phrunt

I can see the big wigs sitting around in a board room gloating their customers are desperate to buy their Manticore coils and thinking how great it is for their customers to be desperate to buy their products. Little do they realize it's never a good decision to annoy the hell out of your customers when the competitors are biting at their heels, they're not overly used to having competition so they don't know just how damaging having upset customers can be, in the past we all had to put up with their shenanigans. When they were the clear winner with no real competition they didn't need to care, now they do, they need to care a lot as once a customer has moved onto another brand it's hard to get them back.

I can't bring myself to thin my herd, I got rid of the QED but that was out of principal more so than I wanted to get rid of a detector, I also got rid of my GPX 4500 but mainly because a guy I know wanted to detect black sand beaches here and he bought a Tarsacci with their infamous NZ black sand coil they say was made for NZ's black sand beaches and it sucked basically and wasn't suitable and I knew my GPX handled it with the 11" DD so I moved it onto him seeing I have a 5000 anyway and was unlikely to use it again. So instead, I just have gear I use, and gear I collect 😉 And my herd is as follows in order of amount of use Equinox 800 (tops the list as I use for gold and coins) GPZ 7000 CTX 3030 GPX 6000 Garrett 24k Manticore Ace 300i My other detectors are just decorations. And my pinpointers that get used in order of use hours are Garrett AT Sphinx 03 (too new to clock up enough hours) XP-Mi4 Others are just decorations.

Probably the right decision, Hard to beat a trusty old model Equinox, at least for me, know it like the back of my hand, entirely comfortable speaking it's language and it does what I need it to do very well. They're in a stage of pumping out as much new product as they can to overwhelm the competitors it seems, new detector models galore and even a pin pointer yet won't provide coils to the suckers that already bought one of these new products, namely their nearest thing to a flagship VLF since the CTX. New models always create a buzz and generate sales, well possibly except a certain pinpointer. I'd rather they just let someone else make coils for it seeing they can't be bothered, just let Coiltek start right away, I'll just buy theirs instead and they'll work hard as they do to get the coils to market quickly. And to top it off from Day 1 the website has never mentioned these coils are not available, in fact it acts as if they are available and just has a where to buy button to click on that takes you to the dealers list, so dealers will be fielding calls and emails all the time about wanting to buy these coils, and Minelab are happy for this to happen for many months as its the dealers dealing with it, not them. I hope dealers' response to customers is more honest than Minelab's marketing department and they're not taking people's money with no known release date. With this new method they're trying to do more often of selling direct to customers we'll see how long this attitude lasts when they're paying the staff to endlessly explain to customers with the same old, "Sorry this product is not available and we don't know when it will be" line.

I have "fear of missing gold" 🙂 I would rather come away with a tiny spec than nothing at all. The 15"CC is great, it's like running a big coil for deeper gold and a tiny coil for small gold with one coil. It lacks edge sensitivity through and its size can be a bit awkward in areas like this that the ground is so uneven, hilly, and rocky. In more open areas it's a no brainer, the 15" would be the way to go especially as I can run my detector in normal with maximum sensitivity to get the most out of it. He lives very near this spot so he can go back time and time again with different coils, which he does so he gets the best of both worlds. I just use what I think will give me the most chance on the day as I don't go to this place often, or in this case trying out a new coil. You're right through, if you're not geared up to find the bigger deeper bits, you're not likely to find it, although my two biggest nuggets (small to most people but big for me) were just over 4 grams have both been found with the small coils, the 8" and 10" and the one with the 8" was fairly deep.

What a great post, thanks for all of the photos, I see Ed from Australia in there, looks like he's having a ball, no doubt it's looking like the best dealer conference ever. Istanbul looks a nice place. The factory looks fantastic and even Nokta branded busses 🙂it's great to see the company grow so rapidly, all that's missing from the Line-up is a prospecting PI machine, I see on one of the photos "New Products for 2023" Hopefully!!! 🙂 I received the Pulse Dive coil today Dilek, thank you. Unsurpassed customer service, you took time out of all that conference to deal with my little problem.

Yes, it's really cool you can set your own sensitivity beyond that of standard pre-sets, a feature that would be a killer setting on a gold prospecting VLF for someone like me in mild soils. It's probably too complicated of an option as you'd get people complain they've made their detector or in this case pinpointer unstable. I pushed mine a little too hard and it was falsing a bit in the air like the Pro-Find at one point, still worked well in the ground though and at that setting was the most sensitive to small target pinpointer I've got. So, I have to decide if I want to put up with a little instability to get the super sensitivity. I'm thinking I'll mess around some more tweaking and try resolve that instability and get as close to that sensitivity as I can, I'm sure I can do it, just takes a bit of tuning. Certainly, my favourite feature of the pin pointer.

Too true Dave, when you've got a good 11" mono it's a hard coil to beat for performance, for me personally I like the aftermarket coils for their size and shape more than performance, I've said over and over again the 11" for me is equal to if not better than the aftermarket coils for small gold sensitivity so unless size matters there is no real point getting an aftermarket coil for it when the 11" is likely to be deeper than any available aftermarket coils now on the bigger stuff anyway. The only other added benefit is they can be quieter running, how much of that is down to size with a smaller coil receiving less EMI is unknown but it would play a part. JW himself prefers the 11" over the aftermarkets and he's certainly put the miles on these things. In your case Dave some coils appear to handle hot rocks better than others, I've seen it a few times now where the Coiltek's appeared better too although noticed that particularly with the 12x7" picking up only one hot rock all day, probably defies logic and it could be that between myself, JW and anyone else had that been detecting in that area they'd all been thrown off into the bushes 🙂 We did see a guy as we were leaving that day with what appeared to be an older GPX model, very rare we see another gold prospector but there he was. Probably only the 5th time I've seen someone else with a gold detector my entire time detecting. Minelab has done a great job on the 11", its downfall was the massive number of faults with the product and just general quality issues more so than its performance when it's a good working one. It's not like the older GPX where many didn't even plug in their Commander and went straight for aftermarket, this time you're not missing much if you run stock. I think they've got all the 6000's issues ironed out now so anyone with a recent purchase that wasn't old stock like yourself Dave has a really good detector.

I haven't put enough time on my 14x9" to give a proper opinion, I don't even know if it suffers from the same lack of edge sensitivity as the 12x7". I do know I found it not as sensitive as the 11" and then I decided it's not suitable for my needs, I need sensitivity seeing most of the gold I have a chance of finding is very small so I haven't used it since. It does run nice and smooth though and works well around powerlines for its size.

Good Macgyver job there 🙂 You could have just bought a toggle switch boot cover and screwed it on, I did so with my GPX. You'd just need the size for the thread on the switch. 10PCS/LOT 12MM Toggle Switch Waterproof Rubber Resistance Cover Dust Cap Boot Black Tarpaulin - AliExpress

Great news, thanks for posting it all, I'm sure someone in the future will find this very helpful. Sounds like the seller got a dud batch of screens.

That's good to know they're all about the same, now to just go and find some 🙂

That's where a feature like the Sphinx 03 has would be ideal, you can set your tone, or do pulse audio. Although the pinpointer isn't available in most of the world hopefully the other manufacturers of pinpointers take note of some of its features and incorporate them into their new pinpointers. You do these settings using its paired phone application.

It was just a gentle ride back to town

Too old for that now, If I stack, I may not get back up again so I took on something a little more placid with skiing and swinging around a beeping screeching stick instead 😛 I don't think the 10x5" suffers from the edge sensitivity issue the 12x7" does, I certainly haven't noticed it, I'll have to bang it back on and check at some point, if it doesn't then it's the clear winner for me as both seem about as sensitive as each other, and the 11" is at least as sensitive as all of them, just runs a bit rougher. I wonder if the 12x7" will be much deeper than the 10x5", you'd think it would be on some bigger bits, but then again the 11" would be the deepest of the 3 except on small stuff where the smallest coil always wins for that.

The Carrot has one of the loudest speakers available, This video I did should show its nice loud speaker compared to others If your Pro Pointer AT is quiet there is something wrong with it.

Yep, my cable wasn't perfect either but I guess far enough away from the coil to avoid it picking it up, where the cable is going near the coil laying it down it's smack in the coils dead zone for tiny targets 🙂 So maybe that's why it didn't see my cable. He generally runs in maximum manual sensitivity on every detector so I'm sure he would have been in that. He's a bit of a guru at finding tiny gold.

Looked to me like the Carrot was the best in that test, at approximately the 3:43 mark he lifts the Pro-Find away and it goes nuts in the air, this is the problem I have with my 35 so it looks like that problem possibly isn't resolved on the 40.

Well, I guess the V80 breaches the same patent, as likely do the XP, Rutus and Garrett detectors. If you read the patent, it's there to stop any competitors doing a multi frequency unit, innovative of Minelab as it's a 2005 patent. So, it sounds like Nokta will likely be guilty, along with the other competitors. It's a very anti-competitive patent from my very limited understanding of it. If Nokta didn't sell into America they would be fine too and not be in this situation, so Quest is wary of doing so, and rightly so. I wouldn't sell my detectors into America either for the same reason If I was making them, not worth the risk and hassle when the world is a big place to sell into without the US market. Nokta has done a brilliant job of making their own version of multi frequency without using Minelab's technology so they couldn't go after them for some recent patent of their multi frequency technology like Multi-IQ so they go after them for an old patent. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION FIG. 1 shows a switched voltage signal generated by switching electronics 2 is applied to a magnetic transmitter 1, shown here as a transmit coil. Signals from a magnetic receiver 3 are amplified by a preamplifier 4 and applied to applied to approximate sine wave weighted synchronous demodulators 5. The output of these demodulators is fed to further signal processors 6 which provide a useful output signal, such as an audio alert or visual display. Both the transmitter and synchronous demodulators are controlled by a controller 7 which includes a clock to control timing. An operator selects the frequency profile of the approximate sine-wave weighted synchronously demodulation by operating switches 8, which may also alter the switched voltage signal appropriately too. FIG. 2 shows a switched voltage signal of fundamental period T, whose waveform repeats, and this is relatively rich in frequencies 1/T, 4/T and 16/T. This waveform and the corresponding receive sine-wave demodulation may very easily be changed using digital signal processing technology, which may be controlled by an operator using for example push-buttons. It would be useful to set 1/T at say 2 kHz if an operator is seeking USA coins, which are relatively conductive, or say 1 kHz if Bronze-age or copper-age daggers which are even more conductive are being sought for example. However, 1/T would be better set to say 16 kHz if small gold nuggets are the targets which exhibit relatively short time constants. Although the invention has been herein shown and described in what is conceived to be the most practical and preferred embodiment, it is recognised that departures can be made within the scope of the invention, which is not to be limited to the details described herein but is to be accorded the full scope of the appended claims so as to embrace any and all equivalent devices and apparatus. Patent Summary 1. A metal detector used for detecting a metallic target in a soil including: a. transmit electronics having a plurality of switches to generate a switched voltage signal, the waveform of the switched voltage signal being one of predetermined repeating multi-period rectangular waveforms; b. a transmit coil connected to the transmit electronics to receive the switched voltage signal and to generate a transmitted magnetic field for transmission; c. a receive coil to receive a received magnetic field and to provide a received signal induced by the received magnetic field; and d. receive electronics connected to the receive coil to process the received signal, the processing including a synchronous demodulation of the received signal using one of predetermined substantially sine-wave weighted synchronous demodulation profiles associated with a corresponding predetermined repeating multi-period rectangular waveform; the profiles being selectable by an operator; and a result of the synchronous demodulation is further processed to provide an indicator output signal in real time, the indicator output signal including a signal indicative of the presence of a metallic target in the soil. 2. A metal detector according to claim 1, wherein: a Fourier transform of the switched voltage signal contains frequency components of relatively high magnitude at frequencies corresponding to periods within the predetermined repeating multi-period rectangular waveform and the period of the predetermined repeating multi-period rectangular waveform, as compared to other frequency components across a frequency spectrum of the Fourier transform. 3. A metal detector according to claim 2, wherein: the synchronous demodulation of the received signal is such that received signal is synchronously demodulated at frequencies corresponding to periods within the predetermined repeating multi-period rectangular waveform and the period of the predetermined repeating multi-period rectangular waveform. 4. A metal detector according to claim 1, the metal detector further comprising: a controller, the controller being accessible to the operator, to control the period of the predetermined repeating multiple-period rectangular Full Patent info here: US7579839B2 - Metal detector - Google Patents I really don't know who to side with on this stuff, Patents are there to protect their R&D and income stream from the invention, Minelab are very good at doing patents and it's the main reason I think they've had little competition. So, their patent is working, its stopping competition, competitors have to tread very carefully. As customers these patents are bad in a way as they stop competitors and competition is great for consumers. So, I can't take sides on this stuff. It's a shame, but rules are rules, laws are laws.

They're features Chuck, Geolocation and GPS mapping to help you navigate. And the phone registering on the towers its using as they login (handshake) to it. GPS in the detector is safe from "tracking". It only stores it locally then you're using the pins on Google maps so it's as safe as your Google account 🙂 Either way, it's a shame that the concept probably won't survive and they likely only fixed this version of it as they still sell the two detectors that use it as new products and they're advertised as having the feature, if it didn't work legally in Australia and NZ at least someone could get a refund on their detector over it, not working as advertised.

Yay! Minelab finally updated Xchange 2 so it still works with Google maps, some time ago Xchange being so old was no longer compatible with Google maps and they've finally fixed the problem somewhat properly using a patch that runs in the background. You can download the fix to your Xchange 2 (Windows) here https://www.minelab.com/__files/f/507670/XChange2-1.8.7-1.3.5-Hotfix.exe XChange2 - Hotfix for mapping and pin fixes. (Released July 2023) External interfaces used by XChange2 change over time which can affect the way that XChange2 needs to work. Installing the XChange2 Hotfix file after installing the XChange2 1.8.7-1.3.5 program will help XChange2 maintain it's compatibility with Google maps so that detectorists can continue to use the program as intended. Step 1 - Download and install XChange2 1.8.7-1.3.5 Step 2 - Download and run XChange2-1.8.7-1.3.5-Hotfix.exe (This will take a few minutes.) Step 3 - Restart your computer then run XChange2 as normal. (the Hotfix will run in the background.) --- Note for Minelab, maintain its compatibility. 🙂

I'm honestly tempted to buy one, I just can't believe what I consider the best metal detector company on the planet can't make a good pinpointer and I often joked the Pro-Find's were made by an apprentice or a high school kid on work experience at Minelab, the Pro-Find 35 wasn't even better than most of the Chinese clone pin pointers, they in fact worked better than my Pro-Find 35 even though I had it swapped out to another one to ensure it wasn't a dud. I've bought a couple of Chinese fakes of Carrots otherwise known as GP-Pointers to test them out as they were so cheap it wasn't much more than buying a Big Mac meal it was worth it just to see how they go, and honestly, they were more stable and just as sensitive as my 35 (happy to do a video to prove it) but now this new video states one of the features of the 40 is reliable stability, and if in reality this is true the pin pointer will be pretty good. To quote the marketing department.... Ultimate Stability, Trust all signals. If I do buy it and it turns out the opposite, I won't be gentle with my opinions 🙂

A little update, JW may have found the solution to his bump sensitivity, his coil cable was wrapped so the cable was under the shaft near to the coil, so it's possible the detector was picking up the coil cable, today he went back using it and wound the cable differently so the cable was up above the shaft and he didn't get the bump sensitivity. Fingers crossed the problem is solved. You can see by habit with VLF's and chance more than anything my coil cable was well away from my coil, so this may explain it. Anyway, today he did very well considering the spot is hard to get anything at all, he was only there a few hours and came away with this using his 6000 and 12x7" The .06 bit at the bottom was the bit he found yesterday using the GM1000 that we tested on my NF coil to see the lack of edge sensitivity. I'll do a video demonstrating that soon as I think what I am saying maybe slightly misunderstood.

If you were to read the first couple of pages of this you'll see why Quest don't want to sell into America. Microsoft Word - 5FG5447.DOC (rpxcorp.com)

I think I'll soon record a video to demonstrate what I'm seeing just to clarify when it comes to edge sensitivity. The Police Siren sound gave me a bit of a fright when it first started 🙂

What a pain, it's great to hear you're really liking the machine though and it sounds pretty impressive to get such positive feedback from you. Interesting way to mount it to the handle though.