New Minelab Gold Monster 1000

[matt]

Looking forward to some true reports on this detector. Minelab must be feeling the heat from the newly released QED.

[Steve Herschbach]

What constitutes a true report?

[Lunk]

Looks like the new GMk will be a great lightweight patch hunter.

[matt]

48 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

What constitutes a true report?

Usage by people that detect for gold nuggets on a regular basis.

[Steve Herschbach]

Gotcha - thanks. The reason I ask Matt is lot of people also exclude dealers and testers from the "true report" list. And then there is this:

1 hour ago, californiagold said:

Ok Steve when you get your hands on one. it would be great to see a shootout between new minelab monster, Gb 2, Gold Racer, and new Fisher gold detector when they are all available.

Shootout? That sounds like me in the middle getting shot! People want easy answers and in my world there are none.

The Gold Bug 2 slays the Gold Racer on the tiny bits under 1 grain. But what to say about a 15" x 13" DD coil on a Gold Racer versus a Gold Bug 2 with it's largest coil, a 14" x 8" concentric? One is better for one thing, and the other wins at something else. One is pure nugget machine, the other multi-purpose. Which is better? It just depends on what the desired use is.

I will say this about Minelab. When it comes to gold machines, they know their stuff. They usually weigh too much, cost too much, or just look funny. But they do find the gold. This one at least looks like it will not weigh a ton and require that you mortgage your house! Now comes the wait. It just seems these days we hear about detectors and then........ wait.

[strick]

Thank God its a VLF...now I don't have to buy it. For a minute there I thought they revamped the SDC into a lighter and better ergonomically designed system.

strick

[Steve Herschbach]

Let's go back to the start of this thread and boil it down to basics:

"Minelab’s new ENTRY-LEVEL specialist gold detector, the GOLD MONSTER 1000, has been designed to meet the needs of both consumer recreational enthusiasts and small-scale artisanal gold miners around the world."

"The GOLD MONSTER 1000 turns beginners into experts with fully automatic operation in an easy-to-use, high performance detector."

And I will reduce that further to "Entry level, fully automatic operation, high performance".

This is a machine intended to sell for a low price as compared to other Minelab detectors and be a machine you can hand to any first time detector user and achieve good results. This is reflected in the control panel, which has a minimal control set.

Performance remains to be seen and what the experts will think about that. Given the design goal here, this may be the machine to consider for new prospectors in particular.

I think about what I had to go through with my father when it came to metal detectors. After several models he finally took to the Tesoro Lobo. Why? Turn it on, full time automatic tracking. In a nutshell, ease of use. If I was doing it all over today now I am thinking this would be the machine for him.

[Rick K - First Member]

With 45kHz operating freq., some sort of auto ground compensation and a "probability of gold" indication, it's quite similar to the GMT in concept, except for external manual comtrol possibilities and - of course - the extra weight that "old timers" like Steve want!!  Lol

[Lunk]

When browsing the specs link from page 2 of this thread, I noticed something new that I've not seen in a detector before:

2 automatic sensitivity settings, Auto and Auto+. Any theories on how these work? Perhaps they work in tandem with the auto ground balance and maybe Auto+ is some sort of sensitivity boost?