phrunt

That's the idea, for people that only have an X-terra or the budget to buy an X-Terra knowing that it is capable of finding gold to a reasonable level for a VLF is what this sort of thread is about, not demonstrating other more expensive detectors are better. My cut off point for a reasonable gold detector is 12kHz, anything over that and someone should be able to find some gold if the gold is there and the detector handles the ground. The bigger gold takes care of itself and someone lucky enough to have bigger gold within VLF depths need not worry, my cut off point with frequency is only as my focus is on very small bits From what I've seen too sometimes having these lower frequencies handle difficult ground better. When I first started detecting I had little idea about anything much so I took my Ace 350 (Euroace) down to a gold bearing river hoping to find gold nuggets, the river is our worst river for black sand where a few buckets of gravels though your sluice and the thing is clogged up with black sand yet my Ace with a fixed ground balance ran perfectly fine there, no response to the ground at all. I didn't even know that was a good thing at the time. I was finding plenty of coins with good depth too but no gold, the Ace at 8.25kHz just wasn't ideal for the size nuggets in the area, nor was my knowledge up to par at the time to know the best places to look. I then upgraded to a Gold Bug Pro as I gained more knowledge and took the Bug to the same river, the Bug even though a ground balancing detector had so much more trouble with the black sand with it's 19kHz frequency, I had to wind back the sensitivity quite a bit to stop it responding to the ground and falsing when the Ace ran full sensitivity dead silent on the ground. I did actually find some Gold with the Bug though. So perhaps for some in difficult soils the 10kHz and 15kHz options in it's jewellery mode may work out for them for prospecting and in milder prospecting areas it should do pretty well, it's surprising how small of a Gold Nugget my Teknetics T2 at 13kHz can hit on with it's 5" coil. The idea is use the tool you have to the best of it's ability, so with a little research and some practice I think a X-Terra owner could do pretty good on gold nuggets without having to spend the money to buy a much more expensive detector designed for Gold Nuggets so I think for someone on a budget that want's a good all round detector that they can do a bit of gold hunting with the X-terra would suit the task, especially with the 6" Nox coil.

Thanks ,that's what I expected.

Do you have the Coiltek 10x5? I'd like to know how it compares with small gold sensitivity vs the 10x5", I guess physics means the 10x5" will be more sensitive unless NF have worked some magic. Great work on the nuggets Gold Ryder, very nice and deep too.

I need to film what I'm seeing with jumpy ID's and show a comparison to the Equinox 800, I just don't have time at the moment, I'm building myself a Cabin for my detecting gear and that's taking up every single day that the weather is fine which is almost done and ski season kicks off this weekend so detecting takes the back-burner for a few months. I intend to get a few nugget hunts in on days when it's not too frozen but I doubt I'll be using my Manticore or Equinox until spring now.

What's good about the X-terra Pro is the price, it makes for a cheap detector for someone to get that gives them an all rounder, it can do the beach, coins and jewellery in parks and would be a reasonable gold prospecting detector in the entry level arena I would think not too dissimilar in performance to a Gold Bug Pro. Yes, it won't be a fantastic detector compared to the dedicated higher frequency machines but it's more than capable of finding a pretty small nugget and for such a cheap priced detector that's great. I gave a go with my Vanquish and it can find gold too in my milder soils, I guess not so well in hot soil without ground balance although multi-IQ does pretty well in many situations, I didn't think too far different from a Gold Bug Pro either in it's jewellery mode so these basic entry level type machines are starting to really be quite capable for various purposes for someone on a limited budget. If someone around here with just enough money to buy a X-Terra was questioning if they could use it for gold nuggets I certainly wouldn't snob the detector and say no way you need something a lot better than that, I'm confident I could find gold with it.

I'm just as disappointed as the next person in the lack of coils for the Manticore, it's getting beyond a joke. I don't even use my Manticore as much as I'd like to and end up grabbing my Nox as it has the coils I need leaving my Manticore at home to gather dust. If they fix the jumpy ID's and release some coils for it they've got a great detector with the Manticore. They're my only complaints. I do feel a little deceived though as their marketing for the Manticore said it has more stable ID's than the Nox, I loved how stable my Nox Id's were so I was excited to think the Manticore was even better, sadly it's worse, significantly. I just hope they don't pull a GPZ on us and say the smaller coil is coming and it never does as they had decided they will make a GPX 6000 instead, they may want Manticore owners to have to buy a Nox as well to get a small coil 🙂 I wouldn't put it past them and in a way they've already done that by making the Manticore small coil bigger than the Nox small coil so for me personally I may end up still using my Nox for gold even when the Manticore has a small coil. I won't be buying a Nox 900, sure the quality is better but I just don't want another jumpy ID detector. I'll stick with the 800, mines never going to leak as the only water its going to see is rain and it only ever has the 6" coil on it for gold so my ears won't break. I used to use it a lot for coins with the 15x12" coil but the CTX and 17x13" coil has taken over that job and hopefully if they fix the ID's the Manticore with 15x12" coil will be a suitable contender for the coins too. I'm really starting to wonder if the Manticore was rushed to market as the Deus 2 was stealing that end of the markets sales. I can't imagine many CTX's were selling being so old and the Deus 2 comes out and gets a lot of sales, sales that are unlikely to go to the Manticore as once people have committed to a purchase they tend to stick with it and not bother with the competitors release.

I can't see the new Simplex models being good sellers. They needed switching single frequencies but I guess they didn't know the X-terra was on it's way at the time they made the decision to make them. To me it makes more sense just to revamp the Simplex as one model to keep it modern such as adding Bluetooth like they did. The shift from 12kHz to 15 was likely because Simplex owners all struggle with the pinpointers all being on the same frequency as the detector so it was just a pain really, having a mute function on the detector for when you use your pinpointer was a bandaid solution and an annoyance so the frequency shift makes sense. It was never a good choice of frequency to put the Simple on and seems like they didn't really consider pinpointers when designing it. That one Simplex model should have been as cheap as they could make it to own the low end market. I guess Minelab did 3 models with the Vanquish so they figured seeing it's one of the Simplex's competitors they could do 3 models too so bring in slightly different price points. Maybe doing that helps sales but it's not what I see with the local market and which detectors people appear to buy, most fork out the extra cash and just get the top of the range model rather than the cheapest one but the Simplex Ultra is very overpriced I think at least in my market. Here I can buy an X-terra pro for cheaper than a Simplex with green headphones, I would take the X-terra anyday although I did buy a Simplex with headphones, but this was before the X-terras release. The Impact Pro is very close in price to the X-terra here only about $30 USD difference, I think it's price has been significantly reduced to clear out the stock as now with the Legend the Impact just won't be selling anymore.

Nokta did it with the Legend, a cut price Equinox but with better quality by far, and proper waterproofing. I'm not sure if the Axiom is better quality than the 6000 but it would not be a hard thing to achieve. It's Minelab's lemon when it comes to quality. There can't be many people left now that haven't had to send theirs in for something. R&D costs aren't recouped on small amounts of sales easily, they need volume to get R&D back and that's what happens when you sell a detector at the right price, again you can look to the Legend, Nox 800 sales must have slowed down a lot over the time they were out, the Legend which is basically a better clone of the Nox came out and sells like hot cakes and you can bet the Legend was selling more units than the Nox 800 up until the Nox 900 release. Garrett may struggle to get their R&D costs back until they adjust their pricing on the Axiom. They need it to be a detector people want to buy, if they came out with the Axiom at $3000 Australian dollars (about $2000 USD) they'd sell so many of the things to people that never even considered these higher priced detectors even in Australia which would be their toughest market to crack I would think. If they did cheaper like $2000 AUD they'd be a massive hit, the casual detetorist that tend to just try buy a Gold Monster and hope for the best would be all over them. The Axioms not taken off as it should have simply because they didn't do what Nokta would have, and come in at a cheap price and grab a large part of the market Minelab miss out on due to their ridiculous pricing. I just hope Garrett are testing the market trying to get Minelab sky high prices and come back to reality when they see they're very overpriced.

Steve makes a good point about the 4500, they could repackage that and head off any competition at the pass a bit like the X-Terra coming in to make the new Simplex rehashes redundant. If they ever made a lightweight GPX 4500 in a modern new housing it would be a great seller if it was at the right price. They could even trim the 4500's features down a bit seeing it's so close to the 5000 and come in at a really good price. I'm sure there are people at Minelab that's job is just this, trying to stay ahead of the competition in all areas. I don't care who does it will benefit greatly from doing so, especially if it appeals to more than just the gold market.

The lack of competition really. You can get a home built PI kit for next to nothing, the price of a cheap VLF coil and make your own PI. Just because it's a PI doesn't mean it has to be a $4000 USD or higher machine, it can be a VLF priced machine if the manufacturer wanted it to be and they'd still get reasonable profit. Sure the batteries need to have a bit more juice, but really there is no excuse for the high pricing except for money grabbing and getting high profits because they can. Garrett have made a big mistake in my opinion, they'll sell a trickle of Axioms at their current price especially outside of the US where they're priced even higher and far too high when they could sell them by the truckload if they halved the price, if people are using and enjoying them they will sell more and more of them as word gets around, selling so few isn't going to help that, especially when with so few being sold and multiple reports of faulty units from what appears to be a small pool of buyers it's not a good look. It may not be reality and they are selling a lot of them and the faulty units are the squeaky wheel that you notice as the happy people remain quiet, but it is what you see happening. People in Australia would really struggle to justify buying one at it's current price there, it makes no sense to do so other than to try another brand. Nokta may get past the post, it's disappointing for such a vocal company they've gone dead silent on the PI offering as that's a bit of a worry but maybe they don't want to let out any secrets, if anyone comes in at a good price it would be them. Fisher I believe have something special if they can get it past the post, weight, performance, everything is there they just need to get the product to market and come in at the right price, too high and they'll sit on the shelf next to the Axioms, price it right and people that otherwise may not buy a PI will buy it, along with many others.

Hopefully this isn't a trend for the future of detectors from foreign companies going into the US market. Obviously Quest is out, who knows how the Nokta thing will end up, it will put brands like Rutus off ever trying to sell into the US.

I've never had the pleasure of owning a White's detector other than pinpointer and I guess at a stretch you could say my Garrett 24k. I have a couple of T2's which I believe are just a bit more modern of an MTX, would there be truth in that? A digital MXT?

I dabbled with AI as a kid with Dr Spaitso, that's as far as I went 🙂 https://classicreload.com/dr-sbaitso.html Click on "start" and play game and have a turn, it kept me entertained for hours as a youngster. Don't even get me started on the talking parrot.

They get left behind regularly 🙂 I've even had to drop into the hardware shop on my last detecting trip to buy a pick as it wasn't worth driving home to get it again so rather than ruin my day I just bought another pick 😛 The amount of times I went with no gold bottle at all before getting a pouch on the side of my detector! I need a little saying to make sure I remember everything.

In an increasingly competitive market with many detectors with similar features and designs from various brands it would set them apart from the rest, a real point of difference and attract many buyers I would think.

My dream would be a 17x13" like the original CTX coil or a lighter 15" round coil (not the Coiltek heavyweight) for deep coin hunting with a Nel Snake 6.5 x 3.5 for prospecting for my Nox or now more so my Manticore as my Nox may not get used much anymore. I'd also snap up a Detech 13" Ultimate if I could as it's one of my favourite everyday VLF coils and I'd use that coil a lot, to complete my set for the Manticore I'd also love a Detech Arrow 18x4" on it, All the coils I want the most I can't have 🙂 To have these coils I have to have a range of older model detectors and can't use my best detectors that I want to use. The 10x5" Coiltek is the only good aftermarket Nox coil for me, I'm not a fan of the other two so if I had choices in brands I could likely get a better larger coil and possibly an even smaller coil. So fingers crossed Quest get some decent coil support from the aftermarket, and if they do I may just move across to Quest from my Manticore.

Just going by history of them having coils for their models without the need for a "endorced" product by the manufacturer like the aftermarket Nox coils. Nokta appeared to make it difficult for Nel so Nel didn't release their Nokta coils for the Simplex even years after annoucement and skipped the Legend entirely and that's all ancient history now. With Detech making Quest coils we can only hope they'll continue on and make new Quest coils too. Another innocent until proven guilty thing, they've not stopped coils in the past, so at this stage we can assume they haven't stopped them yet 🙂 It's good the Nox has 3rd party coils, bad that they're so limited and forced to buy only one endorced brand. I'd much prefer a Detech 13" Ultimate on my Nox than the 15" Coiltek.

yea, I'm just not that good at allocating pockets, I'm ambidextrous so I sit either side of my detector digging so my scoop ends up alternating pockets, I switch arms I swing with throughout the day which I guess contributes to me swinging this heavy brick or a GPZ without complaining it's heavy so I'm a bit all over the place with my pockets. I prefer just having a little pouch on my detectors control box cover, it's also handy for the GPZ having to carry around the little ferrite ring, not that I use it but I have it there in the pouch just in case, at least last time I looked it was still there. I started life as a leftie, in my early years of school I changed to a rightie as everyone else was, now I'm mostly a rightie but switch to left whenever I need to, comes in handy. After losing my gold bottle 2 times now by having it in a pocket, once with 9 grams of gold in it (fortunately found it that time) and the other time with 3 nuggets and never found that bottle I just prefer my bottle safely tucked away in a zipped up pocket on my detector, as I know I'll never leave my detector behind 🙂

There are no winners, either Nokta, Quest etc have done something wrong which is bad, or Minelab are just scaring away competition with their bigger wallet which is just as bad so you're right Steve, It's just nice to back the little guy hoping they're in the right as the big guy can fend for itself with its law suits, lawyers and money, a bit of a case of innocent until proven guilty 🙂 It's us the consumers that lose either way. I just find it odd that they only have to watch their backs in the US, in Minelab's home country you can buy Quest no issues. The Legend is happily for sale without being taken to Australian courts. That's the bit I don't get, they have Australian patents. I guess all this law stuff is just as above my head as the engineering behind the detectors that may or may not have copied something they shouldn't. My thoughts as just as a customer and it's frustrating when you want to buy something or see competition flourish when the big guy always comes down and chops them off. At least the Quest looks different to the Nox, that's a start. Fingers crossed Quest have done nothing wrong. I do like the look of their detector and want to know more about their special gold mode and like it provides 80kHz. That side of it is what I was hoping the Equinox 900 would be, a multi-IQ machine with higher than 40kHz. I also like the fact Quest has embraced aftermarket coils.

While you're at it Trevor can you make a 8.5"x6" or smaller, the other guys don't seem like theirs will ever get to market.

I guess fighting silly court cases for no reason other than to destroy competition is a costly experience they just don't want. Plenty of other markets in the World to sell into with no fears of being taken to court by Minelab. I'm sure some dealer in some other country will be shipping many units to the US anyway, does Canada have the same crazy sue someone for looking your direction laws as the US? South of the border like Midalake said would be another option. It's happened to XP, Nokta and they just assumed it will happen to them too... 😞 Not good for the industry as a whole, especially the customers.

I believe Bone conduction headphones work well for Deaf people, as the bone phones vibrations make up for their lack of hearing allowing them to "hear" the detectors audio. https://www.soundguys.com/bone-conduction-headphones-20580/ I know the Deus 2 has them but perhaps they could get some corded or wireless ones for whatever detector they now have.

Because the US laws, the same reason Nokta is being pursued only in the US for the Legend. Sad for US customers the Quest detectors won't make it there with official channels. I'm sure after watching Nokta they just decided the US market just isn't worth the trouble.

Vanquish uses Multi-IQ meaning SMF.

So Veronica is running the GPZ and 8" you're running the GPX, now I get it. She's done well to keep up with you on the small gold with her using the smaller coil and having less ground coverage. You two make a good gold getting team! Some good photos too.