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I am un able to post or reply in Rocks, Minerals, Gems & Geology. Is this sub forum locked to new users just like the classified forum is?

New Member Signup - Click Here! Lost Password - Click Here! Forum Tips & Tricks Advanced Search Tag List/Index Welcome to the DetectorProspector forums! These forums are normally "on topic" only. This forum is the one exception in that it has no real topic except getting to know other people. That being the case you can discuss pretty much anything here but the overriding rules apply more than ever. There is to be no posting of anything that is going to be disruptive (no trolling). While visiting this forum please act as if you are visiting my home. Treat others with decency and respect. Politics is not strictly prohibited but limit it to items of concern such as public meeting notices, comment periods, etc. Other than that, stay away from the heated political stuff. No detector wars - every detector serves a purpose for somebody. For general editorial purposes this forum is treated as if it is a magazine. To reiterate - the Prime Directive on all these forums is decency and respect. If you can't comport yourself like a decent adult, I promise you will not last long on these forums. The main goal of the forum is to share information. If you see something interesting on another forum or anywhere else, please link to it. Mention any brands you like. A note about the Google Ads - I know we all hate ads but they pay for the website. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All I can do is to promise not to go overboard with them. Special Note To Dealers - Dealers are welcome here, with minimal guidelines. Please read My Policy Regarding Dealers If you have problems logging in or any other issues while on the forum contact the Forum Staff. Information on other general forum use and features can be found here. Steve Herschbach

This is a Garrett metal detector forum and specifically the Garrett Vortex forum. It is for people who like and appreciate the Garrett brand, and who want a place to discuss their favored brand and specifically the Vortex models without getting trashed by fans of other brands. It's not that you can't comment any way you like, but have some sense about what is appropriate and post in the right place. To compare this brand to that brand, go on a rant about the Vortex if you want, you need to be posting on Metal Detector Advice & Comparisons Forum. People on this forum want to discuss the Vortex and learn about it, how to get the best out of it, tips and tricks, etc. Let them do so in peace. If you drop into their thread with negative commentary about how something else is better, expect your comment to be moved or deleted. To be clear, this forum is also not a place for bashing Garrett’s competition. If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it here. The idea is to talk about things you like, not things you do not like. Again, the Comparisons Forum linked to above is the more appropriate location if that is your desire.. Don't be a troll, and do not feed the trolls. If you see trolling behavior here do not engage, report it, and let the mods take care of it. Thanks! Having a Vortex in hand and knowing what I know now this might be a fun thing for people with the right attitude. The Vortex is a near infinite sandbox for an engineer. The detector will never be finished per se, because feedback from users will be critical in defining if there are bugs that need fixing, and more importantly, what general free updates or full blown paid upgrades would be desirable. People who get on board with the process with genuine helpful feedback will be influential in driving the platform forward over the coming years. The Negative Nellie’s and those who like to cast firebombs for eyeballs, not so much. I’ve created the Garrett Vortex Forum as a place where like-minded individuals can discuss the platform in a positive fashion, with the promise that it will be seen by the people that matter. People who just want to complain or generally rain on the parade will be excluded. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in, come join the fun! Essential Threads About The Garrett Vortex Garrett Vortex metal detector - new for 2024

The forum had a database meltdown that required loading a backup from 3/30/2024. All posts since them are gone, and all members who signed up after that date will have to register again. I can understand why you might not want to but this is my first forum failure since 1998, so maybe give it another try. We had lost the years of accumulated post "likes" and the good news is those have been restored. Knowing which posts got the most attention over the years was very valuable in zeroing in on the best information. I have upgraded the database software to the latest version and turned off all the third party plugins that were running in hopes of avoiding another meltdown. Work to stabilize and optimize the forum for better stability will be ongoing on a daily basis the next couple weeks. One plugin in particular formatted the thread titles so each word had the first letter in caps. It looked nice I think, but it was out of date and unsupported. So I shut it off and thread titles will be whatever people put in them. Might look messier but I want to get the forum as close to vanilla operation as possible. There was a plugin for "Member since" under your avatar and one that allowed me to bump topics - both gone for the same reason. We are now just running plain vanilla Invision in the hope that it wil prevent whatever caused the previous database corruption to occur. Main lesson learned is I will be implementing automatic database backups to replace my haphazard and ultimately lax manual backups. No more rolling back two months if another meltdown occurs. I apologize to everyone who had posts go away, and members who have to register again. Thanks for your patience and for supporting the forum. Steve Herschbach P.S. Just before this happened the forum went to not allowing user name for login since everyone can see what your user name is. It got set to require your email on file and password to login. I have reverted this temporarily to allow login with user name, but do update your email on file and start using that to log in. If you made that change in the last couple months you need to do so again. Also, if you have Newsletters turned off under notification settings I can't email you. I sent everyone an email for like the second time ever, and 28% of people had it shut off. Just saying. I won't send you anything ever unless it's super important, I promise.

The Classifieds ad forum is provided as a free service for active, involved forum members. It’s a reward for being a contributing member. Exceptions are not made to this policy. Ads may not be placed on the forums but only here in the Classifieds. New members will have to have made at least ten posts over a minimum of a 30 day period on the forums before being allowed to post in the Classifieds. Making worthless posts to run up the number does not count. Steve Herschbach is not responsible for issues resulting from the use of the Classifieds forum. As always, buyer beware! In general ads are good for 30 days after the last post, and may be deleted after that. No negative comments. If you see an issue, contact the seller or a moderator via pm. Notify everyone when the item has been sold. Use the edit function to modify the original post to do so or add a post saying the item has been sold. Protect yourself. Be careful about giving any sensitive information to prospective buyers. Advertising deemed inappropriate or out of place for any reason may be deleted without warning. The standard Forum Terms of Use apply. Dealers are welcome as long as the items advertised are somehow involved in products related to the prospecting and metal detecting world. Dealers must identify themselves as such. I ask that dealer ads be limited to genuine special deals like closeouts and used detectors. See my general policy regarding dealers for details. 2/17/19 update - Dealers may have no more than three ads at any one time, and ads not updated before they drift off the first page may be removed at my discretion. The Classifieds is designed to protect you from unwelcome contact. Only full forum members can contact you via PM (Personal Messaging). This does mean if you want people who are not forum members to be able to contact you that you need to put that information in your ad. Be as descriptive as possible and always try to include clear pictures of clean items. Many ads are ruined by blurry pictures or not taking the time to clean items before sale. Be sure to make note of any remaining transferable warranty. Review your ad one last time after you place it to be sure everything is accurate. You have the ability to edit it at any time. Go to your ad and at bottom next to quote button hit edit You should be able to edit everything there, including the title. The Tag selection lets you put For Sale, Wanted, and other mini banners on your ad. Put up a SOLD! banner when your item sells or ends and the ad will be deleted within a couple days. Ads by non-dealers may be deleted by the admin after 30 days if no attempt is made to update them or otherwise indicate they are still active. In order to not have to check back to see if somebody has posted in response to your ad, be sure and check the slider control in lower left "Notify me of replies" . You will be sent a message notifying you of any responses. A big tool for sellers is the eBay sold listings. Go to eBay and search for what you plan on selling. Then click the "used" box on left. Then click the "sold listings" box. Now you can see all similar items that sold recently and what they sold for, giving you a realistic way of checking current market value. Oddball items unfortunately may not have enough sales volume to get help this way. A note about the Google Ads - I know we all hate ads but they pay for the website. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All I can do is to promise not to go overboard with them. New Member Signup - Click Here! Lost Password - Click Here! Forum Tips & Tricks Advanced Search Tag List/Index

There have been too many people dropping in and posting too many photos of common rocks, a bucket full sometime, and expecting them to get identified. The photos eat up server space and far too often the posters never return. Just post and gone, not even a thank you most of the time. They are not really joining the forum or contributing to help anyone in the way they expect to be helped. In other words, all take, no give. That being the case effective immediately only Full Members may post on this forum. Just like the Classifieds it is a benefit for Full Members who may need help with rock and mineral identification. You’ve earned it by being a participating forum member. Anyone joining and posting a pile of rocks on some other forum here to circumvent this restriction will at the least have the post deleted and probably get banned. In other words, don’t join the forum just to post here unless you are planning on being a contributing member for some time. Reaching Full Member status requires at least 10 posts spaced over a span of a month or more to be considered legit.

I think this one will get busy so here you go: https://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/68-garrett-vortex-forum/

I should have done this one sooner. Six pages of posts need moving, tedious at best, and in fact I'm still working on it. But thought I may as well point you at the new forum now. Enjoy! https://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/67-garrett-axiom-forum/

I once hoped this forum would recapture some of the magic of the old days at the Alaska Gold Forum. It is obvious now that is not to be, with almost no posts here anymore about gold dredging. It makes sense as I gave that up in favor of metal detecting myself over 25 years ago, and without me driving discussion about dredging here the idea was doomed to failure. By and large the main posting action on these forums is about metal detecting. I got curious where if anywhere the dredgers ended up at, and a brief search of Google results has me thinking the TreasureNet Dredging & Hi Banking Forum is now the place to be if you have an interest in the subject. Looks like lots of good posters and posts there. Not much has changed in the dredging world from what I can see except the dubious fascination with whiz bang magical mats. I doubt anything will change here as regards gold dredging so best bet for those interested will be to head where the action is, and as far as I can tell TreasureNet is the only place getting any substantial number of new posts on the subject on a regular basis.

Many of us know about the present forum problems and hope Steve finds an easy fix. It has already taken too much of his time. We'd like to think our posts and this forum are going to be around forever but we know that is not the case. This is at least my 4th Forum that I use almost on a daily basis. I've gotten to know some of you pretty good. It was one of the reasons I went to New Zealand. I know a Forum Member. I have enough private messaging with him now that we'd still be in touch with each other if this Forum had an unrepairable crash. If that were to happen which is unlikely, where do other members hang out? I hear mention of the Dankowski Forum often. I know there is Prospecting Australia but I don't use it. I know there is another Treasure Site. Treasure Net I don't know about other nugget forums. Where do you guys hang out when you are not here or if you are not here? I don't Facebook but you could list it and then we'd all know where the active, sensible still posting spot is if we dying to post some finds.

NOTE THIS IS A TWO YEAR OLD THREAD REVIVED AND SO THE FIRST FEW POSTS ARE DATED. Simon reminded me I needed to do an update, and boy did I. It has only been exactly a year since the last update, but wow, what a lot of changes! I had to drop the Minelab X-Terra 705 Gold, Nokta/Makro Gold Racer, Nokta/Makro AU Gold Finder, and Minelab GPX 4500 from the list, because all have been discontinued And only one addition, the Garrett Axiom. The field is narrowing folks. There was one big shift in the order, as the Fisher Gold Bug 2 went up $100, and the XP ORX went down $150. That changed my view of the ORX in a big way. It wandered a bit when it came out with coils and price, but now has settled firmly into its' role as XPs nugget detector, and an excellent VLF option at $599. Anyway, it is a first draft, I'll edit again later after my mind clears, but there will be no major change, just tweaks for extra info, and to edit mistakes in grammar, etc. I did add a summary at the end for those that just want a simple, straight up opinion on what I'd use and why, since the listing is still long enough to confuse, with too many options to choose from.

When you signed up you gave an email to authenticate your account and also to act as a password recovery email. You also created a display name. When you sign in / log in you have been using your display name and password to sign in. This is going to change to you signing in with your account email and password. It is a good time to be sure your email on account is still one you have access to. Some people get new email accounts and never update it here. That can be a huge problem if you need to reset your password for any reason. In the help post at the top of every forum there is a link to password recovery. It sends a recovery email to the email you have on file here. Wrong email, you are not going to get it. New Member Signup - Click Here! Lost Password - Click Here! <- Password Recovery Forum Tips & Tricks Advanced Search Tag List/Index And again, you will need to enter your email to sign in from now on. Below is how you check and change your display name, email, and password. It is important you update that email. It is very hard now to contact me if you get locked out as I no longer have a contact page on the website. I got 100 marketing messages a day and got tired of it. The only way you can normally contact me is PM on the website, but you need to be logged in to do that. If you can't log in, you need to use the password recovery. And if you do not have a current email in the system - you are screwed! Well, not quite. If you are reading this you will see my contact email in the screenshots below. The spammers will probably miss this so I will leave this up unless I get inundated again. But making a note of it someplace will allow you to email me if you have a problem signing in. Please do not email me with metal detector or gold prospecting questions. I'll just tell you to post the question on the forum. The email is for emergency forum support only. For big screen device click on your name in upper right. Click on account settings. You will see your email and if it is not correct, you can change it. Big screen Step 1 Big screen Step 2 On small screen devices it takes more steps. In upper right click the three horizontal bars: Small screen Step 1 Small screen Step 2 Small screen Step 3 Small screen Step 4

For those interested, Tom Dankowski’s detecting forum has finally been upgrade to a new host platform. It is accessible via a link on the old site at the top of the page. You will have to re register for the new forum but can use your old login. The old site will remain as a read only source of information.

I know others have shared their gratitude in the past but I would like to do the same. Thanks Steve, for this forum. Thanks to all the contributers who's input, ideas, questions and expertise make this a great source of information, interest and an avenue to help pursue the hunt for buried treasure. I'm sharing a photo of my wife when she found her first ring; priceless. And one selfie with both of us wandering around Nevada having a great time looking for for some yellow stuff. Love learning more about detecting, the technical stuff, tips and tricks, geology and seeing some of the finds people have made. Again , thanks.

New members now have limited access until they reach Full Member status. There is no ability to include links or to edit their own posts until they have made 10 posts and been a member more than 30 days. There is no access to posting classifieds until after 10 posts and 30 days. Finally, the PM function is disabled until Full Member status is attained. To many scammers joining just to PM people junk. Any account that has not posted at all in the 30 day period will be deleted. Anyone with more than one but less than 10 posts will simply remain in the regular Member account status indefinitely. The accounts that make at least ten valid posts and have been a member at least 30 days will automatically be promoted to the new Full Member status. This will give access to the Classifieds, remove the PM block, allow links and post editing, preset "signatures" and more. This does not affect any existing accounts!! Any current members with less than 10 posts etc need not worry as all accounts as of this morning were promoted to Full Member status. Anyone with no posts however should at least post once or lose your account after 30 days have passed. This was done to stop the excessive spammer activity after consulting the current membership over the last month. It should pretty much put a complete halt to that sort of thing, while also encouraging new members to be more active. Lurkers are welcome, but will need to post at least once. Thank you everyone for the valuable feedback on this subject. I will monitor the new setup but if anyone experiences anything odd due to the new setup, please let me know. I changed quite a few forum settings and hopefully got it all right. Finally, I want to say why I am doing this. It is to protect the core participating members from spammers and scammers. It is to help insure that you are dealing with good people on the Classifieds. The idea of this forum has never been about having lots of members, it is about having high quality members. In that I think it is succeeding - kudos to you all.

Says Unknown User Error???

Anyone signing in from old whites forum site? Just seeing if any of you guys made the journey over here. Sign in here if you did. This is Sleddman , long time whites user. Be safe out there to all and have a great Christmas. Sleddman

Just wondering if anybody knows what happened to Monte's forum.

Recently, I have been trying to persuade my wife into coming out metal detecting with me. She has repeatedly told me that metal detecting is a man’s hobby, and that women don’t usually go out metal detecting. So here I am today to see what the percentage is to hopefully prove her wrong and get her to come with me.

I have moved most all posts regarding the older X-Terra models the new forum here, though I will probably still find a few relevant threads. The main reason for this forum though is the new X-Terra Pro breathing new life into the old name. Enjoy!

New Member Signup - Click Here! Lost Password - Click Here! Forum Tips & Tricks Advanced Search Tag List/Index Welcome to the Detector Prospector forum! Anything remotely related to metal detecting and prospecting for gold may be posted here. Forums for other subjects may be found here. The main goal here - to inform and educate. Please keep threads and posts on topic (metal detecting and prospecting). Off topic posts may be moved or deleted without warning. This is the oldest forum here, at one time the only forum. As such it is a catch all for a wide range of subject. However, after about page 6, I move some posts to sub-forums for archival purposes. For instance, posts about specific Minelab detectors get moved to the Minelab Forum, and posts about specific Garrett detectors get moved to the Garrett Forum, etc. This makes it easier for people to find posts about specific subjects in the future, rather than sifting through everything here. The main goal of the forum is to share information. If you see something interesting on another forum or anywhere else, please link to it. Mention any brands you like. The only goal here is to inform and anything interesting or informative is not only allowed but desired as long as it is on topic. While visiting this forum please act as if you are visiting my home. Treat others with decency and respect. Politics is not strictly prohibited, but limit it to items of concern such as public meeting notices, comment periods, etc. Any post mentioning any politician by name is going to be deleted, period. No detector wars - every detector serves a purpose for somebody. For general editorial purposes this forum is treated as if it is a magazine. Do not place ads for your detector or equipment for sale here. That is only allowed in the Classifieds and is only for participating members - read the rules. A note about the Google Ads - I know we all hate ads but they pay for the website. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. All I can do is to promise not to go overboard with them. Special Note To Dealers - Dealers are welcome here, with minimal guidelines. Please read My Policy Regarding Dealers If you have problems logging in or any other issues while on the forum send me a Personal Message (PM). Information on other general forum use and features can be found here. Steve Herschbach

I just posted a new topic and it seems that it needs to be approved before being visible to others or if I want to edit it. I haven't seen it before. Is that a new rule? Cheers!

I thought things would perk along longer than they have. But companies go away, people move on fast, way faster than I thought. As early as May activity here was high, now almost nothing. But so it goes. If things don’t change, and I doubt they will, I will someday move the contents of this forum. Since Garrett bought White’s, I can merge it all into the Garrett Forum. But more likely I would merge it with the Compass, D-Tex, Tesoro, Etc. Forum, which is for companies that are no longer with us. But no rush to do so, and this is you chance to tell me why I should leave things as they are for now. Posting more might also help your case, even if it’s nothing but “look what I found with my White’s” even a thread a week here would matter, but right now, not one thread in month of June, just two in July. ‘If I do eventually move the content, does anyone have a preference between my two options?

Hi Steve, I recall you said you were going to set up a location on the site for 3D models of use by the community. I can't seem to find it - I have a couple of models I would like to contribute to give a little something back to this site. Thanks

I have had my iPad not let me post - the keyboard does not appear. Doing a hard close of the app or hard reset fixes the issue. Another user reported the same issue. It appears to be an issue with Apple and Safari - never seen it on my PC. One user, Carolina, seems to not be able to get around the problem at all, though I'm not sure what devices or browsers he has tried as alternatives. I can't find anything on my side checking the software, and when I do a test post from his account is works just fine. A bit of a mystery and wondering if anyone else has seen issues recently. If so, what devices or browsers were involved, and what was the fix?