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Ice Nuggets


tboykin

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15 minutes ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

BTW, did you ever own a GPZ-7000 and if so, what do you miss about the 7?

Yes I owned a GPZ for about a year. I sold it to a good friend. I miss the wireless speaker, and harness/stick setup. But the GPX is light enough most of the time to not need it. I lucked out when I got the GPZ and got into some bigger gold that helped pay it off faster!

Its frustrating not being able to use the speaker on the GPX. I wish Minelab had tested it more but for now I’ll just use headphones.

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20 minutes ago, tboykin said:

Its frustrating not being able to use the speaker on the GPX. I wish Minelab had tested it more but for now I’ll just use headphones.

This has probably been posted before - I've been away from forums for a bit and missed a lot so apologies if it's been discussed. I'm just now starting to get a ton of daily use on my 6000.

But the 6000 seems to calm down for me with onboard speaker after about an hour of on time. When first starting, I usually have to do a noise cancel every 3-5 mins for a bit, then every 10-15 mins for a bit, then it settles down to every 30-45 mins after an hour or so of continual use. If I shut down for a break, or to change locations, I seem to have to start the process over again though. But once it gets to 30-45 mins between cancels, the convenience of the speaker overcomes the hassle of the noise cancel for me.

Have you noticed the same general increase in stability over time, or no?

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29 minutes ago, jasong said:Have you noticed the same general increase in stability over time, or no?

What I noticed was that it would start out solid, then after about 1 minute the threshold would start wobbling and spitting. Sometimes it would calm down for a stretch and then start up again. An hour is a lot of missed targets for me. For now I am stone-aging it with wired headphones.

I would like to know if people have gotten this issue fixed by sending it in for repair but that is a different thread.

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You might haves some higher emi in your neck of the woods?   Some areas Ive been purr along and speaker use is not really a problem.  Other places, and Im hitting the tune button constantly or even going DD coil if it gets too bad. Also found like Jason described, threshold gets smoother over time, so not a detector to turn on and off once you get detecting. I used to do that with other minelabs to save battery power, but this one seems to need a stabilization period to get dialed in.

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1 hour ago, tboykin said:

 

I would like to know if people have gotten this issue fixed by sending it in for repair but that is a different thread.

IMO.... I don't believe you need to send it in.  Just the nature of the high strung wild SOB the 6 is?  I have also noticed about everything you, Wes, and Jasong mentioned above while learning the 6 (still learning btw).  In my area(s) the 6 was always very wild first thing in the morning it seemed, then maybe settle down.  I'd move to another area and things would go pretty smooth, then wild, and I really couldn't pin-point "why" things changed although I could come up with a bunch of maybe's?  Finally I tried some corded Senhieser phones and things really settled down for the most part?  Next day I tried the wireless 6 phones and once again the machine ran much more stable with way less noise cancels.  I'm in the using headphones camp now as that seems to have really helped in my areas for a more stable threshold and enjoyable hunt? I've dug exactly 100 pieces with the 6 so still have a lot to learn but imo the 6 is just a wild super sensitive sob that is very good at what it was designed to do...just takes some getting used to the nature of the beast..... jmo's

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jasong, I attended 6000 training from Gerry, I used the speaker the entire time. After a while ( didn't keep track of time ) the 6000 was smooth. 

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so, whats the deal with red dirt and gold nuggets anyway? My buddy and I found a rusty red/black gravel  layer under 6 feet of dirt,  and a layer of brown clay under it. 1st day we got 2 little nuggets, 1 bounced 3 inches when I dropped it into the gold pan. and it was half black on 1 side, and shiny yellow as the sun on the other side. Next day all we got was fines, so dunno if the bigger stuff was in the clay or what?

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31 minutes ago, tvanwho said:

so, whats the deal with red dirt and gold nuggets anyway? My buddy and I found a rusty red/black gravel  layer under 6 feet of dirt,  and a layer of brown clay under it. 1st day we got 2 little nuggets, 1 bounced 3 inches when I dropped it into the gold pan. and it was half black on 1 side, and shiny yellow as the sun on the other side. Next day all we got was fines, so dunno if the bigger stuff was in the clay or what?

Through faulting or erosion the dirt is exposed to air and water and rusts. It rusts due to high amounts of iron/pyrite (mineralization). If you dig deep enough in many of my spots you hit "real" bedrock. Where I found these two pieces the bedrock is serpentine.

I've found that clay can be decomposing bedrock in some areas, and holds gold. Other places there is nothing in or below the clay layer.

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25 minutes ago, tboykin said:

I've found that clay can be decomposing bedrock in some areas, and holds gold. Other places there is nothing in or below the clay layer.

This is something I've incidentally taken a great interest in recently as I believe this is what I'm seeing in an area I'm working in AZ. 

Anyone interested in looking at this chemical process further should check out the wiki on saprolites. This is usually what decomposing bedrocks are classified as, and they can even "produce" nuggets as well. This is called saprolitic gold, and is something almost never discussed or considered on prospecting forums. It can lay beneath laterite, which is sort of in between soil and rock, but in Arizona the laterite may be thin or missing. 

It's not just in the temperate/rainforested areas, but can be found in a lot of areas that are now deserts but were once much wetter due to climate change and tectonic drift, and so is something to watch out for a good reason to understand the local geology. 

Usually down here it's a reddish layer of soils followed by a whitish layer of less oxidized gravels, and then varying degrees of bedrock to saprolite. The saprolites themselves can "grow" nuggets. Some scientists propose a biologic mechanism, some propose a chemical mechanism, maybe it's both.

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