phrunt

I brought that up as well in another thread but Steveg assured me that's the fiber itself, the tube is made using the fiber and resins so the problem with UV and water resistance doesn't matter.

Fibreglass does seem good though, and has changed a lot over the years, the fiberglass you can get now is nothing like the fibreglass of yesteryear. 

3 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Unless we are Simon and in Cointopia we will never know how many pieces of trash and goodies are at a site.  We just don't know if we are the first or the 20th detector over a piece of park unless we have been there before.  What are we hearing?  Trash, ignored trash, fresh drop, deep missed trash, notched out misses, Minelab misses, AT misses, etc. etc.

The same somewhat applies to nugget patches.  Why is that target still there?  It is a hammered site.  As Steve has said we just have to get 'lucky' to be at the right place at the right time to find a good piece.  Sometimes that happens when we dig everything and sometimes it is with a new detector cherry picking.

Trash is good and trash is bad.  Digging everything is good and digging everything hurts the back.

Detecting often is the common denominator! (or sometimes not)  haha  We all have stories.

Now ... consistency is another matter.  The body of work and finds.  That takes some of the luck out of it.

Cointopia was a great learning experience for me, very little trash, probably 20 coins to every bit of junk.  I really got to hone my silver finding ability by having so many silver targets in the wild to recover.  The more you dig targets, the more you learn how they behave, what they sound like and so on.    I got to the point I was always confident of the coin I was about to dig before digging it, and I was rarely wrong or surprised.  Sadly jewellery is not my strong point at this stage, either people don't lose it or I suck at finding it.

I quickly learnt I was the first to detect those sites, and oddly enough detecting is such a rare hobby here I can pretty confidently go to plenty of places and be the first to ever detect them.    IT's grown in popularity lately in the big cities, but once away from them into the small regional towns you can be the first still to this day to run a detector over the hot spots.  It's a shame your trip was so short and you didn't get to experience some of this stopping in at the many places you drove past to swing a coil, you would have found your own cointopia for sure, guaranteed.

If I can dig it all in places I do, hard in parkland type places and certainly not in sports field areas, at least in gold areas the rabbits dig more holes than I ever could so the damage I cause is very minimal by comparison, so I can dig dig dig and I do.  

I'm not sure if you wandered down to the lakefront beach in the heart of Queenstown Mitchel, but it's very likely I was the first to detect that only a couple of years ago, if I wasn't the first the person that went, the person before me wasn't very good, as they left a lot of very old coins in the ground and over $100 worth of $1 and $2 coins that I was able to get my first time detecting it.

6 hours ago, Muddydogz said:

I'm rootin for garrett for sure. Imo, minelab still leads in the smf technology. In my mild soil, the legend just didn't stack up with the nox, heck, the vanquish worked as well for me. Not to say the noktas are bad, just seemed to be lacking in a few areas. 

Heard that same thing from the locals here in our mild soils that have ventured in that direction.

We should all be rooting for Garrett, crazy not to, the more competition in the marketplace the better.  We are hopefully on the final leg of the wait now to see what they can deliver.

2 hours ago, Erik Oostra said:

Yes, Geotech's video in another thread about carbon rods shows this clearly.. The rods don’t react when the detector is in multi-frequency beach mode (where the rod’s signal is filtered out just like a salt signal).. I'm thinking about times when I'm not using my detectors in beach mode..

While that's true with the Equinox, it's not with the Manticore, the shaft reacts reasonably badly in Beach low conductor and Beach deep.  What this tells me is someone that looks for small gold jewellery on beaches has a lot more hope finding it with the Manticore, and that's a great thing, the Manticore no doubt in my mind is quite a big improvement over the Equinox as a beach hunting machine after seeing how much more it picks up a carbon shaft than the Equinox in some of its beach modes, it's been said a few times the Manticore was intentionally designed around being a machine for this task, and it does seem that's the case, although in all their testing they must have missed something as the firmware update included this, "General Stability Enhancements: Including improvements to Beach Mode Ground balance on dry sand"  

The Equinox in general doesn't react near as badly as the Manticore does on the shaft, in any situation, demonstrating the extra horsepower the Manticore has.

I'm a lot like you Erik and your car noise analogy really suits my way of thinking, stuff can drive me mad and I can't let it go until it's fixed 😛  I've been known to pull many all nighters tackling tasks as I can't let them go until resolved, no point going to bed as I won't sleep until it's fixed! 

The best thing about this whole shaft debacle is I'm more impressed by my Manticore than ever, seeing it's differences over the Equinox, it's not just another mildly modified Equinox like the 900 is, it's a new animal, different enough to be a new detector, not something that could have been done with a firmware update to the 800 like the 900's software changes.

A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem.

Mike and I were having a little private discussion behind the scenes about his problem where I was reassuring him he would be fine with his warranty, and he was.    He let the store he purchased at deal with it, good move.

He's unable to post being a new member he's exceeded his posts limit however, here is his reply so the thread can end on a nice happy note.

MichaelHill 

I'm not ignoring you guys on the thread, the site says I have reach my maximum amount of post for the day, never experienced that on a forum before. I'm assuming it's cause I'm a new member on a "probation" period? Maybe it will allow me to post an update tomorrow.

Anyway, great news. I was able to exchange the unit for a brand new one at the store it was purchased at, so now I have a brand new Equinox 900, and it is fully updated. I was elated to hear they would exchange the unit no problem. Hopefully I will be able to post tomorrow 👍

No, it's not a required step.

Yep, I was most concerned at him saying it "lost power", thinking he accidently knocked out the cord while the update was taking place causing it to fail, which technically isn't a warranty claim unless Minelab are nice.  When he described the situation better the point it failed was when the detector does its reboot during the flash, it just went black on the screen as it's meant to do, and never got past that and locked up.  That's why I told him to be very clear with Minelab what happened, explain it well.    It may well just need the battery disconnected to fix its "lockup" and then it might restart and be fine, but that's best left for Minelab service to check out.

I'm sure his warranty is fine, as it's clear he wasn't in the wrong.

Updates are done in a way that's far safer than it used to be, and firmware recovery should work if something goes wrong, until it doesn't.   I wouldn't be too concerned about doing future updates, in most cases they're perfectly safe, you've got to be pretty unlucky to encounter a problem.  Knowing Minelab that's likely the last ever update for it anyway.

Most cars look the same, or very similar, do the same stuff yet they're different brands. 

No way in the world are Minelab licensing anything to Nokta, they're likely their biggest competitor.  

Minelab are chasing Nokta down on a lawsuit that they could probably chase other brands down on too, yet they're going after Nokta, a really old patent too, but it's all they had to go after them with so they are.

Nokta are doing their own thing for sure, and so far the most successful at chasing down Minelab, they're the ones forcing Minelab to release these new lower priced models, they've got Minelab worried.

Coiltek better be ready and have a whole lot of the 9" Round Elites over there pending its arrival, the other notable coil of choice would be the 14x9" Nugget Finder EVO, while avoiding the 12x8" EVO, it's a bit rough on it and plenty of people giving that report.  The 12" EVO seems a reasonable choice too, along with the 11" Coiltek Elite.

I'm been following the Aussies also and the 14x9" EVO and 9" Elite seem to be the general consensus for the best two readily available coils for it.

The Sadie is very over-rated in my opinion, unless size matters it's not a good choice as the larger spirals are more sensitive and deeper.

Dealers intending to sell it, it would be wise to have those two coils on offer.

Hopefully Algoforce can ramp up production enough to meet demand, that's been the biggest issue so far with the detector well received.  USA's over 330 million population is a big jump from Australa's 25 or so million, add NZ on and it's just over 30 million combined, nothing compared to USA.

People with a bunch of coils from their GPX will have some fun trying them all out and working out their favourites, most coils will work well, the ones that won't the detector will mostly let you know during calibration by Ultra Fine mode (the most sensitive) failing calibration.  Coils that fail that I'd be iffy at using on my GPX too, especially if another one of the same coil passes it, it can be used to diagnose problematic coils 🙂

That's good news, you're not at fault, you will likely be ok, they better hope yours is a rare occurrence.  

Make sure you describe it well to them.

20 minutes ago, MichaelHill said:

When you say it's toast, and it may not be covered by warranty...I could just be out $1200 then?

Depends on their policy regarding this type of stuff, all you can do is send it / drop it in and hope for the best.  Being an waterproof detector they can't pop the pod open do any technical sort of fixes, so unless they have a trick recovery method that we are unaware of then it's a big issue.  It might just be a glitch that they need to remove the battery to reset it fixes, but let them troubleshoot it.

They wouldn't make you buy an entirely new detector, worst case they'd sell you a new pod if they reject warranty on it.  It will be a good test to see how nice their service is, if they replace it, they're very nice.  I've got my fingers crossed for you.

I think we can rule out the use of GPX coils on the Nokta Pulse machines, they're waterproof, the GPX coils are either not waterproof or waterproof to shallow depths, this was all the GPX needed seeing the coil connector is just a 5 pin microphone plug that isn't waterproof anyway with the GPX itself not being a waterproof machine.

Looks like we can expect entirely new design new coils from Nokta, I hope they don't try and lock them down in any way and embrase the aftermarket possibilities.  When their detector becomes popular enough it's likely some aftermarket manufacturers may make some coils for it, probably Detech would be one of them.

When updating firmware there is a critical spot that needs written, basically a boot loader, it would be required for the recovery procedure, in your case it was likely writing this when it lost power, so recovery won't work, had it gotten further into the update you would have likely been OK as the detector would have had the software portion required to recover, detector is needing a trip to the service agent, iffy one if it's warranty or not, they can go either way, had you not lost power (knocked off the cord?) you wouldn't be in this bind, it's not a manufacturing fault.  

I'm the sort that's extremely careful doing firmware updates not to lose power, I do them off my laptop so if the house power goes out for some odd reason my laptop will survive and keep going with the update, decades of experience doing many thousands of them has made me jittery when doing them, and extremely relieved when they're over 🙂

They're a lot safer than they used to be, but still there is a risk, and you've demonstrated that.  Unfortunately, it's toast.

They need to incorporate the hold down button press noise cancel into all of their detectors, like the Nox 800, but most importantly the GPX 6000.  It really gets me grumpy they give the X-Terra pro the feature by a firmware update, but not their $9000 NZD GPX 6000.

Nokta released the Legend, it's about as close to an Equinox as you can get without being an Equinox, now the 900's out they're even more similar as Nokta went a few steps ahead in some areas of the 800 so Minelab fought back a bit releasing a closer to the Legend 900 🙂  The extra ID's, the carbon *cough cough* shaft, the better waterproofing... All Legend traits.

The Legends probably the best selling detector on the market right now, why? It's not the best, it can't keep up with a Manticore or Deus 2, ,but it's priced right, great value for what you get.

Garrett either have to have their own version of a Deus 2 or Manticore which we would all love and want to buy, or if they're in Equinox territory they need to price it right, as in Legend pricing would be ideal for peak sales.

If they do that, they'll be successful, two cars, exact same performance, different manufacturers, why pick one over the other? Brand preference.  Garrett has a really strong customer base that like Garrett because they're Garrett, made in the US of A! 

That should be enough to make it a hit detector for them, not for everybody but for them and their customer base it will do well, and keep them in the game.  Just don't be greedy Garrett, keep that price reflecting performance based upon competitors pricing, especially Nokta.

We can lighten up the situation with funny pictures 🙂

I've always wondered about this sort of stuff, they extract huge amounts of gravel from the rivers here to use for roading projects and crushed up for grit on the roads in winter, and just general gravel use purposes.  In among that gravel is going to be a huge amount of gold, ounce or more nuggets are found in the river even very recently and I can grab a few buckets of gravel and sluice out some flakes of gold in no time.

This is my gold from a day running my sluice on the Shotover river. 

A caption from a news story about the river

The world-famous Shotover River was one of the richest gold-bearing rivers in the world, and gold was first discovered in Arthurs Point in 1862. Prospectors, miners and fortune seekers flocked to Queenstown where the river was cradled, sluiced and dredged. The rush was short-lived as gold was discovered on the West Coast of the South Island and many miners moved on.

From a news story.

Two gravel-extraction operations have been granted consent to extract up to 100,000cu m of gravel per year from the Shotover River between the State Highway 6 bridge and the confluence of the Shotover and Kawarau rivers.

In a decision released last week, Environment Court Judge Jon Jackson allowed the consent for Steve Rout Contracting Ltd in conjunction with Queenstown Gravel Supplies Ltd to extract the gravel, subject to 53 conditions ranging from the areas to be worked to water quality, and mitigation measures in relation to noise from machinery.

I can only imagine how much gold is being crushed up and put into our roads and wherever we use gravel.

I think it's best just to wait for an alternative lower shaft from steveg rather than stuff like that, the reaction to the shaft is just too big to think keeping it a small distance away from the coil mitigates all problems.  He's on it, he'll be as quick as possible, I'm sure.

Anything else is a bandaid solution, but a bit more like putting a bandaid on before going swimming, it might help a little bit, but won't solve the problem.  The only safe angle is virtually straight up in the air, no one detects like that 🙂

I'm usually all for this DIY solution stuff, but the only solution I can see is getting rid of that lower rod and in the end for me, the best way to do that is going to be just wait and buy one.

21 minutes ago, Erik Oostra said:

For those who appreciate the beauty of carbon fibre rods (I ❤️my 'red-belly black snake' rods), I've got some great news: The original plastic Nox 600/800 lower rods fit perfectly into the carbon fibre Detect-Ed upper rods.. Win/Win.. 

One step ahead of you 🙂 Did that to my Detect-Ed shaft a few days ago.  I was quite happy about that fit myself as I like the carbon upper.   The Manticore's the only issue as until Steveg comes though with the goods, it has no other option, well then there is of course the 6000 to deal with.

The CTX 3030/GPZ batteries are pretty easy to repack yourself

I'd do it now but I have to find a USB cable 🙂 so tonight I'll have more time to do so.

6 minutes ago, JohnTracy said:

So I tried that and still nothing. It would be excellent if someone could verify if plugging it into the computer would turn it on ?

Ok I'll do that today, I'm about to head out at the moment (its morning here) so i'll have to do it tonight, sorry for the delay.

The coil cable barely responds when the shaft screams.  Back to the drawing board.

Pinpointers are not sensitive enough to use for most common gold, believe me if anyone has tried, I have, the best of the best pinpointers can pick up very small targets, but in their highest sensitivity struggle with the ground, even though I'm in milder ground, I'd hate to try one in hot ground.    PI pinpointers are next to useless for prospectors, so weak on small gold they're not a good choice, and just like they're weak on small gold they're weak on the shaft, the PI pin pointers won't pick it up, the VLF's will certainly pick up the shaft.

do you have the battery pack for the normal batteries you can throw in to try and not use the lithium one? to test that way.