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Other Brands Gold Bug issue or not issue.??

Prospecting Australia

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Also wonder what the user manual looks like that comes with a fake machine. Mine has the Correct manual. I've seen them before and it looks right. Tried out the small coil again and even though noisier than the black coil its useable up to about 70-80 gain. But as you increase either gain or threshold it sounds off with staccato type noises. And its noisy when ground balancing but still achieves GB. Interestingly though it detects very well still picking up a sub gram nugget at a couple inches plus air test. One thing. It's seems now that its a very dodgy exercise even buying one of these machines used. What with all the changes to the fascia graphics and the lack of info regarding what exactly to look for it makes it very difficult to even consider buying one this way again. It's a pity Fisher don't supply a bit of info regarding detecting these fakes as Minelab have done with their gpx machines. And how is it that you can still buy a brand new fake Goldbug on Ebay right now?????. Can't Fisher stop them or Ebay from selling these obviously fake machines?????????? :8
 
ronniecruisin said:
Also wonder what the user manual looks like that comes with a fake machine. Mine has the Correct manual. I've seen them before and it looks right. Tried out the small coil again and even though noisier than the black coil its useable up to about 70-80 gain. But as you increase either gain or threshold it sounds off with staccato type noises. And its noisy when ground balancing but still achieves GB. Interestingly though it detects very well still picking up a sub gram nugget at a couple inches plus air test. One thing. It's seems now that its a very dodgy exercise even buying one of these machines used. What with all the changes to the fascia graphics and the lack of info regarding what exactly to look for it makes it very difficult to even consider buying one this way again. It's a pity Fisher don't supply a bit of info regarding detecting these fakes as Minelab have done with their gpx machines. And how is it that you can still buy a brand new fake Goldbug on Ebay right now?????. Can't Fisher stop them or Ebay from selling these obviously fake machines?????????? :8
Click to expand...

I've seen one via YouTube - it was exactly the same as the real thing: :/
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=545767#p545767
 
I wonder if anyone has a pic of the inside of a Fake Bug.??????? The circuit board in my machine is really neat with fisher and build date and looks well made. Also from a point of view re performance my tests reveal excellent depth and sensitivity. Also the discrimination system is one of the best I've ever used. So apart from my original threshold issues the machine seems to work exactly like a real bug should. Does anyone know how well a fake works???? Is the circuit board a crappy build.???? Does the board look noticeably different??????? Does the machine perform badly??? ie poor depth?? Lack of sensitivity???? You would think as happened with fake mlabs the machine would be a very poor performer indeed and some of the features its supposed to have would either be missing or not work properly. :argh:
 
Aha, there's a visible difference! The Russian bloke says to look inside the battery compartment - on a real US Fisher, the battery contacts are 'yellow' (presumably he means copper), but on the Chinese fake version the battery contacts are silver.
 
Ok.I'll kick it off. Mine are silver. Now we need someone who knows they bought a genuine machine from an authorized dealer to look in their battery compartment and see if theirs are silver or gold connectors. :playful:
 
Interesting. The Russian video looks and sounds very much like mine right down to the screen decal layout. Don't know if anyone else picked up the clue in the German video. Now I can't speak German but at one point early in the vid they are obviously comparing and discussing sloppy shaft movement in the Chinese machine. If you remember that was happening to me. Sooooo I'm thinking now mine is almost certainly the same as the one in the Russian video. I wonder if fitting a genuine Fisher coil would improve the threshold situation. Apart from that the machine works very well indeed.
 
Think I may have discovered why I have stability issues with my bug. The other two houses on the farm where I live are around 300 metres away either side of us and they both have WiFi booster systems for their internet and they use it a lot. Went out early this morning for a play. Quiet as a mouse.! No problems. Still in bed I'm thinking.
 
Doesn't seem to matter. Even the 5" can be really bad. When its happening the phase numbers are all over the place even hitting 1 and 2. In combination with uncontrollable staccato noises. It will quiet down but have to drop sense to around 20. Went out on the :8 farm tonight and was about 50/50 good and bad. Then walked home around a km and a half with the bug on 80 sense all metal. Never made a wimper all the way. Perfect.
 
Next time it is going crazy see if you can work out if it is EMI.
Hold the detector horizontal out in front of you and slowly rotate through 360 degrees and if the prob is EMI the signal will rise and fall as the coil passes through the direction that the EMI is strongest. Likely will be two points 180 degrees apart.
If not EMI the noise will remain equally from all directions.

Because EMI is often polarised try this procedure with the coil horizontal to the ground and also vertical to the ground.
 
Hi. Adrian. I'll have a go at that. I did hold it horizontal the other day and it did reduce it. Dont think I did the spin around though. Ill try it. When bad it does it in both modes. Interestingly went over to an area near the farm sheds this morning and the Bug ran perfectly even on full sensitivity. And also perfect with the 5" coil. And full sense!! Now that was a wow moment. Ran the Bug for a few hundred meters around this spot for about an hour. Not a bad sound out of it. Just a bit of light chatter on high sense. So pretty pleased I was. Jiggled the coil lead at the machine end too. No problem. Tells me there must be a lot of stuff going on around this area at times. As I said could be the mine too. Tis way bigger and busier than it used to be.
 
Hi. Adrian. Yep. Playing with the bug today and it went berzerko a few times. Tried what you said and it was different pointing some ways than others. Then either moving on or pulling gain down and re balancing was all good again. I found manual GB fixed it quicker than auto. Got the hang of it now. It is quite different from many other vlf's I've owned but once sussed out I'm loving this machine. I'm actually glad I got this instead of the GMT. I think its more useful and is unquestionably hot on gold targets. :D
 
So it sounds like you have external EMI but where it is actually originating is anybodies guess.
I can run my Bug beneath EHT transmission lines with the gain at around 50% I have never had really nasty sounds coming from the tecta unless it is responding to a large target close to the coil. ( overload signal).
 
Hi. Adrian. Success at last. My bug did have a problem and may still have but at the moment tis working like the ones I see on utube. Doesn't make a racket when balancing. Can run gain flat out. Quiet in no thresh mode. Nice thresh even tone. A different. Machine.!! Was using it yesterday and it played up worse than ever. Imagine someone tapping out loud Morse code incessantly no matter what mode or setting. And I'm talking anywhere on this 500 acre farm. It was unusable. Just touching the coil produced loud sound. But incredibly still picked up targets. So as it was both coils I suspected the plug In the control box. Opened it up. Solder joints look ok. Jiggled the wiring anyway. Also noted the headphone jack was floating around.(they hot melt it to the case. It had come away so stuck it back against the case with gaffer tape.) Put it back together and running like never before!!!!. Now it may still be a dry solder joint and maybe if it happens again I'll have to resolder the connections. But as long as it stays good I is not touching it. What a relief!!!I was beginning to think I was going nuts. :argh:
 
I presume you are talking about the 3.5mm socket? The 6.5mm socket is held tight with a plastic nut....If the rear section of this is broken loose then yes the wiring could possibly short out somewhere on the board.
 
No. There's nothing that would contact the board. The two sockets are connected to a plastic connector of some sort. Then they simply apply some hot melt around that to keep it against the back body of the control housing. When its locked in between the two halves of the body it can't move much at all. I just taped it in place as a matter of course. Personally I suspect dry solder joints either to the back of the plug or where the wiring from the plug is soldered to the circuit board. Went out briefly to test again. Played up slightly a couple times but most was perfect. Might have to bite the bullet and get out the old soldering iron I'm thinking. 8.(
 

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