phrunt

With the price range you're looking in there is no detector that makes more sense than the Legend. You've got the most chance of success with a reliable modern technology SMF detector suitable for your water detecting. a Vanquish on steroids.

I wonder how the sales of the 24k went though, we have to remember it was a re-release of an older detector that had been on the market for some time, they released it to continue such a good detector being on the market but sales probably are not all that crash hot given the circumstances, the bulk of sales are when a product is new and most just get a multi frequency machine these days and not even both with a dedicated prospecting VLF. I think they just put focus onto other detectors for a while that have more chance of drumming up good sales like the Axiom and their SMF AT replacement that they really need to get to market, fortunately the Whites coils were still available for a while so I snapped up two 6" Concentrics to keep me satisfied. I'd love a Garrett 6" Concentric for it though as I genuinely believe they'll make a better quality coil. The 10x6" and 6" Concentric are the only coils I feel I need for the 24k out of the range that was available, the only other coil I'd want is the 6 x 3.5" Nel Snake coil, which they were going to be making for the 24k until the war came along so who knows if that will ever happen now, I would think probably not.

I'm unsure if I like looking at the snow or the gold better, thanks for the photos. Can't complain about that much gold, well done.

A vote for the Garrett Pro Pointer AT from me out of the Nokta Pulse and Garrett, I have both and much prefer the Carrot. Nice loud speaker, solid build quality and excellent performance. Another good option is the XP Mi-4, again nice and loud, built in battery, solid build quality and great performance, very similar to the Carrot but a tiny bit more sensitive to very small targets. The Nokta is best if you're planning on water detecting, awesome you can put a coil on it. The F-Pulse is very quiet, has no better depth in my soil than a VLF pinpointer (I'm in mid soil) and is a bit frustrating to use with it's falsing and requiring touching the ground when being turned on. Never once had to do that with my Carrot. Out of the F-Pulse and Nokta I'd pick the Nokta any day, similar performance but the option of a coil, much higher waterproof rating and a louder speaker. Both are PI. If there is one series of Pinpointer to avoid like the plague it's the Minelab Pro-Finds.

I always thought they should have a way to disable Geosense, I would not be surprised if it was hindering me in my mild conditions. I like the idea of a dashboard type thing displaying what settings Geosense is changing, we know it does sensitivity and ground balance, perhaps it goes further than that accounting for sweep speed, on the older GPX we had to set that ourselves and most went with Very Slow even if they didn't swing very slow which isn't ideal 🙂 It also lets in more EMI in Very Slow so in bad EMI environments the 6000 maybe adjusting that to counter EMI which would affect performance. It's been said the GM1000 and GPX 6000 in their Auto + can be more sensitive in ideal conditions over being in the highest manual modes, I've not seen this at all and manual has always been more sensitive for me. The reason they took control away on the 6000 was for their biggest market in Africa where they didn't like controls and many often didn't even understand them and just painted on the control box where to put the switch. Feedback out of Africa would have been it needs simplified on the new model, they didn't take into account the other users that like to have some control, and over simplified it. It demonstrates they had a lot of confidence in Geosense performing well. Your tests are interesting and concerning and easy to replicate so I'll try put some big iron down and test a smaller target shortly after hitting the iron and see what the results are, if it's desensitized the detector and how long it takes to recover, if it's slow to recover this is a big problem if hunting in an area with a lot of junk, and makes you wonder if it will behave the same way if you hit a area with bad hot rocks, and if it does then it's a very big problem for me. I hope if there ever is an 8000 they don't force us to use Geosense, and leave manual control of ALL settings available on it.

The more popular a forum the more "dung" it deals with, most of us have absolutely no idea... think personally, if your email address gets exposed to spammers from a silly mistake putting it into a form on a dodgy website you can get 100+ emails a day if you're lucky and the only real solution is to change email address, you just can't stop it.... think about a forum and how much rubbish it has to deal with and it's not ideal to keep changing domain names so you have to battle it on the front line, you can't avoid it.

It seems to me both the 900 and Manticore have jumpy ID's compared to the 600/800. It's not just the expanded range, the jumps are far bigger than that. I honestly can use the 800 as a cherry picker, it's ID's were rock solid on my coins, I knew what I was digging, the only better detector is the CTX. The Manticore is not the same, lowering sensitivity helps a lot but still not Nox stable even taking into account more ID's in my soils. Our gold $1 and $2 coins were a 21/22 even at very deep depths and such easy targets with the Nox, I dug hundreds of them, possibly thousands and now with the Manticore even at lower sensitivity they can be anywhere between 60 and 75 and rarely lock on to the 64 and 65 they air test at but even air testing the Manticore numbers are bouncy, and it's much harder to get a solid ID on a coin in an air test, where as the Nox was solid as a rock. I am betting people with 800's or even the Vanquish that bought a 900 are finding the 900's jumpy ID's a selling point and reason to get rid of it, people like me that use ID's a lot would prefer to use their 800 for that very reason. They've taken a step backwards which is disappointing as the Manticore marketing specifically states it has more stable accurate ID's. A load of rubbish that is. Perhaps they may improve this in a firmware update one day, perhaps not, everything else about the Manticore is fantastic but it is annoying taking a step backwards from an old model on a trait I valued so highly. This is a not correct, it doesn't have improved Target ID stability. This guys video runs through air tests on common Aussie coins first with his Manticore, next his Nox 800, you can clearly see the more stable Nox vs Manticore even on his air tests. Add ground into the equation and the difference is even more pronounced.

All I care about with this frequencies mumbo jumbo is if it works and if it works better than my existing detectors, I don't care what frequencies and how many, I care that it finds the targets I want regardless of how it does it 🙂 I'll leave the finer details up to the engineers, after all they're the ones that really understand it, to me they're a number that I know very little about. If it finds tiny gold and claims its using frequencies up to 80kHz to do so, that's fantastic, if it uses some other frequency but still finds the same tiny gold I desire I'm just as happy. If it can shift off 5kHz and 12kHz I'd like that, they're the two most troublesome frequencies for EMI around this area. I'd like a multi freaker that has the ability to adjust it's weighted frequencies to offset EMI. If it is weighted to say 5 10 and 20 for it's coin mode I'd like if a noise cancel would adjust 5 to 6 if it sees 5 is loaded with EMI and uses 6/10/20 instead, now that would be a great noise cancel method. Frequency shifting really works well When do you see a modern noise cancelling detector work as well as this

The 6" round is likely the reason the Nox 900 mightl end up being the better prospecting machine, unless the aftermarket make it or a smaller size coil for the Manticore. I'd love the 6" round for my Manticore 🙂

That's what the marketing states, so yes.

So I guess Nokta sent him a Simplex to demonstrate seeing its a pre-production unit, and he bought or borrowed an X-Terra? I would have liked the Vanquish be thrown in the mix for a baseline as in those conditions it should be a killer and seeing I'm familiar with it I could understand a bit more how the others are doing based on it. The 11" coil the Simplex has should be deeper than the 12x9" of the X-Terra, it'd be a cool to see how it goes with the 11" Nox coil on it just to get an idea how they compare directly. It seems they've possibly improved depth on the new Simplex as it's certainly outperforming my Simplex in that video, mines terrible for depth. I'm quite the skeptic with videos these days, and the only way I really believe them is if I do it myself as often the video results people do are vastly different to my own. Not saying the people are being dodgy, more that I'm in different conditions that change the results. It's good to see these entry level detectors becoming such good detectors though, I won't be buying either, just no need for them.

The 8 x 5.5" can't be too far off now one would hope, It's quite a nice size too, I have it with my Vanquish. If Coiltek produces a 10x5" I likely won't buy it as I'll already have the smaller Minelab coil by then so I'm hoping Coiltek makes a vastly different size. I've got the impression they are making coils for it, it's just a matter of time, and I guess Minelab would never allow it before they've sold their own for a significant amount of time to make a bulk of the money they hope to make off them. Any firmware update is a bonus, if they never make one it won't overly change my life, it's pretty damn good right out of the box. I'd like them to improve the Target ID stability seeing they advertised it as having more stable ID's than the Nox and if possible a bit of tweaking to gold mode on small gold, other than that it's all fine for me.

This little video shows why it's so desert like, it's rarely green in this particular area, very dry climate. It's quite an interesting video, a few stuff ups in it but generally right, for example he uses an Australian flag picture, but hey NZ's used to that one, along with being left off maps 🙂 And when I live right down near to the bottom population density is very low which doesn't help with my detecting of man made lost items with so few people and such a short history of population. I guess it helps my prospecting though with far less competitors looking for it with detectors 🙂

That's what I'm talking about JW does it all the time, and I've watched him do it over and over again yet I've never done it myself!! I need to get my act together. Sometimes he spends an hour or more with his VLF on his dig hole from a nugget with the GPX 6000 or GPZ collecting all the tiny bits they miss using his GM1000, GB2 or Nox. I'm a slow learner I guess 🙂

The last few detectors I've bought would not dramatically change my finds rates if at all, yes I like them for the most part however if I didn't have them nothing much would change for my needs at least. I won't name names as this is a Quest section and as far as Quest goes I'm very impressed, I'd love one and I could possibly replace detectors by using the new Quest model but now I've lost that enthusiasm for new detectors, when jumping up from average detectors to good detectors it's exciting and finds increase, when you're already at the top and change to another top little changes. I need advancements in technology to waste money buying a new detector, minor increments in performance that in the real world don't change the results much if at all are hardly worth the spend, people have different needs and maybe some detectors have improved more dramatically for them and their needs over my needs so my views are my own. Maybe I'm just getting old and grumpy 🙂 In saying that it's fantastic Quest are doing this, super impressed and I honestly hope they kick every other manufacturers butt with their detector, and they may well do so. Some detector manufacturers remind me of Kodak... new or smaller brands are coming in to take their place and Quest appears to be one of those brands. Go Quest! This is worth a read 🙂 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2012/01/18/how-kodak-failed/?sh=3bda25146f27 Tesoro had a Kodak moment, so did Whites, others are following.

I'm looking forward to hearing how the Quest goes, I think it's fantastic another serious player in the game and it appears to have some really good features and differences to other detectors on the market, fortunately or unfortunately whichever way you look at it I won't be buying one, I'm done buying detectors for some time now, I'm not to keen on paying for tiny increments in performance improvements if any and have settled on my fleet for now until there is a dramatic change, if there ever is. I really hope Quest do a good job with this one, it very much appears they will, the more competition we get the better. The fact Detech, Mars and Nel all make coils for Quest detectors is something that's very appealing to me and could be enough to tip me over the edge if its a good all round detector including prospecting, has the right frequencies that's for sure to be the best of all multi freakers for gold.

They would always be superior in trashy areas unless a PI comes out with excellent discrimination, that may never happen. They are also fully waterproof, debatable with the Nox but still, you can go into creeks and do proper water detecting with them, so unless you're swinging an ATX or SDC you can't do that with anything else. Add water and trash together and you've got a VLF again 🙂 We aren't quite there yet replacing VLF, even the very small coils the VLF's can have, at least some of them are a powerful tool in the right places, if you can't get your coil in there then you are missing gold, a little GB2 coil can go almost anywhere. I like chasing tiny gold, but now the GPX 6000, GPZ with small X-coils or a 15" CC and by the looks of it the Axiom can get gold so small you really don't need to go smaller, 0.03 of a gram is within reach of both the 6000 and GPZ, 0.02 if the right shape nugget. Any smaller and it's not really worth chasing unless you're lucky enough to be in a spot with a lot of it, at a patch I found I'd figured it was cleaned up pretty well with my GPZ, JW checked out an area with his GB2 and found about 20-30 pieces of gold in one dig hole where another bigger nugget had come from. 20-30 tiny nuggets smaller than the GPZ can hit still add up in weight. and this is where VLF's still have an advantage. JW often does this, finds a lot of little tiny stuff with his GB2, GM1000 or Nox in holes that the bigger one come from. I should get in the habit of doing the same as it really works for him.

A bit like what some people do with their Carrots, this guy has a pretty good way on his Carrot with an antenna.

They must be doing that at virtually no profit by the time shipping to get it from Turkey to wherever and the dealers profit margin are included. A gift from Nokta to Legend owners for sure.

I'm not so sure, they say this on the website for the Manticore, no mention of boosted EMI immunity for the Nox 900 Part of the EMI improvements for the Manticore are its new quick and long noise cancel methods. The Continuous noise cancel works very well and I wish they'd figured that out before releasing the GPX 6000, a far more expensive detector with a worse noise cancel released not too long before the Manticore.

I was having some success with sluicing and little success with my Gold Bug Pro, I was very new to all this stuff and had no idea what I was doing, after a couple of months of no success with my Bug JW who was a member of this forum came to visit me sluicing on a river near his house while he was going detecting in the area. I wasn't all that inspired by detecting as I couldn't find gold doing it yet I could take my sluice and find gold every time. He decided he'd help me out and we went to a local public fossicking area to have a go with detectors, prior to this I decided I'd upgrade my GBP to a GM1000 which gave me a big sensitivity boost. JW gave me plenty of advice on the day and showed me what I should be doing and success, 6 nuggets in one day and not only bigger easier ones, the one to the right of a bottle in my usual tiny spec 🙂 I've never looked back since and have found gold regularly since and with improvements in my detecting fleet I've gone from gold rarely to gold virtually every time I go out. My first nugget The days finds for me on my first nugget day, all from a heavily flogged public fossicking creek, bizarre, we've never been able to repeat that days success in the same creek. Having a friend like JW that knows what they're doing and very experienced in the area and helps you out is invaluable. Without him I imagine I'd have given up. Very generous thing for someone to do, and still to this day we go detecting together and he helps me out often.

If you put shielding tape on top of a GB2 coil the detector goes completely numb, can't detect a thing so it's interesting the GPZ can detect right through it. If they put a 7000 into a 6000 case I don't want one, to me that's a downgrade as you can bet they'll change the coils to chip inside coil. It needs to be significantly better than what I've got or I'm certainly giving it a miss, and I think that will be a challenge for them. I don't care about ergonomics, weight, Bluetooth, whatever cosmetic things they can do to improve the 7000, I want real performance improvements over the 7000 with a range of X-coils and lots of them or it's a waste of money. It's a wait and see, but if the 6000 is any indication of what to expect, I don't want one. Performance differences from what I can see on anything are minimal over the 7000 if at all. If Woody can improve shielding on the 7000 perhaps I'll take that path and send her off to be modded instead of an 8000.

The differences are pretty crazy between winter and now. This would be the same spot I took the photo yesterday when I got up to the base area of the ski field. This is from up a bit higher showing it better. This is the lake frozen And the beginners jumps area where I did all of my detecting yesterday, I target areas where people stack a lot as that's when they lose stuff. The other good spot is under lifts but its mostly dropped phones as nobody uses coins these days. This is how the road can look when it goes a bit wild after snow then rain then a freeze all in one night and you can see why I wished tourists that have never driven in these conditions just caught the bus, but no, many prefer to drive up in hire cars and get stuck or crash than pay for a bus. and the view from the top of the mountain looking down the other side from the first photo, this direction faces the town which is on the right of the lake in the photo along the water towards the back of the photo.

My plan was to take my Ace 300i with Nel Tornado but I forgot to charge its batteries up so the Manticore got to come along, I doubt would have done any better with the Manticore than the Ace in this situation.

That's the coolest, you need to weld an old satellite dish on the front and go out in the desert somewhere and take black and white photos of yourself on it and you could say you went to the moon.