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


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The more I try and use it the more it comes to life, It's turning on and working quite regularly at the moment, sometimes it still does the error.  I think something may have a poor connection inside it that tapping on it has given a better contact, I'm obviously not going to pop the hood and see but it means if I'm willing to mess around I should be able to take it on a gold hunt tomorrow as my dealer is down here until Monday when he goes back to Christchurch so I've got until Monday to give it back to him, I'll just make sure I take my GPZ too for if and when it lets me down, may even compare some in ground targets between the two in their natural state. 

I've compared small nuggets using the GPZ and 8" coil now vs the GPX and 11" and the GPZ is quite a bit better on it's signal clarity and response without having to deal with the GPX chatter.  Obviously it's quite a bit smaller of a coil so it has the size advantage, it'll be interesting to see what happens when the smaller GPX coils come out seeing they both seem to have very similar depth on these small targets I'm testing.  Both detectors are very close if not equal on depth on the tiny nuggets I've compared so far, the GPZ just has the nicer louder easier to hear response, it'll take me time to get used to this ratty GPX threshold, early days and hopefully the replacement isn't a dud too.

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Well....that makes me nervous! I'm picking up my GPX6000 on Monday {biting fingernails}.... I've requested that the dealer charge up the batteries so I can test it for the whole day once picked up. I also asked the dealer to test it prior to me arriving. Its a 2 hour drive and I don't wanna go home without it...if I have to hand it back for warranty repair/replacement, I'm gonna be as pissed as you Simon! 

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Yea, my dealer brought it down to me from 7 hours away so I can imagine he's as annoyed as I am.  In hindsight I should have asked him to fire it up before he brought it down as he had 2 in stock so he could have swapped it over before bringing it down, now he's got to take it back up when he goes back and post a new one down, extra expensive for him paying for shipping for something that's not been his fault, I hope Minelab compensate dealers for this sort of rubbish, its really not their fault.

Ok so I've spent all day messing around with this thing, It's at a point now it turns on a majority of the time, I'm certain something is loose inside it as tapping on the side of the control box made it go from not turning on at all, to turning on with an explanation mark error to now working most of the time and when it doesn't its still doing that explanation mark error.  It seems to have faulty headphones anyway as they're still charging about 20 hours later, still no solid light 🙂

So I'm still obviously going to get it replaced, unless I just don't bother with it.

Now I filmed a quick little video, I'm obviously no expert on the GPX although it's a turn on and go detector any dummy can use according to the packaging.

And the GPZ I just use as a turn on and go detector too, I know it's not apples to apples the GPZ has a smaller coil, but the fact is people are saying the GPX kills the GPZ on small gold, or does it?  JW doesn't have this GPZ coil so he doesn't know how it performs.

So I ran them both over a 0.03 of a gram nugget just sitting on the surface, that's often how this sort of gold is found, within a couple of inches anyway and my mild soil really makes no difference if its on the ground or a bit of dirt sitting on it.

To me the difference is night and day with the GPZ being the stand out winner, now I'm not sure if this response from the GPX is normal, if it does have a dodgy cable inside perhaps that is affecting performance so I've marked this video as unlisted on Youtube so only people reading this thread will be able to see it, I don't want to make a detector look bad if its a faulty one causing the performance to be how it is, and I think that is likely the case.  Lowering the gain on the GPX makes no difference, makes it a little more stable but the target doesn't improve, however any advice would be appreciated.

I'm having serious buyers remorse on this detector, I can't see me using it to the point I think a refund would be the better option if this is normal for it, but like I said it maybe faulty, or I maybe just not using it right being a first time user and I need to give it more of a chance.

I'd appreciate GPX owners letting me know if this is what they'd expect from it? If it's normal that's fine, I don't want to complain to my dealer saying I think it's got performance issues too if its normal

I probably need to try get it running more stable and see if it improves, there are power lines nearby which will be affecting both detectors, but perhaps the GPX is more affected by them.  I'll take it out tomorrow for a gold hunt and see if it changes out in the gold areas away from EMI a bit more as I'm just using it at the river behind my house.

 

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Welcome to the club Phrunt🎧. JP is right on the money about the six. Both parts.

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I'll use headphones on it tomorrow and see what difference it makes, I've had conflicting reports there with some saying the EMI/speaker thing doesn't exist and others saying it does and it works much better with headphones.  Thanks for the tip.

I'm having a crash course in using it ready to take it prospecting tomorrow, fingers crossed it keeps working and I hope this nightmare just goes away with a replacement one that works better and performance improves away from EMI sources. 🙂

 

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1 hour ago, phrunt said:


I'd appreciate GPX owners letting me know if this is what they'd expect from it? If it's normal that's fine, I don't want to complain to my dealer saying I think it's got performance issues too if its normal.

Looks about right to me, at least in comparison to the 8". I haven't tested them side by side, but my experience is they are pretty much equal in sensitivity. In some cases I think the 6000 edges out the 8" if you swing it at just right angle and over just the right spot on the coil, but conversely in all cases in alkali/salt the 8" is superior.  Outside the dinks, I think the 6000 is deeper overall though for larger gold, but again, just a sense, not tested.

But that EMI...not good on the 6000. Not sure how it's even a debate. I'm surprised you could run it that long, my 6000 usually goes completely unstable after the first few minutes. Not just noisy - completely unstable with the speaker. A problem I can replicate easily and so I'm also utterly confused how it's even a topic of debate - it's real. It almost never loses total stability with the headphones though, but has happened.

The 6000 appears to be highly sensitive to the specific spot on the coil you cover the target with, or potentially the specific angle with which you approach. It's too hard to gauge from a video what height your coil is at, which also makes a difference, but you can hear a wide variance in target response on different swings, some almost silent and some as good as the 8".

As I noted in another thread, I miss not only nuggets in my scoop with the 6000, but nuggets in the ground because of this - which is the real problem I was trying to point out. And the fact it almost never happened with the GPZ. And I think a reason is the remarkably consistent target response of the GPZ compared to the 6000. 

Definitely worth trying a similar experiment in a lower EMI environment though too as you noted, just out of curiosity.

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Hi Simon,

that is a real bummer. Like JP said, you are the last person that I would want to sell a defective product to. That is not a shot at you. Just the opposite. I know you will get to the bottom of whatever is wrong and make sure it is fixed and you will also not hold back.

Listening to your present GPX 6000, the threshold was fairly steady compared to what mine sounds like with the 11” coil at times when it is anywhere near power lines or other EMI sources. 

The anaemic performance of the 11” coil on that .03 bit was definitely not what I would expect with settings of Mono/Normal using manual 10 and auto+.  

My GPX 6000 in my house with plenty of EMI using the 14” DD with settings of DD Cancel/Normal on manual 6 will hit chunkier .03, .04 and .05 bits out to 1” easily. The response isn’t loud but it is clear and consistent.

Looks to me that there is more than just a loose connection going on inside your GPX 6000.

good luck, 

Jeff

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2 hours ago, phrunt said:

Yea, my dealer brought it down to me from 7 hours away so I can imagine he's as annoyed as I am.  In hindsight I should have asked him to fire it up before he brought it down as he had 2 in stock so he could have swapped it over before bringing it down, now he's got to take it back up when he goes back and post a new one down, extra expensive for him paying for shipping for something that's not been his fault, I hope Minelab compensate dealers for this sort of rubbish, its really not their fault.

Ok so I've spent all day messing around with this thing, It's at a point now it turns on a majority of the time, I'm certain something is loose inside it as tapping on the side of the control box made it go from not turning on at all, to turning on with an explanation mark error to now working most of the time and when it doesn't its still doing that explanation mark error.  It seems to have faulty headphones anyway as they're still charging about 20 hours later, still no solid light 🙂

So I'm still obviously going to get it replaced, unless I just don't bother with it.

Now I filmed a quick little video, I'm obviously no expert on the GPX although it's a turn on and go detector any dummy can use according to the packaging.

And the GPZ I just use as a turn on and go detector too, I know it's not apples to apples the GPZ has a smaller coil, but the fact is people are saying the GPX kills the GPZ on small gold, or does it?  JW doesn't have this GPZ coil so he doesn't know how it performs.

So I ran them both over a 0.03 of a gram nugget just sitting on the surface, that's often how this sort of gold is found, within a couple of inches anyway and my mild soil really makes no difference if its on the ground or a bit of dirt sitting on it.

To me the difference is night and day with the GPZ being the stand out winner, now I'm not sure if this response from the GPX is normal, if it does have a dodgy cable inside perhaps that is affecting performance so I've marked this video as unlisted on Youtube so only people reading this thread will be able to see it, I don't want to make a detector look bad if its a faulty one causing the performance to be how it is, and I think that is likely the case.  Lowering the gain on the GPX makes no difference, makes it a little more stable but the target doesn't improve, however any advice would be appreciated.

I'm having serious buyers remorse on this detector, I can't see me using it to the point I think a refund would be the better option if this is normal for it, but like I said it maybe faulty, or I maybe just not using it right being a first time user and I need to give it more of a chance.

I'd appreciate GPX owners letting me know if this is what they'd expect from it? If it's normal that's fine, I don't want to complain to my dealer saying I think it's got performance issues too if its normal

I probably need to try get it running more stable and see if it improves, there are power lines nearby which will be affecting both detectors, but perhaps the GPX is more affected by them.  I'll take it out tomorrow for a gold hunt and see if it changes out in the gold areas away from EMI a bit more as I'm just using it at the river behind my house.

 

I’d expect a better target response out of my 6000 with a target sitting on the surface like that, even for its size. Small rusty wire is an absolute pain in my rear end. I unfortunately don’t have video of it. I also consider the edge of the coil absolute fire for getting into edges where targets may be hiding (and have found them).

 

Being that you are also relatively close in proximity to powerlines won’t be helping you any at all. That threshold is also pretty standard for the external speaker, and I don’t use it at all. The machine is totally different with headphones.

 

Something I’ve also found with the 6000 compared to the Z, that yes, while the target response is better on small stuff, when you get a loud surface target, the volume stays the same on the 6000. The Z tends to damn near blow your ear drums out when it comes across one of these. I’m not sure if others have noticed this aswell.

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