Coiltek Coils For The GPX 6000 - Confirmed!

[phrunt]

26 minutes ago, Goldseeker5000 said:

Trevor, I just received my 9x14 GoldHawk and was wondering if it is flat wound, bundle wound or a combo of the two? 

He's said earlier in another post or thread they're bundle wound.  The thing I've noticed which in a way confirms this is the 11" stock coil is rather insensitive to tiny targets on the edge of the coil which you would expect for its partial flat wound design for those that tilt the coil on its side and use it as a pinpointer.  The Coiltek especially the 10x5 I've put the most usage into has hotter edges which fit in with it being bundle wound.  Anyone that's used the Evo's or Elites on the older GPX will be familiar with what I'm talking about.  As targets get bigger yes the 11" sides pick them up well but its the little hard to find targets they struggle, where as the bundle wound coils having all their windings right at the edge really work great as pinpointing coils.   I think it also explains why the 11" seems about as sensitive to tiny targets as the 10x5" and more sensitive than the 14x9" and also possibly part of the reason the Coilteks run a little quieter.  Just my uneducated observations.

[jasong]

I got a 9" Coiltek in today, gave it about a 3 hour run. Unfortunately, while it does help the EMI issues a bit, it does not help enough in my case to make the 6000 a pleasant detector to use in some problem areas still. Again, not anywhere close to a city, powerlines, or really anything other than maybe cell towers that might be producing a lot of EMI. Yet, certain areas the 6000 just really struggles.

On the bright side this coil seems to get rid of the times the detector just completely freaks out and loses total stability. I can run the detector in one of the places I considered "undetectable" (with a 6000 anyways) previously, but it's still so bad that I have no desire to run the machine there.

It also seems to have some bump sensitivity that the stock coil doesn't have, but I think that as with the EMI, the bump issue is the machine itself unable to cope with input, as it's random and not always repeatable, and happens more when the EMI or ground is worse. 

I'm now pretty certain the 6000 either has some large scale design/manufacturing defect, or it has issues with some frequency from cell towers or some other equipment particular to the US, and specific areas of the US too, but not in others. Or there are both design problems and field issues related to some unknown transmission equipment, together. My 6000 seems to perform about the same as other 6000's in similar locations so I don't think it's unique to my machine.

There are simply too many variables to eliminate with zero communication from Minelab on the problem. All I know is this coil doesn't fix my issues, but it does make them slightly better. And those issues vary greatly between different locations. The one constant is the 6000 itself. 

[phrunt]

Sorry to hear that Jason.  I was hoping your problems would be solved.  While my GPX is certainly improved a lot by the Coiltek coils it was likely mostly because I had a faulty stock coil that I had so many problems which obviously was faulty as the Minelab service agent faulted it too, they didn't just replace it as a precaution as they were able to fault it.

My replacement 11" is more stable for sure than my old one, it still has the typical EMI issues and hates being tilted on it's side and the numerous quirks the GPX has which are improved quite a bit by the Coiltek coils.  

As you likely saw in my video the Coiltek coils for me are completely not sensitive to bumps, I could cut down a tree with one even on highest sensitivity and it not react, so it's strange yours is bump sensitive, you're the second person to say they have bump sensitivity now too as Goldseeker5000 has bump sensitivity on his 14x9".  I wonder what the cause of that could be and why some are and some aren't, so strange.

We have 5G mobile around where I've been able to use mine, and when a bit further away it reverts to 4G but that doesn't seem to affect the stability of the detector.  I think people would be extremely surprised to see how close to civilization I look for gold here so EMI is always an issue and coming from the GPZ which basically has no EMI problems the GPX was a challenge.  You may end up having to sell up and try an Axiom, it really sucks your problems not solved though, especially after mine was solved the same way.

[jasong]

I detect with my phone off usually so sometimes I'm unsure if there is cell coverage or not. But the reason I mentioned cell towers is because literally the only thing anywhere even remotely close to some of these areas are cell towers. When they are in range, they are probably the old Union Wireless (or whatever company predated them) towers that were built out before Verizon, ATT and the larger carriers decided to build their own in rural areas. So they might be using some kind of strange outdated transmitter from the early cell days that the normal cell towers don't use for intra-tower communication? No idea, but that's my only thought at this point.

I have a NanoVNA, not a TinySA, but I think they are the same thing basically. But at this point I just don't care enough anymore, I just want a detector that works. I'm going to take a hit on reselling this 6000, just wasted another $400 on a coil that didn't really help. So I'm out of patience and motivation to solve ML's problem for them, they can pay me if they want help.

I just know it varies by location, that's about all I can say other than the 6000 itself has some problem dealing with certain types of EMI and of those two things I'm certain. It's hard to see until you travel enough to see the problem repeat.

[jasong]

9 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I think people would be extremely surprised to see how close to civilization I look for gold here so EMI is always an issue...

I did quite a lot of detecting this winter with the 6000 in Arizona fairly close to civilization, it was noisy sometimes, but I could deal with it. Some places it ran smoothly, no issues, in places I could hike and get a fast food burger if I wanted, that's how close I was.

Oddly, the big problems I'm having are when I came up north to areas that really have no civilization around them. 

[GotAU?]

3 hours ago, jasong said:

I did quite a lot of detecting this winter with the 6000 in Arizona fairly close to civilization, it was noisy sometimes, but I could deal with it. Some places it ran smoothly, no issues, in places I could hike and get a fast food burger if I wanted, that's how close I was.

Oddly, the big problems I'm having are when I came up north to areas that really have no civilization around them. 

It would be interesting and bizarre  if your more northern latitude was causing the issue due to the recent geomagnetic storms the Sun is causing this weekend.  There have been some great Aurora Borealis lights further south as a result, and we are going to have another CME (coronal mass ejection) hit the Earth on Sunday as well…

https://www.spaceweather.com/

[jasong]

8 hours ago, GotAU? said:

It would be interesting and bizarre  if your more northern latitude was causing the issue due to the recent geomagnetic storms the Sun is causing this weekend.  There have been some great Aurora Borealis lights further south as a result, and we are going to have another CME (coronal mass ejection) hit the Earth on Sunday as well…

https://www.spaceweather.com/

It's something I considered a few times. We had to check solar activity when I worked in the oilfield as our MWD tools would be affected when solar storms got intense, causing potential downhole steering errors.

But I don't think that's what is happening here. I can't say for certain but I think it's just some specific human created EMI frequency in combination with a design and/or manufacturing flaw on the 6000. It's just impossible to say without any input from Minelab though, only guessing, since it's not really possible to differentiate between a problem inside the machine and one outside the machine when the machine itself is a total black box. All that can be said is a problem exists somewhere. There is also the potential that I got a bad stock coil, plus a bad Coiltek coil. Or that a bad batch of 6000's was sent and everyone I detected around all had bad 6000's too such that my comparisons never included a functional machine. Lots of low probability events could make a diagnosis impossible, which is frustrating.

[GotAU?]

2 hours ago, jasong said:

It's something I considered a few times. We had to check solar activity when I worked in the oilfield as our MWD tools would be affected when solar storms got intense, causing potential downhole steering errors.

But I don't think that's what is happening here. I can't say for certain but I think it's just some specific human created EMI frequency in combination with a design and/or manufacturing flaw on the 6000. It's just impossible to say without any input from Minelab though, only guessing, since it's not really possible to differentiate between a problem inside the machine and one outside the machine when the machine itself is a total black box. All that can be said is a problem exists somewhere. There is also the potential that I got a bad stock coil, plus a bad Coiltek coil. Or that a bad batch of 6000's was sent and everyone I detected around all had bad 6000's too such that my comparisons never included a functional machine. Lots of low probability events could make a diagnosis impossible, which is frustrating.

You’re probably right about external interference, remember Simon’s photo of the way the interior of the 6K cases are hand painted with a shielding coating?

Interesting about the Sun’s effect on drilling!

[jasong]

I haven't seen the photo, but I can tell the 6000 and 7000 both aren't well shielded for no other reason than electronic devices easily interfere when brought close to the control box. 

Some types of carbon fiber is conductive, it should act as shielding, I wonder why they don't build control boxes out of carbon fiber?

[phrunt]

See the shielding paint inside, I assume they connect it to a floating ground.