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Yes, I was confused trying to locate a shotgun pellet with it, took me a while to work it out as I kept digging with my scoop in the wrong place, after doing the video I had much more of an idea how the coil works so it made pinpointing tiny targets easier. So you can see the difference in hot spots here is the standard GPZ coil with the same test, same pellets.

The sweet spot for pinpointing and for waiving the scoop over the coil is the lumps on the coil. It's very handy information to know as using the front of the coil or the sides to recover tiny targets using the Z-search is not ideal, always run your scoop over the lumps. It makes it quite confusing to pinpoint tiny targets. This video I did demonstrates the sweet spots for target recovery.

I have successfully used this technique in areas just too loaded with shotgun pellets, blocking out numbers below 5 and was able to weed out some gold without wasting my day digging pellets and frustration with endless target signals. If I was digging every pellet I may have found some tiny bits of gold in among them with similar ID's, but perhaps I would have missed these bigger bits as my time was wasted digging all the pellets, one of the bits was over a gram. This is partly why I still find VLF's very good as a detector to use for prospecting in my hunting areas, sometimes it's just not viable to use an all metal detector and the ability to notch out targets is invaluable for my sanity and the ability to notch out hot rock's ID numbers is also something I really like. It's worth giving the Vanquish a go for 1 gram nugget detecting as Steve suggested, it's not as sensitive to small stuff as the Gold Monster which is what you're wanting and you can set a discrimination pattern to block out the targets you don't want to find. If it handles your ground it should easily get 1 gram nuggets at 6 inches and below.

Thanks for the detailed reply Jeff, that's exactly what I was wanting to know. This is the Snake for the Gold Racer, Nel make the full range for it. http://nel-coils.com/index.php/en/production/nel-snake-9-5x3-5?id=2123 At the moment I can pick up a Gold Racer Pro Pack for cheaper than the standard pack sells for in the USA, for NZ that's rare. I really appreciate your advice, it seems it's tough for anything to beat the Equinox and I'm pretty happy with the 6" and 10x5" Coiltek combination for the Nox on gold, but always chasing something better 🙂 Maybe I should just hang out and see what Nokta does with the Multi Frequency machine, they've already said it will have a prospecting mode.

The 24k was relatively short lived by comparison of other US made detectors that seem to hang about on the market for 10 to 25 years, being a US detector it was a bit difficult for me to ever get my hands on one and I guess I was just too slow at making the move on one. So I'm considering an alternative. I like my Gold Monster but it is a bit simplified and I prefer more options so I just use it as a pinpointer, at the moment my primary prospecting VLF is the Equinox, I rarely use anything else. I have a Gold Bug 2 but find it a bit primitive especially with features and I'd prefer a detector with Target ID's and the tiny gold improvement over the Nox I find is very minimal, the Nox has a great range of features and does a pretty good job but I'm wondering If I'd get a bit more out of a dedicated prospecting VLF with a higher frequency. Am I losing much not using a 24k and sticking with my Equinox? The Nokta Gold Kruzer seems a viable choice, it's extremely cheap and sitting in stock at my local dealer, it has Nel coil support which I absolutely think is a major bonus, the Nel snake coil is made for it, and to me this seems the ultimate prospecting coil. I have it for my Fisher Gold Bug Pro but that detector just doesn't cut it for depth on small gold for me as I live in a place with a majority of the gold being very small. I need a the best VLF for hot rocks possible. Why is it that Nokta detectors just aren't as popular, they seem to make a great range. The Gold Kruzer and Gold Racer are what people have wanted in VLF prospecting detectors, aftermarket coil support, features dripping off them, quality builds and water proof and so on yet you don't see them as detectors people are using. Why is this? Steve H had a Gold Kruzer, Gold Monster etc, etc.... yet ended up settling on the 24k instead. Is the 24k that much better than the Nokta? What made the 24k the keeper and the Nokta the one to go. Would I be better off waiting to see what Garrett come out with, with any luck Nel will make coils for Garrett's version of a 24k. I've never owned a Notka, I am a bit puzzled why they make such feature packed and on paper great looking detectors yet people aren't using them.

Ok, I have sorted out the CTX settings, it's now the ONLY detector I own that can hit the second deepest 8"+ coin using a small coil and ID it as anything else other than iron, in fact the CTX is giving me a certain dig me target ID that's indicating the coin is what it is. It's getting a bit of EMI today I have no idea why but the CTX is struggling more with EMI than normal but that's not stopping it giving me a good ID. 12 38 is the ID in an air test of the coin, and I'm regularly seeing 11 38 and and other numbers around it's number revealing the coin, with every other detector the ID's are dragged right down and mostly into iron when using a smaller coil, to me this means if I encounter an even deeper coin using the 11" or even 17x13" the CTX will perform the same, giving more outright Target ID info on these even deeper coins in my soil conditions. This might already explain why I've been finding deep silver coins in ground I've already done to death. Keep in mind in my front yard I have the CTX gain down quite low, away from the EMI I can crank that up and get even more depth where as I'd tried the other detectors on maximum gain, no need with the CTX it's hitting the coin on a much lower gain. I might record this video again when EMI calms down, maybe it's because it's cold and peak power usage time with my house right near the transmission lines that EMI is bad this morning, I should have filmed it yesterday when I worked it out as the EMI was very calm then. Lovin' it.

ahhh bugger! That explains it, I think Mars also struggled to get a foothold in many markets outside of Europe as they don't seem to have enough distributors. I don't know about US availability but here we have to import them direct from Ukraine which ads to the cost of buying locally. Nel is really the market leader in aftermarket VLF coils so I think by default people just order Nel/Cors. Detech make a really good coil with the Ultimate coil but again the Nel Tornado although a lot heavier is the more popular coil. The Ultimate isn't very good in high EMI though, the Tornado is slightly better. Something Mars point out on their coils marketing is they have protection from electrical interference, prior to buying one I thought this might be just marketing, but it does appear they really do have some sort of protection, I don't know how they do it, but it does work. And yea, Serious Detecting sell the Tiger for the AT Gold but specifically mention it's not for the AT Max. https://www.seriousdetecting.com/product/mars-tiger-13x10-dd-waterproof-search-coil-garrett-gold-metal-detector/

It seems for any detector with troublesome EMI the Mars Tiger might be the way to go. My T2 was shocking for EMI, so much so I pulled it apart and did some EMI mods to it like extra shielding paint and copper tape on the housing wired to the shield point on the PCB. That gave some improvement but nowhere near the improvement I get by just strapping on the Mars Tiger. This persons experience with the Tiger on the T2 basically mirrors mine. http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/teknetics/578415-review-mars-tiger-coil.html For your chattery AT Pro it maybe the coil of choice, it's also solid as a rock, I'd say the best built coil I've ever owned, it's tough, absolutely tough if you haven't seen these videos of them strength testing the Mars coils it's worth the watch, quite funny really. I doubt many coils would stand up to this punishment, even the coil cables are super tough. It's not a super light coil, I think the strength justifies the weight though.

You can pick them up second hand not much more than he paid for his Monster though https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/mareeba/miscellaneous-goods/minelab-ctx-3030-metal-detector/1273927400 $1600 AUD. His aims to not dig stuff much under 1 gram so that's a challenge with the Monster, even on lowest sensitivity it's going to ping on surface pellets. If his Vanquish had ground balance it'd be the cheapest option, but being in OZ and looking for gold it's not likely to cut it without being able to balance.

This is a bit of advice others with more experience with the CTX may want to chime in on, however I think the CTX 3030 might be right up your alley. Your aim is 1 gram gold or larger, quite shallow under 6" and avoiding digging tiny stuff and may as well throw some discrimination into the mix as well to make it even easier for you. I took this photo before I bought the little 6" coil or else it'd be in it too. It's not like the GM1000 where it's sensitive to the very tiny targets, it's not going to drive you nuts with small shotgun pellets and so on like the normal prospecting detector but gram size gold is absolutely no issue for it. It appears it handles bad soil very well, others may want to comment there as I can't personally verify that, just by what I've read. I'm new to the CTX myself although I love it so far, I have messed around with it a lot already and it has a feature that allows you to limit it's depth in a way, it's called volume gain, you can basically make it barely detect deeper targets by turning the volume gain down, deeper targets will just become a break in the threshold and targets at the depth you're after will scream out. I guess you'd just bury a 1 gram bit of gold at various depths and adjust the setting to suit what you wanted to dig and how deep. Here is a Minelab Treasuretalk on the feature that you may want to read. https://www.minelab.com/go-minelabbing/treasure-talk/ups-downs-of-volume-gain It's also quite a reasonable prospecting detector for the size gold you're chasing. It has options of 6", 11" and 17x13" coils from Minelab and Coiltek have had a 10x5" for it. I'm not sure if it still exists as I've been unable to find one to buy so far so maybe they've discontinued the coil. Here is some talk on it being used in OZ by Gold Hound that found a great use for it for his prospecting. He has a bunch of settings you can download for it available on this site to suit various conditions in OZ too. It's also Minelab's flagship coin detector, although with the Equinox now on the market some might say that's debatable. Either way you'll find it excellent for your coin hunts and again, it has the settings you desire to suit your detecting style and really great accurate target ID's to assist you digging less junk and more good targets you are aiming for. It's also getting long in the tooth but still a current model and you should be able to pick up a second hand one reasonably easily with some CTX users switching to the Equinox which has small gold performance more on par with your GM1000 and will have you digging crazy amounts of shotgun pellets 🙂 A potential downside is you may find it a bit heavy as it's about 2.3kg, compared to say your GM1000 at about 1.33kg with the 10x5" coil. Obviously don't jump in and buy one without doing some research and others may chime in if my assumption it maybe suitable for you is correct, but it sure sounds like it suits what you're chasing.

I wonder what age you need metal detector walking aids?

Pinpoint mode on many detectors gives a better signal response over a deep target than normal detecting modes, someone with more knowledge than me maybe able to explain why. On the Go-Find pinpoint mode is approximately the same depth as not notching out any targets, so using no discrimination but with louder audio. With my Go-Find 40 if I am blocking out iron and I get an iffy target, rather than just enabling iron which is cycling through all the modes I just press the pin point button and the signal response of the target improves dramatically and I use pinpoint mode to size the target and work out if I think its worth digging. Keep in mind on the Go-Find like many detectors a deep good target will often be identified incorrectly as iron anyway. The Pinpoint audio on the Go-Find like you've worked out is much louder than the normal audio on the targets too. The cool thing about the Go-Find is you can enable pinpoint by pressing the button and it just stays on so you can hunt in pinpoint mode, and I've done this successfully at the beach, it gives better depth which is a good thing in our soft sand with deep targets and with the easy digging in the sand it's best to dig everything anyway as it's so easy to do. The Go-Find loses depth with discrimination enabled like most other detectors do so it's best to not notch out anything if you're chasing deeper targets.

Yes, that's why I alluded to the GPX 4500 being re-released, they've done it before... they may do it again if they see any sign of competition in the lower end PI price range the 4500 may then make another appearance as the 4500SE (Second Edition), a simplified less settings version to keep it well away from the GPX 5000 🙂 If they wanted to do it properly they'd do it in a new modern housing in line with the GPX 6000 and 7000 with cut back settings options making it easier to use and understand more suited to the weekend warrior market, I only expect to see this happen if Nokta or somebody comes out with a cheap PI to take that area of the market. That's a stepping stone to a higher end machine and Minelab won't want that happening. If they just wanted to do it on the cheap as a quick remedy to competition they'd just release it in the current platform and cut back a few timings or something.

These seem the way to go for those wanting those funky neck style speakers. I'll try get some, hard to get as they seem to be only sold in Japan. These are a high end brand so they won't be cheap, currency conversion from the Japanese price indicates $168 USD. They're certified atpX Low Latency and splash proof so suitable for detecting I'd imagine. A lot more hardy than other options available. https://www.audio-technica.co.jp/product/AT-NSP700TV Unfortunately in Japanese but you can translate with Google 🙂 Listed on the aptX website as certified low latency. https://www.aptx.com/products/audio-technica-wireless-neck-speaker-system This is the model number: AT-NSP700TV 13 hour run time, and they have a charging station which doubles as a transmitter for your TV etc. They also just turn on by the knob on the right side in the photo, it also does volume control.

I did a significant amount of research into this and settled on this one. https://www.xmpow.com/products/mpow-bh390a-2-in-1-transmitter-receiver-aptx-low-latency-bluetooth-5-0 14 hours battery life, decent well known brand and it has the Csr8685 chipset. The latest version while many on the market still have the older Csr8650. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/csr8675 The receiver mode supports atpX HD not LL, so may not be suitable for some but I'm using it as a transmitter. Of course like everything Bluetooth it's backwards compatible so will work with older chipsets like the atpX Low Latency Minelab use in their headphones, It's very simple to use which I found a must, I didn't want a bunch of options and input ports that I'd never use seeing it's just for a detector. Simplicity and lack of "features" was a plus. I intend to use it as a transmitter for my older style GPX 5000 to pair to the Minelab Bluetooth headphones that came with my Vanquish that I've never used, the same as the Nox ones my 800 came with which are also never used , along with a Bluetooth LL portable speaker as an alternative to the much slower ProSonic seeing I had to return mine and was left without an option other than seeking an aftermarket replacement. I'll report on how it goes once it arrives.

There are two pricing models they could take. Cheaper with more sales hoping to recoup the money that way which I'm sure they would. They took this path with the Equinox. People in the coin and relics market were already accustomed to cheaper detectors with the CTX being the top dog in the market for price and possibly performance at the time prior to the Equinox but it didn't have a huge market share compared to the lower priced units which were the bigger sellers. Before the Equinox came along what was the most popular coin and relic type detector? For me it is hard to know, it seemed more of a spread around various brands. The Equinox came in giving people a large step up in features and performance at a similar price to the existing detectors and just basically took the floor out from under the other detectors market, almost everyone quickly jumped onboard and bought one. Although their profit margin would be a lot smaller on the Equinox they've more than likely made up for that on the massive number of sales of it and then we look at accessories, if you want to buy both of the other coils for it they're making a big profit there. Check out the price of a WM08 or headphones for those that bought a 600 and want them, mental. I went to buy a v10 coil for my Vanquish 540 to complete the set. I looked at the price of the coil and thought OK, a bit pricey considering the price of the detector. Then I looked at the Vanquish 340 which includes the v10 coil and for just over $100 more I can get the V10 coil and another detector. I think this is the path I'm going to take to get the coil. I've never bought a detector just to get a coil before but it makes sense to do so. Now, the Gold detector market has been different, people are used to very high prices and for those that are fortunate enough to be in a location with gold that can make these prices viable, it's really no big deal and that's their target market, people that would fall into being professionals really. I'm a hobbyist and my finds in my area limit me to being so, I'm not their target market. They set the price by the bulk of the buyers of the detector and what they will pay, not by people like me. I've heard people say If I buy a 6000 I can pay it off in a week or two in gold finds, it'd take me a year or more, I'd have to go out much more often than I do now too. Minelab are selling more 6000's than they can produce already, waiting lists all over the place. A bulk of the detectors seem to have gone to fill the market in Africa and I guess rightly so, the bulk of the buyers are there. Australia they just had to give a bunch of detectors to for their reputation to stay intact supporting local plus the Australian's are great for marketing purposes flooding Social media with photos and video of the detector in action, the African's don't do this, they're too busy using their detector to make a living. The smaller markets just have to wait to get one and they knew there would be less sales in these markets, and with sky high shipping costs from Covid and even chip shortages and production constraints again related to Covid lock downs and social distancing at the production facilities the high price low sales volume method was really their only realistic choice at the moment, they would have no way possible of keeping up with the orders if they sold the GPX 6000 at $3000 and they have no reason to with no competition. I think it's how it has to be, so my hopes are on one of the other manufacturers throwing caution to the wind and coming out with the lower cost PI option, Garrett are already there they just need to do a redesign of the housing and set a cheaper price point and they can make the lower cost PI for those that want a cheaper unit, they also have the TDI up their sleeve they could redevelop into something a bit better. First Texas have the Impulse Gold if they can ever get it to market, the AQ has left me a bit troubled there. And Nokta have said they were doing a PI.... maybe they'll do it. QED is far too limited by various things we don't need to get into here to really make an impact at all except to a very small user base so can't really be included as an option for worldwide distribution. I think any manufacturer that can fill this void of a low cost good performance lightweight modern PI will do very well, they may create a hobbyist market that didn't even exist due to price constraints. If someone else doesn't do it Minelab might just do it soon to make sure the others have no hope. A modified simplified modern housing built in battery GPX 4500 and a lower price point and bang that opportunity is gone.

This letter should have been: Dear Competition, Please get your act together and make a decent prospecting PI detector, Minelab currently has total control of the market charging extremely high prices for their equipment as they have absolutely no competition so it's money for the taking if you can come out with a reasonable performance, good quality, light weight, modern automatic ground balancing PI detector with good sensitivity to small gold and affordable to the weekend warrior market along with EASE OF USE it will sell like crazy to those not willing to pay Minelab's pricing but still want to have a bit of fun prospecting. The weekend warrior market is likely a huge untapped market largely due to insane pricing limiting the buyer pool to only those more serious about it. You don't have to beat them in performance, just make something that is worth using and built to last, support for GPX coils would help it sell. Thank you for listening Fisher, Nokta and even Garrett, not pointing out any names of course. Simon Even if you didn't want to buy the competitions detector it would drive down some of Minelab's pricing when they see it eating into their market.

I tried tweaking the Nox a bit more and using Park 2 and Field 2 and adjusting recovery speed and ground balancing to try get a better hit on the deeper coin with no joy. I maybe wrong but it appears to me the Vanquish with V8 8" × 5" coil goes a bit deeper than the Coiltek 10x5" coil on the Nox in my mild soil conditions on this coin.

I think the problem for Coiltek will be related to production, they won't want to expand their production and put on more staff and buy equipment and so on for something that is likely to be a one off big demand for the coils, once everyone who wants one has one from the pent up demand from Minelab not proving enough coil options then the sales will slow to a crawl and they'll unlikely every see such demand for coils ever again so scaling up for mass production might be a bit of a mistake. From everything I've seen and heard so far only the 10x5" is popular too. The few in NZ that bought the larger sizes have not been overly impressed.

My CTX 3030 6" coil arrived today so I thought I'd compare it to some other detectors with small coils including the Nox with it's 6" coil and the Coiltek 10x5" Nox coil. I was pretty happy with the CTX, in fact I am pretty sure it did the best by a significant margin, the only issue is even though it was giving a pretty damn good ID on the deepest coin it wasn't giving any sound on it, other than the break in the threshold. Perhaps I have a setting wrong or something I have no idea what I'm doing with the CTX although I found the default profiles useless for deep coins so I just made my own based off the coin program and changed the ground type to ferrous coin and it seems to do pretty good. I tried recovery deep an the sound doesn't work on the deep coin, I haven't messed around with any of the audio settings. 12 38 is what it should show on an air test on the $1 coin and it is often showing 11 38 on the deep coin but no audio, weird. The rest of the detectors do poorly on the deepest coin. The Gold Bug Pro surprises me, it's quite deep but reports it as iron. The Vanquish did semi OK, it at least had the audio tone of the coin, It occurred to me after doing the video the Vanquish was in jewellery mode, so I went out and tested in coin and in relic mode and neither did any better than jewellery mode, it's been my favourite Vanquish mode on coins in the past so I just leave it on that all the time. I didn't bother with the T2 and it's 5" coil, it wasn't worth my time finding the coil to put on as I already know it can't detect the deeper of the two targets with the 5" on, again it's just iron to it and that's when in all metal. Any advice on the audio issue with the CTX would be appreciated. The deepest coin is on the left at 8", with the other target at 6" and I put white stones on the grass to show where they are. They were buried about 2 years ago, who knows how deep they are now, the ground is very soft in winter so they may have sunk lower since then.

You are right, it is there, just hidden 🙂 Great news.

Well, ordered the Superfly, Although I think the Mars Tiger is awesome it's main benefit over the Nel coils is its EMI handling, the AT Gold is already great with EMI, than 18kHZ an 19kHZ frequency range seems a good one around here for EMI so EMI handling wasn't on my list of requirements for a coil. I'll see how the Nel goes. I notice on their coils now they all appear to have that funky red coil cover, I'd rather the old school black ones. I don't like standing out like dogs nuts.

I doubt it, I'd just think they're missing that feature. Once you've got the old one out just pull it apart and see what that 3rd wire is doing, it maybe just attached to a temperature sensor that you can move across to the other battery. The detector would likely work fine without it anyway you'd just have to be careful yourself not to charge it if it's too hot like in a car on a hot day as charging the batteries in too high heat can damage them.

Those Ebay batteries look like they were two wire, the battery that comes out of the Equinnox has an extra yellow wire, not sure what for? Temperature maybe to stop you charging when overheated?

Norvic, you should be sleeping! 🙂 I think Reg will like the 6k, he liked the QED for it's lighter design and the GPX gives him that to an extent. Not near the weight of the QED but still, lighter and better performance. He always hated being strapped up like a turkey and the GPX doesn't have turkey strapping like previous models. Reg likes big coils though, and for that he's a bit limited with the GPX, unless X-coils come up with the goods for it, which may happen! It will be interesting to see what he thinks, especially seeing he often hunts with jrbeatty and he now swings the GPZ. It looks like they'll be in NZ very soon, the dealer has updated his website with a little yellow line of text which indicates so. The newest GOLD Detector from Minelab will be in stock very soon.