sgoss66 said:
Carolina,
Just to expound a bit more on my "largely marketing" comment.
I have talked about this here before, regarding Minelab's implication that the Equinox "won't be as sensitive to deep silver" as FBS. I have said that I think those statements may be more "marketing" than what the truth might prove to be. And then, as you and stephenscool were discussing, we also have Minelab's implications that the Equinox will be only "almost as good as FBS and BBS" on wet sand thing. Just like with the "a little less sensitive to silver" caveats Minelab has mentioned, I am simply having a hard time seeing how it's not at least "possible," if not LIKELY, that this, too, is nothing but "marketing"...
The way I see it is, something just doesn't add up here. EITHER you have created a "breakthrough" in the technology that allows you to better deal with ground minerals -- and thus greatly improve target ID, or you haven't. If you HAVEN'T, but are claiming you have, then users are going to find out real quick that you are selling snake oil. (And I don't think this will be the case, with the Equinox). On the OTHER hand, if you really HAVE created this breakthrough technology -- I have to believe that while your engineers were so busy creating this breakthrough so as to "one-up" your competition, it's highly likely that the engineers also, somewhat inadvertently, "one-upped" your OWN product offerings, as well.
Do you REALLY believe that the Equinox is going to be SO GOOD that Minelab draws away customers from XP and Nokta and Garrett and all the others, and yet AT THE SAME TIME, the Equinox's performance will fall short of 15- to 20-year old technology (BBS/FBS)? How can you take multi-frequency technology, IMPROVE upon it (which is what Multi-IQ claims to do), and then end up with WORSE performance than your prior generation of multi-frequency technology? I really think Multi-IQ will either prove to be an IMPROVEMENT, or it will prove NOT to be. But if it IS, then it just doesn't make sense to say it's only an improvement over NON-Minelab machines, but NOT an improvement over Minelab machines. Isn't that essentially what the marketing department is telling us here? They are walking a tightrope, in my opinion, and they know it. They on one hand need to talk about how much of a breakthrough in performance it will be, outperforming all THE OTHER manufacturer's machines, but they also need to find "caveats" so that they don't make it "obvious" to their customer base that it just may outperform THEIR OWN machines...
I think what will most likely be the case, when the dust settles, is one of two things -- EITHER the Equinox is THAT GOOD (in which case FBS and BBS will likely be out-performed as well), or NOT that good. I just don't see a middle ground in there where the Equinox will be a "better performer" than the others, but yet NOT a better performer than FBS/BBS.
Steve
Steve, I get what you are saying, and I think you pretty well summed it up with your "walking a tightrope" analogy. Let me add just a couple thoughts. For one, I don't think Minelab would purposely "dumb down" the Equinox to ensure that it performs worse than the CTX. If they truly have a breakthough technology here with the Equinox, then they would be best served by letting it loose on the market in its full glory, and capture about 75% of the entire detector market in a matter of months, which is what it would do if its better than the CTX at a third of the price. Why protect the sale of maybe 200 CTX at the expense of 50,000 Equinox sales. Produce the best product they can and let the chips fall as they may. Besides, if this technology is breakthrough, then I predict Minelab will soon come out with a machine based on Multi-IQ, or maybe a Multi-IQ/FBS technology, that has *all* the bells and whistles, like a color screen, target trace, all sorts of advanced adjustments, PC-programmable, and so forth. Then they will almost totally capture the high end market as well.
An analogy I can draw, is the White's MXT. When it came out, it was a mid range detector but it actually outperformed their high-end machine at the time, the XLT. Some would say it actually outperformed the subsequent White's high-end machine, the DFX. The MXT was just *that* good. I know, because I owned all those machines at the time. White's touted the adjustability and features of the XLT/DFX, but those of us who actually used them all, knew that the MXT outperformed them in actual field use (most of the time....saltwater beach was one area the DFX did better however). The MXT was so good, that it sold like hotcakes, and in fact is still selling 17 years after its release because it was *that* good. White's must have made a huge bundle off the MXT. I see the Equinox in a similar light. It is a new mid range machine that could very well have better performance than their top end machines, and if so , so be it, Minelab will make a mint selling Equinoxes and far more than make up for any loss in CTX sales.
So that's my two cents. Maybe I'm just trying to convince myself that the Equinox will turn out to be all that we hope it will be and be an awesome breakthrough machine. The possibility is certainly there. We'll find out here soon enough. Fingers crossed...
