My Minelabs.

[Easylife]

To kick off the Minelab sub forum I can only speak of my own limited experience of them. At one point of upgrade for me it was a toss up between a Whites DFX or a Minelab Explorer, I chose the DFX but in hindsight probably should have gone for the latter? But I had fun so no great worries!
I bought a used GP3000 PI detector (or maybe a 3500?) to gold prospect in Aussie, it didn't find me any gold but I was maybe just not in the right spots? So when I decided to prospect full on there I bought a brand new GPX5000 and compared the two detectors over small lead shot at varying depths and that was a no brainer. I sold the GP3000 to a prospecting shop for twice what I bought it for in the UK. But the GP3000's hard case I had previously taken to the local tip as it was too weighty for the trip, but later learned that they fetch some good money. Anyway the GPX5000 was pretty awesome and found me lots of small gold nuggets. I used it on some beaches too, but then decided to also get an X-terra 705 for the camp spots for it's better discrimination, it came as the 'gold pack' with the smaller elliptical coil. It about paid for itself in the many dollar coins and I reused many of the fishing weights.
But I really should have used the 705 around the extremely remote old gold mine workings where there was much ferrous but just could not put the GPX5000 down as it was so sensitive to even tiny deep nuggets. I had a set of 'gold scales' and the smallest it detected was 0.08g, and you don't really want to be digging anything smaller than that speck.
I had a Deus for about 2 years then upgraded to the Nox 800 which is the best VLF detector that I have ever had. The 15” coil is permanently used unless I require more accurate pinpointing for some particular situation, but it's close enough. It's now pretty hard to see any further possible advancements in the VLF technology, though Minelab seem to be the leaders! I'm a Minelab fan!

[Dave77]

I have a Nox 800 but it took a few machines to get to it.
I bought an old C-Scope at an auction for £5 and advertised on facebook for someone more experienced to take us out, so ended up on a local beach and found 5p .
Next came A Fisher F44 (I think) and still didn`t find much except horse shoes and for the next year I earned the nickname `Horse shoe`.
Garrett Ace 250- I hated the tones as they sounded like door bells,.... So sold it. Then I got a full Deus as my mate had one and he found loads.
I should say my wife detected as well so we were really buying 2 of each detector. I watched all Gary`s videos and hit the fields, BUT I then spent each day messing with the settings and didn`t find much.
Much later I bought a Nox 800 and my find rate went through the roof and I lost my horse shoe tag

BUT at the start our permissions while had lots of history had been detected 100`s of times. So by chance and talking to everyone including random strangers in shops I finally got some land that had never been detected it on and the good finds started to pop up.
I use F1 standard apart from changing the Iron Bias and Neils Beach to Land.

Sorry for the long post,..............