phrunt

Yes, My GPX 5000 was an Ex-hire unit from an African dealer. These photos of it were taken by him before sending it to NZ. Note how the African's don't care about settings, the dealer sets them up for them to use and marks out the switch positions in case they bump them, I guess. They have a pretty rough life, I just can't see a GPX 6000 standing up to the heavy duty use the African prospectors put onto a detector. I had mine set to Minelab for a refurbish and new housing, as you can see by its pictures above it wasn't in good condition. It came out nice after Minelab NZ got their hands onto it for a check and refrub.

The detectors that weed out the last remaining dwindling gold in the ground also face the problem of less customers, the better detectors get in an odd way the less customers are available to sell them to. That's what's happened with Africa.... the easy good gold is gone or going fast, the GPX 4500 and 5000 were extremely popular there, I even own an ex-African GPX 5000, I can only dream of the gold that 5000's found, more so than I'll ever find in my lifetime. The 7000 from what I've been informed wasn't as popular but still a somewhat common detector to see, I would guess due to price or due to the value they see for the price over the 4500 for example, if most of the gold they care about can be found with a 4500 for a much cheaper price why buy a 7000. The 6000 comes out to specifically target that market and falls flat on its face in Africa, it didn't take off like hoped as investor reports have often stated sales are not as good as hoped for the 6000 and now the investor reports are saying we need to move off the African market and focus on expanding into other markets. This can't be due to conflict and so on in parts of Africa, it's a big place with many countries that are heavy gold producers and not all are problematic yet the African sales died. The African market has its problems outside of prospecting that has caused some sales issues but the main reason I think is these people need to make a living off the gold they find, they don't get paid properly for the gold they do find so they need to find even more to make it worthwhile, the bigger easier bits are gone and they don't want to scratch around like chickens plucking out a 0.03 of a gram piece so once the easier gold the 5000 can find is gone so is the gold rush. The Africans didn't get paid per gram the prices we can get if we sell gold, they got a pittance for it, they often had commission to the local rogues that controlled the area too, they sold their gold illegally to middle men that sneaked it out of the country. If they tried to sell it the legal way it's not worth being a small-scale miner, so they went black market but still the price per ounce was small so they had to find a lot of gold to make it worthwhile. Here is a older story on it that's worth reading Gold worth billions is smuggled out of Africa - new analysis (reuters.com) The depth on the bigger deeper gold I believe the 4500 still beats the 6000, it helps with its large range of coils but it can support large coils so depth on big gold is still the 4500 and I'm sure the Africans worked that out quick smart. The funny thing about the 6000 is they intended it to be the good seller in Africa, it turns out its the better seller to other places where the people are trying to scratch out the remaining gold the other detectors missed by its ability to find very small and odd gold that was missed by previous models for various reasons and you see that with people selling the 7000 which is the top of the range to I guess you could say downgrade to the 6000 to find these smaller bits of gold that are left. For us in countries outside of Africa it's been a good success story, more so than Africa but we are a smaller group of people so the revenue wasn't as hoped.

I think people have been scared off by the 35, and rightly so, I still often wake up in sweats after nightmares in the middle of the night over my experience with it. Combine that with Minelab's recent history of poor quality and it doesn't seem a good option. Hopefully someone has marbles made out of titanium and is willing to give one a shot, as on paper and if true they've fixed the various issues the 35 had then it would be a good pinpointer. They need to do a trade in program for the 35 owners, if they gave me a 25% discount if I handed in my 35, I'd take it. (I'm shooting for the stars there, they could drive me down to 5%) Then they could put all the gathered up 35's in a big pile and burn them and put the video on YouTube, it would go viral, their most watched video.

PLTFNDR, well that's what I'd have as I'm an expert pellet finder.

Just like when you get faulty coils keep your skid plates and send it in without, the new one comes bagged with a new skid plate so at least you can get some compensation for having faulty stuff all the time.

Fingers crossed they've resolved these problems on the Manticore, I'd be surprised if they have but hopefully it's the case. They're the company that puts 100% effort into trying to give the best performance and a generous 35% effort into giving a quality product letting known issues keep going by never even attempting to fix them up on later builds. If my Nox 800 did die I'd be replacing it for sure with another 800 as it's a truly great detector and one of my absolute favourites. I couldn't let it go but I wouldn't be replacing it with a 900, to me other than the vastly improved (it seems) build quality the detector itself for my needs would be a downgrade with its poor target ID's by comparison to the 800. If I was a serious water hunter though the 700 or even possibly more likely the X-terra Pro would be worth consideration for in water use and I'd be still using the 800 on land.

I bet if they let Nel make coils for it prior to the war good coils would be released quickly in every shape and size Nel make, Minelab hold such low importance in coils it really annoys the crap out of me. I've waited so long to buy Manticore coils I've basically given up on the detector at the moment and never use it. The two coils I need don't exist, the one I don't want came on it and I'm basing that off my Equinox, I never use my 11", only the 6" and 15x12" get used out of the Minelab coils. People that are good at making coils appear to be able to make new sizes and shapes very quickly. Also a little note to Minelab, release the 17x13" coil for the Manticore too, don't worry about it cutting into CTX sales, everyone who wants one has one already and the Manticore will never be a CTX replacement.

I think the M9 is a marketing mistake by the same people that put a Gold Bug Pro as the VLF image for the Minelab investor report. M8 8"x5.5", M11, stock coil and M15 15x12" coil, that's all we will see from Minelab I'm confident with that, what matters next is which sizes Coiltek intend to do, and they've been all quiet on it for now. A 6 by 3 would be my dream coil and if they did that then I'd say the Manticore is better than the Nox 800 for gold, until then I doubt the M8 is going to cut it to be "better" than the 800, especially on tiny gold. With the Nox having the 6", 10x5", 11" and 15x12" It seems like the nugget winner to me. I have the M8 coil for my Vanquish, the flat nose on it takes away a lot of the elliptical advantage. This is the 10x5" Nox Coiltek back-to-back with the ML 6", you can see the 10x5's advantage in rocky areas by this photo especially with its hot nose and the 6" being hot in the middle.

I'm sure at some point you will get your wish Jeff, with technology hitting a wall all that's left now is various paint jobs over the years. ? We will see lots of different design detectors with similar guts adjusted in small ways to suit the model. At least with Minelab they'll embrace new wireless technology (and limit it too) and other beneficial features like modern screen and battery technology to improve detectors in other ways.

I like the take a list and contact you when they're in stock style in order of list position. No money down needed as the queue should be ample to cater for anyone that pulls out with the limited stock they seem to supply. That's how they do it here.

Am I understanding correctly Minelab have said for dealers not to take pre-orders, in other words take people's money with no product to give? That's great news they're taking that stance. The dealers doing it were giving Minelab a bad name when they were late to deliver product.

A fine line between testing and marketing from what I've seen, especially with the Youtubers, one in the same.

That was my thoughts behind it, why bring a new product to market with all that investment in R&D and get less of a return due to a lagging market with much of the world in financial strife and a dead African market, they'll just keep it sitting there waiting until the time is right, until then they are already the top dog so will get a bulk of the sales anyway regardless of a new model. I still don't see what they can do to a GPZ except lighten it up and modernize its wireless etc. If they can give difficult people normal performance that'd be a dramatic and welcome change but won't benefit me all that much. I guess they'll finally allow a small coil on it as the 6000's released now and had its sales flurry.

Well, I sort of agree except as a beginner accurate Target ID's are a great asset and help keep you interested and the Xterra appears to lack them much like all the new release Minelab VLF's, whereas the Vanquish at least for me is rock solid, as I've demonstrated before on videos it's more stable than the Equinox 800 even on quite deep coins. I guess my views are of someone in mild soils, and Chase and Jeff both being in hotter soils opinions will always be different.

This isn't a sponsored by dealers site, so you can name dealers no problems, that's one of the great things about it, no bias towards any company or dealer when there is no associations with any.

I understand your point, I just see their point of trying to keep it as close to entry level as possible so people don't say well, I don't need waterproof I'll just buy a Vanquish not an Equinox. The more expensive the detector we buy the more money they make as manufacturing costs of a lower priced unit don't vary all that much from the highest priced units. So few people venture outside of default settings and only use sensitivity control so a ground balancing Vanquish would be suitable for many people over the need for an Equinox, I can happily use mine and often do and never feel like I'm missing much not using my Nox, in fact in some places I find it beneficial over the Nox with its Elliptical coils. Maybe they've just tried to get too many models so flood the market and hinder the competition that they're having trouble finding ways to release new models without them overlapping other models too much and that's why 2024 is the year of trying to sell existing gear with no new releases. I think they've taken it too far already with models, and now they're in a position where releasing future models is going to enter paint job territory by the looks of it like happened to First Texas when their engineering talent appeared to reach the peak of their ability. In Minelab's case it may not be their engineering talent but physics limitations that end their run of new detectors but it has to come to an end at some point and then what? That only leaves paint jobs and new designs of shafts and control pods to make them look different when under the hood they're all pretty similar. The days of getting excited about new model detectors are over for me it seems.

How much of the USA has difficult soil that these Ace type users are going to encounter with the type of detecting they would be doing? I see the world differently as I don't need ground balance anywhere here ? I don't know how it works there but if someone was to buy a Vanquish for example here, and take it out to the beach and it didn't work properly they could just take it back and get a refund within the first week saying it's not suitable for their needs so if they were getting a big influx of returned detectors that might force their hand to add ground balance, I'm sure they can add it to the Vanquish with a firmware update and repurposing an existing button by holding it down rather than a short press.

I think soil conditions and needing a ground balance on a multi-IQ unit are so limited in the number of people it matters for that they just consider it a non-issue for an entry level type machine. To those detector users in those conditions they need a different detector and the local dealers would tell them that, just like the people on the North Island of NZ with the black sand beaches, they are aware they're in difficult ground and if not the shops they're buying from instruct them so, they are told they need to spent the big bucks to handle their conditions and nothing less than a GPX 5000 or Tarsacci (which hasn't worked out well for anyone that I've seen) will work so because of their tough conditions they just have to buy something higher priced to handle it. The Ace series are likely one of the most sold detectors on the planet, they can't ground balance and wouldn't work well in these tough conditions either but it didn't stop them selling like crazy and doing very well for people around the world. The right price, the right marketing and for most people the right performance for the price to make them a good choice. The Vanquish jumped onboard with this providing a multi-IQ machine much like the Ace but with better performance at the beach and better Target ID's. To someone that owns an Ace 400 buying the Vanquish would be a great stop upwards to something better in the same places they've been hunting and they could expand their hunting to wet sand at the beach and get great performance too.

You guys pay WAY too much for the Coiltek over there, The M8 Manticore coil is $379 AUD in Australia, the Coiltek 10x5" NOX coil is $285 AUD, often $260 AuD on sale. It's the price of the 15x12" Coil that I think is really crazy though, $499 AUD. The CTX 17x13" Coil at the same shop is $449 AUD, Manticore 15x12" $499 so they want more for a smaller coil. To buy both coils is going to cost me the price I can pick up a Legend with 2 coils included, seems a bit crazy.

Nice spotting, I didn't even notice that and you're correct, it's a Gold Bug Pro ? The Coil cable placement is correct, the knob position is correct just below the coil cable entry. That's pretty funny. I guess the marketing people aren't even sure which detectors are Minelab and just used a stock photo. Makes even more sense some of the marketing peoples claims about their own products now. The Gold Bug Pro is a pretty good beach detector I've found, handles the dry and wet sand quite well.

Well, the 2023 Full year investor report fell flat for those hoping for news of a new GPZ in the 2024 period. I'm confident it's not happening as I have been for some time now; they appear to have no new detectors coming out in 2024 after the rush of new products to try build the growth in the Treasure side of detectors with less focus on gold. They now consider the current sales situation in Africa the new normal and are moving away from relying on the African market for metal detector sales, a far cry from a couple of years ago when every gold detectors box had African prospectors on it, along with their website and designing models with ease of use to target the African prospectors who don't care about learning a complex detector, they just want to find the easy gold as quickly as they can while it's still there with detectors designed for their needs such as the Gold Monster and GPX 6000. 2024 will be all about building sales of the existing new VLF detectors and getting into new markets like India, along with direct selling to the customers to increase revenue. I'm not overly fussed about no new GPZ coming in the near future, I highly doubt I'd be interested in it, time will tell of course but extremely unlikely I will buy one, especially not for ergonomics reasons, as Minelab's slogan says performance is everything and that's all I care about, and that's going to be the hardest thing for them to improve significantly over my GPZ + X-coils and my 6000, especially as I'm in milder soils and can run my GPZ in normal unleashing its full potential. You can read the report here Codan Limited - ASX Announcement - FY23 Full Year Investor Presentation And you can read the 23 FY results here, although nothing exciting in it, a lot of glamourising. Codan Limited - ASX Announcement - 2023 Full Year Results In summary, detector sales slowing, now relying on communications a lot more and they have significantly over taken metal detectors as their biggest source of income. They're doing quite well selling countermine detectors into countries such as Ukraine but even that's not enough to prop up the lagging detector sales. Note the bottom line, decrease in African Gold Detector (higher margin) revenues. I think we all know they significantly over charge for gold detectors.

I'm torn, the 15" is a good size and the size I used the most on my Equinox for coin hunting in my open fields so it's a winner for me, the 8" I'm not so sure about as I can't see the Manticore being better than the Equinox for prospecting, it has the 6" which should be slightly more sensitive than the M8 so I'd prefer to stick to my Nox when it comes to prospecting UNLESS of course the Manticore surprises me so at this stage I'm more interested in the 15", although I'll buy both as I can't handle not knowing.

Save yourself the money and buy an Equinox 800 instead, you're not missing all that much, in fact in some ways you're gaining such as Target ID stability and having the smallest of coils available for prospecting.

Holy crap, $379 AUD for the small one and $499 AUD for the large one, they're taking us for a ride. Introducing the Minelab Manticore M15 - 15" Metal Detector Coil PRE-ORDER NOW! $200 deposit - RRP Confirmed at $499 | Maximize Your Detecting Efficiency! | Unleash the power of the Minelab Manticore 15" Coil (M15), the ultimate tool for serious detectorists seeking to cover vast grounds with remarkable speed and precision. Specially designed for large detecting sites, this larger coil is a game-changer, revolutionizing your metal detecting experience in the United Kingdom's expansive fields and beloved by beach detectorists searching for treasures along the coast. Key Features: 1. Wide Coverage, Faster Results: The Manticore 15 Inch Coil (M15) is built to deliver unmatched coverage, allowing you to sweep across large areas efficiently. With each sweep, you'll explore more ground, increasing your chances of unearthing valuable finds in record time. 2. Perfect for Open Fields: For detectorists exploring expansive fields, the M15 coil proves to be an invaluable asset. Its impressive size optimizes target detection, ensuring you don't miss any hidden relics, coins, or artifacts scattered across the vast landscapes. 3. Beach Detectorists' Delight: Beach hunting enthusiasts will adore the M15 coil for its ability to rapidly search large stretches of sandy shores. Uncover lost jewelry, coins, and treasures with ease as you comb through the sands in pursuit of valuable discoveries. 4. Enhanced Sensitivity: Despite its larger size, the M15 coil maintains excellent sensitivity, detecting even the faintest signals. This feature ensures you can pinpoint targets accurately, reducing unnecessary digging and optimizing your efficiency. 5. Durability and Reliability: Built to withstand the rigors of outdoor detecting, the Manticore 15 Inch Coil (M15) is engineered with Minelab's renowned quality. 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Embrace the power of the M15 coil and open doors to countless possibilities! -------------------------------------------------------- Introducing the Minelab Manticore M8 - 8" Metal Detector Coil PRE-ORDER NOW! $100 deposit - RRP Confirmed at $379 | Unleash Your Metal Detecting Potential! | Unearth hidden treasures with the highly anticipated Minelab Manticore 8" Metal Detector Coil, the perfect addition to elevate your metal detecting adventures. This new smaller-sized coil has been expertly crafted to take your detecting capabilities to new heights, delivering outstanding performance in trashy sites and excelling at gold prospecting. Key Features: 1. Smaller Size, Greater Performance: The 8" size of the Manticore coil offers unmatched maneuverability, making it ideal for navigating through cluttered and challenging terrains. It allows you to access tight spaces and pinpoint targets with precision, revealing valuable finds that larger coils might miss. 2. Unrivaled Sensitivity: Equipped with cutting-edge technology, this coil boasts exceptional sensitivity, ensuring you won't miss even the tiniest targets. Experience the thrill of discovering elusive relics, coins, and precious metals buried deep beneath the surface. 3. Enhanced Gold Prospecting: If you're a gold enthusiast, the Manticore 8" coil is a game-changer. Its specialised design maximises your chances of finding gold nuggets and flakes, giving you the edge in your prospecting endeavors. 4. Durability and Reliability: Crafted with Minelab's renowned quality standards, this coil is built to withstand the rugged conditions of metal detecting. Rest assured that it will endure the test of time, supporting your passion for years to come. 5. Effortless Installation: The Manticore 8" Metal Detector Coil is simple to install, ensuring you can start descovering in no time. Compatible with your Minelab metal detector, it seamlessly integrates into your setup for a seamless detecting experience. 6. Water Resistance: The Manticore M8 - 8" Coil is designed with a submergible water resistant rating of up to 5 metres. This means you can take the powerful M8 anywhere with your Manticore Metal Detector. (Please be advised this means the coil will function correctly up to 5 meters of water, it cannot be guaranteed if the coil is taken deeper) Join the ranks of successful treasure hunters and gold prospectors who rely on the Minelab Manticore M8 - 8" Metal Detector Coil. Embrace the anticipation and equip yourself with this powerful tool to unravel the secrets hidden beneath the earth's surface. Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to take your metal detecting prowess to the next level!

I'll believe it when I see it. Exciting news though, finally. The guy needs a new keyboard, his full stop button appears to be stuck down randomly.