Compass Electronics posts from the past..........

[Melbeta]

Reference to PHIL's Compass forum, he for some reason, and not explained to me why, froze my membership in the Compass Forum. I could still enter the forum, and read the posts, but could not post in it. I emailed him, but he did not respond with removal of the freeze, so I REMOVED EACH and EVERY POST I made in the Compass forum. I just came back, from looking to see if what guys said is true. And I did notice, that it is true... Now if my ILLEGAL postings of the original postings, carrying and bearing the name of MELBETA, are removed, then I will relax right now. If they disappear immediately from that forum, I will be very grateful.....

PHIL stuck back into the forum, some of the posts I REMOVED from the forum. My USER NAME of MELBETA, is still there with the same words I REMOVED. I spoke to an attorney, and he said I could sue under Colorado LAWS, get a judgment, then pursue the collection of the judgment, and that the judgement would be TRIPPLE DAMAGES. But I do not think PHIL has much money that could be collected. And I am not sure I want to hurt him anyway. I am not a vindictive person you see. So I will wait to see what is going on with PHIL using my USER name of MELBETA in that forum, illegally of course...

So far I did not notice any attacking of my user name. Just keeping it in HIS Compass forum... The state of Colorado has a law, that permits state residents to collect tripple damages for any injuries to one's name. I USED that Compass Forum's OWN SOFTWARE, to remove and purge any and all posts, made by myself, using the USER NAME of MELBETA, and I have noticed that someone, most likely could be PHIL, has taken the removed posts, and RE-POSTED my posts. Now that is not merely a civil act, I was told it is an Criminal ACT. I think he does not know the damages are rolling up on such methods.

IS SVEN still working for PHIL in the Compass Forum???????? SVEN??? Sven, will you send me your email address??? Does anyone have either Sven's or PHIL's email address???

Now that does not mean I am letting him use my USER name! I was told it was an violation of Federal Law for him to stick it back in, and a violation of Colorado Law, and use it without my permission. The name of MELBETA, as I created and use it, BELONGS solely to myself. And I was also told, that when a person posts something, it belongs to that PERSON who originally posted it.

So far I have not noticed any damages to my user name. So if anyone has a member ship in PHIL's Compass Forum, and notices an attack against my user name of MELBETA, please make a copy, and send it to me at [email protected]. So any member of that COMPASS FORUM, if you notice any postings that attack my MELBETA name, make a copy, and email it to me, to the email address contained within this sentence... Right now, I am MORE CONCERNED with damages that might arise if any attacks or damage is resulting with the ILLEGAL USE of the name of MELBETA, irregardless if there is no change to the wordings of my original post!!! I did LEGALLY remove EACH and EVERY posting I made in and to the Compass Forum........
MELBETA

[Melbeta]

Christmas is approaching us next week. So I am alike all of you guys and gals, my children are coming for the holidays, bringing our grandchildren, and some are bringing great grandchildren, so I will not be a vailable that much, as they are coming as early as today, and then being the oldest, I have to be readily available for them. So until Christmas is over and gone, I doubt I will be posting here, as it takes me away from them. So I will wish everyone a Merry Merry Christmas and a Happy Happy New Year. And on the east coast, in January we will be having a NEW PRESIDENT taking HIS OFFICE AGAIN, so that changes the political picture for all of us as well. So I will be dancing out of this forum and dancing into the spotlight at our house, for the next two weeks.

None of them are detector users though, so that really stretches my mind to change thinking for the next two weeks.

So Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year for each and every one out there from MELBETA... Now you can understand, the Red Color and the Green Color, are both Christmas colors......
MELBETA

[Melbeta]

Charles, I do not blame you for not wanting to work repairing metal detectors. They are vintage models, and parts are vintage as well. Some parts are still availabe, other parts no longer are made and no longer are available for vintage machines. I thanked Charles by email, sent him a check. Waiting to hear back to make sure he received the check in the mail. Charles is a really nice person. Pity that Compass
owner is letting the Compass forum run out of steam. But I like it here now. Carl really has it running well!
Melbeta

[Melbeta]

Now here is a file that I liked what it said in its words... I did not write it myself! If it has an error, let me know quickly so I can change it...If not, it will stand by itself.........
MELBETA

A Brief Bounty Hunter History

Pacific Northwest Instruments (PNI) in Klamath Falls, Oregon originated the Bounty Hunter brand of metal detectors sometime in the late 1960's or early 1970's. Click here for an August, 1971 ad in True Treasure magazine, featuring their trio of BFO machines. These were likely the first models offered by PNI and all three probably shared pretty much the same parts and circuitry. Just the addition of a few controls or a larger meter and case created the differences between them. Inside was a basic Beat Frequency Oscillator circuit that was no doubt very similar to what any of the competition was offering at the time. Anyone who could handle a soldering iron and read a simple schematic could design and build one.

In those days it was a wide-open field, literally. Dozens of small companies sprang up and began to compete. Most any new design was instantly seized upon by all the makers and copied as best they could, hopefully avoiding patent infringement lawsuits as they went. Detectorists also enjoyed wide-open fields that had never been hunted by anything but the eye or a magnet and shovel. Detecting was allowed most anywhere you chose to search.

By the mid-70's, PNI Bounty Hunter had survived and grown. The tried-and-true BFO was still featured in their lineup, and had added several TR, IB and combination designs. Click here to see a 1976 catalog. Ground compensation and trash discrimination were just beginning to be addressed.

Bounty Hunter had some real firsts in the industry. Their Red Baron detectors added phase discrimination and ground balance to a VLF design. Patented by George Payne for PNI in Tempe, AZ, in 1978, these machines are still popular today.

In this same era, Teknetics entered the fray, a young company created by some former technicians from White's. They acquired from PNI the Bounty Hunter name and several key patents. Using the revolutionary tone and visual ID circuits of George Payne, their Mark 1 detector put Teknetics on the map.

There was a shakeout in the industry in the later 80's to early 90's and unfortunately, Teknetics was one of the victims. The company's property eventually became the object of a badly-handled bankruptcy and was thus acquired by First Texas, which was already in the business of producing metal detectors under their own brand, sold mostly through mass-marketing chains such as Fingerhut and others. (I bought my first detector, a First Texas Search Master DX-8500 from Fingerhut in 1981. I still have it and will make a page for it here someday.)

So it was that Bounty Hunter/Tek made the trek to First Texas in the 1990's and it was soon evident First Texas had the funding and marketing to finally do something with the collection of innovative designs and patents. We owe visual target ID to George's unique concepts. The Big Bud series of detectors, built by George Payne, combined many of the features that almost all of today's machines continue to use, and are probably the most significant models to come from Bounty Hunter in this time frame. I believe this happened around the time First Texas acquired BH.

I'm writing all this from memory with only a few supporting documents, so if I've gotten the timeline incorrect in regards to when George Payne worked where for whom, please forgive me. Then, please send me an email with corrections, and I'll update the page.

From the early Outlaws and Red Barons, progressing through the Big Bud and Mark 1 concepts devised by George Payne and others, came the familiar machines we all know and love: Tracker, Quickdraw, Sharpshooter and all the rest. Meanwhile, George had moved on to work for Compass and other manufacturers. First Texas continued to improve upon the BH lineup by releasing several upgrades and new models. The Time Ranger and Land Ranger epitomized this era at Bounty Hunter.

Entering the new millenium, things were still pretty much the same. Around 2002-2003 things started waking up at First Texas when Dave Johnson entered the picture. Dave is a well-known detector designer since 1981, with many successful designs under his belt. Among them the Fisher 1260-X, the Gold Bug I and other designs for Fisher, Tesoro, Troy and White's. Almost immediately we began to see new designs from Bounty Hunter, such as the Discovery 1100, 2200 and 3300 made for Radio Shack. The Time Ranger and perhaps a few other models got a quiet upgrade or two during this period.

Around 2005, the Teknetics name burst back into the field with the introduction of the cutting-edge T2 detector primarily designed and programmed by Dave Johnson and John Gardiner. To say it made huge waves felt throughout the industry would be an understatement! Though many of us knew better, as we were aware of Bounty Hunter's important contributions to detecting, there was a public perception that BH machines were cheap junk not worth owning. This ill-informed perception was largely disbursed by the introduction of the T2 and its wide acceptance as a state-of-the-art metal detector.

A couple years later when Fisher began to founder, it , too was rescued by First Texas, vastly broadening the scope of products they could release.

We haven't reached the end of this story by any means, but this is about as far as my own involvement with First Texas' many products has taken me to date and it brings us close to the present. I am more interested in preserving on these pages the info that's becoming harder to find. The current state of the detecting art is already out there in wide array for anyone with questions. It makes no sense for me to try to cover it all in any detail here. I enjoy the new as much as the next guy, but I really appreciate the old. If you've read this far, you must enjoy it, too. Happy searching with (or for) whatever detector suits your fancy!

January,1st, 2010

Actually the Mark 1 came a little later in the Teknetics history, Their 9000 was a earlier Kick off than the Mark1. Between the two the 9000 ID'ed better than the Mark 1, The Mark 1 was a bit deeper and had a slower sweep speed. I never own a Teknetics Eagle or a Condor, but I would say they were probably as good as the Mark 1 for depth and would ID as well as the earlier 9000 and 8500.

The History of the Tabs, (pull & Toss beaver tail rings). They hit main stream in 1965 and were in heavy use until 1975. The smaller square sta-tabs hit the market as a replacement to the pull & Toss tabs, the idea was to reduce litter problems from the pull & toss.

My first little adventure in detecting was with my grandfather who had gotten some piece of junk detector and wanted to go to the park and fine some money (this was somewhere around 1970, he died in 1972) after a short while of hunting he found out that after picking up and digging dozens of pull tabs to one penny it wasn't worth it, that ended his detecting. By 1970 in our local parks the pull tabs where laying on the ground, while some where just below the surface. (The same park now, those tabs are about 3" to 4.5")

I started hunting in the early 80's.. and those tabs were the problem as they are now! Then like now the detectors (the good ones) you could work around the tabs and coin hunt, but Not Nickles! and the same then as now for gold. There isn't any way around those tabs if you want to find the nickles and the gold.

VID detectors of the past (high end ones)
I've had, Teknetics 9000 Tek 8500 (I still use one of these for cherry picking) Tek Mark 1 Fisher
CZ-7a-Pro Whites 5900/Di Pro-sl

and I've got, Whites XLT Coinstrike ID-Edge F2

And as far as just target ID ability calling a coin a coin those old ones in many way are as good, some ways better! The biggest gain I can see is in, smaller packages, less weight, and in the early 90's came some improved depth.

The Teknetics 9000, 8500 and the Whites 5900 ID as well as anything detector I've seen! And the fact that the 5900 came out after 1990 put it at the increased depth.

If I were the owner of a detector company I would came down out of the Ivory tower with a bag of tabs and I would tell my engineers to build a detector around finding these tabs! I want it to be able to as much as possible leave everything else. Then when done I would tell them to incorporate that system into a normal metal detector, I would say they add a toggle to switch off the tab detection and switch to normal detection. It seem that going the other way isn't possible, but I'm thinking the other way is!

But, the Tabs in local parks were a nightmare by 1970 (around where I live anyway) Mark

Again, I liked what this article said, I did not write it myself. If it is in error, let me know in a timely manner, so I can change the erroneous error! If not enough time, it cannot be changed by myself... I am not sure who wrote it!!! If you notice something that is not true in this article, let me know in a timely manner, and I can change it or delete that paragraph. If not timely, it will stand and I will have to modify it in another way... I do not want anything I post to be erroneous!!! I like to post only the truth and not post anything that is not true! I liked what Mark above just said.... Read what Mark said right above!
MELBETA

[Melbeta]

Ahhhh! Compass Electronics and also Whites Electronics, and other companies are ALL GONE TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And from the material you just posted above, many of those are gone as well today...
MELBETA