phrunt

Thanks for that testing Jeff, I'd missed it until now. A bit of a question for you, with many detectors I find that they hate air gaps, for example I can detect a coin at 8" with the Equinox and 11" coil, I lift the coil 2" and the coin is gone or best case identifies as iron. If I then move that coin down 2" in the soil and detect it, it detects fine, and I can go another couple of inches. The CTX and Manticore are two models of detector that don't seem bothered by air gaps. Why this has always bothered me is the areas I hunt often have quite long grass, they're not well mowed, and when the mower guy shows up I get all excited and go detecting the next day so I can get closer to the ground. when I was using my Equinox 800 the longer the grass got the less finds I had, after a mow it was like night and day. With the Manticore and CTX handling the air gap much better I wasn't so bothered when the grass was a bit longer, I was still doing just as well. I am wondering if the Deus 2 is one of the detectors that hates an air gap. The Manticore I already know doesn't, so if the Deus 2 does hate an air gap then it could go a little way to explain why all the targets dropped off so much when you lifted the coil. I've never owned a Deus 2, probably never will, but I think my Deus 1 hates an air gap, although I don't find it a very deep detector in the first place.

Same wire. Just done a bit differently. I'm not meant to reveal the secret not that I completely understand it, it hasn't been duplicated at this stage which other coil technologies often are, as soon as one manufacturer does something the rest are sure to follow. The 10" came out nearer to the end of them selling GPX coils and not many were sold compared to the other sizes so I guess nobody got their hands one that wanted to chop it up.

True, but the 10” X-coil isn’t stacked, they used another trick, I wondered how Coiltek did their 9” and now it makes sense, also why I think my 10” is more sensitive than the 9”

Timings are one of the most confusing things about the original GPX series, once you've got a good handle of them, I don't really think it's all that much more complicated than many modern high-end VLF's, in fact some like the Legend that are notoriously hard to navigate can be just as difficult to understand as a GPX. Now we have the new GPX 6000 detector, some of the benefits of having multiple timings are being realized.

I too hope Garrett stick with the Apex style control pod for the coming weather event, I'm not much of a fan of the mobile phone on a stick design with side buttons, I like the bigger screen designs like the CTX, and now Apex. The AT and Ace series had terrible screens, I have good eyes and I struggle to see the little screen in the sun sometimes, let's face it, tiny little things even though the Cottrol pod is massive. I hope Garrett realize the Apex has a nice pod design and suitable for their higher end machine and don't think it's their "Ace" lineup pod and go for the phone on a stick design for their higher end machine to be like the competitors.

The one timing chart that's missing is this one, this one I found easiest to understand before moving onto the more detailed charts. Steve has a great collection of the timing charts here, however this one was missing. It was acquired from this Minelab document, the document was the likely cause of Americans running around using fine gold thinking it was the best setting, because of this statement in the document describing the new fine gold timing, "Awesome in US goldfields! Easily finding 0.03dwt nuggets in heavily mineralized, “hot rock infested” ground, using the super sensitive Monoloop coil." It makes me wonder if I should have been running around myself in sharp, and not sensitive extra like I did with my mild soils.

The 10" Full Spiral X-coil was more sensitive than the 12x6" Semi-Spiral, but the 12x6" was more sensitive than the 10x5" bundle wound coil I've got so it had its sensitivity benefits, I didn't own a Sadie at the time and haven't compared it now that I do have one but I still think the 12x6" will be more sensitive than the 8x5" Sadie, it was a good way to get some spiral windings into a smaller coil as we know coils like the Nugget Finder Sadie at 8x5" is less sensitivte to small gold than a bigger spiral coil like the 10". The 12x6" worked well on the GPX, I still have one, it worked particularly well on the QED with its adjustable pulse rates and it loved the lowest pulse rate on the QED and was pretty good on that detector, and quite popular in the QED community. A big part of the reason they discontinued all GPX coils is they're cheaper coils to sell, and with Covid and the increased shipping prices associated with that they became no longer viable to sell. Prices have retreated a bit since then though.

yep, the 12x6" X-coil for the GPX 4500/5000 was one, it and all of their GPX coils went out of production a couple of years ago though, but maybe their GPX coils will be making a return sometime soon due to the Algoforce increasing demand again.

I've long been screaming for metal detector and coil manufacturers to come to their senses and make Snake like coils. The 6.5x3.5" size in its solid form is a fantastic coil, the Gold Bug 2 has something similar albeit Concentric and it's part of the reason people love the GB2 still, after what is it now almost 30 years on the market, in fact next year will be it's 30th Birthday! How many other electronics products are still on the market sold new after 30 years? I'm guessing almost none, even the common toaster has changed a lot in that time. Not only is it good for prospecting for many reasons, it's good for hunting in heavy trash and difficult locations, it almost turns your detector into a super cool pinpointer with Target ID's. If only they would listen.....

That's my big interest too, as from what I've seen only A PI can do this to a degree.

Beast must be the favoured buzzword for marketing at the moment, even the car brands are using it.

A very sincere welcome Bob, you will be a real asset to the forum. A wealth of knowledge. The arrival of this storm is highly anticipated!

ahhhhh now it's starting to make sense, the userrs are doing it. The Ford, GM thing going on. Thanks for clearing it up.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and well, the Legend was a bit of a copy of the Equinox, and now its marketing is becoming a bit more Manticore like. Colour schemes, imagery, naming.... all very familiar. I'm not so sure I like this marketing strategy, they're doing innovate original updates with the Legend, why not take their own path and separate themselves from the competitors.

That, along with their fire sale pricing is cheaper than they have been selling to dealers. If this is the new Fisher, with their new pricing method, I'm quite happy, they were always overpriced I thought, now they're good value and sales are clearly going to increase, the Fisher part of the forum is busier now as it's been in years.

Funny the Manticore uses "Unleash the Beast" as their marketing slogan, now the Legend has "Beast Mode" 😛

That's the ticket, you did the right thing, they did the right thing, exactly as I expected from a business like Garrett, top notch handling by both you and Garrett and I'm sure if it was a problem in the past for people, it won't be now. Problem solved! Great to see Rita passed the information onto someone higher up. You did make her sticky note collection bigger though, at least it wasn't Mary's, hers is big enough. 🙂 Best outcome possible. 10 out of 10. I like putting faces to names so here is Rita. Bob didn't appear in their 60th video, or if he did he went incognito and didn't get a direct interview. Good on you Rita, job well done, and your sticky note collection is nothing like Marys 🙂

With renewed interest in the Fisher range with their firesale, has anyone actually used their "newish" butterfly coil? It does look alright, looks very light. It's hidiously expensive to buy for us in NZ, $323 USD plus shipping from USA which will add another 800 or so USD to that price 😛 Although, I think I could encourage someone to ship me one at normal pricing if necessary. Here is a link to it on their site. I'm thinking it's time to move up from the GBP to the F19 to take advantage of the great range of Nel coils and the Detech Ultimate 13" I've got for the Bug, but this one is interesting as I do like the GBP's high target ID accuracy on coins in our soils here and it is so easy for my daughter to use, she doesn't mind it at all, light and easy to use and locks onto our $1 and $2 coins very well.

Well, you were right @Prickly Prospector Philip is going to be a dealer and will have some stock soon at https://theprospectorsdepot.com.au/ Good to see a single line dealer expanding to another brand.

See, their method is working great, all these people buying their products that otherwise wouldn't. I've seen so many people now that just couldn't resist and bought something, when a week ago it wasn't even in their head to buy these products. Well done Fisher, you've worked out a way to bring your product back to life.

We have to remember the gold detector market customer base is shrinking, the higher gold price may spark some interest from those that had given up to return to it or bring in a few newbies, but more than likely it just makes those already dong it happier 😛 The loss of much of the African market hasn't helped the situation, being the bigger market. What's the bet they have made more money out of the Manticore than they did the 6000. This wasn't helped by the high failure rate with 6000's but the sales volumes of Manticores would be much higher, a much broader market of customers. The Equinox series has probably made them more money than the GPZ ever did even with the vast price difference. They've stated to take note too indicating they're shifting a lot of focus onto these multi-purpose VLF machines. The 6000's selling well enough for them to just leave it the current machine, when the novelty wears off from it and sales slow to a crawl that's more than likely the new GPZ's time.

A big part of Fisher's problem is the fake detectors, it's made it so difficult for them to sell detectors outside of the US, the genuine ones have almost disappeared from sale outside of USA in many other countries, especially in my part of the world. The fakes are readily available, the genuine ones aren't. I hate to say it but the fakes are now working just as well as the real deal, except their coils are a little hit and miss, some get good ones, others don't, a bit like Minelab GPX's 😛 Then there is this, here is their Ebay listing for the GB2 with 2 coils, brilliant deal by the way, I'd buy it myself if I didn't have it already! I marked the points of interest with red arrows. People who viewed that GB2 deal, also viewed four fake Gold Bug Pro DP packages for sale which Ebay advertises on Fisher's ad. A fake GBP DP package, see how they white out the Fisher branding off the box, pretty futile seeing they didn't bother to white it out on the detector too 🙂 At least they tried! The fakes sell well, on that listing 8 sold, 1 left, as soon as that one sells, another 10 will appear. You look on the Chinese sites and they have them available by the 10,000, more than Fisher produce without a doubt. How can they compete with that? The fakes have destroyed Fisher, they're partly to blame by keeping models for so long, especially models that had already been cloned. When the Minelab X-terra was first cloned, it was quickly discontinued.

Interesting update, Nokta keep putting better bait on their hook, they'll reel me in soon enough, the deeper Target ID thing is interesting, depending on how it compares to other deep target ID detectors. Just need those Nel coils to be easily accessible. I'd like to hear how these features improve it as a prospecting detector, the hot rock thing may help.

It's usually on the drive home the emotion of how good the find is kicks in, same with when you find nothing, the drive home is when you feel it 🙂

Minelab would never release a machine that makes every other machine they make obsolete, they want to make every detector they have viable for sale, so a new GPZ would be some improvement over the earlier one, yet it would never make the 6000 obsolete, or any other in the range detector they want to continue to sell. They are more likely to do baby steps, they also don't want it to be the last detector they make, if they throw the farm at it, they'll have little left for the future. I think this is probably the biggest reason we get baby steps with models. They'll release as little as they can get away with to make a viable new model that people will want to buy. I guess I'd do the same if I had no competition. We all know that they were holding back the GPZ, it can go deeper than they allowed it to, it can be more sensitive to small gold than they allowed it to. This paved way for an easy release of the 6000, as its far more sensitive than a standard GPZ. I don't see ergonomics as technological advancements so by lightening it up and adding new Bluetooth version and so on, that's a given on a new model, as other industries have done the leg work for them there, it's the guts of the detector that needs to change for the better to perk my interest, not the body the brain sits in. My 5000 doesn't weigh much more than my 6000, due to upgrading body parts. The earlier GPX series could go deeper than they allowed it to with their Commander coils too, and can be far more sensitive than it can with their Commander coils, they just didn't lock detectors down in those days, nothing new going on there. This new GPZ discussions been going on for years, I think it will go on for years yet before we see anything, if we do and when it does come out, it will focus on depth.