PhaseTech

6000 ear pads have holes - this allows them to breath - but yes bad in wind. First thing I did to mine was replace the ear pads. I have plenty to choose from here due to building/selling several different headphones over the years. The Gel Pads that are supplied with the SteelPhase headphones fit the 6000 headphones nicely. They are bit tight when trying to put them on the plastic plate, but with a bit of love they get on there and are a nice snug fit. They don't transform the headphones to be amazing in wind, but there is definite improvement. Personally I use the SteelPhase headphones or my old Recon's when it's windy, and my Minelab wireless ones are reserved for when working really scrubby terrain - which can only be worked on calm days, otherwise the noise from tree rustling is unbearable. So, I just use your traditional leatherette style ear pads, minus the micro holes. These are also an option for the SteelPhase headphones, which I recommend to people in humid climates, as they breath a little better. I sell these as an accessory here.

Very easy to miss a target in a scoop regardless of detector or coil. Many years ago I got into the practise of not throwing out your 'barren' spoils, but putting them back in the hole, or on a pile next to the hole. I still get excited from time to time though and Murphy's Law gets ya! A grown slightly overweight man on his knees with some plastic contraption trying to find a 0.fly fart piece of gold must be a sight for those horse riders passing by 😁

First software update for me was a breeze. Doing the 1.06 update, my laptop was not recognizing that the Legend was connected. I downloaded those USB drivers and then it worked fine.

Loved the old 2100's. The detector I found my first gold nugget with, and such a powerful and simple machine. Also quite friendly to mono coils except for in the worst ground. Pairs up very well with an 8" mono. The v2 model had the very nice bonus of having the tune and tone adjustments as external pots. Best of luck with them.

All I can add is the Pro Packs haven't even arrived in Australia yet, and Nokta have already put out 2 updates, which has addressed and improved a lot of things already. I'm sure they are not done yet.

As for the battery level meter, sorry but I never noticed if it was missing or not, but pretty sure it was always there for me.

Well I see depth as relative to settings. To achieve the level of stability I have now with the previous software I would have to drop my sensitivity down to 14, and have Stability on 5, and there would still be the odd loud chirp. With the settings I can run now, I'm confident I've actually gained depth. There is still plenty of wiggle room if you want to increase the sensitivity and run the machine a little hotter which is how it should be. Can't give a more detailed answer to that as I've only done about 1.5hrs with it, so more use is required at different locations to get a better feel for it.

So quick update on wet sand with the new update. Beach Mode, Multi Wet, Sens 22, Stability 2, Recovery 4, the Legend is very stable. Pin-point does seem to be working better. Never noticed any bugs on mine, so can't say if any have been ironed out. I got a soft repeatable tone, scraped off some sand, and yep, definitely a target. I had to have three digs at it before I got it out of the hole, and it was a very crusty half a pull tab. I was expecting a big coin or half a can at that depth, so that was impressive. Just wish the beaches were not so sanded in at the moment.

Correct. CTX3030 is heavier than a lot of coin machines, but the balance is excellent. But balance only factors in when walking/swinging. Regardless of balance, it's the full weight of the machine you feel when pulling it out of the car, carrying it to your spot, and every time you pick it up after you've recovered your target. So for these times, a lighter detector sure is felt and appreciated. But as I've mentioned in the past, I don't want manufacturers to start making things so light, that build robustness starts to suffer. I remember back in my Minelab days, the boys from service called me over to look at a SD2100 they received. I can't recall the exact story, but I think the owner left it on the ground at the back of the ute, forgot about it and reversed over it! The box was a little mangled as you'd image, but the thing still worked!!

5000/4500 with a Detech or Minelab 8" Mono is just a joy to swing. Really well balanced, no bungy needed. Even with a 12" Evo I don't use a bungy unless I'm going for a long period without needing to dig up a target. The SD2000 was very light, the SD2100 and 2200 were a bit heavier, then the GP series were heavier again. GPX series control boxes went on a diet. Yep 7000 is a bit of a beast, but it's built tough, internal cable requires thicker shafts, and big power output requires bigger batteries. You can put a 12" NF coil and a CTX3030 battery on and have a much lighter set-up, but the CTX battery is only good for about 2.5 hrs.

A few questions - 1) IS GPS NECESSARY/BENEFICIAL ON A PI UNIT? NO, keep weight, cost, software complexity and battery resources to a minimum 2) IS COLOR SCREEN MORE PREFERRED? ADVANTAGES / DISADVANTAGES - TBH I don't need any screen 3) ARE YOU OK WITH AN EXTERNAL CABLE AROUND THE SHAFT? - preferably 4) COILS - SIZES AND SHAPES (3 PLEASE) - 8" round, 14 x 9 and 15" round 5) IS 10 FT WATERPROOF GOOD ENOUGH? Plenty, something I can hose off after a dusty session, and something that will survive a sudden downpour of rain is great. I would very rarely actually take it in the water, but if it worked at the salt beaches then I probably would.

Thanks Simon, I guess a "marketing" video needs to appeal to a potential new customer, someone who's been thinking about detecting for a while and needs that trigger to decide it's something they want to do now and they go buy a detector. To most experienced guys, there's always an element of cringe with most "marketing" videos, but you me and others who've been around for a while are not really the target of these videos. And yes you are right, the guys filming often have their ideas of how a scene should look, so you have to try and compromise and find common ground without totally embarrassing yourself haha. I have always believed that a good product sells itself, just as a bad/dud product will dig it's own grave. Too much hype just feeds the sceptics.

Iron on the Kruzer falls in the range of 0-15, so you either want to reject all numbers up to 15 (probably best to do this if you're new to it all), or you can reject say 0-5, then set your second tone break at 16. So then ID's 0-5 will null/blank, and 6-15 will give you a low grunt tone. ID's 16 and above will give you a higher tone.

I mean good and bad targets - where you have lots of sifting to do. Plenty of picnic areas that are continually getting replenished with targets

The other aspect of small coils is that targets are typically going to be shallow, and with the high accuracy of pin-pointing, you generally get your target out pretty quickly. This means lots more targets dug for any given period of time. When you are sifting through target rich areas, this can make all the difference.

Ouch! We all have out clutz moments that's for sure. Like the time I was so excited to pull my pick out of the holster I nearly knocked myself out! Wish I got that on film, it would have gone viral for sure 😅

Thanks for sharing, and that's encouraging to hear.

I've lost count of the number of detecting videos I've watched where the user is cranking up the detectors sensitivity to very erratic levels. And in some of the testing videos, they are leaving multiple detectors on at the same time and they are all chattering away like crazy. Sure there are times where running your detector hot can be an advantage, but I can't help but think that when a person who's just thinking about taking up metal detecting, is lurking on YouTube and comes across video after video where the detectors are chatting away like crazy that they just get put off. I've even had the odd comment or two on some of my gold detecting videos, where to me the threshold was humming away beautifully, as if it was one with nature 😇 and I'll get a comment along the lines of...."nice one, but how do you deal with that annoying noise?". If that's what they are thinking after hearing a soft smooth hum, what would they think when they come across one of the detecting videos that sound like C-3PO after a case of Red Bull!??

What's the deepest target you dug, and did you do any depth tests on any coins?

Yes, with VLF's small coils will give you the best chance of finding something, unless: 1. Your ground has 4-5 inches of top soil/leaves/pine needles etc. 2. Piles of hot rocks If you are using a VLF to utilise the iron disc that many models are equipped with, that usually goes with the plan to attack some trashy spots where the PI machines are just very hard work, then often in these spots there is a good chance some decent gold is left behind. Now if there's 3 bits of iron on every sweep, then sticking to a smaller coil is wise. However, if we are talking 1 bit of iron every two or three sweeps, then I would rather be swinging a bigger coil - more ground coverage and better chance of hitting that 2-3 grammer at depth.

Hated the MP3 file format and still do, although I admit on shitty speakers you can't really tell, and higher resolution versions are okay. For portable music (before the days you could just use your phone) I still kept using cassette tapes. Give me a little tape hiss over the horrible digitized echo sound of a bad MP3 file any day! So I guess older audio guys like me were never Apples intended market haha. As for discriminating PI's, imagine you could get the depth/sensitivity of a GPZ but able to blank out Iron to 7 inches. That would open up a lot of areas!! I'm all for discrimination. Even if you only use it 5% of the time, it just gives a particular gold machine that little extra versatility.

So the cleaned up product line up looks like: Simplex Simplex WHP Legend Legend Pro Pack Anfibio Multi Impact (more features, not waterproof, AA batts) Gold Kruzer Gold Finder 2000 With that they have most bases covered, so now to complete their line up, they would need: - PI Beach machine - PI Gold machine - A very basic SMF machine to sit between Simplex and Legend price point (but that's least critical at this stage).

Thanks for the feedback, glad you enjoy them.

I started doing metal detecting videos a long time ago now, and I always wanted to make them informative, not too serious, but most of all real. Along the way there was some very "real" i.e. embarrassing moments, which unfortunately in the early days a lot of that footage just got binned. At some point I just laughed and started saving some of it. So I've done a compilation of the disappointing trash digs, bloopers and just plain bad camera work.

Big discounts on Gold Racer, AU Gold Finder, Kruzer and Anfibio Multi here in Australia 😉