phrunt

This was one part of my job in Australia, and I can guarantee you just because you purchased it second hand doesn't mean you don't have the same rights as someone who purchased it new as long as you have the proof of purchase, the problem is many retailers and companies don't know themselves the intricacies of the consumer law, which is understandable, it's pretty complicated. It's quite normal they will try and avoid a refund as they have the option of a repair, so long as they repair it to your satisfaction and on their side factory specifications, they don't need to do a refund, it's only if it goes unresolved and both parties can't come to an agreement in that regard they would be needing to refund. In difficult cases where an agreement can't be reached its normal practice that they just replace it to make the problem go away rather than keep trying to fix it but generally a couple of attempts at a repair should be done before going down this path. Some reading for you. Repair, replace, refund, cancel | ACCC Consumer rights in Australia: Warranties, returns and repairs (thenewdaily.com.au) Hopefully you get it all sorted out to your satisfaction. Sometimes you just need to educate the company in question about the laws, they'll do a little research and then they'll come around, if not let the ACCC deal with it on your behalf. The laws override anything Garrett has written in their terms and conditions, if what they've written doesn't fall into the consumer laws terms its meaningless and they are likely just a copy and paste they use in all different countries, although different countries have different laws. I'm sure though, given the opportunity they'll fix it for you, Garrett is well known in the USA for their exceptional warranty service, I'm sure that Garrett Australia will do their best to help you out, it really needs to get back to them to give them another chance and they'll sort it out. They may have encountered others like yours since it was last in and have more of an understanding of your issue now.

I love my Vanquish 540, it's an awesome detector for its price and I especially like its rock solid target ID stability and depth it can achieve on deep silver coins using the v12 coil in my mild soils, while I've not used a high-end Nokta machine like the Legend to get a baseline with my only experience being a Simplex but we won't go there I would think the Double Score model should have the edge on depth, especially in milder soils as it has an option for a 13.5 x 12.5" SC35 Coil, this coil "should" go deeper than the biggest coil for the Vanquish, the v12 which is 12x9" and if it doesn't, then I'd be very disappointed in the Score.

Thanks everyone, that confirms to me they have a faulty detector.

Which coil on the GPX 5000 are you basing that opinion on? Have you tried a small spiral coil on the 5000 like the Coiltek 9" Elite of the NF 12x8" EVO? I'm not saying you're wrong, I have no idea. I'm just trying to understand this as so many people have such vastly different opinions on it, and the Axiom the X-coils guys have is less sensitive than the 5000 and a poorer performer overall but I suspect they have a faulty one. I initially thought their views on the Axiom performance were based upon being heavy GPZ users, but then the comparisons started with the older GPX and it was better than the Axiom too. Unfortunately, it's too hard for them to try and get warranty on the detector as it had to be purchased overseas as its not sold locally and they are not wanting to buy a second one in hope it's better. With only a handful of people contacting them about buying coils for it when the earlier GPX model gets a possible coil release announced and they get flooded with queries about it and people wanting the coil it became clear to them making Axiom coils would not be worthwhile, hopefully this changes in the future.

You've had a big turn-around afaiken, there was once a time you were happy with your Axiom, sadly this is what happens when a customer receives a faulty unit, I was in much the same boat with my 6000 when I got a lemon, hated the thing for the first 6 months or so of ownership! I think you should persevere with the warranty process, not take the massive loss butchering it to make some sort of hybrid 7000 in an Axiom shell. I doubt this will ever work the PCB's probably won't even fit, and you'd need to fit the GPZ screen in the Axiom housing too which is probably unlikely. I see the appeal to that though, the Axiom being the better design. Perhaps if you try warranty again you might get a different person dealing with it, or you may end up with the same person that puts more effort into diagnosing it rather than no fault found seeing its returned again. The people at the service agent will be as new as the users are when it comes to the Axiom, they're not instantly guru's with it and have probably only seen a handful of faulty ones in their life and some of them would be obvious faults, the random ones are the hardest to deal with, and just don't take no for an answer, demand they replace it or you want a refund, use that Australian consumer law to your advantage. They have no choice but to replace or refund it if you demand this be the case. If you get it replaced and still aren't happy with its performance at least you can sell it knowing its a new unit so you're not ripping someone off.

This is what you're talking about in the manual, it's the same with the Deus 1, the lower frequencies use more power. The low frequency geared all terrain high conductor mode on the Manticore uses significantly more power too, so it's not just an XP thing. The Deus 1 manual shows the differences in power usage with frequencies in better detail. A battery that can last 25 hours in 25 kHz only lasting 12 hours in 4kHz, or even down to 6 hours with TX Boost.

I'd put my bets on the GPX 5000 with 15" EVO.

First Texas are only the leader in this arena in the USA I would think, outside of the USA the Chinese detectors own the low-cost market, many stores here have rebranded Chinese detectors as their own, most of our electronics type shops brand them their own and even big box stores like K-Mart, (K-Mart in AU/NZ is different to K-mart the USA with different owners, completely different store) Brands like National Geographic selling Chinese model metal detectors with their branding on it in their stores. They also rebranded a Go-Find to be a National Geographic detector so Minelab has been trying to crack into this market for a while but now they're hitting it hard with good detectors with lower prices like this X-Terra Voyager. The Go-Find was a bit behind the Chinese models for a more expensive price. It was a pretty basic detector where features wise many of the Chinese detectors sold in stores next to it here exceeded it in both performance and price, often having Target ID's which the Go-Find lacked. The X-Terra is really a game changer in this area for Minelab by having all the features of these Chinese detectors with the big brand name to go with it selling at a similar price. The biggest surprise for me was the biggest metal detector dealer in the country carries the Chinese detectors too alongside the other more well known metal detector brands. They carry a brand called Gold Century which are also branded as many other detectors on the Chinese online marketplaces and are heavily overpriced at the dealer compared to buying from China, the high prices making them look better machines than they are. Gold Century (jacobsdigital.co.nz) A guess Minelab just want a piece of that low priced big seller entry level detector market pie.

The final frontier for Minelab, cracking the low-priced detector market, it's a big market, probably the biggest of all. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. To complete in this market, they had to get the control pod manufactured China, something they've avoided until now with only accessories like shafts, arm cuffs, headphones etc all made in China. The gamble is now for sure X-Terra clones will appear pretty quickly, but I guess the technology involved in it is so old it doesn't really matter and they still have the chip protection with the coils the cloners are yet to crack to make a proper clone. You can bet at that price they're still making a tidy profit on the detector. The problem for Minelab being if the Chinese want to compete with price they will and they will be able to go far lower than Minelab can. Note also the Chinese Panky star rating is similar to the Bounty Hunter and X-Terra, so to someone with no knowledge it appears and may well be a decent detector, considering how many thousands have bought it yet it still has a high rating. I'm sure to someone in the know it's obvious the X-Terra is superior, but that's not a bulk of the people buying these detectors so the star rating and number of units sold is likely their indication of the better detector.

I retired my 11" from general use when I purchased the 15", I only care about deep silver and it does that job well over the 11". It's surprisingly light too.

Revised International pricing!

Minelab didn't "allow" aftermarket wired headphones Erik, they just have no real viable way of stopping them, if they could they would I'm sure ? The best they've got is using difficult to source connectors, which is usually quickly overcome.

This is probably why a lot of people think the noise cancels are all a gimmick, as the small shifts are not enough to mitigate their EMI in that particular area. In some places a noise cancel works, others it doesn't. I tend to like doing my noise cancels with the detector in full sensitivity so it has the most hope of "seeing" the EMI around, this carried over from the Minelab GPX detector which I was able to particularly notice a benefit to doing so, in turn I do it with every detector. I haven't found noise cancels on SMF detectors to be near as effective as they are on single frequency machines, and this video is a good demonstration of frequency shift working very well, this EMI is caused by underground power going to spotlights on a spots field. Thanks, Carl, for your explanation, it makes good sense and also demonstrates why quite often the scans don't work well, if the EIM is taking up a wide range of that frequency the small shifts applied are not enough.

Although it's about to have an overhaul this answers your question when it comes to dedicated gold detectors and sums them up well. The challenging part is now detectors that are essentially general-purpose machines are starting to take over being equal if not better to many of the gold prospecting VLF's while also having multi frequency which can help with difficult ground over single frequency which the stand-alone prospecting VLF's all currently are. Worth taking note when it comes to these general-purpose machines are the Equinox 800,900, Manticore, Nokta Legend and Deus 2. I have all of the dedicated prospecting VLF's I consider to be the best yet I still often reach for a general-purpose machine, namely the Equinox 800 when looking for small gold nuggets. The Garrett 24k I personally think is the best of the dedicated single frequency gold nugget machines when it comes to handling hot rocks, far better than the Gold Bug 2 and Gold Monster for example. The GB2 is so slow at recovering from its "boing" hot rock sound that it easily misses gold in a hot rock area, other more modern faster detectors will find gold nearer to hot rocks better.

It's only $640 AUD which I think is very cheap for the size of the thing. Here at Miners Den I guess in the US it will be more and the dealers have to incorporate shipping the big sucker across to the US which won't be cheap.

I wonder if he tried high yield with severe as the ground type, I've found that to work pretty well on the GPZ with a DOD coil on black sand beach environments, I just don't know if it will handle the crazy black sand of the pure black sand beaches up north from here.

I have the 11" Coiltek AI coil for the GPX, I will give it a serious try on the crazy black sand when I go there, that coil is surprising in the fact it loses little sensitivity over the 11" DD coil, very similar performance there but it's absolutely awesome in high EMI, quiet as a mouse. I also have the 15x12" DD Commander so I'll give it a shot and compare.

yes, the most important feature for me the GPX 6000 is missing is a ground balance lock, like Fixed on the earlier GPX, it's a major flaw in the design I think and seeing a majority of the people I've seen regularly used Fixed then it makes little sense this was overlooked.

I thought similar but now I've tried a 15" Concentric I don't think this is the case, one of the positives of Concentrics is they have a smaller inner receive winding, this makes them more sensitive than a similar size coil on smaller targets, however, being more sensitive they will have trouble with the black sand, at least the 15" CC is that way.

Thanks Steve, just trying to be prepared for my trip. as it seems even the guys living at these beaches have had little to no success so I want to be as prepared as possible. Much like Knomad saying the larger 13x11 DD is better than the 11x7 DD on the Axiom I've been finding the same, larger DD's appear to work better than smaller ones on the GPX 5000, I put it down to them being less sensitive to smaller targets. I think this was the downfall of the 15" CC spiral too, the less sensitive something is the better it seems to work.

Yes, I've done beaches where a large coin on the surface is reported as junk, and bury it an inch or two and it just blends into the sand's response being iron effectively not being detected at all, with the Equinox constantly having its overload icon on the screen. The GPX works to a degree on these beaches, better than anything else I've tried anyway but can't ground balance the ground out so I need to experiment more with settings to try get it working better, and I'm not even at the worst of the black sand beaches further up the country which are just pure black sand, mine at least around here have a mixture. The ones on the West Coast further up the country are next to impossible to detect. My 4500 went up there to a guy that wanted to detect them, didn't work out for him. Tarsacci made a coil they claimed was a NZ coil for detecting these beaches, needless to say it doesn't work, the guy that tried my 4500 had no luck with the Tarsacci setup with the "NZ Coil" and declared it a waste of money. It's good to hear the Axiom working to a certain degree in this sort of ground. I intend to make a trip up to these beaches sometime this year as they would have to be an untapped gold mine, very popular beaches for swimming yet nobody can detect them very well at all. I was hoping the 15" CC for the GPX by X-coils may help, sadly I can't see it resolving the problem with my attempts at the local semi black sand beaches, it appeared worse than the DD at handling the ground, perhaps being spiral didn't help with that. The QED where you were able to dumb it down by changing the pulse delay and a DD coil worked quite well on the semi black sand beaches so as Steve was saying the weaker the detector is on small targets the better it works in the bad ground. Maybe I should have kept it. My question is how does the Axiom compare to the GPX 5000 in heavy concentrations of black sand?

That coil is very interesting as it's had a 2024 update and is now 400 grams lighter than the original, that's a huge amount of weight to shave off a coil and I'm surprised NF has even had time to work on it when it's not that big of a seller it appears and they're too busy to make the coils that are in far higher demand like the 16x10" for the 6000, just adds to the mystery. If your going to get one in your part out of the world watch out Luis they'll probably be selling off the older heavy version by having old stock. I don't know of anyone that's got one, I vaguely recall reading someone has used one somewhere, there was a video posted on this site recently comparing coils and the 18" mono Nugget Finder was far deeper on a can than the 25" DD, but you would expect that from a mono, I do wonder if he was using normal with the DD X though, as one of its marketing speals is you can run it in normal in bad Aussie ground where his mono would not be in normal, he probably left them all in the same settings. The other weird thing about it is the GP SD GPX coils stil have a 3-year warranty but Nugget Finder has dropped the warranty on their 6000 coils to 2 years. Nugget Finder 25" DD Metal Detector Coil- Updated 2024 - now 400grm lighter! To suit Minelab SD, GP and GPX4000/4500/5000 metal detectors Fantastic Depth on Large Gold combined with Massive Ground Coverage down to maximum Depth... Super Strong Polycarbonate Reinforced Shaft Mount Pressure Regulated ABS Shell Divinycell Core Combination of Spiral & Bundle Windings Litz Wire Water Resistant to 1m 3 Year Warranty Weight now Approx 1250g This coil is capable of running Normal Timings in Highly Mineralized Ground (GPX Series) allowing significant depth gains on Large, Deep Gold & Relics...

yes, and at the moment he's not even using Ferrous-coin so needs to give it a try.

Ferrous coin is good for detecting coins in areas with the likelihood of plenty of junk, it's a setting I use a lot as it gives great target ID's, it's best in low mineral ground, and beaches and parks it works particularly well on around here with killer accurate target ID's even when there are reasonable amounts of junk around. Ground coin is better for higher mineralisation, and with ground balance enabled helps to give better Target ID's on coins in bad soil. Not a setting I've played around with much although I did try it on a beach with some black sand content and it worked pretty well considering I was using the 17x13" coil. Ferrous coin is my go-to setting though for plenty of locations, and I often use Low Trash in areas with next to no junk targets except the pull tabs and so on that Ferrous coin won't help with anyway. High trash has actually been pretty useful too although best in low mineralisation it's good for picking up coins next to nails when using lots of discrimination. I find it best if there are many iron junk targets around especially big bits of junk and I want to use a lot of discrimination. Low Trash is great in my parkland areas where there are few targets as it gives awesome depth and Target ID's, it's been good on the clean beaches too. It's worth you experimenting with Ferrous coin when detecting in junky areas, I prefer it over high trash for junky areas and Ground coin if you have mineralised ground.

I've been trying to get one for ages now, appears impossible.