For the vast majority of users, the recent GB/G2 platform machines will be better than a Diablo Micromax. This fact places a price ceiling on the DM which isn't even available new, you take big risks buying one used.
I will now revert to "old man telling stories while he still can" mode.
* * * * * * * * * *
I've been playing with metal detectors at the design engineering and field testing level for more than 30 years. The DM is an all-analog machine, designed in 1995-96 and technologically primitive by today's standards, but the technology was done exceptionally well in terms of delivering performance in a minimalist package. The first thing it had to do to be a credible product, was to match the original Fisher Gold Bug on hots. It met that criterion. The GB2 at that time was very new and expensive, we were not aiming at that.
Three things killed the DM.
1. Its design was aimed at the old Gold Bug, a respected and established product. To take market share away from that, first it had to provide a reason to be interested, and a lower price tag was the obvious ticket. Manufacturing cost on a DM should have been 'way less than the old GB which had been a "no matter what it costs' design. I'd say that the DM was a better product than the old GB, and I suppose nearly everyone who knows both machines would agree with that statement. But that doesn't mean you can intro a product at a price point higher than the established competition you're pitting it against! Tesoro intro'd it at a higher price hoping for a fatter profit margin. Huge strategic mistake. The thing priced right could have reinvented the gold machine market, and it never happened.
2. Jack was big on "smooth sound", and insisted on sandbagging the audio gain on it. He'd built a business around so-called "two-filter motion discriminators", doing them very well, but despite being right there in the legendary Bradshaws, he didn't know gold machines. Ya gotta be in all metals mode running on the ragged edge to hear the tiny stuff. I don't use headphones, I run on speaker, my prototype I jacked up the audio gain so I could hear what the hell was going on. All others use headphones to hear better, right? When I saw the first magazine ad, I was shocked: the testimonial was "smoothest". Not "hottest" or ______ (all those other possibilities.) He just called his first real gold machine a dog. This wasn't going well.
3. Jack's heart was never in the DM anyhow. The DM was a stepping-stone on the way to the Lobo Supertraq. From my perspective it was a big brother, little brother thing where the two items would support each other in the marketplace and even in manufacturing. From Jack's perspective, the DM was the product he hadn't really asked for, and to him it felt like a bastard child. Without Jack really wanting the product, and the wrong price point and the de facto requirement for headphones working against it, it was doomed.
It's remarkable that one of the best products ever produced in this industry, lasted (as I recall) about 3 years. This is an industry where a really good product can go ten, fifteen, even twenty years and more!
All was not lost. The Diablo Micromax was the preliminary all-analog version of the computerized and hotter Lobo Supertraq. The Lobo Supertraq introduced in late 1996 shifted the spotlight on computerized ground balancing in gold prospecting machines away from Australia to the USA. And here we are 18 years later with the Lobo Supertraq is still regarded as a member of the "dead-serious" VLF gold prospecting machine club.
Just the same, knowing both machines as I do (knowing how to go in there with a soldering iron and jack up the audio gain so I can hear the damn thing on speaker) and being comfortable with primitive manual phase-reference-shifting type ground balancing, for gold prospecting I'd take the Diablo over the Lobo. Easy choice for me. I own a Diablo because a friend heard how much I wanted one and gave me his; whereas the Lobo which was and still is a market success was a machine I never liked personally and don't have one. Different strokes for different folks. As a design engineer on someone else's payroll, my job is to design products that sell, whether I personally like them or not.
Nowadays, if you ask what's a "serious entry level" gold prospecting machine, the answer is the GB/G2 platform products. There's fairly broad agreement on this among people in that business who have no commitment to any particular manufacturer, they like what works. ........ Our F5 and Omega 8000 can be regarded as entry level, in fact I usually bring an Omega on gold machine field test expeditions. But those aren't in the serious gold prospecting category. They're good midscale general purpose machines with real but limited gold prospecting capability. Someone who knows how to use either machine skilfully can run rings around someone else swinging no-matter-what-it-cost that they don't know how to use properly -- which is most often the case.
I've been around a while in this industry. It's become obvious what my personal preferences are. I love simple cheap stuff that works good. Cars: low end hatchbacks. TV's: the best and cheapest TV that can be owned is the one you never buy in the first place, you can't give me a TV for free. Clothes: comfortable and less than $25 and they go in the trash when they become no longer functional. Etc. That frugal Scotch ancestry and steam-engine obsession with the Second Law of Thermodynamics permeates everything I do. Now and then it's all come together in products that bring those traits out the best, and by that standard the Diablo Micromax was my career high point. (So odd that as a Tesoro product it was such a failure!) The CZ platform intro'd in the very early 1990's was extremely complex which I didn't like, but complexity was a necessity for that product. The user interface nonetheless was simple and straightforward, performance-wise it is still the top machine for saltwater beach work, and it doesn't take a kilogram of batteries to run it because in the design I fought tooth and nail for every microwatt of power consumption no matter what the cost.
There won't be another Diablo Micromax. In electronics, the parts used, the design methods used, and the manufacturing methods used, are now mostly different from what they were back in the 1900's olden days. A "Scotch design philosophy" gold machine nowadays would be something else. And, it probably won't even happen. The GB/G2 are too multipurpose to be put into that minimalist category.
We do however have a product which meets the criterion of "Scotch design philosophy", and it's a product I had almost nothing to do with. It's the Eurotek Pro, designed by Jorge Anton Saad assisted by Yi Yang. If you guessed from their names that they're not Scots, that guess would be correct. Thus does the Second Law prevail over all, its wisdom did not end with James Watt and Arthur Eddington and Claude Shannon. .........The EtekPro is not by any stretch of the imagination a gold machine, it's aimed at general purpose beeping excluding gold prospecting. But it was designed to deliver the mostest with the leastest, and by golly it delivered that. I'd be as proud of it as I am of the Diablo Micromax except for one thing: it wasn't my design! although it was developed from a platform that originally came from me a decade ago. If I have something to be proud of, it's that these two guys learned enough from me to carry on without me.
By the way, rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. Hell, I was writing my obit several months ago, but since then managed to dial in better meds (especially medical-quality zinc gluconate originally developed for Wilson's Disease) and it looks like I'm cheating the Grim Reaper for another round. We have several new gold machine platforms (not just tweaks of existing platforms) under development and we even have a gold-geologist-in-training. Make no mistake, we're serious about gold! (And, please don't PM me asking me for details: no straight answers to questions like that can be offered until dealers in the authorized distribution chain are taking orders for a product that the factory has described publicly in detail.)
Meanwhile back to the original question: since my personal Diablo Micromax isn't for sale until my estate's being executed, I can't say what the price tag should be.
--Dave J.
