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Really strange man. Where's Steve today? Maybe this is the Rye Patch weekend and he's over there. He will know what happened.

I have neither, but do have the 800, Manticore and Deus with both HF coils which is almost the ORX, I'd pick the Manticore first, Nox 800 second and Deus with HF coils 3rd. The Nox with 10x5" is more like the Deus performance wise on small gold in milder soils, with the 6" coil I find the Nox better for smaller gold. At this point for me, buying anything other than the Manticore is settling for second best. I just hope the Manticore gets more coils in the future from Coiltek.

hi Kingswood, What surface do u mainly look for May I ask? I have seen people saying AB, CZL, AU. I have only realised to read suface geo last week. lol Also as for fault and fractures, I thought you can see them from bedrock geo map anyway? So why would you use mag? lately I have been looking at Laverton and in some E tenements there are a few dead SPL and live SPL. Would you reckon around the SPLs there are still good chance to have a look? I assume the good gold won’t come up alone? some YouTubers said the more intense the drill holes are the more prospective, what do you think if this ? Kind regards, ethan

I used my GPZ again after some time of having it stored in the cupboard to try get my monies worth out of the GPX 🙂 I just love my GPZ, it's a detector that suits me, I like the stable threshold, I like the double blips on pellets from the DOD coils, I like that I find it easy to use, I like that it talks to me in a way I can understand. I've always liked really stable detectors, and always struggled with ratty detectors, the GPZ maxed out is so much more stable than the GPX on low sensitivity. I guess I just like the GPZ more no matter how hard I try to like the GPX. My GPX is dramatically more stable after the fix, if you recall my earlier posts on the GPX I hated it, I can now deal with it, but just prefer the GPZ. It may be detrimental to my detecting as the GPX may find some gold I'll miss with the GPZ, no way to know, although I'm sure that goes both ways. I just gel with the GPZ and the GPX is something I put up with.

Don't you have a "say" with minelab anymore with their detectors &/or testing them? D4g

I've used the smaller one for a long time now and love it, can stuff about 2oz of gold in it, which has only happen a couple of times. I put my ear plugs in it to, just in case I need too shoot my snub nose 357. I didn't know there's a bigger one I might have to upgrade as with the ear plugs and on a golden day it in can get crowded.

@Phrunt. I thought after the EMI fix on your 6000 that you loved it. What's changed? D4G

most of the time I use surface geo, then use mag imaging to define faults and structures.

I think they're behind in the single frequency VLF gold detectors, with Garrett in the lead there. They have stated they're moving away from single frequency detectors although broke that already to bring out budget models, but their next Gold VLF is likely to be some form of multi-IQ, but needs to give something they've not already done to the multi-purpose units. They can't just give it better coils like nice solid ones and think it'll sell well; I'd not spend the money to buy it when I already have the Manticore. Maybe they'll release one, but it's not going to be a smash hit with people rushing out excited to get it. I'm wondering if we are at the end of dedicated gold VLF's even being viable, and even then, they'd have to be cheap seeing a multi-purpose machine can do it well now. The GPZ is a tricky one, the more people that have invested in aftermarket coils the harder it is to bring out a new model unless its significantly improved. Can they significantly improve it? I wouldn't buy it if it were lighter and added discrimination. That's not worth 10 grand or more to me, it would have to blow my GPZ away to think about buying it, the hard-core prospectors that find a lot of gold will buy it and think it's great, but they're a much smaller portion of the market, Minelab needs a lot of people to buy it, just not the very successful gold finders as they need sales to bring in a good profit especially with the African market being close to dead. I wasn't blown away by the 6000, but its small gold sensitivity over the stock GPZ seems to have the market excited and has likely taken over as their best seller by far and they're going to happily let that be the sales winner for them for some time so they don't need to rush a new detector to market, competitors are starting to nibble at their heels but nothing to be too worried about just yet in taking control of the market, but the competitors are taking a lot of sales Minelab missed by high pricing. These sales won't show on Minelab's figures spreadsheets as they were never going to be Minelab customers anyway, but they've missed a lot of PI sales that have gone to Algoforce especially and Garrett in the US by people who were not willing to pay the big money but happy to pay less for a detector. Nokta is going to come out at some point and take even more of this market. My expectation is a new GPZ is not coming soon, they'll more than likely release a detector to fit into the Allgoforce, Axiom and Nokta PI range, and be competing in that area of a well-priced PI. You could say the 5000's already there, but a new detector gets a lot of sales, not an old one. They won't want to lose that market share of the lower cost PI to competitors as that's just the start of things to come, like VLF's all over again. Minelab have completely lost any dominance over the VLF market, and their share is shrinking by the day, hence the deep discounting of the Manticore. They will want to get into this lower priced PI arena before it's too late.

I have found small nuggets with the ORX, Nox 800, and Nox 900. I haven’t had an opportunity to nugget hunt with the Manticore yet. The ORX has great ergonomics and can be configured many ways including removing the lower shaft and coil from the rest of the detector and as long as the wireless signal stays connected I can just detect with the lower shaft and coil. It’s great for pinpointing and for detecting overhead or on the sides of cuts, etc. The ORX is not waterproof and the wireless signal will lose connection if the coil is submerged even in an inch or two of water unless you use the wired antenna. It has very acceptable sensitivity to really small nuggets, has ferrous/non ferrous 2 tone capability using its Gold modes and handles difficult ground conditions very well. Its audio is a little brash and cannot be adjusted or changed. The Nox 900 with the 6” or Coiltek 10X5” coils using its Gold modes in Multi simply has another gear compared to the ORX. Running the 900 at 20 of 28 sensitivity, it can compete totally with the ORX but the ORX has to be run at 95 of 99 to stay competive. The Manticore has another gear sensitivity wise that takes it past the 900 in its Gold mode if ground conditions allow. The Nokta Legend is also an excellent gold prospecting detector that I would consider to be slightly better than the ORX. Both the 900 and Manticore have much better stock ergonomics than the Nox 800 and easily compete with the ORX for balance and versatility in the field while being fully waterproof and having no issues going in or out of water. They are exceptionally versatile detectors for just about any kind of detecting.

Thanks Jeff I’ve got that LG 30 coil but my only trouble right now it’s just be a air test. I will put what you said if I can get myself back in the goldfields again. Remember people it is no stupid question you can ask on here. So you don’t be stupid and not ask it . Chuck

So I was shallow water hunting today(saltwater) in Tom Danowski settings. I would get a real faint target with sensitivity at 16. I would raise the sensitivity to 22 to see if I could here the target better and I was getting iron numbers and tones. I still dug the target and it was a coin. This happened 2-3 times so I didn’t do any ground balancing or noise canceling and was wondering if that what caused it. I wish I could post this question on his forum but for some reason I can’t register. also can others tell me how they st up there machine to wade in the water

Is there anything in California that is not against the law or doesn't cost too much? too bad, use to be a great state. Still very beautiful though.

The Legend will find small gold nuggets no problem with the LG15, LG24 and even the newer LG30 coil using Goldfield Multi or 40 kHz. I usually run mine in the A discrimination pattern and with sensitivity lower than Andy is using in the video. The Legend hits hard on anything metal within detecting distance down to about 0.01 grams.

Klunker, I think I found that one you left, thanks.

Looks like a Garrett AT in the middle, and a Fisher to the right, but they're saying the best finds are made with good company, meaning that a Garrett person can get along with a Fisher person, they don't have to hate each other for using different brands! A good message behind that. I don't know if it was intentional, but people don't need to look down on people for choosing a different brand or model detector than they use.

https://www.ksl.com/article/50993629/utah-veteran-finds-a-piece-of-genuine-american-history

Thanks Steve for posting the video and thank you JCR for your comment. The downside is with a VLF machine is you just can’t swing a big coil like on a GPX and find small gold. Just maybe the VLF will go bye the wayside like the BFO and we pickup our PI detector because it’s our go to machine for every type of detecting then . When Nokta comes out with their PI detector let’s see how far into the future did we step . Chuck

You're very accepting of it, Bill, a lot of people are not. Might want to see the sentiment on Facebook from a Storm group formed in anticipation of the detector... do these people feel like you do? https://www.facebook.com/groups/929805548395125/ It's a private group, so you would have to join to see the discontent. What I see is a bunch of unhappy protentional customers. Many companies do these delayed marketing releases, it never goes well for them, Nokta was given a good beating over doing it with the Legend, I've noticed since their detectors seem to more often than not just appear by surprise, and that method works the best! Do you want to know the way to please everybody? Not mention it is coming until its ready. Some can blissfully not care it's not out and they have been teasing the market about it, not everybody is so accepting and it is losing them sales because people are annoyed.

yea, if you're in ground the EVO's on the GPX 4500 were noisy I think you would find the same with the spirals and it's the reason X-coil make standard bundle DOD coils too like the Z-search coils, the sensitivity would be the main benefit other than being able to pick the size coil you really want to use rather than the Z-search which is almost the same size as the stock coil, if you don't need that it's a pointless exercise. As Lesgold was pointing out he was able to find gold deeper with the 12" than the 14x13", that makes sense as at the right size gold there is always a cross over a smaller coil will do better than a bigger one on some gold, even if it's only slightly smaller, pretty hard to find that sweet spot in the wild but I guess they were able to do that with various target checking between the two. As we all know different ground changes results. I cruise around in HY/Normal with a sensitivity of 19, I can easily run 20 with any of the X-coils so I'm one that benefits a lot from the extra sensitivity as it doesn't change my stability at all and we are a place that tiny gold is the gold you're going to find 99% of the time, but I find 19 sensitivity has a more stable threshold which I like and going that extra notch to 20 doesn't seem to provide anything much more than a little bit more unstable threshold. In saying that, the 7000's a dream even at 20 to run for its stability over the 6000. I was just using the 7 with 8" yesterday after not using it for a few months as I wanted to get my money's worth out of the 6000 as if it plays up out of warranty, I'm just getting rid of it, I may even offload it before the warranty runs out as I don't have a lot of faith in it being a long lasting detector, what a smooth nice running detector the GPZ is by comparison, I'd forgotten how smooth it runs compared to the 6000, in fact it was just purring along perfectly.

https://en.empirecostume.com/bouton-de-la-gendarmerie-1ere-legion-on-stock-c132-t1-a814.htm got it

Nice ring, I have not yet found any gold this year

The star may be silver, I need to test it, I like the junker bumblebee ring, I'll probably put it with my good rings instead of junker rings, because I like bumble bees, the chain is brass I think

One other design I'm curious about is a flat, single layer spiral coil wound with variable winding spacing. No spacing between windings at the center leading to more and more widely spaced windings towards the rim. I might be envisioning it wrong, but it seems like denser winding spacing towards the center and less dense towards the rim may have some kind of flux density shaping effect leaning towards emphasizing more flux at depth (vs a standard coil) directly under the coil, at sacrifice of flux towards the edge of the coil and shallow? But yeah, I totally get the no free lunch. Most of physics can be derived from basic thermodynamic principals, I try to always look at systems from a conservation of energy viewpoint.

Start video at 2:40 mark