Steve's Insanely Hot GPZ 7000 Settings

[Steve Herschbach]

Paul, all it is was is a mention of his using Normal at http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t22791-more-than-40-deeper#220355

 

I had been mulling my post about running hot for some time and the fact Normal was working well for Dale triggered my post. Part of the problem we face prospecting is the differences between Oz and the US and stuff being posted in one place being misapplied in another. Dales post gave me confidence that the GPZ can be run hotter in Oz than I might previously have assumed and that therefore running hot might have wider application than I had thought.

[vanursepaul]

Thx Steve..I am trying to see how to do the update now

[Reno Chris]

Part of this is a personal hearing thing, and setting up the machine for what works best for you individually. Sometime back, Steve and I had one GPZ to share between us. At the particular settings we were using at that point, the sensitivity of the GPZ with that set up in the area was driving me nuts. To my ear it was like a bad VLF out of ground balance in a highly mineralized area - nothing but noise - noise - noise - constant squacking and beeping (if you raised the coil a foot off the ground it was no problem, but who wants to hunt with your coil a foot off the ground?). Steve told me it was no problem for him, but for me it was borderline unusable. Not everyone has the same hearing.

(I actually had my hearing tested within the last year and the doctor said my hearing was good.)

So the moral of this is what works great for Steve, may or may not work great for you.

Try different settings and see what works for you. Run it hot, but if its making so much noise that you are constantly chasing hot rocks, ground noises and other non-metallic or unrepeatable responses, you will need to lower the settings. I find myself running a lot in High yield, Difficult and a gain of around 13 to 15.

BTW Steve, Nice specimen!

[normmcq]

Steve

 I gave your audio settings a try today, I had to bump up the volume to 8. Are you using a booster?

                                                    Norm

[Steve Herschbach]

Nope. As I noted volume is one setting that may need tweaking. If 8 works better for you use 8.

Hearing is funny stuff. I do not have good hearing. But I do have a finely tuned sense of audio change and what constitutes a target. I have always run audio settings on any detector I use quite low from a volume standpoint. All I need to be able to do is barely hear it, but I sure can pick up instantly on variations in what I am hearing. Or so it seems to me. How can I know what I am not hearing?

Kind of like in Chris post. It is not necessarily that I do not hear the stuff that sounds like noise to him and drives him crazy. I just lower the level of the "noise" to where it is comfortable for me to listen to, and the noise goes in one ear and out the other - until that magical difference that indicates a signal.

[Steve Herschbach]

JP just made a killer post on this subject on the Oz forum referenced earlier. Hopefully he will here - Great stuff!

[Jonathan Porter]

Happy to Steve... for those interested my comments were in referenece to Steve commenting about the coil sweep speed of the GPZ.

"You've hit the nail on the head Steve, its all about coil control with the GPZ.

I think people are still making the mistake of thinking of the GPZ in terms of a GPX 5000, ZVT is not like that. In simple terms the GPZ is a full blown, full power VLF that takes clever advantage of polarity switching to garner target information in mineralised soils. But there is so much more to the 7000 story than just that, it also has an inherently quiet coil configuration and underlying all of this are the major improvements in electronics that gets rid of a huge amount of Sferic noise, sferics is the hidden monster in your GPX threshold that kills performance.

With ZVT there are a few tricks to learn along the way if you want to take advantage of all that power or you can just choose less aggressive modes and enjoy the ride, its your choice because the detector has been designed to be all inclusive regardless of the terrain (I'm not saying its perfect by any means but the positives FAR FAR outweigh the negatives, and seeing how my DNA as a prospector always leans towards "the glass as being half full" and not as "half empty" I'll stick to just focusing on the positives thank you very much 8) ).

In the right conditions where the soil mineralisation is less extreme the GPZ runs a lot quieter than a GPX with a mono coil attached, not only that but the GPZ 7000 outperforms a GPX with a small mono coil on tiny gold and at the VERY same time outperforms a GPX with a large mono coil attached. All that from just one coil size. I strongly advise operators who are now conversant with their GPZs to start exploring the world of Normal "Ground Type" to see the incredible performance the GPZ has to offer, but BUYER BEWARE, it will not be suitable everywhere and you will have to modify your detecting style to make the grade.

If you were to draw a line between the GPX 5000s performance level of Normal timings with a Monoloop coil over Fine Gold timings there would be about a 20% give or take difference in outright depth, this is largely dependant on ground type ect, but all in all from an air depth point of view thats about the average in signal strength between the modes on most targets, obviously the advantage is when the ground signal is greater than the average of the target signal where the Smooth type timings start to offer a major advantage. With GPZ its a completely different animal and I do mean animal!!

The GPZ 7000 on the other hand is a beast in Normal Ground Type modes, so much so I won't even put a percentage comparison between Normal and Difficult because I'm still to establish where the ceiling is, suffice to say it all comes down to interpretation which is dictated by a number of refinement methods and thought processes when pursuing that upper depth ceiling.

Tips: The GPZ 7000 is much more swing dependant that a GPX 5000 with a monoloop coil, all experienced operators from the SD and GP era who specialised in DD coils will know all about swing dependency and is effect on target responses on deep nuggets. Because of the dual receive you absolutely need to understand the interaction on signal behaviour when one or the other winding is exposed differently to the ground and a buried object. Because of the dual receive the direction you approach a target also has a major bearing on signal response, so be prepared to swing from multiple directions and also go outside the target zone then swing back in again on iffy deep responses.

X balance with the Ferrite is critical, become absolutely OCD on Ferrite balance especially in Normal modes.

Coil height: The GPZ saturates easily in Normal Ground Type mode, this is NOT a FAULT, it is part and parcel to ZVT, get used to it!  LIFT the coil up, ground scrubbers need not apply, unless the surface mineralisation is Minimal.

Lastly be aggressive in your chasing of iffy target noises, in Normal the GPZ is a chatter box. When you get to know what it's telling you you'll be able to tell when your in gold bearing ground, you'll be able to tell when a target a long way from the coil is disrupting the force. Trust the detector to inform you of a GOOD response compared to ground variation, good coil control and lifting the coil helps with this. Lastly if the general ground signal information is overwhelming you then you need to be responsible and use a mode that helps (Difficult), because some ground types are just not conducive to Normal modes on the GPZ resulting in a less than ideal level of ground signal response potentially overwhelming Normal Ground Type modes depth percentage advantages.

JP"

[Bada Bing]

Great posts Steve and JP

I think by now most serious users are nearly exclusively in normal mode - we certainly are. In the first few months we (like many others) constantly fiddled with modes over targets. In deep compacted clay we saw the power of normal mode very early on. When I saw my mate go 2 + foot down on a signal that said "I'm a nugget" in normal mode, switch to difficult mode to get NO signal at all, we were sold. The GPX 5000 with a 14 inch NF coil only picked up the signal when he was well over a foot down.  

Enough said.

Cheers

BB

[vanursepaul]

JP........Am I to understand that we are to keep the coil OFF the ground when using the GPZ,,,, on Normal at least?

How high ? Just enough to keep it from "saturating"?

TIA

paul

[mn90403]

Paul,

Get some sleep there big guy!

Lucky had informed me of this 'off the ground' is better than scrubbing before.  He was of the mind that you keep it about 1 inch but at least don't bounce it.

I know some will say they are 'off the ground' when scrubbing because the coil cover is so high.  Let's wait and see what JP says about that.

Mitchel