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I'm a great fan of the 6000, because it has basically paid for itself. But I've also dug a wheelbarrow load of square nails, most of them at 10 to 15 inches. So, I agree with tboykin-iron discrimination would be a big improvement. Two days ago my brother got two nuggets with his Gold Bug 2 and me a sack full of nails and iron fragments. But I wonder if discrimination is even possible? An open spider web type coil to lighten the load would be good too. Leave the Bluetooth headphones alone as they are perfect. To think way outside the box, I need a tiny receiver in my detector to point me to my scoop that I keep losing all over the hills. I'll glue a transmitter chip to the scoop and swing this new detector feature around my back trail to find it.

My aging, arthritic hands made me decide to look for a reasonably-priced, slightly smaller, tough, stainless steel scoop for my beach detecting. My bigger scoop enticed me into digging up overly heavy scoops of wet sand, which wore out my hands (and back and shoulders) too quickly. I ended up getting a Quest Scoopal model, and it's been working well for me. It's available from many sources, but here's one with some details (at $100): https://detectors1.com/products/scoopal®-sand-scoop It comes without a handle (although it's often sold with an optional handle at higher price). I went to a hardware store and bought an oak shovel/pick handle for about $10-12, I think. I figured I'd try this wood handle first, then switch to something lighter weight later if necessary. I'm still using the wood, however. In my opinion, this combo is worth considering.

Doc, I knew you were criminologist, but I didn’t know the rest of that. Wow! Organizational Psychology is a very interesting subject. For all the larger companies I’ve worked for, the best ones were two that actually used contractors specializing in this to help with employee morale programs and they were pretty good. And as you know, those companies with owners and supervisors who don’t really care end up with very short employee recidivism, and end up with high training costs, lower employee productivity, etc. A close friend of our specializes in it also, and she’s very busy in the bay area with many corporate clients. You were absolutely spot on with the Gspot scoop. It does speed up sorting out the waste from the heavies, particularly all that time wasting lead! At least with iron one can take it out quickly with a magnet, but man I hate lead, as do every other prospector out there. The scoop was a great idea. As for the Dalas project though, I’m sorry that I have to report that I still haven’t any idea how pizza and a paddle have to do with prospecting but I’m sure it will be a good one for the unveiling! 😄

GotAU, Yes I developed the Phase II Profile Work Ethics Profile in 1977. It had patents in the U.S. and in Canada. I still have over 880 clients that use my profiles around the world. As you probably know I have a Ph.D. in Criminal Psychology with a minor in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. I have developed other profiles that are widely used as well. I have one client who used over 26,000 of my Sales Success Profiles last year. They have been a client for over 20 years. In fact my average client has been using my employment tests for 23 years. You didn't really think I make money selling metal detecting accessories do you? LOL I have a nice income from my testing business. It's all intellectual property with proprietary scoring algorithms based on statistics gathered from literally millions of tests. My profiles are very unique because the scoring algorithms are based on Validity and Reliability. Unlike typical tests where there are right and wrong answers. My algorithms are based on how valid and how reliable each question is at predicting whatever behavior you are trying to measure. So each question is weighted differently. In fact some answers give you points, and some answers take points away based on how valid and reliable they are. So one answer may give you 1.83 points, another may deduct 2.17 points. Validity refers to how valid a question is in predicting what you are trying to measure. Reliability refers to how consistently that question predicts whatever behavior it is you are trying to measure. So lets take this question for example. I have murdered someone in cold blood. TRUE or FALSE. If someone answers that question TRUE, it is 100% statistically valid in predicting whether someone is a murderer. (Maybe less if someone is just jerking the test around.) If they answer FALSE, the validity sucks because killers will lie. Now as far as Reliability goes, TRUE answers are always reliable, everyone who answers TRUE in all likelihood is a killer, or they are stupid and can't read. So reliably people who answer TRUE are killers, but reliability refers to if they take the same test a year later, will they still answer TRUE? In other words reliability refers to how consistently the same person would answer that question over time. Interesting note: The Phase II Profile, (Work Ethics General Honesty) is scored on a basis of 200 points. 148 and above is acceptable. 139 to 147 is questionable. Below 139 unacceptable. We gave the test to 60 some convicted felons involved in some crime involving theft. Armed robbery, grand larceny, embezzlement, car theft, etc. We told them if they could pass with at least a 139 we would add $25 to their commissary account. We told them to do the best they could but remember there is a "FAKED GOOD" scale which will invalidate the test if the test senses they are lying to make themselves look good. A FAKED GOOD score of 8 or less on a 10 point scale automatically fails them. NOT ONE, was able to pass, and the average score was -14. MINUS 14! With that income from my test business I am able to develop new and exciting metal detecting accessories. It's sort of my hobby. I love inventing things. I just had no idea so many customers would love the things I invent. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. So, doing patents is a very expensive process. AND, it's almost senseless. All someone has to do is change some aspect of what you invented and the $25,000 you spent on your patent is useless. OR they claim they reverse engineered it. "Patent Applied" for means nothing. In order for you to prosecute the patent and answer all of the questions and challenges from the patent office is exhausting and costly. My tact is to create something very unique and well thought out. Spare no expense in development and have it manufactured in the tens of thousands, to get the price down so low, there is no incentive for someone to rip me off. And if they do, it's never as good. Also I do not use "off the shelf" stuff to try and Jerry Rig some new product. If it's worth doing it's worth doing right and having it made from scratch to my exact specifications so there is no compromising on quality. I do think 3D printing has been a great advancement for the inventor because now they can actually create new and innovative customized things and make their ideas come to life. Look at the support ears for the Equinox Coils. Great idea that helped many folks prevent the coil ears from breaking or repairing ears that had already broke. That's why I own over 3 freaking miles of bungee. Because I wanted it to my exact specifications and 3 miles was the minimum order for customized Bungee with 50% stretch UV Dacron Polyester sheath. I created the GSpot scoop which has been wildly popular and successful. $14.95. Sona, a Chinese company that manufactures very inexpensive gold prospecting equipment, decided to come out with their version, retail $14. See pictures. The SONA Scoop is great if you like to fill the riffles up with small rocks and debris and spend your time digging out the crud. This is what happens when someone who is not a prospector tries to rip off a great idea but does it so poorly, that it increases your sales. THE TYPE OF PIZZA IS AMAZING! While the DALAS™ is AMAZING that is not what the clue PIZZA refers to. Sorry for the long run on, but this is how my mind works, a million miles a second going in 40 different directions all at once. Doc

Yes... Chuck has confirmed he is getting back into the scoop business. From Chuck (Owl Engineering) himself on a different forum... "I am back with what I think is THE game changer of them all. My proto-types are done and will be testing them in Brasil starting next week. I expect the reveal to be this July or August."

Like an old western star ! Slim Pickins I got a couple rings of bling this week + some green crusted wheaties , a fist full of clad , and pull tabs , lots of pull tabs since I found out a 1/10th oz coin of AU is the same ID # LOL ,,,,some day , when I least expect it , I guess. There sure are a lot of them here so the ratio is building fast . I l start skipping them by quitting time. Speaking for myself and my elbows we miss the beach ( being a son of the) and I managed to miss the week+ of negative low tides , in the day time even for some of them . However it looks like I'll be going to one of the biggest ones saturday , the 11am tide will be -.3 , not the -1.7 it was a couple days ago though. Gotta wake my scoop up from hibernation..

September 4 2002 Part Two Did I Do That? The mining didn’t last long. When Conor went to place the first scoop of gravel on the grizzly hopper he came down too quickly and smashed not only the grizzly but also the hopper and the top of the tom. We were done before we started. I let out a long string of curse words I won’t write here in the journal and Conor had a sheepish look on his face. Clay was going to think he was working with goofballs. Before I could get over to the tom Conor attempted to back the skid steer up but the bucket was caught up on the hopper which caught the tom and the entire wash plant got dragged across the ground. I hollered for Conor to stop but it was too late. The top half of the tom was destroyed. I screamed for Conor to shut down the skid steer which he eventually did. I turned and walked away to take a seat on a nearby log. Everything would need to be rebuilt. I was thinking “What next” to myself. I needed to calm down before talking with Conor. TO BE CONTINUED .............

September 4 2002 Part One Mining Again When I got up this morning Clay was still sitting in his chair and the campfire was smoldering. He was sound asleep and I counted 13 beer bottles laying near his camp chair. I got some coffee going and Jacob and Conor came out to have a cup and eat some breakfast. I woke Clay up and he looked mighty rough. He said that was just a normal night for him and he'd be ready to haul gravel when we were ready. I handed him a cup of hot coffee which he downed and he poured himself another. We all had bacon, eggs, and biscuits. The sun was up now and we all got ready for the day ahead. Clay fired up the Mack and let it idle for a spell. I drove Jacob up to the dig site and he got the excavator started. I came back down and jumped in the Mack with Clay. We drove up to the dig site slowly as he checked out the haul road. He gave it his stamp of approval and I walked back down the road and back over to camp. Conor and I set up the longtom about 100 feet from the creek. We had decided to go ahead and run gravel with the tom until we got the trommel back from town. We could stockpile as well as run the tom. The run rate on the tom was somewhere around 5 to 7 yards an hour. We could at least make a little gold and stockpile the extra gravel. It wasn’t too long before I heard the Mack coming down the mountain. Clay brought the load over to where we were standing and I showed him where to dump it. He pulled away and Conor used the skid steer to scoop gravel and feed the grizzly hopper. We were mining again and it felt good. TO BE CONTINUED ................

The 900 is controversial. I have both the 800 and the 900 and feel way more confident in the 800. So depending on the mineralization of that area, I would recommend the 800. It is an excellent detector for gold and, of course, general use. The water proofing should suit your needs and there is a wide section of coils. While a new one is already less expensive than a 900, you also may be able to scoop a quality used one and have even more money left over for coils.

Yep thats me too. I dropped the larger pick a few years ago and now detect with the small pick hanging thru a tool belt pouch belted around the waist. If I need the larger pick, will just walk back and get it. I havent had to do that yet ha ha. The tool pouch is awesome as it has a slot for the pick to slide into, a spot for the scoop and 2 pouches for GPS, gold jar etc.

I hear ya buddy! I'm detecting stuff so small at the beach with the 11" that I can't find it. Keeps falling through the scoop holes, so I narrow the target down to a small handful of sand out of my scoop and I still can't find it. Time to start carrying a pinpointer I guess, but if it's that small, it's not the jewelry I'm looking for anyway.

Steve’s and others carrying their picks are good ideas and I do too when traversing hills- I also sometimes use mine when climbing up a slick dirt hill to help pull myself up, but I usually holster it when walking flats while not detecting. To carry it, I use a $10 Harbor Freight holster because it has a couple extra smaller tool holders on it that I use for my pin pointer and my scoop. I also attach the connector end of two retractable key reels to it to attach to the pin pointer and scoop - keeps me from losing them and even pulls them back up if I don’t holster them.

In my opinion you need the best metal for the job, I go to stony beaches and beaches where the sand is like powder, this is a tough one. Titanium is strong and light but you will damage it lifting rocks or scooping in stones, so I bite the bullet if you will on the days when I go to a local stony beach, and I bring both when I travel to beaches in the summer with my RV. Nothing better than a huge white sand beach with a titanium scoop. It just makes the day better. I'm not sure how good the Carbon Fiber handles are at the bigger stores, both my scoop handles come from Steve's Detector Rods, his are slightly heavier but I have confidence they won't break. He took great pains to tell me why it would cost a fortune to get a really long one. I think his are in the 40s, I wanted one that was 52" or longer. Why is a longer shaft necessary? Buoyancy works against you when over 50% of your body is in water. It also helps to stabilize when you are getting hit by waves. It might help save you if you get caught in a rip 🤔 Also consider a Raptor handle to put at the balance point, it may save your back in heavy mud: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01MT248MD They are very tough.

There is actually something satisfying about recovering an incredibly tiny bit of gold, kind of a "I can't believe I found something that small" sort of thing. It does take some proficiency to be good at it. Efficiency of recovery with a scoop is as important as the finding - many people leave little bits after they find them because they can't find them! "It's not worth it" really means "I've been trying to find that bit for ten minutes now - I give up!" It is not worth ten minutes but if you get it down to a minute now we are talking. There are 480 grains per Troy ounce and at US$2082.00 right now that is $4.38 gold. If you are hot you can hit gold to 1/10th grain (0.0064 gram) and even 1/10th grain is worth almost a half dollar. Would you leave a half dollar lay if you saw one? No? Me either. Some Gold Bug 2 gold 28 little guys. The largest bit, in the lower right hand corner, weighs 6 grains. The smallest is about 1/10th grain. The total weight is 41.7 grains, or 2.7 grams.

Big or little…they all go in the Poke! Now, I have left tiny targets that I can’t fish out knowing that it’s Gold to find the next. The GB2 is an amazing VLF and Robin and I have been more than fortunate to have found a few places that you can sit down and just toss your scoop full of multi targets into a 5 Gallon Bucket to pan out later! Here is a photo of my GPX 4000 vs Robin using a GB2 for 2 1/2 days. Them little nuggets are important they fill in the spots between the big nuggets in your poke! Love them all Big or Small. LuckyLundy

I see that @BeachHunter is also in SoCal. Looking forward to some great tips. What gauge scoop works best in our type of beach sand?

The Axiom seems really good, and now with the new lower price in Australia it's becoming increasingly a viable choice. I quite like comparison videos although they rarely end up being similar results to the ones I get due to my milder soils. They still give a bit of an understanding of how things are going. Something I find meaningful is when they're just waving the littlest nuggets over the coil, the process you would do when you're recovering a target, it can be very telling then how well the detector is performing on small nuggets, you can see in some videos they're saying its hitting it well yet they have to really rub their scoop on the coil to get a response, so easy to throw the gold away in that scenario if it's not on the bottom of the soil pile, others they don't even need the scoop to come close to the coil on the same nugget to get a good response, that's what I like in a detector.

i split my time between local beaches and parks. If beach detecting is your gig. I'd lean towards a SMF (simultaneous multi-frequency) metal detector. You mentioned the Deus II, but there's also the Minelab machines (Equinox, Vanquish & Manticore) and the Nokta Makro line. Minelab, Deus and Nokta Makro dominate the market for SMF machines, but are not the only ones. Single frequency detectors can be noisy and inconsistent on the wet sand, but some (like my Tarsacci) will work. Do your homework. The next most important tool would be your scoop. Don't skimp here. Get a strong (but lightweight) scoop. Xtreme, and T-Rex are some of the most mentioned names, but there are more. Carbon fiber shafts lighten the load-if you can afford it. As far as pin pointers are concerned, I don't use 'em at the beach (I just move the sand around with my foot until I isolate the target), but I know some that do. Finally, you should buy a finds pouch. I use a waist belt pouch that is big enough for trash and treasure. Good luck!

I had a stainless scoop on a wooden shovel handle for years. Finally caved in and bought a CKG titanium with one piece carbon fiber handle for just over $300 about a year ago. I see now the price has creeped up a little to $245 for the scoop and around $85 for the handle so $330 for both.....still cheaper than an Extreme by a long shot. I hunt sandy beaches with no stones. Scoop looks good as new after a year of hunting 1-2 times a week 6 hours or so per hunt. I should have pulled the trigger years ago....what a difference in weight. Get the one piece handle unless the travel two piece is absolutely necessary. One piece will always be stronger. I would shy away from the cheaper Dune scoops. A guy I watch on youtube had stress fractures on his after only a short time. Here's the link....CKG Scoops

Sorry for the late update and thanks for everybody's input. I purchased a Pelican 1615 case for my Detector coils and shafts, scoop, scoop handles snorkeling gear everything fit perfectly in it. This case will last and be used for a long time. Hawaiian Airlines does not allow any lithium Ion Battery's in checked baggage, none , noway, nada. Sucked pulling the head out on my EQ 800 and putting it in my back pack, with the shaft attached. Couldn't unscrew it in a timely manner while in line with the allen wrench. I know somebody said put it in my back pack, I can hear you laughing at my pain. It worked though. First day was raining and windy, and the surf was really choppy, so were day 2, 3, and 4. Day 5, I was able to put one good day in and parts of day 6. I found a silver earring with a fake turquoise stone, and a penny. The water and the beach were warm and I just had to work with the chop and get some OJT. This is my very first time detecting in water and in the surf. What an experience! Cleaned and rinsed all my gear up at the rinse station. Packed it away. I went to go use my 800 yesterday and it was singing and pinging, it just wouldn't settle down. then I notice water behind the screen. So here starts another saga. Sending it to Minelab tomorrow. Oh Steve H, the Service Center Phone numbers you have somewhere on this site, in another post are Golden. Thanks!

Hello all, going to Hawaii for vacation. I Want to take my Equinox 800, need a collapsible shaft or purchase a 900? . What's a really nice durable scoop to travel with and be able to put in my luggage? We typically take carry-on luggage. How do the hotels feel about metal detectorists on their beaches? Any other advice regarding airlines, laws, etc. will be greatly appreciated.

Panama City Beach can get extremely busy during season. The roads are stand still, hour plus waits for food, beaches are jammed. Cameras tucked into bikinis, no limit to body art. And before the crowds come in the morning and after they leave is the time for hunting. Sometime after Labor Day things start thinning out. They say November could be the best month to clean up. BUT, it's not November it's January, it's sanded in and unseasonably cold. On top of that when I arrived, too rough to wade. So here I was looking like a nimrod, pushing my Tar up the surf zone. Must've been only a hour or so, 4 tent pegs and a pull tab, hunting in AM. I heard a very faint tone, different from what I've been hearing. I'd taken a couple steps before it registered that I better check this out. Back tracking a bit, I found it just where the Surf crests. As soon as the turmoil recided I plunged my scoop in to the hilt. Nothing, but the distant target still buried in the hole. The hole itself filled back up by the following wave. Finally after several scoops , I spotted the target as it surfaced still in the hole. A mad dash of the scoop and the prize was mine. Just a quarter, green and crusty with sand not even all that old but. That old feeling came back, not just a quarter but a hard fought for Treasure. Turned out, it was the best find from a dismal lot. So, as the song goes "The Road goes on Forever and the Party never ends"

I have been 5 or 6 beach hunts of about 6 hours each with the 15" and love it both in the water and sand hunting. I can't offer any reason not to buy it, so go spend your money. Ha! I have not done any direct depth comparison in-ground tests with the 11" and 15" side by side at the beach to comment on how much deeper it is if any. I do know I'm pulling dimes VERY deep with the back side of my scoop 6" deep in the hole below the sand's surface on several occasions. The need for more depth is kinda nullified in the water at my sugar sand beaches because once you hit a certain depth, the sand keeps falling back into the hole and you'll have a heart attack trying to dig any deeper. Near impossible. It's easy to loose a target due to it falling deeper as you dig if you miss it the first couple scoops. But the 15" is staying on my detector, no doubt. Both in the water and out. I love the extra coverage per swing.

Happened to me yesterday. I just keep my cover on and dump some water over it with my scoop. Goes away quickly.

I have been running two of these for over 20 years. RTG PRO ALUMINUM 6" WATER SCOOP with SS Tip (#RTGBB6tip) Light but tough with the stainless tip. Aluminum is easy to weld and repair if you have issues.