Steve H and the fate of HIS MxSport

I commend Steve for his thoughts and have the utmost respect for him. I am not a member of his forum, but I read it quite often. I know he is a big Whites fan, so im sure this post, and decision, wasn't easy for him. I highlighted the parts I felt were most insightful to me.

"I got my unit back day before yesterday. I did some quick tests to confirm the tone smearing issue was fixed (it was) and put the unit up for sale last night. It sold today and is on the way to a new home.

So why did I do that? I think my expectations were extremely high, and my initial experience with the machine was not good. First impressions do mean a lot. All my posts about the MX Sport early on make clear I was hoping it might replace my DFX as the detector running my Bigfoot coil plus others I have. That appears to have been wishful thinking with White's officially declaring existing coils will not work properly with the MXS. People who have made adapters indicate there might still be some hope in that department, but over the last couple weeks I realized I was just trying too hard to make something work when the fact is I already have a detector that works perfectly on my Bigfoot - the DFX.

In all honesty there is one other thing. I think after my initial post about the tones issue that a lot of people have now put me in the position of being the guy that needs to officially declare the firmware update to be good and give the MX Sport a thumbs up or thumbs down. The problem there from my perspective is that if the firmware is suspect and if I am to give it a proper testing regimen, it would require a couple weeks of my time to do extensive field testing and cross checking on found targets under a wide range of conditions. Simply using the machine is not good enough as you don't know what you are missing if the machine can't find it. I like to put three different model machines head to head in rotation finding and cross checking found targets, to see if any machines are seeing targets the others miss. It also requires getting into as many varied circumstances as possible due to the software nature of modern detectors and the way the settings interact. For example, a bug may exist at only a certain range of ground balance settings, or only with a specific set of other settings options. In a way I was just lucky (unlucky?) to see the tones issue under my conditions, but it was in large part due to it already being noted by others and an open question that I looked for it specifically.

Anyway, full beta testing was not what I was signing up for when I got the MX Sport. While the MX Sport was away the last three weeks I moved on to and am having fun with other detectors, and the prospect of doing any of the above sounds like work to me. You can basically say I chickened out on the whole thing and dumped the MX Sport to just be done with it all. I may end up regretting that and maybe after the dust settles I will get another MX Sport some day. It would not be the first time I got a new machine, got rid of it, and got another later on. For now though I am just glad to be on the outside looking in and will be as interested as anyone to see how the MX Sport plays out for others. I don't regret any of it for a second however - I learned a lot and got my eyes opened up about a few things, that's for sure.

I will offer this however. I think White's has a killer fresh water detecting design in the MX Sport. It is an extremely solid and well conceived machine from a fresh water detecting perspective. However, for dry land use the decision to go with eight AA batteries and a coil designed more for water hunting than land hunting makes it heavier than need be. It is like a water machine that you can also use on land, as opposed to a land machine that you can also use in the water. And with that observation I will leave further developments to others."

Im glad people like Steve have the courage to say what's on their mind, positive OR negative, even if it's about something they love.

Honesty and straight forwardness are qualities I highly value.

Steve has a tremendously great writing style, I envy.

His forum is nice too.

Wow, high praise, thank you gentlemen.

I have to admit I thought I was in for a repeat of what I have done many times in the past - get a new White's detector that flat out works and have something great to use and talk about. It was that way for me with the GMT, MXT, TDI, Surf PI, M6, and many older machines. I just googled "Steve Herschbach White's Electronics" and got 2130 page returns so yeah, I have a lot of history with White's.

Long story short I guess this kind of thing happens more often than not these days with new machines, but still caught me flat footed when it happened with a new White's. My bad maybe but I expect better of them. The good news is the MX Sport has some genuine raw horsepower and once White's gets it all sorted out I am sure it will be a great machine.

Seriously though, if this is the way things are going to be, then any manufacturer selling higher end units needs to make firmware updates over the internet a standard feature. Either do the serious footwork to insure machines are 100% on release, or just make it more painless for all involved to take care of updates if they are needed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2016 05:11AM by Steve Herschbach.

Steve Herschbach Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Seriously though, if this is the way things are
> going to be, then any manufacturer selling higher
> end units needs to make firmware updates over the
> internet a standard feature. Either do the serious
> footwork to insure machines are 100% on release,
> or just make it more painless for all involved to
> take care of updates if they are needed.

White's had the perfect chance to do that here, and to move that ability/feature to a new mid-range series.
The one-time development costs could have been subsidized by future use of this same platform...
With the firmware problems that quickly showed up White's could have come out looking like geniuses here...
and further FW improvements could have been made over time to the benefit of everyone...

White's vision is obviouly pretty shallow, sad to see their reputation take a hit like this but this one is
certainly deserved....

oh, and Steve I think you handled this perfectly...

I was ready to Get the MXSport as soon as it came out as I did with the V3i, and the Racer, Racer 2. I thought I'd thin down the herd and maybe replace the MXT Pro, an M6, and my Tesoro Tiger Shark with the Sport but I was having so much fun with the Racer 2 that I sorta drug my foot on the Sport release. I'm very happy that I've waited. I've been using White's detectors since I started in 1975 and was so pleased with White's that I eventually became a White's dealer. I saw the writing on the wall when White's started making special (cheap) detectors for KellyCo, and then the release the Prizm series. I ordered a Vision the first week it was available and then found they had to change the name to Spectra, and then I had to send it in for the upgrade to the V3i version not to mention the bad D2 coils. The name change sure hurt it's resale value when I sold it last month. Then there was the tone issue with the MX5, then the release of more bottom end units. The V3i was released about March 2009 so no new Top of the line detector from White's in over 7 years. Figured I'd sell it while it was still White's Flagship model, besides it had become only a fresh drop coin and jewelry detector with the BigFoot coil on it and I could do the same with a DFX and recoup some of the money. Why was it only used for fresh drops? Because even though I had all the available White's coils, there were other detectors that worked better in all the other types of detecting I do. I still have a few older White's detectors that do produce like a Mod'd IDX Pro, M6, DFX, and a PI Dualfield, but I'm going to wait on the MXSport until the jury's in. I'm hoping for White's to get back to top but getting rid of Jimmy looks like they're still headed in the wrong direction, at least as far as making machines for the experienced users, but that's probably not where the money is. I guess the money is in making crappy products for new folks that don't know any better. Gotta go........my Makro Racer 2 needs a workout.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2016 10:38PM by Tom Slick.