phrunt

I doubt they will with the aptX LL chipset discontinued.

One of the guys in NZ received one with a scracted screen from factory too, I think he just kept it knowing he's likely to do it himself sometime anyway. I think he was just more concerned about having to wait for a replacement and also the shipping costs to return it.

Did you manage to find some gold Jeff, I've not really seen anyone using the Legend yet to actually find any gold, not saying it's not capable it's clearly more than capable it's just I'm not seeing people use it for that purpose anywhere.

It wasn't that they should have delayed the Manticore further, the good business sense thing to do would be to get the coils ready while the detector is getting eady, they seem to have a pattern of doing coils later than detectors in most cases as they don't focus on coils perhaps as much as they should. Big money can be made in coils, very big money as Steve has already pointed out entire businesses with reasonable size facilities and dozens of staff have been built entirely around Minelab not being good at making accessory coils, all this is money they could have had. Many of these aftermarket manufacturers only make coils for Minelab detectors. They decided to focus on releasing a Nox 700 and 900 as well as an X-terra rather than the accessory coils for essentially their new flagship. They failed miserably at it all as they didn't have enough stock of anything and still don't. People have been waiting for 6 months for Manticores they'd paid for, not Minelab's fault entirely as dealers should never take money like that but Minelab are the ones that said it's coming, it will be soon etc so they can't not take some of that blame, and then if they did release them in quantity when for example I got mine everyone would have before Christmas when they expected to get them according to Minelabs marketing, we've all seen the Mark Laurie video where he said we should be able to have them by Christmas, and the marketing image saying they'll be by Christmas. Releasing 20 detectors to marketing people masquerading as "testers" doesn't cut it, these people by the looks of it mostly received their detector when it was a finished product right around Christmas, they were not there to test anything, just to put videos on their Youtubes and Facebooks to help with advertising. I guess by labeling them testers it makes their videos have a bit more credibility than as marketers. I'm just waiting patiently for my coils, the first decent snow fall yesterday so my detecting time slows right down over winter/spring as skiing takes over for a until near the years end so I won't be needing them as much soon anyway. On a brighter note and for a bit of a chuckle my wife just got back from a holiday to Australia, I didn't want to go, but while doing some food shopping she discovered they seem to be confused over in Australia as to what a chicken nugget is, perhaps it's inflation's fault with the looming recession but they're really going out on a limb with this one.

Here is a more detailed story on it https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/victorian-man-discovers-240k-gold-nugget-with-budget-metal-detector/news-story/50e330c1b9bc3dd7ede8219a738faa32

Just give them a factory reset, sometimes they screw up and can't pair... its' happened to me and I haven't used mine much. Press and hold the volume + and - buttons simultaneously for about 5 seconds until the LED briefly turns PINK. You'll also hear two "beeps," indicating that the speaker have reset. The speaker should then go into pairing mode and the LED will alternate between flashing RED & BLUE. Also when pairing Bluetooth stuff it's best to hold it right next to the detector so it gets maximum signal strength. You can snag a copy of the manual here https://a.storyblok.com/f/58706/x/e88cf35a24/avantree-torus-nb05-user-manual-v0.pdf

I'm sure I've done it quite a few times.

wow, a $240,000 nugget found with a Nox 800.... lucky person there. It seems they really never do get them all, I wonder how many dismissed that target as a giant piece of junk over the years for a guy to wander along and find it with his Nox.

yes, but it was a forced update, it was done due to components no longer existing required to make it in it's traditional vintage form so needed some adjustments to use modern components. I'd much prefer an old model though, I can't imagine many people "upgraded". I think it was more crushing they released it rather than releasing a modern Gold Bug 3, that's what everyone was waiting and hoping for, and by releasing that modified Gold Bug 2 they gave the impression there is not going to be a Gold Bug 3, and that's likely the reality. Just another paint job.

They tend to use their name with a full stop, like john.rambo@minelab.com.au

Back when they made the Vanquish the Ace series were the target, now the X-Terra the Simplex was the target. I wonder what they will target next? They kinda killed two birds with one stone with the X-terra taking out the Simplex and Garrett AT Series in one blow, and I guess you could say between both the X-Terra and Vanquish they have crushed all the First Texas models too except the Gold Bug 2. If they end up releasing a Gold Monster 2000 it will crush the last remaining VLF gold prospecting machines on the market I guess, a multi frequency GM, hopefully they break out of their DD habit and follow the decades old Gold Bug 2's lead and make a concentric coil for it. They're going after any detectors that are hot on the market at the time made by another manufacturer. The Ace is an incredibly well marketed machine and the Vanquish was out to take it on, even though I believe better because of multi-IQ I don't know how much of the Ace market they took away, seems to me the Ace still sells well. I'd be surprised if the Simplex continues to sell well with the X-terra available for the same pricing. I know which I'd rather that's for sure. The Manticore was the answer to the Deus 2, but they're different enough it has no hope of shutting the Deus 2 down. The casualties of these releases are the detectors that have been floating around on the market for decades and relatively high priced still, who's going to buy an AT Pro when they can buy a X-Terra for far cheaper and get a much better detector in features and in performance? I hope they make a Vanquish 2 with multi-IQ and ground balance into a X-Terra housing as now the Vanquish is lacking a bit when it comes to build design, the Ace design wasn't such a bright idea. I don't think there is any need for a single frequency detector to be released in the future, if it comes down to it and say for a GM 2000 if they were to make a multi-IQ machine but also a single frequency option of for example 71kHz to give GB2 tiny gold performance but because of this if the standard coils that runs the multi-IQ 20/40kHz doesn't perform optimally at 71kHz they could just release a 71kHz tiny coil perhaps even concentric like the GB2 for it as an accessory, and you can only switch to the 71kHz profile when this coil is connected. If this was the case they have an opportunity to sell a detector and later an accessory coil. A little like how XP have the HF coils where only when they are connected can you run the high frequencies. That would also make the GM2000 a viable detector when there is already great gold performance on the Nox and Manticore as at the moment realistically there is little need to own a Gold Monster if you already have a Nox and small coil, more often than not the Nox is the better choice. To release a GM2000 they have to give people a reason to buy it.

If that was a small sample in a bucket the soil looks like it'd be pretty good if you hit it in a big way, I'd call that a success and go back better equipped for more 🙂

The 10" is fantastic, it's a real shame they discontinued GPX coils, it's the smallest fully spiral coil I own and very sensitive for a GPX 5000 coil. Blows the Sadie and Joey to pieces for small target sensitivity. I never did bother with a 14x8" EVO, but I have a 14x9" EVO and the 10" is noticeably more sensitive than it is, mostly with depth on smaller targets than overall sensitivity which are similar. I have no idea how the 10" would handle very bad ground being so sensitive though , the windings cover the entire coil laid out flat, there is no space to go smaller and even then they had to do some magic to make the windings fit as they wouldn't fit if just laid out flat. I was privileged to see inside it when they were making mine as it was the first one ever made. Coiltek have a 9" spiral, I have no idea how they achieved that as looking inside the 10" there really was no room to possibly make it smaller, I'd like to try the Coiltek 9" but seeing the GPX 5000 is no longer a detector I use for tiny gold I can't justify the expense but if the 9" is anything like the 10" it's worth taking a look at. If I was no longer in possession of the GPZ and GPX 6000 I'd be using that 10" as my primary coil on my GPX 5000, I do really like the 14x9" EVO though, nice coil.

Waterproof? X-Terra... Vanquish, be careful in the rain, although you have some cloth type cover thing which I have somehow lost. Ground balance - X-Terra, difficult ground people have often complained about the Vanquish, not me personally but others have. There is always enough differences in every Minelab model to make the other viable, they make sure of that even if it is just based upon coil availability.

Yep, the only bigger deeper targets I find are junk, the depths I've dug down to find a small piece of iron junk 🙂 One day Reg, one day... we can all hope. I have hope the reason for my inability to find bigger deeper gold is I'm not in a place that has it more so than my inability to find it, who knows.... I believe my missus must have been nuts for some time, after all she took me on.

That's the entire reason the GPX 6000 exists 🙂

It has a 3000 meter range above ground and a 50 meter depth, you should have asked him to point it at some of the nearby buildings and see if it goes nuts with target signals, surely there is plenty of metals in there it should be picking up. Plenty of jewellery collections, diamonds (which it can also detect) and other precious metals in peoples apartments. Kinda like an air test 🙂 1-The system of searching for precious and non-precious metals: such as buried antique gold - raw gold - veins of gold - meteorites - silver - zircon - bronze - cobalt - coltan - mercury - copper - iron. 2- The system of searching for underground caves, voids and ancient tombs. 3- Underground diamond search system. 4- A two-dimensional imaging system to determine the depth and analyze the search results. The search depth of the Gold Hunter Smart device reaches 50 meters in the ground and the forward range is 3000 meters.

It will be interesting what happens with pricing across the board now, either a significant shift in pricing or just only sell detectors to those with absolutely no knowledge of what they're buying but even then the stores if repeatable should point the customers in the right direction. That's why it's wise for people to buy from places that sell more than one brand though, never did like the idea of a dealers that only sell one brand for that very reason, they're not going to tell you to buy a detector they don't sell. Nokta has done wonderful things to the metal detector market well above and beyond them releasing great detectors, and now the X-terra has come into play the battle is on and we the buyers of detectors are the real winners. 🙂

When people buy coils a very large percentage of them don't even float around Online, don't post finds, don't chat on forums or go on Facebook so you just don't hear from that group, I can say that with some background knowledge from being friends with a coil manufacturer. Like anything if people have a problem that's when you hear about it, if people are happy then you'll hear next to nothing except from a small group that tend to use forums and social media that like to help others by giving feedback.

Poor guy, this is exactly why I go out of my way to expose these things. Even when he realizes it is a scam he likely will have trouble accepting it as he's paid so much for it. I understand your position at the time, it's never easy telling someone they've been ripped off, especially when its a substantial amount of money. 😞

It's not something I can be bothered hunting around for and I'm sure if you can be bothered you won't have difficulty finding stuff, and it was generally the "competition", and who is the competition? 🙂 It's not Fisher. They're currently even eluding to it on their site now, but if you go back and watch many of Dilek's videos on the Legend you may hear some things that will perk your ears about the "competition". I'm going to hold out for the Legend 2 to see if I want one as as Jeff has already pointed out the top tier detectors are so close in performance (aside from prospecting - thanks Deus 2) it's really up to the end user which they prefer feature wise, brand wise or whatever makes them choose. The problem is at the moment Nokta are saying on their website there will be no Legend 200 or Legend 300, so they're sticking with the Legend in its current form for quite some time and in it's current form I don't see an advantage to having one, great for Legend owners as it likely means they'll keep doing firmware improvements for them. I can understand that though, it's got to be extremely hard to improve on these new modern high end detectors, they're rapidly running out of things they can do to make them better but it's great it's no longer dominated by one brand, super happy Nokta and XP have got very competitive machines. My views are always a bit different when it comes to the Legend though as they priced it the same as an Equinox here, it's not cheaper like the lucky USA buyers get it so it loses that advantage.

Probably for this reason I don't think I'd do better with my Gold Bug 2 than I would my Equinox, and if I do it's because the Gold Bug 2 has a better coil size and type with it's tiny little concentric more than the frequency being used. I really don't think the GB2 is going to find much smaller gold from what I can see based on it's kHz. It probably has the ever so slightest advantage, but how much of that is coil based? That we don't know as Minelab don't make that size coil for their detectors, it's a brilliant little coil on the GB2 and really is the secret to that detectors success, it's not so great with the 10x5", put it with the 10x5" up against the Equinox with the Coiltek 10x5" and see which is best, I'd take the Nox any day. The Deus 1 goes to 81 kHz on it's 9.5x5" coil and It isn't keeping up with my Nox on tiny gold, admittedly the Nox has the smaller coil. I'm not saying I wouldn't want a higher frequency multi-IQ type machine, I'd love one but I think on paper for the engineers its probably not staking up as worthwhile. We'll see when the Gold Monster 2000 comes out I guess.

It's not necessarily throwing stones although I am in a bad mood as I was driving along, singing a song with the sunroof open catching some rays when some bird from high altitude decided it was time to drop a bomb, that particular bomb flew down right through my sunroof and hit me in the side of the face! Talk about a good aim. My payback was to have a lot of chicken for lunch. I was just pointing out no brand seems immune to these problems cropping up sometimes on new models, it's just the way Nokta was very clearly saying how much better they were than Minelab for quality that sort of backfired on them. Nokta were the ones gloating they made superior machines when it comes to quality and even in their marketing were pointing out how much better quality they are than the competition then they've had their fair share of issues with the Legend too, so kinda embarrassing for them the way they behaved then issues pop up. I much prefer XP's marketing method, focus on their product and what's good about it, ignore the competition, highly respect XP and even Gary with his videos for behaving that way. I almost expect the Manticore to have some hardware fault appear, it would be out of the ordinary if it doesn't 🙂 I'm hoping it doesn't, but problematic detectors are more common than not, for the most part the cheaper built Vanquish hasn't had issues that I've seen, perhaps less people have one or report on problems with it but I've not seen anyone complaining about anything, I've seen some coils with broken ears on the Vanquish but of course they used the same pitiful ears they did on the Ctx and Nox with it so that's to be expected. I can safely say I much prefer my Simplex ears, one of the few things I like about it. Minelab was lucky their main Nox fault was with waterproofing as most don't use their machines in the water, and others only sometimes do and many not at all, the hard core water hunters are a smaller subset and the most likely to get the most problems. The Legend speaker thing is likely to show its face more often as you would expect a larger number of people use the speaker at least sometimes than detect underwater and the Legends peak sales like every detector were when it was first released, it took a while to work out there was a speaker issue and at that point the Legend had been on sale for quite some time. It's difficult to know what's caused the Legend speaker problem, I've seen lots of people saying the volume over drives the speaker and if they use lower volume they won't blow the speaker, I just can't imagine Nokta would make that mistake putting a speaker in that can't handle the volume output of the detector, very unlikely, I think it's more likely they were unlucky and ordered speakers that were not very good quality and have a high failure rate. The Simplex has also been a bit plagued with speaker problems so perhaps the same brand speakers? Quest were smart, their speaker is a little pop out module with one screw that can be easily replaced by the end user, I love that idea. I must say Nokta react to their faults a lot better though, fixing them up on existing models rather than people having to buy the new model to get them rectified. It took a lot of pushing and shoving I think for Minelab to acknowledge and then eventually fix the GPX 6000 EMI thing and they left the dodgy ears as they were and still pump out coils with them now.

I guess he's sat it with his clothes and towel for 20 years while he goes in for a swim and never had an issue, I'm sure he'll be leaving it at home from now on when he goes for his daily swim 🙂

I'm as happy as I could be with my Vanquish, I ended up using it more than my Equinox 800 for coin hunts, my reason was it gave better more stable Target Id's, why did it do this? I don't know, it's jewellery mode is fantastic for silver coin hunting, seems odd but it is. Coin mode should be the one to use but for some reason Jewellery mode gave me the best success, and were the more stable ID's due to the different elliptical coils? I really don't know but I found myself picking up my Vanquish more than my Equinox when looking for silvers. People who remember my Cointopia thread would recall about the time I switched to using my Vanquish and doing videos showing how much better the Vanquish was for me with EMI. It's a shame the Vanquish brain wasn't in an X-terra design, I'd even buy the new model Vanquish if they did that, and if it could also run Nox coils I'd be super happy. The Vanquish has worked out to be the perfect wife detector too, I rarely get her to give detecting a go but when I do she'll only use the Vanquish, it's simple and given her good success with it's stable ID's. So just because a detector is a cheaper model doesn't mean it's worse in every way, the X-Terra may have an advantage over the Nox 800 in some way or another, and with it not costing much more than buying a coil it's a steal especially when it can run my Nox coils. If the Nox could run the X-Terra coils it would be a no-brainer I'd buy an X-terra immediately just to get another coil, but I guess Minelab thought of this and didn't want us buying an X-terra just to get more coils for our Nox. 🙂 I was considering getting the 15" Nox Coiltek coil just to try squeeze out a bit more depth from my Nox and to give me another reason to run it over the fields again, but I can buy an X-terra for about the same price and that'd be more fun to take for a test drive.