GB_Amateur

Ahaa! So you were in on this conspiracy -- should have figured that. You Alaskans all stick together. OK, I didn't realize that was a common overdub trick.

Don't forget the dog barking, although that sounded like it was coming from inside a room.... Wonder if they rechecked the hole afterward. They're still out there.

I assume this is the same company. Doesn't look too good (and that seems to be a gross understatement). From Yelp:

Somehow I must have missed that post since I don't remember it. (OK, I admit I don't remember as much as I used to....) Even young Tom looks older now after his 2-3 years working there. 🤔 The one thing that always intrigued me about the V3i was the graphs. You here might have noticed I really love graphs/plots. "A picture is worth a thousand words." When I bought my F75 the V3i was in the running. The price and the weight are what ended up ruling it out. I did get a chance to try one once, owned by a detectorist I know. But he was swooping over my shoulder like a vulture with every swing, telling me what I was doing wrong. When I asked him about fine tuning, given its myriad of options, he said he just left it in default. Later he said he had traded in a DFX for it and often regretted that move. I figured at the time that said more about him than the detector. (Not that everyone has to like the latest and greatest 'flagship'.) One less player in the game now, but we still have some good ones and Nokta/Makro, which I don't think even existed the last time White's released a cutting edge detector, has been steady in their progress. Garrett has a new model coming out this summer which (on paper) shows a lot of promise. The Fisher Impulse AQ 'prototype' is in the hands of detectorists as we write. Minelab powers on in their bullying ways, obstinate in not responding to their loyal customers' questions and wishes but still occasionally providing detectors we can't refuse. If you can get a QED it appears you'll really have something. Aftermarket coil makers (so far) have weathered the storm. Bottom line: the cup is at least half full.

Are you sure she said 'pants' and not 'knuckles'?

As usual there is an analogy between these two facts. From what I've read here it's very difficult to find undetected gold producing ground, at least in the USA; not sure about Australia since so much of that country/continent has been so 'unfriendly' to exploration let alone habitation. Africa and possibly parts of Asia and South America? Antarctica as soon as climate change melts all the snow and ice? Of course the difference (contrast) is that coins, jewelry, and artifacts are found where people have been -- the more the merrier (well, up to a point, even a limit there) -- and natural gold is better found where people haven't been. For sure there are still out-of-the-way places with natural gold and even in the USA, Gerry, Lunk, Rob, and others have shown us pictures and videos of recent finds considerably larger than the (seeminly) microscopic bits I've found. Whether these are still considered "low hanging fruit", I kinda doubt it in most cases. Modern gold detectorists (in the USA, for sure) need to be giraffes. Concerning coins in this country, although there have to be unsearched public areas for purely statistical reasons, for the most part it's private property (what we detectorists term 'permissions') where most of the good stuff remains, and there's probably quite a bit of that. But just like with native gold, you have to work harder to get to that today than people did back in the 1980's and 90's just going to schools and parks, gathering up the ripe cherries laying within easy reach.

Oh, that's harsh, but unfortunately true, both literally (shown in the factory sale ads) and figuratively (newest detectors had ~1990 designs, or am I being too generous with that year tag). But most of all, what you said is just plain funny! 🤣

Never heard that one before, but make sense. I'll have to try it next time out (which may not be for a while since the summer heat and worse -- lack of rainfall for weeks -- are putting a damper on my detecting time).

Yes, those are the key words. Lots of people here can tell you what they think you are experiencing, but you'll never know, and you'll never have confidence, until you've experienced it yourself the old fashioned way. There can be shortcuts to learning to detect but you're probably past much of that with your current experience. Now you are both the student and the teacher. Afterthought: I don't say this to discourage you or anyone from asking questions. Continue to do that, but keep in mind that not all answers will be correct -- or more accurately -- correct for your style of detecting. Further, many problems (or observations) can have different causes and therefore different solutions. Even when someone gives what seems like the perfect answer you should verify for yourself if that helps with the issue you are having. In the end, another old saying holds well: "experience is the best teacher."

That sounds like my current park. Aluminum is potentially everywhere from TID 1 (very small piece of foil) up into the 30's (often an aluminum drink can) but the sweetspot for pulltabs is 14-17, and those (in my case) are everywhere. I want nickels -- sweetspot 12-13 -- and even there I dig 2 to 3 times as many pulltabs as nickels (mostly the smallest ring-and-beavertails or larger beavertails alone, i.e. missing the ring are the ones that TID as nickels). My park has been hunted but it seems that at least some of those detectorists were so annoyed with pulltabs that they just decided to ignore nickels, too. (Good for me!) Can slaw can't be so easily compartmentalized. If its shape is assymetric (e.g. long and narrow) then when you position yourself 90 degrees away from your initial hit (I like to call this changing angle of attack) it will give a different TID. Be aware that coins not oriented horizontally (not parallel to your coil) can also do this, though. My rule of thumb for nickels is to require half my hits be in the 12-13 and even then ignore if there is a 15 or 10 mixed in. (Even those loose cuts cost me a coin on occasion.) However, and this is very important, only make selection cuts after you've located the target and are swinging (small swings are fine) with the target directly under the coil housing's attachment bolt! TID's won't be as accurate if the target is off-center of the coil. If crown caps are a problem, adjusting Iron Bias will help. There has been considerable discussion on this site about Iron Bias, particularly lately. Personally I don't have problems with crown caps since they aren't prevalent in my parks. But for some people, especially beach hunters, that's a different story. You can read more about that on other threads here. You seem to have experience prior to getting your Eqx 800, so maybe what I say now is already ingrained from your previous experience. However, others (maybe not as experienced) will read this and although it's been said before, IMO it is worth repeating. Every detectorist (and it can even vary for an individual detectorist depending upon things like particular site and time allotment) has a tolerance for digging trash. Think of a linear scale. At the left end you don't want to miss a single good target so you dig everything, regardless of TID. On the right end of the scale you are so averse to digging trash that you refuse to dig anything! (OK, those people don't stick around. 😄) As you move from left to right, you become more choosy in what you dig so as to avoid digging trash. But as you move from the left you begin to lose desired items, not many at first, but still some. Near the right end, almost everything you dig is a desired target, but a lot of your rejects are desirable and you have to accept leaving those. Each detectorist lands somewhere on that scale. Yours will be different from mine and mine will be different from ____'s. There are other tricks to help mentally discriminate besides just TID. I'm not going to go into those (partly because I'm not so good at them), but from my experience you have to develop those tricks yourself as they are very difficult to explain. Even when shown on YouTube videos they are confusing in my experience, and of course they are susceptible to the same issues as just discussed with the TID trash avoidance scale. There you go! Surface coins are pretty easy, but those typically (definitely exceptions as I've proven many times) are the modern coins -- last 55 years in US (not silver, for example). The deeper targets are weaker and they often don't give the clean signals. It's like tuning an AM radio which has a (continuous) frequency adjustment knob. If the station is close you don't have to be so accurate adjusting the frequency. It still sounds loud and clear with no interference from other stations. If it's far away, you have to fiddle a lot more with the knob to get it just right and even then you still hear scratchy noises and even other stations fading in and out. If you've developed a rigid "got to be a perfectly clean signal before I dig" criteria you would have left those Wheaties in the ground for the less choosy detectorist to later collect. The best detetors give you a lot of information in their reporting. They are made for those who train their brain to be the discriminator. It's like the old saying goes -- they give you enough rope to hang yourself. Someday when artificial intelligence is incorporated into detectors (it will happen...) this may not be the case, but for many of us that will take much of the fun out, and further make it so easy that every Tom, Dick, and Mary will be out there sweeping up the good targets and there will be nothing left to find.

I can't answer that question, but the standard (factory warranty) is 3 years. From the Minelab website: All Minelab detectors are engineered in Australia, manufactured to exacting standards in ISO 9001/2000 quality accredited facilities, and backed by up to 3-years transferable warranties.

That's a pretty high discrimination threshold. EMI reports (i.e. the erratic sounds) can be TID dependent, so possibly you were just hiding it with your discrimination. There are several nice tone features on the Equinox that aren't found on many detectors, and particularly detectors most of us have cut our teeth on over the years. One of these is adjustable tone *volume*. What many of us do is eschew the discrimination threshold completely and use either 5 tones (my choice) of 50 tones. In both cases you can turn down the volume on the low end (non-ferrous end, iron end -- the negative TID numbers) so they they just kind of quietly grunt in the background. This has a lot of advantages, but I think one of them might expose the problem you were (potentially) having -- silent EMI hidden by too high of a discrimination threshold. I've done well hunting with sensitivity set at 18 (also 17) so if you have to live with that you should still do well. Another thing which can quiet EMI is lower recovery speed. I use 5 typically, which is the default for Park 1. Some use 4 and others even lower, although you need to adjust your swing (and your ear) as you go to low numbers, let's say below 4. Operating frequency choice can be affected differently by EMI, since a lot of EMI is narrow band (tight frequency range). Although Minelab won't say, many people have done spectral analysis which seems to indicate that multi-frequency transmits a low frequency (near 5 kHz) and a high frequency (upper 30's kHz) so if your EMI is being transmitted close to one of those then multi-frequency will be noisy whereas the right choice of single frequncies may be quiet. As usual, start with the settings you want but adjust as necessary. You mention ridiculously trashy parks. Are the trash targets aluminum, iron, hot rocks,...? My old parks have iron either because of razed buildings where they left lots of nails or because the land was previously used for agriculture or industry with associated structures, fencing, etc. My feeling is that iron is the worst, but aluminum (pull tabs, can slow, screw caps) can also be quite annoying in old picnic areas. Sometimes when the iron trash is bad it may help to run lower sensitivity as iron seems to get worse (relative to desirable targets getting better) with higher gain. We all want to go as deep as possible and sometimes it seems like a badge of machismo people flash when they say how high of gain/sensitivity they operate. But it's not a linear scale by any means (i.e. turning down sensitivity by a factor of two doesn't decrease the depth attainable by a factor of two) and sensitivity is one of those things that can be optimized for the site and the targets you seek.

Not a good time to lose your job. I feel especially bad for the White's employees. This in some ways is the tip of the iceberg -- a wave of things to come, maybe not in the detector manufacturing world, but what is their share of Gross Global Product (GGP)? And, yes, much bigger companies have already gone under the last few months. If you've been listening to economists this kind of thing shouldn't be a surprise. But it seems politicians are louder, bigger bullies -- another example of the squeeky wheel getting the grease = listening audience. By the same token, why would a solvent company want to take the risk of buying out a failing company in a market that is potentially soft industry (leisure activity being part but not all of the space, although most of White's?) in this depression? FT, Garrett -- they have their own detectors to sell. Intellectual Property could easily be an exception, I get that, but besides the Goldmaster 24K which has stiff competition anyway, who has been lining up to buy White's detectors lately? I still really like my TDI/SPP and especially my Bullseye TRX. Just hope they hang in their because if they go on the fritz there may not be a fix.... There are some cheery thread topics (e.g. the Fisher Impulse) here right now, but this sure isn't one of them.

I misunderstood your original excitement. I see now you really do want an imager. Here's quick-and-dirty Back-of-the-Envelope (BoE) approximation. The brochure (your link) has a table for the penetration depth in various materials which I reproduce here: Fortunately (according to a Google search) the specific gravity of dirt is around 2.65, which is quite close to pure aluminum at 2.7 with its common alloys typically 2.8 --> 3.0. Another nice thing is that with the energies of the X-rays in this device, materials made up of low atomic number elements, which Aluminum, Oxygen, and Silicon all qualify, as do plant matter constituents that might be in the dirt, other attenuation processes that depend upon more than just density aren't relevant. What I'm saying is that density alone is the dominant component of penetration depth. Unfortunately the table says only about half an inch penetration through aluminum so unless the soil is considerably less dense (in which case you can possibly find another match in the table) I don't think you can peer much deeper into the ground than 0.5 to 1 inch.

I scanned the brochure and it looks to be an X-Ray imager only -- that is, no spectroscopy to identify elemental composition.

I downloaded these photos from the site I posted above. First photo appears to have been taken at the hiding/recovery site: Second photo shows Forrest going through the chest recently (last week?): 3rd photo shows Forrest trying on a silver bracelet from the trove: Lots of talk in the commentary of the page I linked about things like sentimental meaning of the bracelet, meaning and condition of the key, "where are the jewels?", what the apparently rusty scissors was for, etc., etc. You can read all of that there. I started to but it's a long list of comments.

There is some speculation in the reader commentary page of where that photo was taken. Some say it looks like it could be in a bank's safe deposit area. That would indicate he flew to meet up with the finder and subsequently saw the treasure (when photos were taken). I have to run but when I get back in ~15 minutes I'll see if I can post those photos here.

Here's a webpage shown in the sidebar of the 'newspaper' article Mitchel posted. You can draw your own conclusions, of course, but it seems to be a pretty informed site with apparent input from Fenn himself. It's way more interesting than the article, IMO. No one will ever silence the conspiracy theorists. Do we really care what they think anyway? One interesting thing is that a go-fund-me page has been set up with a goal of half million dollars in the name of one of those who died. (That's from the article Mitchel linked.) It's getting there, all the way up to $315 (no, I didn't forget to add zeroes).

I wonder how far along First Texas is with the Gold variant. I suspect most of us would prefer it to be released fairly soon (say within a year) with the features and properties already in the works than have to wait an extra year for mods. All just WAGging. OTOH, it can't hurt to ask/request/beg(?). Fisher (both before and after First Texas acquired them) has created some detectors which not only rewrote the book but still are the book -- the Gold Bug II's performance on the tiny gold and the T2/F75 in the ergonomics' properties are a couple examples. If they give these new Impulses as much attention in the ergonomics aspect as they did the T2/F75, that would be well received, IMO. One improvement that, IMO, would enhance even the T2/F75 would be if the counterweight module could be user repositionable along the shaft. That would allow fine-tuning for different weight coils. To be clear, I'm not asking for the T2/F75 to be redesigned but rather to incorporate this adjustability to the Impulse. Then again, maybe Fisher has already thought of this. I think the same engineers who did the ergonomics for the T2/F75 still work there.... They already have that 'Oscar' in the trophy case but room for another!

Is the $500 pricetag (with options and accessories listed) for the VX3 or V3i? When I was watching Ebay prices (not in the last month, though) it was typical that the VX3 would sell about $200 less than the V3i. Some of that may have been provided accessories, but like used automobiles those things tend to get more stronly depreciated than the main unit, in my experience.

Might be worth doing an air test. If it's the ground that is preferentially favoring 5 kHz over Multi-frequency then that should disappear in air tests.

You mean like when someone mildly disagrees with something they've posted on this site? Unfortuntaely I have this weakness -- I'm sometimes wrong and when that happens I have both the wisdom the guts to apologize. Apparently I was wrong about the Tennessee statewide ban. I don't recall anyone speaking up contradicting that when it did come up previously, but I might have missed that part of the thread. It did (and still does) seem like one of those "something sounds fishy; better do some fact checking here". Sorry to all for propogating a false statement. Pretty sure the rest of what I said is true. If not, I don't have a problem with someone pointing out my errors in a civil manner. In fact I prefer it, but with that qualification of civility.

I think that map only refers to metal detecting in state parks -- at least that is what the heading/sentence directly above it seems to indicate. Again, I could be misinterpreting what 'state parks' mean. I've always used it in reference to parks that the state operates, not parks operated by other government agencies -- particularly municipalities.

Since there are now two Iron Bias scales (independent -- user gets to decide which one) it might help if you told us which you are referring to: FE or F2. I don't water hunt so my replies may not be relevant to what you are experiencing; thus I'll refrain. I will be posting soon what I've been finding by experimentation in the field, playing with the F2 settings. I may wait until I get more testing done, though. IMO it's a very confusing feature. I'll leave it at that.

🤣