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My New GPX 6000 Is Faulty, Straight Out Of The Box


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What a bummer, all these reports about poor quality. My 6000 runs without any issues and I am very happy with it. It was one of the first ever to arrive in the US, perhaps the early production models where higher quality? Regardless, ML better fixes these issues before releasing a new flagship detector (or any new model for that matter).

GC

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1 hour ago, Gold Catcher said:

What a bummer, all these reports about poor quality. My 6000 runs without any issues and I am very happy with it. It was one of the first ever to arrive in the US, perhaps the early production models where higher quality? Regardless, ML better fixes these issues before releasing a new flagship detector (or any new model for that matter).

GC

Mine was also one of the first...no factory issues.  

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3 hours ago, oneguy said:

Mine was also one of the first...no factory issues. 

Thankfully I am one of these too.   I think I got one from JPs first shipment, so one of the first in Oz.  And got a 17” coil later on and have not had a single issue with anything - touch wood 🪵 

That is not to disregard the issues with Phrunt’s and others’ detectors as they are a very expensive product and should have quality control to reflect that.  
 

I am still happy I went early and am amazed at the performance. Apart from the headphone port and poor speaker location choice there is nothing I would change.  
 

But, I am keen to purchase the CTX 4040 (or whatever the next high range treasure detector is) and hope that Minelab have learnt a major lesson in quality control from this episode and the poor reflection it is having on the brand.  They cannot underestimate the damage a thread like this will have on sales.  
Customers and shareholders alike are watching to see the response.  

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So it had it's maiden voyage today, it's still working fine, whatever giving it a good old fashioned beating did, it did it well.  The detector has stayed working, it didn't do the error at all today, I could give the service center good tips about GPX repair..  I'm going to contact my dealer and tell him I'll just keep it and keep an eye on it as I'd have to drop it back to him tomorrow before he leaves the area if I'm going to get it replaced, if it screws up again I'll just send it in to be swapped/repaired, it's not the end of the world if its away at detector hospital as I'd rather use my GPZ anyway. It's odd as when you read the manual about the error I was getting, the explanation mark error, its a critical error and if you see it the detector needs to be sent to Minelab for repair so it's so strange it works after some man handling.

Now, as far as detectors build quality goes (not the electronics) it's not too bad, I had absolutely no shaft twisting and I was detecting in long grass and being quite forceful with it, perhaps this is something Minelab have resolved on the later builds.  I'm confident my shaft is better than earlier ones, I was quite rough with it, well the same as I am with my GPZ and it was fine.  While it can't force grass down near as well as the GPZ it did manage to do it without any twisting of the shaft.

The stability of it is a bit of an eye opener, I thought my old GPX 4500 ran unstable, I was wrong, it ran a dream compared to the 6000, I'm going to wear a hole right though the noise cancel button, I must have pressed it 50+ times today.  I don't believe it's a noise cancel, I don't think it scans for a clean channel, I just think it shifts each time you press it between a set number of channels, more often than not I had to press it multiple times, and when I pressed it usually it was worse than before pressing it so I had to do it a few times to get it good enough.  That doesn't sound like an intelligent channel scan, and might go some way to explaining why it's so quick.  The GPZ channel scan although a lot slower is much more effective, as was my old 4500 channel scan.

There was 3 times during the day no matter how many times I tried to noise cancel I couldn't get it to quieten down, in these instances I did a factory reset and that worked well linking to my theory about it not being EMI but Geosense going crazy.  If it were EMI noise cancels would fix it, I tried 10 or more times to no avail and a factory reset fixes it instantly.   It's frustrating having to pair the headphones again after doing that but expected of course.  It also caught me out once because it reverts to difficult after doing that and I run in normal but forgot to fix it.

Who picked up on that? I wore headphones, yes the first time EVER! I spent the morning without them and the afternoon with them, I wanted to see the stability difference and yes, there was a significant difference, it's much more (EMI/Geosense) problematic on speaker than headphones.

The weight is great, at the end of the day my arm felt no different to the morning before I started, not tired at all, I can't say the same for my legs and sore foot 😛  We walked quite a bit today.

Aside from the EMI issues which I don't even think are EMI, I think it's something to do with Geosense going wacky it performed quite well.  I couldn't tilt my coil on the side to take advantage of the mono coils hot edges like I tend to do a lot with the GPZ and 8" Coil to pinpoint small targets in my dig pile or hole, if I did this the detector went EMI (Geosense) mad.  I was able to detect quite close to JW, we were able to detect at our usual distances from each other fine.

I only managed one piece of gold, and found it right near the end of the day, that was a bit of a disappointment, but better than a skunk.  JW found three little pieces and I think his were bigger than mine too.

The small target sensitivity certainly outperforms a standard GPZ, so users of the GPZ with the 14x13" coil would find a significant small gold improvement, it seems to really amplify small target signals very close to the coil, but that amplification drops off quickly with any depth, it loves shallow pellets with a very strong signal response, abnormally I didn't really find any deeper old lead ones like I usually do in this area, all pellets were just within a few pick scrapes, it very much favours the steel pellets over lead with its target response when any depth is involved.

It's beneficial using headphones on it, the gold I did find I highly doubt I would have found using it's speaker trying to hear it through the noise, it was a very soft target noise,

Does anyone else notice a constant hiss in their headphones? It's only there once the detector is connected, kind of a high pitched hissing sound, it was quite annoying.  I also get electronic interference buzzing and crackling in the headphones when I'm down on my knees running targets over the coil, I recall this similar noise when my speaker went near my GPX 4500. 

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This was my golds dig hole, I was mostly using Auto and Auto + with the threshold on, When I was in manual I wasn't too happy in the highest manual setting, nothing to do with my soil causing issues obviously, more to do with the EMI, dropping a few notches doesn't appear to affect performance much if at all anyway.  I preferred keeping it stable over running high sensitivity, a different approach as with my GPZ I'm always maxed out.

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It was quite deep, the video shows the depth better than the photo, I was happy with the depth, similar to what I'd expect with my GPZ on this nugget.

IMG_20220507_165058.thumb.jpg.6b0740d4a58bb3f9e057747b27716a76.jpg

Funny looking thing, looks like a mini walnut or a butt crack.

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So for the size of it I would say the depth was reasonable, I don't think the GPX has a fault causing performance issues, just the power on explanation mark problem and the headphones never completely charging.

IMG_20220507_204619.thumb.jpg.b9ca03facbc379caeae96e385d3d03a2.jpg

My junk, a fair bit less than usual.  I was digging everything, only rejecting surface pellets.

So do I like it so far? it's OK.  If I didn't have the GPZ and was using my 4500 still, I'd love it, even with it's EMI (Geosense) quirks.  I think it will grow on me over time, I can't see it replacing my GPZ though, that I'm certain of.

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I still feel you need to send it in for repairs/replacement. I never touch the noise cancel button that often in a session, though I do live on the quick track button.
 

That noise you hear when down near the coil is actually the output of the machine/coil and the frequency it pulses at. I picked it up the first time I used it with headphones and then heard it again while watching a prospecting TV show recently (The Weekend Prospector if anyone’s interested, also not expecting to hear it through the TV). I also picked the GPZ’s frequency up when I started wearing headphones/earbuds aswell, though not as loud. That did take me off guard before I worked out what it was. I haven’t heard the ‘hiss’ that you speak of though. 

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Phrunt, I've been following the thread. You don't know me and I know less than you about detectors. But I'm giving free advice about your situation based on my life experiences and past mistakes. SEND IT BACK FOR A REPLACEMENT. You will never trust the machine at this point. Give Minelab the chance to make it right. Give yourself peace of mind. As I read the thread I feel sorry for you, the money put out and hope you don't cheat yourself.

If I was Minelab and read this thread I would have your replacement ready to go and be contacting you for your shipping address.

Consider this situation with the big picture in mind. Happy hunting!

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I spoke to JW about the noise cancel thing, he seemed to think it was pretty normal based upon his 6000, he also has to do the reset thing occasionally during the day, all very similar so I guess that's the environment we live in, we are often never far from civilization or the power network.  In fact he was just doing the reset process when his 11" coil died as he was trying to fix up the Geosense EMI.

The performance seemed right to me on the day and JW seemed to think so too, if I was using the GPZ with 8" coil I think the two would have been very competitive with each other on the targets I was finding and the depths they were at which falls in line with JasonG saying the two are very competitive with each other.  I was quite happy with the performance overall, I would like if I could disable Geosense though, probably not how it works but I'd love to just hold down a button to turn it off once I've got the detector stable, I don't need it doing a billion calculations per second about my soil, there is nothing for it to do as its very mild so it seems more trouble than its worth with the EMI issues, some manual control would have been nice, even a manual noise cancel adjustment would have been good.

They're on the right track I think, the GPX 6500 will likely be a fantastic detector once the technology is improved upon.  I probably would have put the speaker in the control pod though, not the tail end, might have helped with the speaker generated interference too having it further from the electronics.

There are plenty of positives too, it has great small target sensitivity, it's so stupidly light and it sure is great not wearing any sort of harness.  The EMI/Geosense thing really takes the ease of use away from it though, the GPZ seems more of an easy expert detector than the GPX as for a beginner the GPZ would be easier to use and easier to understand with less of the EMI to confuse the new detectorist.

I don't want to take the other detector off my dealers stock with him replacing it if it now works, he's happy to take this one back today as hes going back to Christchurch 7 hours away tomorrow morning and then ship me the other one he has in stock on Tuesday, dealers are only small businesses and it's a high value item, and he'd then have shipping costs etc to deal with, it's not his fault at all.   I have 3 years to get it back to the service agent if it develops the problem again.  It's only my secondary detector, if it was my primary detector I'd be more worried.

I will enjoy learning it, and I will learn to live with Geosense and eventually after time learn to take advantage of it for it's intended purposes.  I do like it, I just like the GPZ better at this stage.  I will give the DD a try, JW has said it has no EMI issues at all, and he's finding very small gold with it, it doesn't seem to dumb the detectors performance down much.  I may find I enjoy using it more with the DD, and after all that's what it's all about, if you don't enjoy it then it becomes work.

Sheppo, I'm the exact opposite, I never needed to touch the quick trak button 🙂  We do have EMI problems here due to the large power network from the hydro lakes so that could go some way to explaining my EMI problems, The GPZ doesn't care about it at all and I often go the entire day never once using it's noise cancel, not even when I first arrive at the spot, but my older 4500 struggled a bit here too with EMI, it's why I dabbled with the QED, the GPZ ended up the best solution.   I'll try record the headphone hiss and put up a video if it comes out in the recording.  It's sort of high pitched and I believe people lose high pitched hearing as they age but you should be able to hear it I would think.

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On 5/6/2022 at 8:20 PM, Aureous said:

When I pick up mine on Monday, the 6000 will owe me 40 grams. I'd better like it....:unsure:

Coming from a 4500 I think you'll love it.  Massive sensitivity jump to small gold.

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Simon are you saying you’re going to be complaining about your faulty 6000 for the duration of your warranty?  🤔 😳The detector has a fault we could all see that, you should get it back to Minelab and at the very least have it looked at if you genuinely want to have faith in your detector and also avoid damaging others faith in them. 

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