I've read on several detector dealer sites that the GB 2 is produced in China, I'm glad I was wrong. I think anything of value made in China is junk. The only thing that I've bought recently has suprised me that is made in China is a wide band VHF/UHF handheld radio for $50.
I only knew of one dealer site with that ridiculosity, he said about 2 years ago he'd fix it but only took it down several days ago. This was a dealer whom I knew and had previously respected. Didn't know that other dealers were also posting such malarkey. After all, anyone who wants to know if the GB2 is made in China, all they have to do is call and ask. (The answer is no, it's made right here in El Paso and furthermore I'm the guy who designed it.)
There's a lot of good stuff made in China. Many of the electronic components that go into electronic equipment (yes, even US military stuff) are made in China. In my lifetime two of my girlfriends have been Chinese. I eat with chopsticks skilfully. No problem with China as such.
When it comes to metal detectors, China does 'em rather badly. Without much of a domestic market history, it's all new to them and they get into business by copying for export without bothering to learn anything about how the darn things work, much less how to design a good one from scratch.
I expect that in time, China will develop an indigenous metal detector industry just as we see developing in the former Soviet Bloc nations, designs home-brewed by engineers who understand both electronics and metal detecting. By that time I suppose China will be a first world nation and the USA will be a third world nation and the actual manufacturing will be done here.
Here in El Paso-Juarez, a traditional low cost manufacturing hub, we're caught in the middle between the rise of China and the fall of the USA. Some of the stuff that companies sent to China is starting to trickle back now that the Sinaloa Cartel has defeated the Juarez Cartel and druglord wars are winding down. (If you're wondering which cartel had the monopoly the whole time on the USA side of the border, avoiding the bloodshed, we're talking
the same drug corridor here!, think for about 60 seconds which US government agency has never named the cartel that controls the traffic between El Paso and Chicago, and why it's impossible to get the federal government to legalize weed. If 60 seconds isn't enough to arrive at the correct conclusion, you haven't been paying attention.)
We do business globally, and China is one of the countries in which we both buy and sell. Two of our BH products designed here are manufactured in China by a manufacturer whom we trust, and we've never seen those products show up as clones. One of those products we also manufacture here since that gives us more flexibility to meet sudden changes in demand.
The GB2 is never going to be made in China. The reason is simple: no Chinese manufacturer would even be tempted. Too difficult.
--Dave J.
PS: on that dope thing, I have friends & family in and from northern Calif to Washington, a region of both cannabis production and of legalization. They've come to the conclusion that the problem the feds have with the stuff is not Reefer Madness, but that the domestic industry undercuts the DEA's drug business which is based on control of drug flow through ports of entry. Thus does the federal government suppress local industry and the tax base which legalization could make possible, in favor of its lucrative arrangement with foreign production and international criminals. The whole thing is so attractive to politicians that neither the Republiphant nor Democronkey hypocrites can muster the guts to say NO to it.
I live half an hour's walk from the Zaragoza port of entry where the DEA takes control over Mexican dope cartel shipments. Since the stuff don't disappear somewhere in Kansas, it's not going by car and truck, it's going by air. I-10 however provides a convenient truck corridor to the Dallas area, since for half the way I-10 is darn near the only road in town and it's easy to hire a follow vehicle to keep track of the truck. The follow vehicle doesn't even need to know why they've been hired to do the job, or who it was really who hired them to do it.
*****
And that brings me to another subject, the other collaborators, the TSA. The stuff mostly goes by air because by air you can bypass the local cops who might accidently screw things up. That means TSA has to be in on the deal. Since El Paso is a major dope distribution hub with a minor airport, at El Paso International, dope has to run TSA policy. What I've figured out so far is that they're exceptionally good at theft of perfectly legitimate cash and computers, and absent from the picture of dope seizures.
Dope seizures in El Paso are either from freelancers, or for show. The ones for show are typically (allegedly) of big shipments in garage "safe house" trans-shipment points, but somehow these show busts never lead to trials, one suspects that the whole story was fabricated by the DEA and fed to the El Paso Times with instructions to print it if they know what's good for them. The only light at the end of the tunnel from Washington DC is the FBI, who can't touch the DEA and TSA but who can at least investigate our local politicians and weed out the ones so corrupt that they are vulnerable to attempts by the Mexican dope cartels to move the de facto border north of the Rio Grande. Thus does the FBI find something useful to do, it works for us in El Paso.
Gotta put in a good word here for Juarez-El Paso. We are one metropolis divided by an international political border. There for several years, Juarez was the most violent city in the western hemisphere and El Paso was very nearly the safest city in the USA. What a difference a fence makes! The fence that counted wasn't the physical one: after all every day tens of thousands of people cross the border both ways. The fence that mattered was the political one. On this side of the Rio Grande, the message to Mexico is that the cartel is the US Government and remember this fact always. Drug wars in Chicago are old news everyone's used to, but drug wars in El Paso would look like the USA lost control of its borders, it would be a political disaster and bring in the US Army. And by the way, the Mexican federal government doesn't want a thing like that to happen, they remember who Pershing and Scott were even if you don't. ........The thing seems to have come to its logical conclusion: thanks to the recent change in Mexican government, Mexico is back in the business of assigning druglord territories, not fighting dope as such, and that makes it possible for Mexico and the USA to fight the drug trade again as partners by making as much money off the damn thing as possible. The bad news is the cost of prisons, but politicians love prisons! The good news is that in another couple years Juarez may be stabilized enough that I can walk the bridge across the sandwash again without having to fear for my life.
this little guy 3.1 grains, It was about 5" down suck in a bedrock crack.. Gold bug 2 for some reason missed it completely. I take both detectors with me every time i go out, and check every target with both machines.
