What Next For Minelab?

[Gold Catcher]

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Announcement May 2025 with likely availability by end of 2025

And first availability by end 2025 would mean that I would not buy a unit before end 2026, at the earliest. Given what happened to the 6000, it would appear prudent to wait for at least a year so they can figure out all the bugs (hopefully). For a 10k investment I wouldn't feel like packing it up and shipping it to the service center just 1-2 months after I bought it....

GC 

[Aureous]

3 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

And first availability by end 2025 would mean that I would not buy a unit before end 2026, at the earliest.

But if lotsa people here on DP are publishing dozens of ounces being found, you'd be lining up quite quickly. Remember the power of FOMO....

[Gold Catcher]

7 minutes ago, Aureous said:

publishing dozens of ounces being found

Then let's take it from there....😉

[Doc]

Personally I don't know where they would go with technology above and beyond the GPZ7000.  Not unless they added GPR which they already have that technology in their Mine Sweepers.

People love the Zed.  However, the one thing they do not love is the weight and the lack of discrimination.  Minelab seems to want to ignore that the reason the GPX5000 has held on so long here in the U.S. is that the Civil War Relic hunters love that depth, but they want the discrimination.

I think that the AXIOM and maybe even the ALGO Force may have stirred some thoughtful conversations.

I've always wondered what would it take for me to give up my ZED?  Well, it wasn't the GPX6000.  

However, give me another ZED iteration, but make it lite, make it have discrimination, and maybe a bit more visual feedback like the AlgoForce.  It would be hard to imagine a detector that could out perform the ZED.  The pure unadulterated power of the GPZ7000 and it's ability to find darn near all sizes of gold and find them deep, is mind boggling.  When I got the GPZ7000 I went back to every patch I had ever found gold at.  I had beaten these patches to death.  I averaged 6 new nuggets a patch.  I ended up with 132 nuggets in 3 months.  The most memorable was 2.1 grams at 22 inches.

So all I want is a machine that performs like the ZED that either has a free lifetime pass to a Chiropractor, or make it lite enough that I don't need a Chiropractor.  Give me discrimination and some visual clues as to what might be in the ground that is giving me a target signal.  And I will kiss my GPZ7000 goodbye.

By the way, strangely enough the cover I made for the Manticore, fits the AlgoForce beautifully.  So yeah, if they happened to design a new machine that would fit a cover I've already made that would be a bonus.  (It would never happen.) 😁

Doc


 

[Lanny]

10 hours ago, Doc said:

Personally I don't know where they would go with technology above and beyond the GPZ7000.  Not unless they added GPR which they already have that technology in their Mine Sweepers.

People love the Zed.  However, the one thing they do not love is the weight and the lack of discrimination.  Minelab seems to want to ignore that the reason the GPX5000 has held on so long here in the U.S. is that the Civil War Relic hunters love that depth, but they want the discrimination.

I think that the AXIOM and maybe even the ALGO Force may have stirred some thoughtful conversations.

I've always wondered what would it take for me to give up my ZED?  Well, it wasn't the GPX6000.  

However, give me another ZED iteration, but make it lite, make it have discrimination, and maybe a bit more visual feedback like the AlgoForce.  It would be hard to imagine a detector that could out perform the ZED.  The pure unadulterated power of the GPZ7000 and it's ability to find darn near all sizes of gold and find them deep, is mind boggling.  When I got the GPZ7000 I went back to every patch I had ever found gold at.  I had beaten these patches to death.  I averaged 6 new nuggets a patch.  I ended up with 132 nuggets in 3 months.  The most memorable was 2.1 grams at 22 inches.

So all I want is a machine that performs like the ZED that either has a free lifetime pass to a Chiropractor, or make it lite enough that I don't need a Chiropractor.  Give me discrimination and some visual clues as to what might be in the ground that is giving me a target signal.  And I will kiss my GPZ7000 goodbye.

By the way, strangely enough the cover I made for the Manticore, fits the AlgoForce beautifully.  So yeah, if they happened to design a new machine that would fit a cover I've already made that would be a bonus.  (It would never happen.) 😁

Doc


 

Great thoughts Doc, a nice little write-up of what's really needed.

All the best,

Lanny

[phrunt]

I think they're behind in the single frequency VLF gold detectors, with Garrett in the lead there.  They have stated they're moving away from single frequency detectors although broke that already to bring out budget models, but their next Gold VLF is likely to be some form of multi-IQ, but needs to give something they've not already done to the multi-purpose units.  They can't just give it better coils like nice solid ones and think it'll sell well; I'd not spend the money to buy it when I already have the Manticore.  Maybe they'll release one, but it's not going to be a smash hit with people rushing out excited to get it.

I'm wondering if we are at the end of dedicated gold VLF's even being viable, and even then, they'd have to be cheap seeing a multi-purpose machine can do it well now.  

The GPZ is a tricky one, the more people that have invested in aftermarket coils the harder it is to bring out a new model unless its significantly improved.  Can they significantly improve it? I wouldn't buy it if it were lighter and added discrimination.  That's not worth 10 grand or more to me, it would have to blow my GPZ away to think about buying it, the hard-core prospectors that find a lot of gold will buy it and think it's great, but they're a much smaller portion of the market, Minelab needs a lot of people to buy it, just not the very successful gold finders as they need sales to bring in a good profit especially with the African market being close to dead.

I wasn't blown away by the 6000, but its small gold sensitivity over the stock GPZ seems to have the market excited and has likely taken over as their best seller by far and they're going to happily let that be the sales winner for them for some time so they don't need to rush a new detector to market, competitors are starting to nibble at their heels but nothing to be too worried about just yet in taking control of the market, but the competitors are taking a lot of sales Minelab missed by high pricing.  These sales won't show on Minelab's figures spreadsheets as they were never going to be Minelab customers anyway, but they've missed a lot of PI sales that have gone to Algoforce especially and Garrett in the US by people who were not willing to pay the big money but happy to pay less for a detector.  Nokta is going to come out at some point and take even more of this market.

My expectation is a new GPZ is not coming soon, they'll more than likely release a detector to fit into the Allgoforce, Axiom and Nokta PI range, and be competing in that area of a well-priced PI.  You could say the 5000's already there, but a new detector gets a lot of sales, not an old one.  They won't want to lose that market share of the lower cost PI to competitors as that's just the start of things to come, like VLF's all over again.  Minelab have completely lost any dominance over the VLF market, and their share is shrinking by the day, hence the deep discounting of the Manticore.  They will want to get into this lower priced PI arena before it's too late.

[dig4gold]

23 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I’d agree with that. When Gerry mentioned soon I thought he meant soon, like this year. Announcement May 2025 with likely availability by end of 2025 is not my definition of soon, so I’ll go back to napping until then. 

Don't you have a "say" with minelab anymore with their detectors &/or testing them?

D4g

[Steve Herschbach]

28 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

Don't you have a "say" with minelab anymore with their detectors &/or testing them?

D4g

I jumped to Garrett with the 24K and Axiom and declined an invitation to sign a new NDA with Minelab as I did not want to risk any possible appearance of impropriety. I've wrapped up work on the Axiom obviously and at this point content with where we are in detector technology given where I started 50 years ago. Long story short I've not had any contact with anyone at Minelab in over a year. It's not something I am all anxious about one way or the other as my big nugget hunting days are behind me. I have little interest in anything other than a detector that gets a solid 20% more depth than what we have now, and that's not going to happen.

[Aureous]

31 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

I have little interest in anything other than a detector that gets a solid 20% more depth than what we have now, and that's not going to happen.

Don't be so sure Steve.... from what I hear, this isn't so far from reality, 

[dig4gold]

23 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

And first availability by end 2025 would mean that I would not buy a unit before end 2026, at the earliest. Given what happened to the 6000, it would appear prudent to wait for at least a year so they can figure out all the bugs (hopefully). For a 10k investment I wouldn't feel like packing it up and shipping it to the service center just 1-2 months after I bought it....

GC 

MMMMmmmm.... You wait a further 12 months & there will be less gold for you to find. Early bird gets the worm. One thing for sure is that ML honour their warranties & your mates who get the new detector straight off the bat will get the gold you would have most likely shared in with them. Food for thought.

D4G