet at an inch or so, the 6000 can't see one at all so perhaps its more like a 13kHz detector, or maybe lower. I didn't know about the AKA, thanks for pointing it out I'll take a look.

I think you have to be a social media personality with a lot of followers to be a tester these days 🙂 I hope the release of their PI's is not far off and we don't have a couple of year wait between the naming content and the release like with the Legend. Even then it felt like the Legend came out the doors early because of the XP surprise release so it may have taken even longer if not for that. They need to get it out quick while one competitor is being sold in Australia only and never has stock available, they can't keep up with demand at all and never once have they had a time since release you could just buy one off the shelf. Unless they fix this, they're not a threat to anything as people waiting can easily just buy something else if it were to come out in the meantime. Garretts been dropping pricing and becoming even more competitive too and they may have to take that further when the Nokta PI's come out. Really excited for the PI's release, it's going to shake the market up and we will see more and more discountinng.

So, you're saying Garrett has it sitting in their storage room in among the boxes marked "whites old stuff" and they could continue on with the project? It is something someone else could take over or is it something that would be near impossible without your involvement? Would the code you have written be able to run on today's hardware or would it need redone due to obsolete components? I don't understand why if this was in existence the project would not be resumed, as it does sound like a very beneficial product that would sell very well. A PI/VLF combo both are the same time would be an absolute weapon. If Minelab for example was able to offer a GPX 6000 with a Manticore built in, I'd have my dream machine, although I'd really like a GPZ with Target ID. It opens up a whole new world of use for a detector having discrimination, but not the simple discrimination of the early GPX series, real discrimination of a VLF. The Algoforce target ID's are amazing to me, such a surprise it took so long for a PI to come to market with it. So, what makes the half sine design so special over the current market offerings? What are the benefits of it over the detectors we currently have? I know very little to nothing about it, well before my time when this was taking place, a real shame it didn't hit the market though.

I used the much tougher ears of my Nel Snake to crush the 2 washers down into the shaft, prior to doing that no way was I going to get the 10x5" Fisher coil on without bending the ears right out and fear of breaking them, after the Snake was used for a bit now the 10x5" goes on fine. I'm still not clear if I am meant to use both washers, judging by the GBP manual I'm probably not supposed to use both, and one does seem ample, it works fine with one and doesn't appear to bend the ears inwards. The 10x5" ears seem so thin but they must be tough, you don't hear of people breaking them, even with this confusion around the washers.

I don't like their marketing charts at all, they're manipulative, they don't declare which coil they 5000 is using, nor do they mention changing coils on it would change the results, they make out that the 5000 performance doesn't change and the result it had in their testing are the final results. The same goes for the 7000 although that's more satisfactory as the aftermarket coils for it are not official products. I'd rather they not did these performance charts for marketing. I'm sure when the new detector comes along it's chart will demonstrate it's better than what currently exists, in the form where the current models are lacking intentionally to make the new model look better. 🙂 I'd rather they just verbalized it saying what's improved, how it's improved and why they improved it. For example, for the 6000 they could say they've improved performance on small gold and specimen gold, along with lightening up the detector and improving its resistance to EMI over the existing GPX series. This would all be very truthful and stuff any owner of it would be able to clearly see as beneficial when they buy it. They could use marketing to bling it up and add a lot more benefits too. As for testing, it seems not long after release JP at least was commenting on the issue, the more the end users were pointing it out the more obvious it became there was something wrong. Minelab likely said they think there might be an audio feedback loop going on and they're investigating it, still took a long time to resolve, but we are all happy they did. Some days mine ran a dream, the next I was being punished pushing noise cancel all the time, factory resetting over and over again or just turning it off, waiting 5 minutes and turning it on with a factory reset to calm it down. The fact it had good days makes you think perhaps it's just environmental EMI and a detector running on edge, but you could replicate the same problems in very low sensitivity. It turned out it was poorly shielded inductors so changing inductors to better ones resolved it, I believe due to this every model with the old inductors is affected to some degree, now all new ones use the new brand inductor. If the testers spent their time in headphones, they likely wouldn't notice it as it was nowhere near as bad with headphones, and who would think by using a speaker you would change the detectors stability, it probably wasn't tested on speaker much, the speakers also not loud enough for noisy environments, I hunt near rivers a lot, can never use the speaker, far too quiet. They should have had a GM1000 speaker in it. I don't think Minelab will make a similar mistake in the future, the best people to test a product for a fault like this is the engineers working on it, not a detectorist. How is a detector user going to know what's normal or not when it comes to wild behaviour, yes, they can point out it was noisy or seemed to have unusual EMI issues on certain days, but the engineer would be the one that would know something is truly up if they were using it when it happened. It's an engineering issue, not likely a tester issue. The engineers missed the fault.

No, no more detectors for me, I'm kicking the addiction, still happy Garrett is doing a lite package though, hopefully this becomes the new norm with lite and full offerings. I'd rather Garrett dropped a few more bucks off it and ditched that carry case though.

That's cool you've got an 8", were you able to run in normal? probably not being in Australia, my go to is Hy/Normal/19 sensitivity with the 8". I can go 20 of course but I just like 19 for the extra threshold stability 🙂 My two favourite X-coils on the GPZ are the 15" CC and the 8".

Looks great. One day Nokta is going to be the undisputed market leader for sales of VLF metal detectors, I have no doubts in my mind.

This is a good move by Garrett, plenty of detectors I've bought come with stuff I don't want or never will use like an awkwardly large DD coil, or some wireless headphones. I have a pile of headphones I'll never use that I paid for as part of packages. Cutting back to the bare essentials and lowering the price is great for people like me that don't want the extras. Good on Garrett for offering a great detector at an unbeatable price/performance ratio on the Axiom.

After losing my gold bottle with something like 10 grams in it I quickly learnt not to use a brown pill bottle. JW helped me find it in the dark late that night with torches I then wrapped red electrical tape around that bottle to make it stand out more but you guys have far better options than I currently have. I have one of Docs little gold storage yellow rubber like folding containers which I haven't given a go yet, I should give it a try. I like the idea of bright yellow or orange, something not a natural colour in the gold fields to make it easier to find should I lose it. That wasn't the only time I'd lost my gold bottle, I also lost another clear one another time with a few little nuggets in it, had I resolved it that time I likely would have found my 10 grams far easier. Slow learner.

yea, if you've got the broken off piece you could just use some Weld on glue to stick some cut to size acrylic on both sides to toughen up the ears and just use a longer bolt/nut. I use this stuff by Weld-on, it chemically bonds the two plastics together so they become one, so not a glue as such more of a solvent cement. Weldon Acrylic Glue - Cambrian Plastics Weldon Acrylic Glue (SCIGRIP 16) is especially formulated to bond acrylic (poly-methyl methacrylate) plastics. It can also be used for bonding styrene, butyrate, PVC, ABS and polycarbonate, as well as other plastics and porous surfaces. SCIGRIP 16 is a very high strength, clear, medium bodied, fast curing, solvent-type acrylic cement. Applied to cast, molded or extruded acrylics, it will affect initial bonds very quickly so some parts may be handled within a few minutes. Bond strength continues to develop very rapidly reaching a substantial level and forming strong joints within hours. This product may be thinned with SCIGRIP 3 by approximately 10%. Initial bond forms very quickly so some parts may be handled within a few minutes of application. Joints are water and weather resistant and will generally have similar physical and chemical properties to acrylic plastic.

Sorry, he has taken his entire channel down so the video is gone for good.

The F19 VLF I just got would have found that piece with ease and I say so in the initial post, it was nothing to do with the detector, as if often the case, just like when I found a couple of bits with the Algoforce in the same area a few weeks earlier, nothing to do with the detector, just the coil being in the right place. The 6000 likely would have found most if not all the gold I found in the thyme bushes, ,they're both very good detectors, and on this sort of gold they're very competitive with each other although I do still favour the 8" on the GPZ over the Coiltek 10x5" on the GPX 6000 on this small gold as if golds a bit deeper I have more confidence the GPZ will find it and the 6000 may not (small coil vs small coil), I might be wrong and don't have enough experience finding thousands of bits of gold but I find the GPZ tends to find deeper bits than the 6000. I'm not so sure the 6000 would have found all the gold the 15" CC found on that patch, but it likely would have found some bits the 15" CC missed. If I ever find another patch similar, I'd use both detectors on it with a few different coils for the best results and that's why for now at least I'll keep the 6000 even though it's not my favourite detector. What I did notice that day was the Equinox I had with me would have missed a lot of the gold I was finding with the 8", and of course the 15" CC I was able to do a lot of side-by-side testing that day between them, and in the video I demonstrate the Equinox not picking up one of the bits until much closer to it so that day helped move me off wanting to use VLF's so much as prior I was a big fan of using the VLF's and often used one instead of my GPZ much to JW's surprise, he never did understand me rocking up with my Nox instead of my GPZ 🙂 Looked at me in shock horror sometimes when I appeared with a VLF. 😀 Something else that is fact, I'd missed that 4.1 gram bit I showed the recovery video of with the 8" on the GPZ with other combinations, , it's a slim little bit of soil between two dug out areas. yet the 8" got it, even though it was quite deep, deeper than my scoop.

Yes, it turns out some GPX 6000's had battery terminals that were stuck inside the detector from the factory, not popping out and dealers were dealing with that themselves fixing it when they had returns because of it as you could usually pop them out with a toothpick or something, although in my case I'm not overly sure as it would turn on and just error with an ! mark right out of the box so it was getting power, and yes, I threw it to the ground in annoyance of a DOA and it kicked in and worked after a power cycle so something was possibly loose or a poor connection somewhere, it did do the error a few more times over the coming days and my dealer was arranging to ship me a replacement but I told him it was working now so not to worry as all the costs involved to him for that but I'd lost a lot of confidence in it at that point. There were no issues with getting it swapped under warranty, you don't lose warranty for physical damage if there is no damage 🙂 I did read other reports of the connection between the PCB's not being ideal on some detectors, perhaps mine had that problem. I guess the biggest issue being an early bird are the costs associated with shipping it back to Minelab for repair if it is a dud, my 6000 wasn't too expensive to ship back I think something like $15 in NZD when I had to and insurance is included here in the shipping price at no extra charge but I believe in the US you have to buy insurance for the package which is quite expensive so shipping theirs back was a costly exercise. My return process was quick and easy, but that's the benefit of being in a small country, overnight shipping, fixed the same day it arrived and shipped back the next day overnight, same with when my coil went back, quick process. I can't complain about their warranty service, the NZ service agent is top notch, I'd give them an excellent review. The other problem with the 6000 was as we know the EMI fix took them over a year to even acknowledge, if they were more honest about it perhaps it wouldn't have spiralled into such a big deal, they could have caught it earlier on and saved themselves a lot of money in repairs too but they chose to believe it was not many detectors and very rare, to this day their notice still says that, yet I've not noticed anyone getting it done that didn't notice some improvement, even the sceptical. I got mine and didn't stop complaining about it until they acknowledged the problem and it was fixed and I'm sure glad they fixed it, such an improvement. Some old threads on it, here and here, but there are plenty more, once the snowball of complaints started, they had little choice but to acknowledge and fix it. I'm generally an early bird, my delay with the 6000 purchase wasn't because I wanted to wait for bugs to be ironed out, it was more I was deciding if I'd even benefit from having one with my GPZ and selection of coils for it. I didn't want to spend the money if it wasn't worth spending the money on. I still to this day don't really think I benefit much from having it and prefer using the GPZ but that's just me.

That's great news, I knew this was coming based upon two new competitors PI's that will enter the US marketplace in the near term. Makes sense to make the price move sooner rather than later... What a great deal it is now for the Axiom.

I'm guessing the 600 and 800 are still around because of the Legend and because being such a popular model there would be thousands of them in stock around the world. Discontinue them and the value of the existing stock falls. Once this stock runs low, will they keep making them or will they suddenly be discontinued? I think they'll phase them out over the next year or two but they may just keep them going because of the Legend. It's easy to keep the model alive on their website while most dealers won't stock it as it's not selling, a bit like the CTX, probalby not a well-stocked item but dealers can bring it in if needed from the local distribution point. If we think they care about replacing the odd pod that gets flooded we don't understand how little these pods would cost them, $40 maybe, and they're moving to inhouse servicing in places like the US which keeps their warranty service costs low not paying 3rd parties. They make so much profit on each detector they could replace the entire unit many times under warranty and still retain a profit on the sale. The 900 not just being a replacement for the 800 and an instant discontinue of the 800 is a marketing move I think, new models sell, if they just put the 800 into the 900's body to fix the known faults with the 800's design people wouldn't be in a rush to buy it until their existing 800 died. By adding some minor new features like a larger ID range which is just a firmware modification and a little bit of a sensitivity boost even if it can often be used which is just another firmware change and would be very easy for them to do, they probably could have just given the 800 a free software update like Nokta do to make our 800's into a 900 software wise. They could easily make the 900 appear like a new model with minimal effort. And most of the 900's improvements with hardware are borrowed from the development of the Manticore, so it was a minimal expense for development of a new detector, and with new models selling far better than existing ones it made a lot of sense to me.

The T2 is a different detector entirely though, the Time Ranger Pro, GBP, F19, G2 etc are all the same detector, so it does make some sense they'd make the Bounty Hunter a little less sensitive being the cheaper model/brand. It's also beneficial, as it's a brand targeting beginners so having it wound back a bit makes it even more stable and something a beginner appreciates. I wish I had one now to compare just to see. I would guess the new GBP's have their sensitivity wound up the same as the F19 has and the Time Ranger Pro has it's wound down a little bit. Even a #9 lead pellet test the F19 is doing slightly better than my GBP with the same Snake coil on, and that's a pretty easy way to see the performance on tiny stuff. I'd love to waive that #9 pellet over a Time Ranger Pro with the Snake on it. Maybe, just maybe even though they do use the same model detector across various brands and price points, there is actually a difference between them when it comes to the gain at least. It's good your Bug has the silver fix done on it, do you know what Firmware it has on it? And what year you bought it? I'm guessing my Bugs were sitting in stock years at the dealer, and I did get them a good price at the time, but they were not a hot selling product it appears. I bought two at once so my wife could use one, and got a deal for doing so.

I'm not sure, it's a bit of a worry though, those FT coil ears are super thin. I rarely use their stock coils so probably not a problem for me, if it's not the Snake on the detector it's the Detech Ultimate, but I store my spare 19kHz detectors with a coil on them, and one of those coils is the 10x5", and that detector I've put both rubbers on. Maybe @Geotech will know the answer to this?

I just found discussion on the GBP firmware versions indicating what has changed between some versions on Dankowski detectors forum by our very own Steve, so I'm sure he won't mind me putting his post here. The rest of the thread is also a very interesting read for those interested in the FT 19kHz machines. "The late 1980s Fisher Gold Bug was a real design breakthrough at the time with S rod, elliptical coil, and compact detachable control box. It ran at 19 kHz which was high at the time. There was no discrimination at all. Just beep and dig. It is a very good detector but the lack of ferrous discrimination would be a major lack compared to the current crop of detectors. The 1990s Gold Bug 2 looks physically the same, but upped the frequency to 71 kHz making this an extremely hot unit on tiny gold. The trade off is it actually gets less depth on large gold in mineralized soil than the earlier 1980s Gold Bug. The addition of a very good iron discrimination setting is a major plus, and the model is still produced today. As a prospector I consider it a "must have" detector due to the extreme sensitivity to small gold. The Gold Bug 2 can be purchased new with either a 5" x 10" concentric coil or 4" x 6" concentric coil for the same price. There are no DD coils for the unit. The only other coil option is a 14" elliptical coil. First Texas then decided to produce a huge number of variants on a new design. The new 21st century Gold Bug is sold as the Gold Bug, the short lived Gold Bug Special Edition, the Gold Bug Pro, and to really make life interesting, the Teknetics G2. These are all 19 kHz detectors with digital target id and adjustable audio discrimination. The Fisher units have a S rod design with control box mounted on the rod and the Teknetics units have a pistol grip design with the control box mounted on top of the pistol grip. The Gold Bug Pro comes with a 5" round DD coil and the Gold Bug Pro DP is just another variant in that it is the same detector but standard with the 11" elliptical DD coil. The G2 comes with the 11" elliptical DD. Units with the 11" DD cost $50 more than units with the 5" DD. The new Gold Bug, Gold Bug Special Edition, and Gold Bug Pro all also have firmware variants which generally change the audio output in small ways most people would not notice but which detector nerds like myself obsess over. Modulated audio or not? VCO or not? There was also some concern about lack of sensitivity to silver coins at one point supposedly addressed by later firmware variations. Regardless silver is not a strong point on the Gold Bugs which, well, are designed to find gold. I believe we are up to version 4 of the firmware, with version 3.0 and 2.9 Being a couple earlier versions. With the unit turned off and set in disc mode, depress the ground balance button. Keep holding it depressed, and turn on the detector. The firmware version should display. My Gold Bug Pro displays version 3. If buying new I think you can pretty much ignore the firmware issue. If you like S rods, go Gold Bug, and decide which coil you want to get with it as the stock coil, 5" or 11" (or both). If you want pistol grip then go G2 but as far as I know you can only get that with the 11" coil as stock. Just to make matters interestingI will mention that the new 5" x10" DD accessory coil is getting nods as perhaps the best all around coil for the unit. Mine is on order so I will have to weigh in later on that. For prospecting I would lean towards getting the Gold Bug Pro with 5" coil and adding the 5" x 10" accessory coil if you want a larger coil. Hope this helps, Steve Herschbach" So, there we go, I wonder if they ever went past version 4 on the Bug, if anyone has one that is a recent purchase it would be cool to see if you have a newer firmware than my version 4. I assume the version 3 I have on my F19 is the latest, but with the F19 being a newer detector I'm surprised they're up to version 3 on it unless the Gold Bug is now up to version 6 or something. I think the silver coin problem was fixed with a POT adjustment, not a firmware update, as demonstrated by my Gold Bug Pro's. This seems to be verified by Keith in a post under Steve's on that forum. I'm also wondering if Fisher wind down the sensitivity on detectors like the Bounty Hunter Time Ranger Pro so the more expensive models of the same detector perform better, this would be simple for them to do and encourage people to buy the higher priced models seeing they're the same detector, I would not be at all surprised. So, if anyone has a Time Ranger Pro, please check the firmware version too, that might be interesting. I am betting they do. I guess the only way to know would be side by side testing like I've now done with my GBP's and F19 with the F19 having higher gain than my old model GBP's. I think the Bounty Hunter will have a lower gain making it more suitable as a beginner's detector with the target brand and price range.