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Sovereign GT Mods

Your take on this mod is very good and you provide great detail. I think a red or green L.E.D. meter for low light conditions and a black numeric for daylight is the way to go. Your quick change out option for the meter is a solid and economical solution.

Thanks for thinking outside the box....
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Usualy I'm told that rather than being very detailed I'm just very tedious, but I'm OK with that. :biggrin: One thing I hate is when people throw up a "How To" on something and leave out a lot of critical information, so to avoid a lot of questions in PMs I figured I'd throw up every little worthless detail. In the long run it'll save me time not having to answer PMs all the time.

Speaking of being "Master Of The Obvious", I'm almost done with the custom light shaft. I've already lost weight with a lighter (but so much stronger) aluminum hand grip than the stock one, and the upper aluminum rod alone is dropping I think about 4.5 ounces of weight. Still stiff, though. Just today I ran the stereo plug inside the shaft and handgrip and mounted the switch inside the grip too hanging down like a Whites. Tested it out and it works great. Just have to figure out how I'm going to mount the meter as I would prefer it on top of the grip like a Whites. I've been taking pictures and notes as I go to detail each step, so it's going to be a lengthy build thread to talk people through every step. Not only lighter but much cheaper building your own shaft, and with a few features not found on commercial ones.

I'm already happy with the weight I've dropped thus far but still have more to do: Shorten coil cables and turn the cut off lengths into extensions for future hip mounting needs.That should drop a bit more weight and clean up the machine's looks. Meter cable also is being cut down. Replacing stock lower fiberglass rod with a Whites carbon fiber. Then there's the one that will really drop some ounces- lipo battery mod. These Sony studio headphones from Walmart are already so much lighter than Grey Ghosts, but I plan to cut down the cord on those as well 'cuz they are way too long. As I like to say every little bit helps. Hoping I can start throwing pictures up by Monday. It looks like this light weight bike bottle holder is going to work well as a stand, and I'm talking it weighs grams and not ounces so it won't really add anything.
 
Forgot, I also like the idea of quick disconnect meters for night/day hunting and so on. Soon enough I'll be getting back onto that project. I want to get a few other things out of the way first. That also will be lighter than the stock Minelab meter. I've got a good digital scale and I've been weighing every little thing as I go to see how much weight savings are adding up to for each part. One thing I'd like to replace is the Minelab arm cup. That sucker is heavy at I think almost 9 ounces, meaning half a pound. Again they went overkill with how thick of metal they used for that. The only problem is that arm cup is how the box mounts to the shaft. I have to figure out a way to attach the box mount to the shaft by it's self if I get rid of that arm cup. I'll be looking at that down the road here to drop more weight.
 
You can get replacement mounts, i've seen them on ebay, its just the basic clip(i don't mean the v clip)for elite and GT, the S shaft that they sell in europe has it in front of the handle, its held on by 2 rivets, any minelab dealer should be able to supply one, and for a light arm cup a piece of suitable plastic rainwater downpipe cut to shape and also riveted(make sure its the flexy not the brittle one) you could also use a crutch strap/cuff
 
I've been avoiding getting started on this build thread for a light weight shaft and other mods to drop as much weight as possible. This information is also going to contain the final details on wiring up the remote pinpoint switch. Mainly I've been dragging my feet on this because I took a lot of notes during the process and it's a lot of stuff to cover, even for somebody like me who likes to ramble. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I figured I'd at least give it a start by posting all the pictures first. Later I'll fill in the details and steps that will make more sense to the pictures. When you think about it it always seemed odd to me that pictures would come after instructions on these types of threads. It's more easier to understand what people are talking about if you first quickly review any photos that go along with the information. Yea, I'll justify it that way...:biggrin:

I'll apologize right away for the picture quality. My camera doesn't have auto focus and it seems something might be going funky with the lens adjustment. I noticed it was loose after seeing how out of focus some of these photos are. Any questions just ask.
 
You might be asking what the heck those lead weights are doing in the one picture. That just shows how much weight I've roughly already shaved off this thing with the upper shaft alone. With the extra parts added to the new grip (rubber grip and switch....not using the stereo jack at the switch end that's shown on the scale too) it's going to pretty much be a wash for that versus the stock grip, but at least I don't have that cheesy looking stock one or the foam cover that chunks apart and holds moisture to keep your hands wet and cold. Not to mention the new grip allows the remote switch to be mounted inside it and makes for a handy place to mount the meter. Really the new grip is a bit lighter than the picture shows because that was before I cut down it's length at the top. Once you put your hand on the thing you'll realize it doesn't need to have 2 or 3" at the very end that can be cut off. The plastic plug at the end will fit easily into the new shorter length.
 
The bike bottle holder in the above picture is going to be my detector stand. I haven't worked out the details on that but it should be useful with a little modification, if any. I don't remember if I had the scale set to grams or ounces (everything else is in ounces for sure) on that thing because it's so light being made from aluminum. When I get to the details I'll have all these part numbers and official weights posted as I compared various things and what they saved me.

You probably can't see it well in the above last two pictures but the hand grip and the shaft have holes drilled in them for the stereo cord to route inside the shaft and into the base of the grip just about it's mounting hole.
 
Second to last picture above shows where the stereo cord enters the shaft just in front of the box. I used 20 pound fishing line to pull the stereo cord through the shaft and back out near the hand grip base, then just pushed it up through the grip, which is now cut down in length at the top and has it's plastic plug put back in place to cover the access to the switch.
 
The last two pictures just show how much extra cable length there is for the coil and meter if the box is on the shaft. I'm going to cut all that junk down to clean up the looks and drop some weight. I'll use the cut off sections to make extensions for any future configuration needs.

I'm not real happy with the looks of the meter mount I made so the meter could sit centered since the hand grip has a slight left bend to it (for me being right handed, the 2 pack also has a grip with a right bend for left handed people). Details on all that stuff later. Anyway, I was thinking of doing the mount via a balsa wedge painted black. That would look better and be lighter than anything. After a bit of thought I'm thinking I might find one of those lights, mirrors, or some other light weight gizmo at a bike shop that is designed to snap right onto the handle bars or bike frame, which means it should snap right onto the grip in my case. Those sort'a items for bicycles normaly have an adjusting pivot on them so they would be perfect to adjust the meter with it's V-clip mounted to the thing. Like this bike end bar (grip) and the bottle holder (stand), they also build this other stuff as light as possible for bikes so I'm willing to bet I can find something perfect.

I'll try to get into the build log within the next day or so to help clearify just what these fuzzy pictures are showing. Sorry again about the quality of them. I'm not real happy about that myself. I know the shaft looks pretty bad right now but that's because it was used and had some tape on it. I'm going to sand that off and paint it black once I'm sure of everything. The weight savings are better than what the above scale photos show but I'll have details on that later with totals. So far I think I've said somewhere in the 4 to 6 ounce range but I'd have to refer to my notes to be sure.
 
A little off subject for now but here's a great website on mods for various detectors. I think I finally found the message that had me thinking some guy got his 15x12 down to 16 ounces. Glad because that was driving me crazy, but it wasn't a sanded down SEF but rather a homemade 15x12. In either case, it's a great site to read up on homemade coils and other mods for detectors. Here's the thread where this guy is talking about how good his homemade coil is and a little detail on construction and using the preamp. There are some heavy hitters on this site building custom coils for just about any detector you can think of.

http://www.geotech1.com/forums/showthread.php?p=81793
 
Here's some new photos of the new way I'm mounting the meter instead of using that plywood. Just looked too stupid. Thanks Ron for the tip on that pipe hangar! Details on what I did later when I finally get to all the steps to post. First photo is an ergonomic pistol style hand grip. A 2 pack (one left, one right handed) is like $10 at Dick's in the bike department. VERY comfortable and looks like it was made for a Sovereign, but I'm not sure if I'll use it as it's more heavy than the other rubber grip I have on right now. Both types with weights are in the first picture to compare.

The ergonomic one is 2.6 ounces where as the other is 1.2 ounces. If I find the lighter one isn't comfortable I'll switch. The weight difference isn't much but like I said I'm trying to drop any weight possible building this thing. Right now the shaft is saving me a good bit of weight compared to the stock upper shaft but I believe I'm just matching the stock grip with my new grip that includes aluminum grip mount, rubber grip, switch, and stereo cord routing through the unit. Of course even matching the same weight as the stock grip I'm still getting much more for the same weight with the pinpoint and all. Somebody not running a remote switch will for sure be beating the stock grip so long as they use the right rubber grip on it I think. This is all from memory but I have all this jazz in my notes and will list a nice and neat table for all these stock/replacement parts later to get finer in the details.

Turns out the copper pipe hangar ($2 at Home Depot) is very light, more so than my cheesy plywood rig I had for the meter mount before. Thanks again for that tip Ron.

The shaft and meter mount will be painted black later to really clean up the looks. Just want to be sure of everything before I give it a nice paint job. I think I have the camera focus issue fixed for the most part. If anybody needs a cleaner picture of any of the old shots let me know.
 
A little diversion into headphones. I love these Sony studio headphones from Walmart that somebody turned me on to. For $20 I think the tone quality of these things is WAY better than the Grey Ghosts I was using. They are also real light and the cord is a good soft flexible material that shouldn't break causing shorts easily. Also like that they don't sweat my ears up as bad in the summer as full sized headphones, yet they aren't tiny like walkman style. They are very comfortable with the soft leather like material around the cups.

I also like how I can still hear nearby noises a bit with them which makes it easier to talk to a friend or hear my pinpointer, unlike the Grey Ghosts which had me so deaf to the outside world that I kept having to remove those to hear anything. After having a few dogs sneak up on me in the woods and scare the tar out of me I had enough with those. These Sonys seem to have just the right balance for me in allowing me to hear what's going on around me without external noises being a distraction.

The only complaint I had was that they are just a bit too loud even with the volume control all the way down on my GT. I've heard people say that you should always max out the volume control on your Sovereign and then adjust them on the headphones to insure that very deep soft signals will sound through. Rather than buy a volume control for them I took the cheap and easy way out. I had some foam weather stripping material meant to go around window air conditioners laying around in the garage so I just took two pieces of that and tucked them into the ear cups. The leather like soft material around the muffs will pull out, allowing me to tuck the foam's edges under that to keep it in place. My goal is to muffle the volume enough to be able to crank the GT's volume control all the way up. I haven't tested them yet but if they are still too loud I'll put cotton balls or something under the foam to block the noise further.

My only concern at the moment is that this foam might not be "human friendly". I guess if my ears break out after a few days of hunting I'll know what the problem is. Radio Shack sells "universal" replacement foam muffs for headphones if anybody ever needs ones for a pair of headphones. If I find this insulation is causing me problems I'll pick those up to cut up and use inside the muffs.

While I was at it I also shortened the cord on these headphones because it's way too long. I cut off the extra length and soldered and heat shrinked the wire, making sure to use good quality heat shrink on the wires and then a bigger one over that so I'll have no worries about it coming apart in the field. The cut off section weighed in at half an ounce, which helps add to the diet I'm putting the GT on.
 
I believe you can add a resistor between the contacts on the volume pot to decrease the Sov. volume output.
You'll have to check on it.
 
If I was going to go through with that much trouble I would just go buy a volume control for the headphones. I'll see but I think using some foam and/or cottonballs is a cheap low tech way that won't cost me anything.
 
Here's the progress on my light weight GT with custom upper/lower shaft, hand grip, and remote pinpoint switch. The lower shaft is a Whites Tall Man carbon fiber coil rod ($10 at Kellyco). Since that was so much longer I was able to cut the length of the upper shaft down more to save even more weight as the Whites rod is even lighter than my new aluminum upper shaft. Even if I had left the upper shaft to stock length it was still lighter than the stock one. The Whites rod, despite it's extra length, is still .2oz lighter than the stock lower GT rod as well.

I tested the flex of this Whites rod versus my stock lower fiberglass GT shaft by trying to torque a bend into them by hand and found there was little or no difference between them in stiffness. I was a bit concerned about that after hearing it might not be strong enough but I don't see any problem even with my 15x12 SEF coil mounted as shown. Everything is very rigid and strong. I'm thinking down the road I may try replacing the upper aluminum shaft with a carbon fiber one to drop even more weight.

The stock upper/lower rod weighs 12.2oz and my new upper/lower weighs in at 6.6oz so as it stands right now I've dropped 5.6 ounces total. That more than makes up for the extra weight of the SEF coil compared to the 10" and the machine will still be lighter with the SEF coil than a stock GT with the 10" on.

I have further plans to drop more weight on the machine (and coil by replacing the cover with spray on liner) in various ways, including replacing that pig of an arm cup which I think weighs 8.8 ounces (half a pound!), shortening my cables, and doing a few other things down the road. All in all my best guess at total weight savings over a stock GT with the mods I have planned will probably be somewhere in the 20 ounce range or more, meaning 1 and 1/4th pound. That's a lot of weight when you think about swinging it around all day.

Just replacing your stock upper shaft alone will save you more weight than the 15x12 adds, so it's a good easy option for people who want to lighten the machine up to below stock weight of the machine with the 10" coil.

Now I just have to strip all the parts off and give the upper shaft and meter mount a nice black paint job which will really clean up the looks. Further details and pictures will be posted in the next few days, and later when I do more mods I'll be posting those as well. The great thing is nothing on the original shaft or GT is being modified in anyway, so I can always throw everything back onto the stock shaft for re-sale value if needed.
 
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