Jump to content

A Big Lump And The Funeral Of The GPX 6000


phrunt

Recommended Posts

15 minutes ago, GB_Amateur said:

Great find, Simon!  That tiny coil has really done well for you.

Have you or JW tried hunting the wall of that cut (shown in the picture)?  I've heard/read people sometimes find gold (with detectors) in similar structured face exposed material.  I suppose the fact that the old-timers didn't pursue it could mean its barren, but they didn't have the tools you have and probably needed high yielding ground to make their efforts profitable.

Thanks, Yea, I really love the little coil, it's got some raw horsepower 🙂   I wasn't sure how well it'd go on big deeper gold as that's an extreme rarity here however it surprised me on this piece getting it at good depth.   I generally use it for depth on the little bits.

I have detected a cut out sidewall like that before at another spot and found some gold in it, I started doing this sidewall but below it is quite a slope and my sore foot hates standing on sloping angles so it was hurting so I gave up pretty quickly.

The old timers would work an area until it was no longer viable for returns I would guess, or until they heard rumour on the grape vine of a more rich area and rushed off to it before everyone else did and abandoned their current area.   One thing I can be sure of is the old timers never got it all.

I'm sure there are plenty of areas around here that the old timers tested and found gold but not enough to make it viable for them to mine it, I hope one day I come across one of those areas 🙂

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites


  • 2 weeks later...

We went back here today, JW used the GPZ and 15" Concentric and found 6 pieces of gold.

I used the GPX 6000 and found zero gold, my first skunk at this location in who knows how long, I can't even remember my last skunk here.   I got a number of pellets though, I'm still puzzled why pellets are such booming signals near to the coil,  It's really hyper sensitive to small targets near the coil like these little lead pellets with a big booming signal, but if you do a couple of pick scrapes and try detect them in the dug out soil they're difficult very faint signals and you spend a while messing around trying to find them, my solution has been to flatten out the soil so I can get the coil close to them again.  In some shallow bedrock areas you just have to investigate these near surface targets.

I had the Nox with me with the Coiltek 10x5" and cross checked a few small targets which ended up pellets, the Nox did a better job overall, in signal strength and ease of recovery.  The Nox is great on tiny lead pellets though.

Next time the GPZ and GPX are coming along, this time I purposefully left the GPZ at home as I wanted to force myself to use the GPX to give it a chance and if the GPZ was there I would not use the GPX.  That's never happening again, if the GPX comes, the GPZ comes.

I was having endless troubles with EMI and using noise cancel all the time, never was one press enough, normally 2 to 3 presses did the trick, I'm 100% confident it' not an intelligent noise cancel, it doesn't look for a clean channel, its just randomly moving channels, it can't get it wrong so many times if it was searching for a clean channel, more often than not using it made the EMI worse not better.   This spot does have the big transmission lines through it, my older GPX had a lot of trouble here too which is why I bought a QED as it handles power lines better until I bought the GPZ and combined with the Concentric coils power lines are no issues at all.

JW of course with the GPZ had no trouble with EMI and was able to go detect right under the high voltage transmission lines, I stayed hundreds of meters away and was still troubled badly, JW said I should have had my 14" DD with me, and he's right, I didn't even think about it, lesson learned.  I couldn't detect the area JW found his 6 nuggets, the EMI was too bad to go that close to the power lines.  His 6000 11" coil is away for warranty after dying, the service agent doesn't have one to replace it with, nor does Minelab so he's got a big wait ahead of him it seems.  I guess they've had to swap out too many and run out of stock.

If you want to see me suffer watch this video, this should have been gold, I was 99% sure it was going to be gold.  A nice good deep target in the deep gravels, it makes no sense it wasn't gold.

Don't worry about my high gain, having a low gain made absolutely no difference to EMI so I saw no point running it low, may as well run it high if it isn't beneficial to lower it.  My fault, I should have had the DD with me, or just used the GPZ in a high EMI environment, as with it I can run in HY/Normal gain of 20 and not have an issue.

I also checked the spot I found the 4.1 gram nugget with the GPZ and 8" coil the previous weekend, I'd missed nothing there the GPX could find, I was hoping the bigger coil on the GPX might find another one deeper.  I'll try again another day with a bigger coil on the GPZ.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, try the 14DD next time. This is why it comes in the box. The 11 inch coil is absolutely not recommended near powerlines and is the wrong coil choice in high EMI conditions. Hence, no surprise with the bad result. I have no problem detecting near/under powerlines with the 14DD in EMI cancel mode and it runs much smoother than my GPZ (and SDC). 

GC

  • Like 6
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like you've had some productive outings Simon, and sorry you're still having struggles with that 6000, but you're not alone, and that troubles me as to why Minelab shipped those faulty units out without proper testing beforehand. However, it looks like you'll have to give that DD a go to see if it makes a difference.

Good luck, and all the best. Say hello to JW the next time you see him.

All the best,

Lanny

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

JW often talks about you Lanny, I'll pass on your hello although he may end up reading this anyway.

JW's 6000 worked in this spot on previous days, not perfectly of course but was quite good, this is the spot he was using it when he tried the factory reset to calm the EMI and his coil died,  it should be far enough from the power lines, where he went yesterday it obviously wouldn't good for the 11" as he was right under them so we separated for the day and I went to where I found the 4.1 gram with the GPZ and he went to the power lines to a spot he'd not been to since he used his GPZ with stock 14" coil a couple of years ago and he recalls finding 1 piece, maybe 2 and I last used a 4500 at that spot and found nothing, well tried to use I should say (EMI).

We've both noticed with past older detectors like my 4500 some days EMI is worse than others, we obviously can't work out why but it could be wind direction, moisture in the air (fog) draw on the lines during peak times or any number of things, this issue isn't new and we often detect in areas with them so start to see patterns forming with things like this.   There was a lot of rain in the area the day before, I wonder if because of that the Hydro dam feeding the lines was pumping out the power more so and caused worse EMI?

This day was just a particularly bad EMI one I think and the morning started out with a fog and fog was always bad news for my 4500 for EMI and not likely the detectors fault.  As the day went on my EMI woes started to improve.

My lesson from the day always carry the 14" DD just in case, part of the learning curve of a new detector, I've not even touched the 14" yet.    I hope the aftermarket guys at some point consider making a small DD coil.  14" is a bit big around the bushes.  In the video I look up a bit and you'll see the thyme bushes everywhere, a 14" coil would not be suitable.

A little mono might end up helping a bit with the EMI too, the little Coiltek Joey 10x5" mono made my 4500 work better in this area than using a larger coil, I can't wait to get aftermarket coils, I'm going to get one of all the brands in the size I like to see the differences and work out which I prefer.  This days problems weren't the detectors fault as it was finding plenty of small pellets at reasonable depths, it was just the EMI,  I guess my motto is I'll never die wondering 🙂 I like to try things and work out which I prefer, I hate wondering if something else would have been better.

As you can see the detector was working fine, plenty of pellets and these are the pellets I had to dig to recover, not surface pellets I rejected all of them unless I was right on the bedrock which wasn't much of the day.

IMG_20220516_074502.thumb.jpg.9f637b643cd2ba106391f526034ac473.jpg

I didn't find gold as I didn't go over any I guess, better luck next time I hope.

IMG_20220516_074423.thumb.jpg.758d238cb4f28e087cdb7d70b886378f.jpg

Not sure what size the smallest pellets were, plenty of these little ones, but they're a bit bigger than a #9 (which the GPX can't detect by the way)  Almost all of them are lead, at least not magnetic.  There is no reason for shooters in this area to be shooting modern pellets as there is no pest wildlife like rabbits that they need to control, I only ever see some birds so I think most pellets have been here for a very long time.

Next time at this spot it's the GPZ again with 8" coil, and the GPX with 14" DD.  Both get to come along for the ride, it's over a 4 and a half hour drive for me so I have to go prepared.  My Avantree Torus and DD leather GPX cover set will arrive in the next few days from Australia so I'll take it back again soon and try again.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My mate has an issue with his 6000 11" coil and has put up with it for a year! He couldnt run it at more than 5-6 but with mine I run  it at 8-10 most days. The cable inlet was touch sensitive too, indicating a fault right away. His 6000 was way more unstable than mine. He often did a couple dozen tunes per afternoon....I rarely do any at all, even within 30m of a powerline. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm in love! Yes, in love! the GPX 14" coil is great, performance is pretty good but it really calms my detector down and I feel I could use it for a day with this coil and not feel like wrapping it around a tree like I do with the 11".

I ran it over some little nugs and I thought its performance was similar on them to the 11".  It's very noticeable that the left side of the coil has the target signal, the right side is almost dead.  The good part about this is I could use the left side as a form of pinpointer.

This is the first time I've felt happy about my 6000, I went and put it right under high voltage lines that run from a wildmill farm and it worked remarkably well and would be quite usable under big power lines, not near as good as the Coiltek AI coil on the older GPX model but still,  good enough and on par with the GPZ with concentric coil for stability under power lines and seeing the GPX doesn't seem to loose too much in the way of small gold sensitivity if any with the DD I will be using it a lot more often now. 

I really hope the aftermarket guys make DD coils for it, and hopefully their coils are a bit better in EMI than the 11".  I noticed the coil cable on the DD coil looks thicker than the 11" Mono's cable.

HAPPY! Finally!  My 11' is going to become a sacrificial lamb for a better purpose 😛

Aureous, I had another guy contact me overnight on Facebook, his 11" was faulty too, his was noisy and erratic and it felt like it got worse when it was in use for a while.  His detector was randomly shutting off too, they couldn't fault the shutdowns but after having his detector for 2 weeks of testing swapped his 11" over and he's happy with it now.    Maybe my 11" isn't quite right, doesn't matter It's not going to be used, it will be replaced with aftermarket alternatives.

Is this plastic defect normal on the 14" DD up near the coil ears?

IMG_20220516_124133.thumb.jpg.1f07cc8aae0029d7cbbcdcd595100c05.jpg

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ive been using my 14DD solely for the past 3 days yes, its very stable indeed! Very sensitive all right and although a bit heavier, Im getting used to it. I'll switch back to the 11" in a day or two. The seam on the 14DD is just a join mark from the injection molding formers when the shell was manufactured. Nuthin to worry about...

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Aureous said:

Ive been using my 14DD solely for the past 3 days yes, its very stable indeed! Very sensitive all right and although a bit heavier, Im getting used to it. I'll switch back to the 11" in a day or two. The seam on the 14DD is just a join mark from the injection molding formers when the shell was manufactured. Nuthin to worry about...

I pull the forward shaft in closer than with the smaller coil when using the DD- that balances it a bit better.

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...