tboykin

I appreciate it. I think having a less risky purchasing decision (sub $300 machine) is the way to go to get those people interested. Hard to justify spending $800 to try something out when many people under 35 are spending half their pay on housing...

Yep!

For YOU it is not a good machine. Everyone is entitled to their opinions! A simple YouTube search will show what others think of the MX Sport, and their incredible finds. Sometimes you just don't connect with a machine, that doesn't make it bad. For example - the XP "Deuce" is a fine detector... I just can't stand how it sounds! My opinion but hardly gospel. Also, try setting the Reject Volume at 40 for your alloy military buttons, or opening up your Disc mask to about -40. It should help a great deal. But still, it just might be too much raw horsepower for some. Try lowering the Recovery Delay down to about 30 (might have to play with this) and go into the Expert Menu to adjust the tones how you like them. You can assign any VDI to a tone. For a four tone mode emulation on the MX Sport you can put VDI's in certain buckets on your V3i. Bonus is YOU decide which ones. Takes time but can really help if your ears are setup like mine. I don't think the V3i will ever feel as fast as the MX Sport. The V is a beast of a machine, but the Sport just has a zip that most other detectors don't have. The AT Pro comes close and the "Deuce" is right up there too. But the V3i has strengths in other areas - saltwater, iron ID, and pure flexibility to setup however a user wants.

That was a while back, we've been trying to encourage our dealers to be active online for the past several years. Just to be clear, this wasn't meant to be a "help White's sell more detectors" thread, that's on me, not you guys (though I appreciate the good intentions)! It was a more high-level view of the hobby and it's slow decline in the US. There are other countries where hobby detecting is growing at a fast rate (China, Peru, Mexico, etc) and then of course gold booms and busts all over the world. Here's our channel right now, which I would say is indicative of the metal detecting hobby overall based on my travels and interactions with hobbyists across the US. Like golf, it's an older, whiter guy's hobby. Our field team is all over the map, from 26 to 50something, so we have a good spread to cover these bases.

They do their best but many of them are opposed to having any kind of online presence. So I think it's hard for them with the changing market. But some of them do alright without even knowing what Facebook is. Still, I wonder how much BETTER they'd do if they bit the bullet and learned how to use the technology at hand to increase their reach. Old dog, new tricks... Thanks to everyone for adding to the discussion. I'm starting to see that the generational differences play a huge role in the changes we are seeing to metal detecting. There's a whole new crop of hobbyists who spend a lot of time on social media and sharing is a huge aspect to them. They may not be in a detecting club or do much face to face sharing, but you can be assured their finds will show up on Facebook and get a ton of engagement from people all over the world. The interesting thing to me is how little cross over there is to forums like this. The younger set tends to stay away from internet forums. Well, they might read them, but they are not as active as the older guys.

I grew up hunting, fishing, camping, wheeling. It seems like the generation that is growing up with constant access to technology is less interested in the real world, but maybe that's just me. I would guess it's because the internet offers an instant (but I would say hollow) gratification - boom, you're connected. But hunting, fishing, detecting - those all take WORK to get something out of. Same thing with building something out of wood with your own hands. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I do think it's worth trying to get younger people outside but it's tough... Kinda like detecting itself sometimes.

Something I've been thinking about is "growing the hobby." It's kind of a tricky thing. For detector manufacturers to survive, there is a need to expand the reach and interest in metal detecting as a hobby. But, the catch 21 is that there are less and less relics and old coins to dig each year. The more people get into detecting, the less old stuff we find. And the finds are what get people into detecting in my experience. It's a lot harder to get excited about finding 37 cents at a park than it is to find a trime or a colonial buckle. In talking to old timers, the "good ole days" seemed to be the 70's, 80's and early 90's - when silver was easier to find and every site wasn't pounded to death. That's why making detectors that out-perform current machines is so important. A deeper, better discriminating machine can breathe new life into old spots, which is what most manufacturers should be working on. What do you think about introducing the hobby to new generations? Would you prefer it stay an "old guy hobby," or would you like to see the younger crowd pick up where you leave off? How do we deal with the fact that each day, there is less treasure (including nuggets) to find?

We taking bets?

Thanks you guys for all the feedback and votes. Asking.... for a friend!

I like this idea.

Ditto on headphones in snake country. If you are not aware of your surroundings (no matter which sense) you are setting yourself up for a bad time out detecting. This is coming from someone who has had several close calls with rattlers and one with a very curious cougar!

Good input! I think vibration could be a more nuanced sensory input than lights. The strength and frequency of the vibration could match the VCO audio of a gold detector. So the ZIP ZIP you get from a GMT could be felt as a very short, strong shake in the palm of your hand. Whereas an iron response could be a broken vibration with a hole in the middle. Just a thought!

Same here. But I have heard from hearing impaired customers that really have it rough. A vibration function is very useful for them, and I wonder if it might be for me too.

How many of you are "beepers" vs. "peepers"?

Before my days in metal detecting I had the pleasure of working on this TV show. Really cool, and actually sparked my interest in the hobby. I've never hunted meteorites - maybe someday I will find one by accident. Guess I will have to "dig it all" to make that happen!

Taken care of!

Strider55 - please PM me.

Issue 3 has a very special article by a famous prospector who may or may not run an internet forum! Thank you Steve for the writeup and all you do for the hobby.

Tough choice which sub-forum this goes. Technically the eggs have coins inside, so this one seems good. White's has expanded its Easter Egg Hunt this year to cover more ground. Top prize is an MX Sport. Rules and map here - contest is USA only! https://www.whiteselectronics.com/whites-easter-egg-hunt-2017/

Well I know what I'm doing this weekend... So much for fishing.

Got back from DIV and found my first ever Civil War relics with the MX Sport and a modified TDI SL! I will try to answer some of these questions, you didn't ask me what kind of ice-cream I like or what size shoe I wear so it's not too personal. I do a lot more than media at White's. I am not sure there is a title that would cover everything. But I am involved with product development, marketing, advertising, sales, and customer service. Do a little bit of everything. I've been here at the company for just over a year but am trying to make the absolute biggest impact I can every day. I try hard and take risks, and also make mistakes. But I do a little bit better every day. I have been detecting seriously for about 2-3 years. I enjoy hunting ghost towns in NV, gold prospecting (still yet to find a nice nugget though), and relic hunting. I started out coin hunting in parks but that is pretty boring now. Maybe that will change when I find a nice 24k ring... There are many issues that face all manufacturers. The decline of the U.S. hobby market is interesting... I would posit that it is due to stagnation in technology as much as rising regulations and a smartphone-oriented culture. Today's machines go a tiny bit deeper than the old ones but it is till just rehashing. Moving around options and calling it a new detector. All manufacturers are guilty of this! *Note - Sometimes I will post opinions or thoughts that may not reflect the official company policy of White's, but that is because I am an individual and enjoy discussion. It also helps me do my job better since I can figure out what machine you guys would like to see next. I will not profess to be smarter than anyone else in this world - I have a lifetime of learning ahead of me. But I try to make up for that with hard work and lots of listening. I do get a lot of heat from people for my lack of experience, but it's kind of like buying a used car - "it's the miles, not the years." What I have learned in the past year would have taken me 15 years if I did not work for White's Electronics. This board has helped too!

The big knock on the V3i is that it has a big learning curve. Some people just want to turn on the machine and find stuff. It's possible to have an extreme performing detector without requiring an engineering degree to know how to run it. Just my 2c. FWIW I run a V3i when I am at the beach, all other times it's the MXS or machines that aren't on the market.

Thanks Chuck, I will shoot you straight when we have a new product. For now there are a lot of options on the market to choose from. They all do about the same things so the choice can be hard to make.

Can't talk about current projects, but I will say that the company's focus should make members of this forum happy.

Thank you guys for all of the feedback. I always feel bad digging a big ole plug in parks. I will try and work on my screwdriver skills.