Just bought a QED PL3

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RM Outback said:
Well it won't be removed from here :) :perfect: thanks for the heads up :power:

We really want honest reviews of equipment here whether good or bad. So no it won't be removed.

But please no personal digs at the manufacturer or other forums, just honest reviews, remarks, field testing results.

Cheers

Got to admit though that Reg's test results are interesting as are users experiences out in the field.
 
Ohhh Nooo,
Please do not do that.
Reg will now have to have a debate with himself to debate whether it should be debated. PMSL.

I have a lot of respect for both Reg and Bugwhiskers and all of you.

I myself picked up ages ago that the QED is a prospector's machine.
Just picture 10 cars coming down an assembly line, Each exactly the same build.
Problem is they each will be different with quirks and such.

It took me 15 bloody minutes to work it out how to tune
the darn thing.

I quite like it.
I own one.

I waved it over some really bloody brick red crap with quartz and visable gold in viens just North of Dunolly.
15 inch Nugget finder.
Blew my eardrums out.
Toned it down a bit.
All good.
With a sadie, dit, dit, dah.
Morse code, Come get me. LOL

For those who are into electronics,
"Q" is a very complicated computation.
This machine is adjustable both on the rising "Q" and the falling.

Finding the right "Peak" is the challenge.

In summing up, I will stick up for any manufacturer of any machine.

Any one of them.

Oh, QED can find " Prickly Gold. "

A lot of others cannot.

Araratgold said:
UPDATE :

To Reg's credit, he has just publicly apologised to me on Finders Forum for the ***** he gave me over my experience with the QED.

It takes a good man to do that, more kudos to Reg !

Rick
 
Araratgold said:
Typical Dud !

The heat of Reg feeding it to Howard got too much on his floppum, so he closed the thread to all but his members ( less than 10 of which are active ), and demands that we join if we want to continue reading about Howard's arse reaming.

Gutless wonder !

What about the public's right to know Dud ?? :mad:

Rick

Moderator Edit

Please do not bring that crap over here.

You Have been Warned.

" You have been warned " Really ???

Don't you think the members here, who are potential purchasers, have the right to know that there is a seemingly high failure rate of the QED, as attested to by Reg ??

Don't you think that they deserve to know that 3 out of the 4 PL4 QED's that Reg just received were so flimsy that they were broken in transit to him, and had to be returned, at which time Howard turned nasty to Reg ???

And you are happy to defend the maker, despite the venomous crap he and Doug threw at me and others, including now Reg as well ?

That is nothing short of stifling discussion ! Much like what Doug is doing on AEGPF !

Rick

Moderator Edit again.

And you want it all your own way. ??
Just leave the other forum nicks and jargon out
of it please.
Well known of what your attitude towards these parties are.


Just leave it be as you have had your say.
Thank You
 
I am one of those 10 on AEGPF.

I guess I am one of the lucky ones. Only owned my PL3 for 9 months but have put about 100hrs on it & have been VERY happy so far.

Still need to test it in the absolute worst mineralisation but has cruised through everywhere I have been so far (SEQ,CQ) & found a few small nuggets for me - as well as some D-E-E-P brass fittings in areas myself & others have flogged.

Howard has been v helpful to me a few times in answering my questions as to exactly how some aspects worked electronically. I doubt I could call up Bruce from ML and get the same :)

I have only had a little contact with Reg but has been positive and normally enjoy & respect his contributions.

Sad to see this surprising but enlightening outburst. It may well spell the end for the QED as no matter how awesome it is when it is working, people insist on reliability & consistency first or they just wont buy (think 1970s Alfa Romeo).
 
XLOOX, therein lies the crux of the matter. How do you know you don't have a sub par machine ?

Reg was describing a bloke who was " nearly in tears ", who had been using one for a year, all the time not knowing that it had DISMAL depth over larger deeper stuff ?

This is the sort of thing that needs to be made public, not hidden from consumers behind an iron curtain !

PS : Question for Tathradj from Steve ( Madtuna ) : You told me you were gifted your QED.....was that true? Have you ever found gold with it?

Rick
 
True, my happiness is due to its performance relative to my TDI SL and also comparing what I get to target/depth info I see on PA for various detectors but I cannot know for sure how it compares to other QEDs unless we do exactly the same test in same ground.

Given that I wont be going to Vic anytime soon I cant take up Reg on his testing offer.

I guess I will have to ask Reg & see if he can suggest a portable repeatable reference test method for a standard big & small target...
 
XLOOX said:
I am one of those 10 on AEGPF.

Sad to see this surprising but enlightening outburst. It may well spell the end for the QED as no matter how awesome it is when it is working, people insist on reliability & consistency first or they just wont buy (think 1970s Alfa Romeo).

Possibly, I tried to sell my one and a bit year old QED PL3 on the QED FB Page, just the detector with no coil as the coils are worth more to me than the detector and no batteries as shipping via air hates batteries although they're only about $6 each and it only needs two, It's in new near condition rarely used and comes with spare parts. I was accepting any offers and was selling to the highest bidder, I got some offers like $1 and $4 and the highest offer was $100 via private message. It wasn't worth my time packing it up to ship it for that so I'm just going to give it to someone local that needs a first detector.
 
I still like the QED, great detector for the money and nice and light and excellent in high EMI areas, can be more sensitive than the GPX but I don't think as deep for me on some targets, a few issues with build quality with the older 3D printed parts and weak cabling/connectors which are mostly being resolved I think in newer builds as it's evolved and Reg seemed to want to do his best to let people know about any potential flaws and have them fixed and certain people rebelled against him for that and threw abuse at him too which is sad as he was doing the right thing by the end users, there is never anything wrong with constructive criticism and Minelab constantly cop it from me and many others. If Minelab didn't exist it'd likely be the current market leader for PI gold detectors though.

I just don't use it often enough and when I do it was mainly just to compare it to other detectors on test targets more so than taking it prospecting as like with anything you use what gives you the most chance of success and for my circumstances it wasn't the best for most situations out of the detectors I've got to choose from and I found myself reaching for the GPZ or the Equinox instead. I bought it to see how it compares to other detectors out of interest more than anything. If I need a lightweight detector here I can use a VLF like my Equinox which has the added benefit of being waterproof as it performs significantly better on small gold anyway which is mostly what we have around here and seeing my soils are mostly mild the Equinox easily out performs the QED and meets it or beats it in depth anyway in mild soils especially on smaller gold and I have the GPX and GPZ when I want to use a more powerful unit so it spent most of it's life in my cupboard. I intended to use it as my creek detecting PI as it'd do a good job of that and if I dropped it in the water by accident I wouldn't be too devastated but I'll just stick with the waterproof Nox for that with the new Coiltek 10x5", the QED is a bit delicate for rough treatment anyway.

The QED has a lot of toxic people around the project, mostly some hard line users that hate people questioning anything about it and I was attacked by one of them as I questioned how significant this random poor performing detector thing is and how widespread... I think that's a reasonable thing to ask as many QED users, I'd almost say a majority are either new to prospecting or it's their first PI detector and they'd have no clue if they had a poorly performing one. As their hard line supporters would rather dismiss any possibility of bad units and abuse people who question anything in regards to it's performance and in many cases outright lie saying it performs better than other units on the market. Maybe I'll get a future model one day as it keeps improving.

People need to learn to keep it real, yes it's a good detector but it's not a GPZ performance killer like some make out, closer to a GPX in performance under some circumstances and a well experienced user can probably make it exceed the GPX in performance fiddling with settings to suit the situation like I was doing making it perform better on small gold than the GPX. You can tune it to be good on the gold type in the area that you're looking for but it is a single channel PI so you have your bias to adjust to suit the possible gold in the area, go one way biasing towards bigger targets and you lose some performance on the other. It also hits on funky gold the GPX completely misses even touching the coil so I'm not saying it's a bad detector, quite the opposite, but some people associated with it are doing it far more harm than good and if I was a potential buyer and saw what these people do I'd run for the hills never to go near the brand, fortunately most of it is done behind closed doors in a private Facebook group that you have to join to see what they say. If they thought that group would be beneficial to the brand it would be completely public so anyone can see it, members or not.

I wish Howard the best, he's is a good guy and stands behind his product, it has a great warranty and he honours it, and it's constantly improving, the new ground balance method is great in comparison to the old ground balance ability and I look forward to seeing newer better models in the future. Currently with a decent coil on it and for the price it can't be beat so it certainly has it's place and as I said is a good detector but it's not the best detector when it comes to performance, it is in ergonomics though, fantastic weight and if that means you can swing it for a week straight where as someone else gets worn out in half a day and gets sloppy and tired, which person will find more gold?
 
phrunt said:
I still like the QED, great detector for the money and nice and light and excellent in high EMI areas, can be more sensitive than the GPX but I don't think as deep for me on some targets, a few issues with build quality with the older 3D printed parts and weak cabling/connectors which are mostly being resolved I think in newer builds as it's evolved and Reg seemed to want to do his best to let people know about any potential flaws and have them fixed and certain people rebelled against him for that and threw abuse at him too which is sad as he was doing the right thing by the end users, there is never anything wrong with constructive criticism and Minelab constantly cop it from me and many others. If Minelab didn't exist it'd likely be the current market leader for PI gold detectors though.

I just don't use it often enough and when I do it was mainly just to compare it to other detectors on test targets more so than taking it prospecting as like with anything you use what gives you the most chance of success and for my circumstances it wasn't the best for most situations out of the detectors I've got to choose from and I found myself reaching for the GPZ or the Equinox instead. I bought it to see how it compares to other detectors out of interest more than anything. If I need a lightweight detector here I can use a VLF like my Equinox which has the added benefit of being waterproof as it performs significantly better on small gold anyway which is mostly what we have around here and seeing my soils are mostly mild the Equinox easily out performs the QED and meets it or beats it in depth anyway in mild soils especially on smaller gold and I have the GPX and GPZ when I want to use a more powerful unit so it spent most of it's life in my cupboard. I intended to use it as my creek detecting PI as it'd do a good job of that and if I dropped it in the water by accident I wouldn't be too devastated but I'll just stick with the waterproof Nox for that with the new Coiltek 10x5", the QED is a bit delicate for rough treatment anyway.

The QED has a lot of toxic people around the project, mostly some hard line users that hate people questioning anything about it and I was attacked by one of them as I questioned how significant this random poor performing detector thing is and how widespread... I think that's a reasonable thing to ask as many QED users, I'd almost say a majority are either new to prospecting or it's their first PI detector and they'd have no clue if they had a poorly performing one. As their hard line supporters would rather dismiss any possibility of bad units and abuse people who question anything in regards to it's performance and in many cases outright lie saying it performs better than other units on the market. Maybe I'll get a future model one day as it keeps improving.

People need to learn to keep it real, yes it's a good detector but it's not a GPZ performance killer like some make out, closer to a GPX in performance under some circumstances and a well experienced user can probably make it exceed the GPX in performance fiddling with settings to suit the situation like I was doing making it perform better on small gold than the GPX. You can tune it to be good on the gold type in the area that you're looking for but it is a single channel PI so you have your bias to adjust to suit the possible gold in the area, go one way biasing towards bigger targets and you lose some performance on the other. It also hits on funky gold the GPX completely misses even touching the coil so I'm not saying it's a bad detector, quite the opposite, but some people associated with it are doing it far more harm than good and if I was a potential buyer and saw what these people do I'd run for the hills never to go near the brand, fortunately most of it is done behind closed doors in a private Facebook group that you have to join to see what they say. If they thought that group would be beneficial to the brand it would be completely public so anyone can see it, members or not.

I wish Howard the best, he's is a good guy and stands behind his product, it has a great warranty and he honours it, and it's constantly improving, the new ground balance method is great in comparison to the old ground balance ability and I look forward to seeing newer better models in the future. Currently with a decent coil on it and for the price it can't be beat so it certainly has it's place and as I said is a good detector but it's not the best detector when it comes to performance, it is in ergonomics though, fantastic weight and if that means you can swing it for a week straight where as someone else gets worn out in half a day and gets sloppy and tired, which person will find more gold?
I cant see how any person could take your word on any metal detector. Are you not the same guy that bricked a 7000 making the x coil adapter and kept it secret from the whole world as you were pushing those x coils at the time. Steve at DP forum was onto you though. I would buy one of these Qeds just to have a look myself cant really go off what you say. The whole 7000 bricking debacle was very poor form in my honest opinion. :N:
 
You should buy one, being new to detecting and not being used to any other PI you'd take to it quite quickly and it does the job. Steve from DP wasn't "on to me" he knew about it the entire time as we told him not too long after it happened years ago long before the coils were being sold and were just prototypes that we were going to try out but anyway... It's up to you what you want to do or think, I was just giving some feedback on a detector's performance which maybe helpful to someone and I'm sure most would agree with what I've said in that post, especially those that have owned the detectors talked about in it.
 
phrunt said:
You should buy one, being new to detecting and not being used to any other PI you'd take to it quite quickly and it does the job. Steve from DP wasn't "on to me" he knew about it the entire time as we told him not too long after it happened years ago long before the coils were being sold and were just prototypes that we were going to try out but anyway... It's up to you what you want to do or think, I was just giving some feedback on a detector's performance which maybe helpful to someone and I'm sure most would agree with what I've said in that post, especially those that have owned the detectors talked about in it.
Thanks for clearing that up phrunt. :)
 
Hi Maple leaf
I have one for sale in the for sale section and can offer a better price than I have listed, this unit was used by the wife only 4 times
and is as new . With what covid threw at us we could'nt even get out this unit still has 4 years warranty left and 2 on the nugget finder sadie coil.

PM If interested
Bob..
 

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