Algoforce E1500 Plus In Black Salty Sand Compared To The GPX 6000, Axiom And Manticore

[TheDeepseeker]

That's an amazing sight Phrunt. It shows how conditioned I am also with regards to what a beach should look like. It kind of creeps me out thinking about sitting on a jet black beach. I didn't realize NZ had so many of them, and I can see now why a detector that can handle it would mean so much to you. The first one with the magic wand gets to find all the goodies that everybody else walks away from. That's definitely an alluring proposition.

[phrunt]

They can get too hot to walk on 🙂  Kids can build a little pool in it and it gets hot like a Spa.

Every single grain is magnetic and they're VERY heavy, take a bag of it home and it weighs a tonne, super heavy stuff.  I've got a fair few coffee jars of it somewhere as my daughter used to want to keep it.

If you go to places like Hawaii it has them too, again volcanic, as does Malaysia, Alaska and Iceland, probably lots of other places.

[Swegin]

6 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Now you toss some interesting words on the thread "ad hominem attacks" and my mind gets stumped.

I had to look that up also. 😀

[TheDeepseeker]

30 minutes ago, Swegin said:

I had to look that up also. 😀

I'll confess, so did I. Honestly my first thought was someone was being told off for having a shot at the guys in minelab marketing

6 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

  It's my dream, so don't piss on it.

 

And that Gerry is pure gold! If Shakespeare were still alive he would have written that. 🏆

[Norvic]

5 hours ago, TheDeepseeker said:

That's an amazing sight Phrunt. It shows how conditioned I am also with regards to what a beach should look like. It kind of creeps me out thinking about sitting on a jet black beach. I didn't realize NZ had so many of them, and I can see now why a detector that can handle it would mean so much to you. The first one with the magic wand gets to find all the goodies that everybody else walks away from. That's definitely an alluring proposition.

Aye me too, did a Google and there you are, has anybody seen such in OZ? My OZ travels (mainly goldfields except when the treasurer insisted a few days on a beach was needed.)

[ivanll]

 

Italy have Black sand beaches, but I didn't have a detector when I was there back in the mid 60ties.
Today NZ is fare closer than Italy, would like to try a Fisher Impulse AQ on a NZ Black sand beach.
Or a few other beach PIs for that matter.
Axiom is doing well on wet Australian ocean beaches, a mono coil and no GB is my preferred set-up.
Black sand beach would most likely require a GB.

 

 

[phrunt]

I guess that's why I have a little snicker when Aussies say I don't know what bad soil is being in NZ, It doesn't get much worse than pure black sand.

The first time I tried a detector on pure black sand was the Equinox, and it just overloaded and couldn't even detect a large coin just under the surface, I didn't even know it had a feature for heavy minerals until then, a little overload icon comes up on the screen, I thought it had a fault and was angry at it 😛

It's overload mode didn't help at all, but did let me know how bad the ground really was.

[TheDeepseeker]

Heck, I knew I'd seen it somewhere Gerry. I've dragged all of the dusty old boxes of books up from the basement, and thumbed through "The Bard's Pocket guide to Shakespeare's Plays". Many Friday night beers later I finally found it.

 

The Merchant of Boise, Act IV, Scene I [The quality of threshold is not strained]

William Shakespeare

1564 – 1616

The quality of good threshold is not strained;
It hummeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
upon the place beneath the mortal's coil.

He be twice blest; It blesseth him that understands the many timings:

It blesseth him whose riches can afford the latest wand.

'Tis mightiest in the hands of the most learned;

It becomes the dream of all who swing.

Aye, it be my dream.

I beseech thee, on it pisseth not.

[EL NINO77]

On 3/21/2025 at 3:41 AM, phrunt said:

I guess that's why I have a little snicker when Aussies say I don't know what bad soil is being in NZ, It doesn't get much worse than pure black sand.

The first time I tried a detector on pure black sand was the Equinox, and it just overloaded and couldn't even detect a large coin just under the surface, I didn't even know it had a feature for heavy minerals until then, a little overload icon comes up on the screen, I thought it had a fault and was angry at it 😛

It's overload mode didn't help at all, but did let me know how bad the ground really was.

Good point Simon... Black sand and actually the magnetite content in it sets a high standard for the construction of detectors and coils...so that they can work properly on such terrain...add to that the salinity that Black sand also has and the standard increases...

If Equinox 800 enters Triangle mode/reduced TX/ on such terrain, we can say for sure that such Black Sand contains around 25% or more magnetite.

Since I have a box with such 25% Black Sand I know that...such and greater mineralization makes a difference like night and day between VLF and PI detectors.

EQ 800:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PI detector Garrett ATX with 12x10" "D0D" coil..:

If you set the PI detector ATX to minimal but stable timing/../...so that you can make GB so that the detector is stable after GB... you can achieve really good detection results...and it will work well on much smaller targets..

In this test I set the PI detector ATX to a minimum stable timing and other settings like/timing to 2 and sensitivity to 8/.. so that the detector could well detect a small 0.5 gram kangaroo gold coin under 4" inches 25% magnetite...

You can adjust the Timing settings as well as other settings - sensitivity and threshold so that the detector is even more stable, but also deeper..

I will make another video on such settings:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now my observations regarding your video Algoforce 1500, GPX 6000 and Garrett Axiom,,,

In my opinion, the Garrett Axiom will also do very well in such a test if it also has a DOD coil...also because it has a sufficient number of manual Timing settings, and also other settings... which have an impact on good detector work in such mineralization..

Algoforce 1500 shows that it can handle such magnetic terrain well..and that is good..and what is good is that it has really good target identification even in such terrain..

GPX 6000 is a very sensitive detector for very small targets,,but since it is an automatic with only 2 types of Timing..so it may lack another Timing setting for such demanding magnetite terrain.