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Coin And Relic Detecting With The GPX 6000


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14 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

...

There is, as I have repeated myself way too many times, no loss of depth, ....

I am indeed reading all that you lay out .

 

And would love to get pulse depth, while retaining TID.   If anyone ever harnesses such ability, to actually employ it in park hunting (junky urban parks), is the day that the world will beat a path to their door.   If someone has gotten it even down to 50% ratio getting fooled (ie.: allowing that, sure, it won't be perfect), then :   That's the day that parks would come alive again.  Since, at present, it's 9" or 10" max, (and even that's max'ing things)  on a dime-sized target, when/if cherry picking with standard machines.

 

I know you don't want to come down to Sacramento , to try in turfed parks.  But if someone in CA ever harnesses this, for use in parks, I'd love to do some flagged tests.  

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2 hours ago, Tom_in_CA said:

I am indeed reading all that you lay out .

 

And would love to get pulse depth, while retaining TID.   If anyone ever harnesses such ability, to actually employ it in park hunting (junky urban parks), is the day that the world will beat a path to their door.   If someone has gotten it even down to 50% ratio getting fooled (ie.: allowing that, sure, it won't be perfect), then :   That's the day that parks would come alive again.  Since, at present, it's 9" or 10" max, (and even that's max'ing things)  on a dime-sized target, when/if cherry picking with standard machines.

 

I know you don't want to come down to Sacramento , to try in turfed parks.  But if someone in CA ever harnesses this, for use in parks, I'd love to do some flagged tests.  

The GPX 6000 is not the detector you want for the scenario you are proposing.  For one thing, Steve's interrogation method only works if the soil is mineralized, otherwise, you'll be digging a lot of aluminum.

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  • 2 months later...

I used a TDI for park hunting for a year in the turfed parks around Duluth, Mn. and It was a exercise in frustration. Sure you could Disc out a lot of the iron targets and even some of the junky aluminium targets by judging the tones etc. .. but high conductors like coins you were in the dark. Without the ability to ID various coins such as a zinc  VS a copper penny or dime like I can on my VLF Machines you ended up digging them all!  ( I don't bother digging zinc pennies for various reasons)  Zinc and  copper pennies and clad dimes all read as high conductors on my TDI  as they are all very close  conductivity wise.  I can't imagine that any other PI machines would be any better at discrimination from what I have read...

Michael

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  • 3 months later...

I'm going to revive this thread. Hopefully others have done some experimenting and can add to the discussion. 

First I wanted to talk about the pros and cons of the GPX 6000 if you're going to in fact use it for relic hunting (Yes much of this has already been discussed) . Pros-GPX 6000 is rain proof, light (compared to the 5000), attached rechargeable battery, wireless headphones, very simple to use. Cons-not many coils available (but that is changing), not many timings to choose from and no iron disc.

And before I get into the actual test part of the discussion, I wanted to talk about the targets you typically run into relic hunting and how each machine handles them. Low conductors such as aluminum, small gold coins, small buttons, large buttons (depending on timing used) small pieces of flat tin, small wire, .22 brass/lead, etc. etc. etc. All those types of targets are going to sound good on both the 5000 and 6000 and you will dig them regardless of iron disc in most situations (more to follow specific to the 6000 below). High conductors-silver coins, large bullets, square nails, large iron, belt plates, etc. etc .etc. is where iron disc comes into play and can be useful. 

Took the GPX 5000 (sensitive extra timing) with a 12.5" DD coil and the GPX 6000 with the 11" mono to do some comparisons this morning on some buried relics and square nails. The goal was to see if I could in fact use the GPX 6000 for relic hunting and how it would compare to the GPX 5000 with iron disc.

Keep in mind the results may vary depending on your soil conditions and my targets were freshly buried. But I think this should give most people a good idea of how the GPX 6000 will do when relic hunting.

For those of you that haven't used the GPX 6000, it's very noisy and hard to get a steady threshold. Noise cancelling often is the key. I'm worried it will have trouble in a group of other closely grouped people using GPX's. This makes it very difficult to hear deep targets. So running the sensitivity at it's lowest setting is a must and does cut down on the threshold noise considerably.

Lets talk about the iron targets first. The following targets were buried. 2" long square nail 6", 3" long square nail 8", 3" long square nail 10", 4" long square mail 12", flat tin the size of a dime surface and 2" long bent square nail surface. Iron disc on the GPX 5000 only worked on the 2" bend nail on the surface and the 2" long 6" deep nail. Would I have dug them with the 6000? No because they both gave the typical double beep of a nail. The flat tin I would have dug with both machines and all of the deeper nails except the 12" deep nail gave the double beep and I wouldn't have dug with either machine. The 12" deep nail sounded good on both machines.

Now Steve talked about what the timing does to certain targets at the beginning of this post and at first I couldn't wrap my head around part of what he said. Just talking about square nails-normal timing on the GPX 6000 gives all the nails a low tone, switch it to difficult and they all go to high tone. This is very important to remember.

Now lets talk about the buttons and bullets I buried. .58 bullet 12", .58 bullet 14", US coat button 12" and small pewter button 9". The GPX 5000 heard all these targets although the 14" .58 bullet could have easily been passed over if you were swinging too fast. Bullets low tone and buttons high tone on the 5000. All these targets were low tone on the GPX 6000 on both difficult and normal timing, which surprised me. The 6000 struggled on the 9" small pewter and the 14" .58 bullet and could have easily been missed if swinging too fast. So with those coils mentioned I feel like the GPX 5000 has the advantage on the deeper targets, definitely a better signal on the 9" small pewter button. I have yet to try the 14" DD coil on the 6000, which could change things up a bit.

So from what I found out today with the 11" coil on the GPX 6000 in 3-4 bar dirt on the F75. Running the GPX 6000 on the lowest sensitivity and in difficult timing, I can essentially ignore all high tones and dig most of what I'm looking for relic hunting and dig very little in the way of iron. Being able to switch between timing, could also help with a dig or not dig decision on those questionable targets. Looks like everything from small pewter buttons up to large bullets would fall in the low tone category. Now silver coins, belt plates and possibly the small $1 gold coin (probably not) may get missed. But those targets are far and few between and if the target sounds good on the 6000 regardless of high or low tone, I'm digging it anyway. If you hunt Culpeper VA, the soil conditions may change what I have outlined above. But I kind of doubt it.

I will conduct further testing with the 14" DD coil when I get time and possibly the 17" mono. The 17" mono should have similar results but get better depth. I almost feel like I could get rid of my 5000 and do just fine both gold and relic hunting with the 6000. Put the 14" DD on and could cover the beach as well.

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