Andy, I felt compelled to respond to this post about your book experience of late with Minelab. I'm very saddened at what appears to be such an almost disregard or seemingly, a "disinterest" on their part in regards to your book and efforts to greatly enhance our "experience" if you will, with the help of your wonderful books on their detectors. (boy that's a mouthful), but I'm not sure how else to say it.
I've read a lot of the posts on the Quatro forum (I"m a Quatro owner), and I don't ever remember reading anything negative said about your book, Mastering the Quatro, (which I've read and re-read many times). I've only heard accolades on how much it helped people, and frankly, I was almost stunned that "cross saving" was not included in the directions that came with my Quatro. I only found out about it through your book.
I hope I'm not out of line sharing what I'm about to say, publicly, but I think it's safe enough to mention, so here goes-- About 6 months or so after I bought my Quatro, I kept thinking, gee, they've done a DVD on the Explorer, why not the Quatro, and being a serious amateur videographer, I got so worked up about it I contacted a man in Minelab's marketing department. I won't mention his name, but he was very cordial, and I asked him if it would be ok if I were to shoot a training video for the Quatro, and I thought he gave me a pretty fair response. He said, yes, it's ok, but in order for me to put Minelab's logo on the video, they would have to view it and give it their approval. I thought that was a fair response, but "darn me", I kept putting it off and as it turned out, I never shot it, but, in my opinion, a decent training DVD can be a good enhancement to one of your books (if it's done well and accurately) and certainly an enhancement to the more or less "bare bones" owners manual that comes with the detector.
All in all, I still love my Quatro, and I"m sure I'd love the Safari or the Explorer SE pro, or any of their more or less higher end detectors. I guess it's just like you put it: "It is what it is", and we just have to make the best of it. Even if Minelab never includes your books with any of their detectors, I know that I, for one, and many others will still buy them because they fill a great need for "extra curricular learning" if you will, on these machines. Keep up the good work, and I know you'll still be selling books and making a lot of treasure hunters happy that you did. Sincerely, Marc Trainor.
. Have to agree with others though Andy a Safari DVD would be a nice idea, and I for one would buy one.