Minelab X-TERRA Forum

Good day everyone. I tried to do a search and apparently I can not narrow the field down enough to find what I am looking for. I have a 705 gold that was purchased feb/march 2012. The last couple times out it is working fine then the volume drops out. I can not hear a thing. I changed batteries (my battery indicator is still reading full batteries) and turn the 705 off and back on and this usually cures the issue. But in another thread on here I see I am not the only one who is having this issue. So I guess I should contact the service rep for my area???? How long does this take to fix usually??? I am leaving for Nome AK on June 23rd for a prospecting trip and was going to take the 705 with me but now reading that this is a issue should I not waste my time? Or should I just live with it and send it back to service when I return??

Thank you everyone for your input. Great site I have learned a LOT on here

Crash

Try pulling the batteries out and pressing the power button a few times while the batteries are out and then put them back in. If that doesn't work then follow the steps in the manual to do a factory reset.

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Pittsburgh, PA
Minelab X-Terra 705
Coils: 9" Stock (MF), 6" CC (MF), 6" DD (HF), 10.5" DD (MF&HF)
Coiltek 6" Digger Coil
Garrett Pro Pointer----Predator Tools Piranah Shovel

Seeing the world a half a step at a time.

Thank you mapper65! I have gotten in touch of Minelab and they suggested I send the machine in for a checkup. Hopefully I get it back in time for my trip. Again Thank you

If not using headphones try a pair. Also big pipes under ground will do this for me sometimes. I hope it's not the machine. Every since I got headphones I have not noticed it as much. Maybe 2 times.

I got my 705 about 8 weeks ago. 3 weeks ago my volume dropped off to nothing .I tapped the case and it came back on . It has only done this 1 more time since then. I will watch to see how you make out.

Are you guys using the Built in speaker or headphones?

oldmancrash,
I've never had that problem but I always use headphones. Hey, anyway have fun in Nome, I went to the GPAA Cripple River camp in 2005 and had a blast! They really put on good camp. If Kevin Hoagland is up there when you are, don't miss any of his demos. I'm going up to Valdez Creek, in central Alaska, in July to do a little prospecting myself. I'll be mostly dredging, but I'm taking my 705 with me too! Enjoy yourself and watch out for the bears and the mosquitoes, not necessarily in that order!
thecoinhunter

Hi folks, Thank you so much for the comments. I am sorry I should have said the fading volume has happened with headphones and without. I have 2 friends who have bought their 705's after me and neither of them have had an issue. So I think it might be something special just for me LOL.

Food for thought. I took my 705 packaged in the original box and then packed inside another box to the UPS shipping store. I requested it to be there by thursday. The best they could say was maybe it would be there then and for a total of $75 including $800 insurance. After picking myself up off the floor I went to USPS and paid $32 including $800 shipping and guarantee delivery by wednesday. I am not sure if anyone has come across this but heck I felt like I found gold saving $43.

thecoinhunter, very cool. My buddy and I are getting a little more worked up each day. I actually started to spread things out yesterday in the spare bedroom of what is going with me. Trying to figure out how many bags I can get away with. We are only gone for a week but it will be a full week of learning I am sure. This is all new to me. We are hoping to get out and at least get a afternoon of metal detecting under our belts. But we figured we would save that for a day that the weather is so bad we cant work the dredge or high banker. Kevin Hoagland??? That name sounds familiar? Already been warned about the mosquitoes and their ability to carry a medium sized man away. Thank goodness I am a fat guy LOL. Should be a fun trip. You have any helpful hints?

Again Thank you to everyone for your comments. I will keep this thread updated as I get more info.

oldmancrash,
Kevin Hoagland use to work for Minelab, but just recently hired on at GPAA as Director of Development. He is a great guy. I'm working with him right now on a possible Outdoor Channel show about my friends at Deep Blue Marine. They are diving on a treasure shipwreck in the Dominican Republic as we speak (or write, text or what ever we are doing!). Kevin is an expert on gold hunting with the Minelab detectors, he is featured on most of the videos put out by Minelab about gold prospecting with metal detectors.
As far as helpful hints about Nome, take a variety of clothes, it could be raining, snowing, windy, hot (70 degrees) or cold. A good set of rain gear is a must, both for the obvious (rain) and to protect your clothes when you are "highbanking". Don't worry about taking too many clothes, they do have laundry facilities there for you to use. Also a good pair of hip waders and a pair of waterproof over the ankle hiking boots will be all you need for "shoes". If you forget anything, they have a store on site that has almost anything you may need. The list that the GPAA includes with your trip packet is well thought out, pay attention to what they say. Froggtogs brand of rain gear are really light weight and durable, you can get them at Sportsman's Warehouse or Cabala's. A good sleeping bag (not to heavy!) pillow and one of those high tech foam or air mattress is a must. That plywood bunk is those hooches is really hard!
The only thing that you'll say after your week is done is " I wish I would have signed up for TWO WEEKS". There is always next year. Another warning, Alaska in habit forming, you'll have to go back after you have been there once!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have fun and tell Tom and Perry and Kevin (if he's there) hi from Bill in Utah.
thecoinhunter

Quote
oldmancrash
I took my 705 packaged in the original box and then packed inside another box to the UPS shipping store. I requested it to be there by thursday. The best they could say was maybe it would be there then and for a total of $75 including $800 insurance. After picking myself up off the floor I went to USPS and paid $32 including $800 shipping and guarantee delivery by wednesday.

I'm able to ship UPS from my office at a discount so I get to see what it costs to ship via UPS. Unless you have no other choice, the UPS Store is never a cost effective way to ship something. I didn't have a box large enough to ship an Apple iMac in. I went to the local UPS store (which has since gone out of business) because I knew they would have a box. I bought a box and figured that I might as well have them ship it since it was going UPS anyway and I was at a UPS store. When they told me the price I said "I'll pay you for the box but I can't pay you that kind of money to ship it." I went back to my office, put it on the scale and it was around 1/3-1/2 the cost for me to ship it on our UPS account. Lesson learned!

Lately the good ole USPS has been my choice for shipping. It cost me less to send through them compared to our discounted UPS account.

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Pittsburgh, PA
Minelab X-Terra 705
Coils: 9" Stock (MF), 6" CC (MF), 6" DD (HF), 10.5" DD (MF&HF)
Coiltek 6" Digger Coil
Garrett Pro Pointer----Predator Tools Piranah Shovel

Seeing the world a half a step at a time.

OK time for a little update. I called yesterday to get the status of my 705. Of course I did not have my RMA number. Why would "I" be prepared? So the guys were very very nice on the phone. The first person I talked to looked all of my info up and nothing had been updated in the computer. He said that is not unusual as they have 2 different computer programs and until they update theirs it will not show my machine even coming in. He promised that they would call back in a while and give me an update. I figured maybe hopefully I would hear back from them. Well in a couple hours I got a phone call from Brian and he said the machine was checked in last Wednesday and the issue was found and repaired and return shipped on Thursday. Now dang it that is what I call service. In one day and out the next. Plus they really did call me back. Brian suggested that I really give it a work out seeing as to how I am taking it to Alaska next week with me. He wants to make sure it is fixed before my trip. THANK YOU MineLab!!!! I wish 90% of our stores here in Missoula would take a lesson in customer service from these guys. I am really sold even more on minelab detectors now more then ever. I will update again when I get it and am able to test it out.

Sounds like BADBAJA will be sending in his 705 before the warranty runs dry here in a few months. Arrrrrrr anyone got a ctx they will let me borrow for a month? Lol

oldmancrash,
I just got back from my trip to Alaska and was wondering how your Nome adventure went. I did better at fishing than prospecting, but sometimes you prospect, sometimes you find gold, sometimes your fish and sometimes you catch!!!!!!!!!!!! We took about 300 pounds of halibut, cod, ling cod and rock fish to the processors after our fishing trip out of Whittier last week. I wish we did better at the gold, but we had fun up on Valdez Creek anyway, We saw lots of wildlife and some beautiful country, I can't wait to go back. I'm already planning a trip up there next year. We met a bunch of guys like the "Gold Rush Alaska" group up on Valdez Creek area and they were just setting up their operation to get it ready to really hit it hard next year. They had a bunch of their equipment held up in Canada by customs and didn't get started as early as they expected this year. Looking forward to hearing how you did at Cripple River.
thecoinhunter

Hello thecoinhunter, 300 pounds of fish? WOW that is a lot of fish. It will be a nice treat during the year. Sorry about the gold. Hopefully next year when you go back you will have as much luck with the gold as you had with the fish. I had a heck of a good time. On the way into camp we were lucky enough to see some whales that were pretty close to the shore. I couldnt figure out at first what the heck was going on with water shooting 20 feet into the air. But the Stan the driver told us it was whales. He said it was pretty rare to see them that close to shore. Not many of the dredging rigs were out in the ocean which we thought was weird. But we later found out when we were in to Nome that most of the dredge boats had severe damage from the winter storms and had not made it out yet for the season. We wound up talking to one of the discovery channel film crew guys and found out he was from Missoula Montana also. Small world. He said that they were weeks behind but the dredge crews were getting it together and this year the gold show should be a good one. We got to see several of the dredge boats from the show in port. We found one dredge that was flying a Montana flag. We asked if it was ok to come closer and the guys about talked our ears off. They are from an area about 120 miles north of us. They seemed to have a pretty good setup on their boat. It was fun seeing things you see on TV in real life. What scared the heck out of us is some of the boats are not boats but river dredge systems being held together by 5 gallon buckets and extension ladders. I am not kidding. And these guys are taking them out in the ocean, scary. As far as any wildlife? All I seen was a coyote and a fox and I was within 15 feet of the fox. Then come to find out he is kind of a camp friendly fox. My friend that went up got to see a cow moose and calf. And there were rumors that a BIG bear and cub were just across the river so everyone was advised to be careful crossing cripple river.

I wasnt going to go fishing but broke down Saturday afternoon and bought my 1 day license. I figured that if I go home without fishing I would kick my butt the rest of my life. So at 3pm I went and bought my license and by 4:30 pm I had caught so many 1 ½ - 5 pound pink salmon my arms were tired. I actually stripped the gears on my reel. I set up my gopro camera and videotaped me catching some of the fish. I bet I caught between 35-40 fish. To much fun.

As far as the gold??? We had some pretty good luck. I think we brought home over 2oz. I am still hoping for more but for the work and actual time spent I think we did pretty good. Everything there is super fine beach gold. We were told that some of the outer camps that we wanted to go to were not open so the only real option was the beach. But later found out that was not true, camp ketchmark was open. UGH. Oh well maybe if we get to go back we can do it next time. We have about 40 pounds of our beachbox cons to go through so there should be some pretty good gold in there yet. I sure liked running the new beachboxes. The new matting does seem to hold onto the gold. But plugged up pretty quick if we fed it to fast. Once we figured out how our beachbox liked to be run we had some pretty good clean outs. We were assigned a 25 foot wide claim on the beach that ran from ocean to tundra. Our claim didnt seem to have as much of a pay line like the others so we ventured out one night and did some exploring. After about 6 hours of walking we came across an area that had the red sand we were told to look for just lying on the beach surface. From what we were told the red sand is ground up rubies and it holds a lot of gold. The spot we found was anywhere from ½ inch deep to 4 inches deep of pure red sand for maybe 75 feet long. For a day and a half all we ran was this red sand. We ran 79 buckets in all. I would load 3 5gallon buckets on the atv and take them to my buddy and he ran them in the beachbox. Each one of these buckets weighed over 100 pounds. It was real heavy material. As a matter of fact, one of the staff members had seen what we were doing and came and gave us some helpful direction of how to deal with this material. He asked if we do a clean out if we would mind coming and getting him to see also. So after 15 buckets we shut down. Bad news was we had a LOT of gold sitting in the last couple of ridges of the matting telling us we lost a lot out the end of the beachbox. Good news was there was a LOT of gold in the beachbox. He said he had NEVER seen that much gold in 1 clean out. He asked if we would mind showing him where we found the paydirt. Heck I am a nice guy. So I showed him and he asked if it was ok if he and his buddy ran some buckets also? I didnt care, it was all over the beach and as far as I figured he asked before just doing it. We decided from that point on to only run 8-10 buckets and do a clean out. That proved to be the magic number for us.
I am embarrassed to say I never took my metal detector out of the hooch. I helped a couple of guys that rented 2 minelab 705 gold machines from the store understand how to use them. They went out for a few hours and came back saying they were going to buy one when they got home. But they didnt find anything. My buddy took his out and came back saying the mosquitos were getting to thick.


So short story of a real long story is We had a lot of fun. Would we do it again YUP. We are both shooting to try again next year and hopefully 4 weeks this time.

Sounds awesome. 2 oz was that enough to pay for your trip?