How About Australian Qed Gold Detector?

[中国 张]

The technology is also PI technology, which is also relatively lightweight and has good stability for watching videos. But there don’t seem to be many users. . . . .

[GB_Amateur]

https://www.detectorprospector.com/tags/qed/

[phrunt]

It's good as an entry level PI, build quality is very unprofessional with a lot of 3D printing letting it down although it's been said over the years the 3D printing plastics have improved somewhat.  Mine were delaminating and breaking regularly in the short time I used it. Performance is reasonable in my ground (mild) and would pick up small gold quite well, a bit better than the GPX 5000 on the small gold but I was able to run it with the settings maxed out due to my mild soils giving it extra sensitivity over those in worse ground, as the gold size increased the GPX rapidly become better.  I didn't find it particularly deep on anything but it handled EMI very well.  It's not a professionally manufactured machine and the creator was hand soldering the PCB's when I got mine and there was reported problems with consistency, I believe somewhere along the line some started being made with a pick-and-place machine to help with this however this is all taken into account with its cheaper price.

Its big benefit was it's so lightweight, now with other options like the Axiom and GPX 6000 available which are far superior in performance is every way it's made it difficult to recommend for anyone except someone that wants a low-priced PI machine, second hand QED units can sell for very cheap prices, often the coils they come with add up to a higher price than the detector asking price on the used market.  I wouldn't buy a new one, a used unit at a cheap price would be a reasonable purchase to get into the PI Gold detectors on a budget, ONLY if it's still covered by the 5 years warranty (control box only) and they're regularly available second hand from buyers who decide it's not for them for various reasons, some units are like the town bicycle where everyone's had a ride, having many owners in their day and being on sold regularly.

Now something to keep in mind, for a number of years now the manufacturer has promised a ground tracking update which has never eventuated, it's been said it was being tested, and virtually ready, an easy thing to add and many other excuses yet all this time and it still does not exist.   People purchased it being told the update was coming very soon, this was a few years ago and still it does not exist.  The detector would benefit from this update as it is a manual ground balance detector and requires the operator to be very aware that they need to keep it well balanced or performance suffers and it's a bit fiddly to keep it balanced.  It's quite an easy-to-use detector once you understand the basics of it.

It's biggest positive is it can use any Minelab GPX compatible coil from the earlier GPX series except Concentric coils, not the 6000 coils.

No wireless audio often standard on modern machines, and the audio was at least when I had one troublesome, very fussy about which headphones could be used or the audio volume would be extremely low.  Generally cheaper headphones worked better than higher ohm headphones, the standard GPX Koss headphones did not work well at all on it, very quiet.    The maker told me this was unable to be fixed for some reason, downfall of a single man team.

It works well in salt environment like a beach in wet and dry sand especially with a DD Coil, so was a good beach detector, and handled the black sand at my local beaches well, no better than the older GPX model but due to its better EMI handling being a single channel PI it was better for use at higher EMI beaches where a lot of human activity exists with housing, buildings everywhere and powerlines, I could use a mono coil on it in these situations where as the GPX needed a DD to cut back the EMI.  Then again, the benefits of the GPX being multi-channel detector far outweigh the QED's single channel benefit, which is from what I can see the EMI handling.

[geof_junk]

A good write up Simon....The only place to find more about QED is at  https://www.qedmetaldetectors.com.au/ but note this site is QED Metal Detector manufactured by Interfacion Pty Ltd   "official site"  and most poster are owners of QED so they may be bias.

[Aureous]

The 3 biggest issues with the QED are single channel (limited to either small-medium targets or larger only), complicated, multi segment setup and most of all, a ground-grab fixed ground balance. Soon as you get into more mineralized ground conditions, the Minelab machines beat it easily. Numerous side-by-side & test patch comparisons have proven this over and over. It certainly finds gold and for the money, its a great option for those wishing to get into PI prospecting on a budget. Light weight and coil options give it Kudos as well. But serious operators give it a wide berth in exchange for better performing ML machines. 

[Reg Wilson]

The above comments are pretty spot on. The cheap price (AU$2,000.00) and 5 year warranty were good selling points, however the builder could best be described as a 'flawed genius' and fell out with just about everyone with whom he had dealings. Totally unable to take advice from those who could have helped him to be successful, he was a one man band with tunnel vision and a rather toxic personality. 

I was approached to test the prototype and later became a dealer, and still own that original machine. I was initially impressed with the potential and urged the builder to abandon his obsession with 3D printing after I produced a more robust and user friendly version which I named the QED PL Pro. After market testing this version with positive response the builder agreed to let me build this unit as an alternative to the base model but reneged on the agreement after I had purchased at some expense the needed components, leaving me considerably out of pocket. He also changed the software a number of times claiming that it made the machine easier to tune and use, but the result was a loss in depth, which he strenuously denied although myself and many customers with experience tried to convince him of the problem.

After producing PL1, PL2, and PL3 the builder, against my advice, built the PL4, an absolute horror of a detector which had to be recalled because if left in the sun for just a short time began to 'melt' due to the poor (cheap) 3D plastic used in its construction. To add to the problem it was an ugly looking beast which used a cell phone power pack, something he believed was a revolution, but was in fact a backward step. It also lacked the depth of earlier models.

An opportunity unfortunately lost to produce an 'Aussie' entry level PI at an affordable price. 

[Jeff McClendon]

I enjoyed using the one I owned for relic hunting in mild to moderately mineralized ground even though I had constant EMI issues due to it being an Aussie detector battling with 60 Hz USA electricity. 

It was just OK, nothing special for smaller gold nuggets below 0.5 grams.

As soon as the ground mineralization became more difficult, it was pretty useless. 

Hated to sell it but it went to another good home in Virginia USA for relic hunting.

[Aureous]

4 hours ago, Reg Wilson said:

however the builder could best be described as a 'flawed genius' and fell out with just about everyone with whom he had dealings. Totally unable to take advice from those who could have helped him to be successful, he was a one man band with tunnel vision and a rather toxic personality.

Could not agree more..... and you're not the only one to lose $$ trying to help him Reg. 😑

[GoodAmount]

I cut my gold prospecting teeth on a QED PL3 after battling the mineralised ground of the Golden Triangle in Vic Aus with a Whites VX3 for 9 months. I found my first gold nugget with the QED, so it holds a special place in my heart and I don’t think I’ll ever sell it.

All the comments above mirror my experiences, and while I went on to find just over an ounce of gold with it (more than paying for itself), it was hard going and I’m relieved to now be using a 7000. I was able to keep up with my prospecting buddy on the small gold when he was swinging a 5000, but when he got a 6000 he left me for dead.

I love the fact that a one-person company could develop a machine that costs a third of the competition’s machines and keep up with them functionally (to a point). I also love the idea that he could 3D print many of the detector’s parts at home, bypassing the investment risks of tooling up for mass production and keeping the production system agile. And cost effective. When one of my parts broke, he was also willing to send me the digital files so that I could 3D print my own replacements at home - which is an amazing difference to the attitudes of the competition.

The PLA+ plastic he uses is the wrong type for its application - it’s not that it’s cheaper than other plastics, it’s that the thermal characteristics are just not meant for high temperature conditions like being left in a car on a hot day. It’s a bio plastic and I celebrate its sustainability credentials, just not at the expense of product robustness and performance.

My machine suffered from EMI issues and didn’t handle variable ground vey well, which made for noisy detecting. It was tiring to listen to and I had to concentrate hard to hear faint signals, but I think it made me a better detectorist in the long run. I value my experience with the QED on the goldfields, but now that it’s been retired from those duties I’m interested to see how it goes on the beach.

 

[phrunt]

I think you'll find it pretty good at the beach, although detectors like the Manticore now probably have the same depth and offer discrimination abilities if your beaches are hunted by people with older model VLF's you should find stuff that they missed due to depth restrictions, especially if you throw a big coil on it.  

It's a concern you had EMI problems as that's where the QED really excelled for me.  It worked remarkably well even right under power lines.  I believe one of the problems people had been was EMI related which sending the machine in for repair fixed.  You'll see I'm on gain of 10 (max) right next to the power line.

And at the beach, this beach is a black sand beach, not the worst of NZ's black sand beaches as they're further up the Island from me and I did this locally.  This beach still makes detectors like the Equinox go nuts.  This was again maximum gain using a 15" Spiral mono coil.  I'm keeping the coil from being submerged due to it not being a waterproof coil, nothing to do with the detector.

I think the QED could have really become something decent with more development, especially if a team of people were working on it to expand on the knowledge and ability of one person, that one person has done a fantastic job, it just needs more development to make it a retail product that truly is competitive with other detectors, making it less "home made".

Something I'd forgotten to say is I had mine updated with a new update that made the ground balance easier by adding more numbers, when it returned it was less sensitive on small gold than it was prior to the update, it lost some depth on the smaller bits too.  This was a side effect of the changes that were done to the Modes as part of the update to make it more stable in worse ground, for me that was the end of it as I didn't have the bad ground and now my detector was worse than it was prior to an update.  It would have been better to somehow leave the old modes alone as well as adding the new mode adjustments.   I was told it was due to uS pulse delay changing to the modes to help with bad soil conditions in WA or something that the mode changes were made but it really messed it up for those in milder ground.  I preferred the older firmware but not worth sending it back to Australia again to get the old firmware put back on as my time with the QED was about over.