GB_Amateur

Would you be willing to reveal your source(s), or are you claiming journalits's privilege? 😏

From your sidebar it doesn't appear as though you have a ground balancing PI. Got any friends you could borrow one from, or just bring them along and have them swing over it? I have a 6 kg non-magnetic rock from the California motherload that sounds good with my IB/VLF's but is silent on my White's TDI/SPP. (I've seen this same thing with another larger rock for the same area.) I think it contains a considerable graphite. An ohm-meter says it has extremely low resistance. But even if a PI doesn't sound off, I personally wouldn't conclude there is no gold present. Further investigation is warranted, IMO.

Erik, reading from a distance (literally thousands of miles 😁, but I mean figuratively), I see three possibilities: 1) you have a lemon set of bone phones; 2) regardless of the cause (e.g. your innocense 😉), you aren't configuring your setup as intended by XP; 3) these headphones don't work for someone with your hearing loss condition. My brother was born deaf. He could feel low frequency (sub-audio) vibrations, but that was the extent of it. To get his attention we would stomp a foot on a wooden floor. I don't ever remember him being able to use any electronic device to facilitate hearing. I recall when cochlear implants became available. He wasn't a candidate due to the fact that his particular situation couldn't be helped by it. I only bring this up because of the possibility that your condition is outside the realm of being accomodated by these bone phones. What I've related is my limited extent of knowledge and may not even be relevant for you. I hope you find a way of getting them to work for you.

7 silver coins in 2 days (and one is a quarter) -- I'd say that site has barely been detected, if at all. Well done and I predict there are more oldies there to recover. What's your Wheaties count? Have you checked date+mm of those? Are you discriminating out nickels? Surely some Wartime (35% silver) in there, too, not to mention the potential for a key or semi-key date.

The MInelab Vanquish is a related detector and an equal performer in most conditions (heavy mineralization being an exception, but that isn't common in the USA) and there are multiple models here within your budget.

I was thinking when I wrote my reply that you made a tongue-in-cheek / devil's advocate post. Even if that wasn't the case, if you just keep quiet you'll get the credit.

A similar argument has been made for grain-sized natural gold and USA coins, particularly (and close to my heart) USA 5 cent 'nickels'. Why do people fish if they are just going to throw it back if they even catch one? Why do people golf who have no chance of ever breaking 80 (or 90, or...)? Sometimes its about the challenge and (small, in the eyes of some) accomplishment. Now in my case, there's a juicy key date Jeffie or Buffie out there just waiting for me, so I'm swinging for the fences, not hitting for average. And I can even keep the undersized sunfish. 😄

Is the price increase worldwide or only in certain geographical markets? I don't know how much the exchange rate (e.g. AUD to USD) affects this, but I suspect it does sometimes. Competition has a way of impacting prices. Now that the Minelab has some serious competition in the multifrequency IB/VLF space, I wonder what effect that will have on prices.

I'm not an engineer but have worked with many (more the mechanical/civil/structural kind than the electronics ones). I've picked their brains over a few lunches, dinners, and beers. One of the things discussed is stress concentration (a term they shortened to 'stress con'). Further mentioned was that strengthening one part often transfers the weak point from one place to another rather than eliminating it. This can even cause "the cure to be worse than the disease". Has the Equinox coil ear breakage, which no one except Minelab knows how widespread, justified the concern of a spillover to its younger sibling, the Vanquish series? Have there been any reports of Vanquish coil ear breakage? Why would waiting for a problem to occur and fixing it then be such an issue? After 3+ years of use (so out of warranty), one of my coil ears broke at the hole. My repair was chronicled here on this site. Basically I used a thin layer of the very epoxy I linked earlier in this thread (steel impregnated JB-Weld) to attach a bakelite washer (packratted away since childhood) to the side of the coil ear. Now it works as well as it always did before the break.

Welcome, Andy! Those must have made your heart skip a few beats. Both found in the Eastern USA? I'd be interested in hearing more details, but I'm not trying to coerce the locations out of you. I always think of USA gold coins being found in the Western USA since typically people there, in the less-civilized areas anyway, were particularly drawn to precious metals and distrustful of fiat money, especially in paper form.

Yes, I thought about that after I got started, but since I spent ~10 days (~couple hours a day) on this study I just ran out of steam. 😁 More people have Equinox so I figured that was relevant. Also, there have been some (Steve H. being one) who argue that just because you have more bins doesn't mean you get higher resolution. Where the target falls on the scale may also make a bit of a difference although the ML Eqx and Fisher F75 have USA cents falling at about the same region on their full non-ferrous part of scale, so probably not a big deal there. There are probably other subtle differences which might show a bit of variation with this kind of test. But, yes, I was going to use the F75 to search for a difference between the 1% tin, 4% zinc of 1947-1961 and the 0% tin, 5% zinc of coins minted during and just after WWII and also the 1962-82 Memorials which also had no tin. If you recall there was no apparent dTID difference from WWII onward (using the Eqx). Is there something else that better resolution would reveal? Bottom line is that by the end of my study I needed the tables for other tasks!

With my ML Eqx 800 in my ground I typically can't tell the difference between a 95% copper Memorial cent and a clad dime. Maybe some detectors can.... As depth gets down to more than ~5 inches, the spread of dTID's for a single target gets larger. It stills tend to have a central value about where a similar shallow target would, but IMO it's a mistake to get too picky. Some people talk about trying to tell the difference between a clad dime and a silver dime by looking at the dTID. That may be easy to do on an air test at a few inches, but again, targets in the ground are in a different class. Now, for early Lincolns, IHP's, and Zincolns, similar issues apply. Sometimes (especially near the end of a detecting session when I'm getting tired) I will ignore shallow targets in this range figuring they are Zincolns. But in the long run I will get burned by that practice. I recall finding an IHP at 3 inches depth. I've found 2 inch deep silver dimes.

Well, it's not spherical so difficult for me to determine that by eye. More like an ellipsoid with axes: 17 mm, 13 mm, 6 mm. I'll let you do the math. 😁

Based upon the lack of complaints here regarding the Vanquish coils, I'd say the answer to the 'easily' qualifed question is 'no'. IMO it would be a mistake to do anything at least until the warranty has expired. Minelab may be lax in the durability of some of their products, but they sure seem to be great at honoring a warranty as long as the user has kept within the warranty limitations. I suspect epoxying a stiffener to a coil would void a warranty. As to whether they would choose to enforce that -- ?? But why chance it? As far as non-epoxied aftermarket 'stiffeners', AFAIK those are seat-of-the-pants (aka 'garage engineering') attempts to alleviate the problem of Equinox coil ear breakage. There is certainly some debate as to whether or not those even improve the situation. This may be the case of the faceoff between two common maxims: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the more homespun sounding If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 😄

I made a 1.23 g bead of this JB Weld product (which I think is what you are referring to -- links are always best for clarity). Note the packaging center wording "Steel Reinforced". It was attached to a thin wood 'wand'. I ran my Eqx 800 in Gold 1 w/11" coil, gain = 17, Recovery Speed = 5, Iron Bias F2 = 0. Rubbing on the bottom of the coil housing and out to about 1 cm from the sweetspot of the housing, the detector gave a loud response. The signal faded away about 2 cm (0.8 inch) from the bottom of the coil housing, over the sweetspot. I also used my strongest Neodymium super magnet to see if the bead was attracted to it. It was. Conductive and ferromagnetic material in the field of a coil will distort the field. (I looked for a good sketch that shows this but haven't been able to find it. Many sketches in books, etc. show no distortion, which is inaccurate.) However, my bead was considerably more than someone should use for a typical repair, and even it only distorts the field closeby. Thus I don't see it would be a concern as long as it doesn't move in relation to the coil. It is true that detectors in the past used (non-ferromagnetic?) stainless steel(?) screws to attach the coil to the shaft. AFAIK that practice ceased a long time ago (at least a couple decades??). Whether that change was based upon actual experimental evidence of performance loss/deficiency or was just an attempt to allay public perception, I have no idea. Others here likely know more about that.

You didn't mention sending it in for repair. (Uh, oh. I have a feeling you aren't going to be impressed with their webpage. Please go easy on them as they are all we've got left of White's, other than memories and whatever Garrett decides....) Carl (Geotech) would likely have some good answers for you. You could '@' him. Or maybe he'll see this post. It sounds like you have a lemon. It seems their quality control/assurance wasn't great, but maybe the problem didn't happen in post-assembly-line inspection. I'm one of the 'TRX lovers' but mine have never been this hot or this erratic. (I need to check which sensitivity setting I'm on.) If you can't get it repaired, at least you have spare parts for the other one. (Now I duck to avoid the "slings and arrows..." )

Nice report, and I'm looking forward to more to come. Doesn't the Deus I have some kind of magnetite indicator/measurement? Deus II also? If 'yes' to either, did you get a reading for that in your ground?

When I search for that, here is what comes up: Thus Amazon recommends two separate steps. (They aren't the be-all, end-all in electronics advice, I realize....)

That 3m product is $50 on Amazon. Can this be done in two steps? 1) clean/degrease, and 2) lubricate? How about this double whammy: https://www.amazon.com/CRC-Contact-Cleaner-Protectant-Aerosol/dp/B007I9Y200/ref=sr_1_4?crid=3OQTP82MXCTZG&keywords=contact+cleaner+and+lubricant&qid=1643940864&sprefix=contact+cleaner+and+lub%2Caps%2C102&sr=8-4 followed by another of your recommended products: https://www.amazon.com/CRC-Heavy-Duty-Silicone-Lubricant/dp/B0042NWOLY/ref=sr_1_2?crid=18XMC2UPJRVZF&keywords=crc+silicone+spray&qid=1643941138&sprefix=CRC+silicone+%2Caps%2C121&sr=8-2

I don't think we can get there here (it's an Australian brand/product). Is this pretty close?

Hold the phone! Did I just read that a guy who has pulled half of his 40-something hair out (seems to have grown back nicely, though, unless that's a dating site photo ) dealing with trans-Pacific (USA-->AUS-->NZ) shipping is recommending someone pay for the reverse direction headaches?

Rob has the NuggetFinder Advantage 6"x8" Sadie for $240 -- a coil Jeff mentioned above.

I would delete the seller who is asking that from your list of potential suppliers. I'm pretty sure the X-Terra 705 is discontinued but before that happened they were going for under $500 (with choice of 7.5 kHz round concentric or 19 kHz 5"x9" DD). Adding a second coil shouldn't cost an addition $300+. Caveat emptor. The ML X-Terra 705 has selectable frequency, but only by changing coils. As you can imagine that wasn't a popular feature, having to spend $150 and up for a new coil just to change frequency. Maybe that was cost-effective in 2010.... Back a few years ago (say 2015 when I got back into detecting), for a gold IB/VLF, Steve recommended three which he felt were more/less equal in strength for that task -- native gold detecting. Two of those three are ones you are considering (more accurately the highlighted the Fisher Gold Bug Pro as the F19 was just being released -- I think he later preferred the F19 because it came with his preferred size gold detecting coil -- 5"x10"). The third competitor was the Garrett AT/Gold. At that time all three were priced in the $800 ballpark. All three of those detectors will work reasonably well for general coin/relic/jewelry detecting on land. (The X-Terra 705 has more features than the Gold Bug family; I'm not sure where the AT/Gold falls in that area.) Ebay has the AT/Gold for around $550. Amazon has the TRP for $400. (Neither Ebay nor Amazon has a new X-Terra 705. But as I mentioned, Ebay had them a few months ago they were under $500. Did you look at what Steve H.'s database had the price for that??) I have both a Gold Bug Pro and an X-Terra 705. For coins (what I spend 95% of my detecting time searching for), they are about equal, IMO. I liked the multitones of the 705 but didn't like the iron wraparound at 3 kHz and 7.5 kHz. Note both are 10+ year old single frequency designs. You can get multifrequncy (three models of the ML Vanquish and the Garrett Apex) in the under $500 price range and even a waterproof single frequency (Nokta/Makro Simplex) for under $300. Is there a reason you've eliminated those from your list?

Lying implies intent to deceive, in my book anyway. Many people have a way of viewing the world through rose colored glasses. CEO's are human -- very human. Do company officers, when presented with more than one plausible explanation, choose the option that makes their company look better? Was he lying? Possibly, but IMO strong accusations require strong evidence. Is what he said accurate? Possibly. And that means what he said is possibly inaccurate. I'll rephrase my statement: Garrett likely knows more about what is going on inside Garrett than Minelab does. That is what my post meant, nothing more but certainly nothing less, either.

I'd rather hear what Garrett has to say about their own products than what Minelab has to say about Garrett's products. Fox reporting on the henhouse.... Today I suspect their focus is on a couple other companies. The narrative is likely going to be different at the next stockholders' meeting. So this Q&A session was from a year ago now? Hopefully that means there will be another one shortly.