Relic Hunting With The Minelab GPX 6000

[abenson]

After some initial testing with the GPX 5000 vs the GPX 6000 last week on some buried relics. I decided to take the GPX 6000 out for a few hours yesterday to one of my permissions that dates to the late 1850's. Based on what I learned from the previous weeks testing I set the 6000 in difficult, threshold off, sensitivity at 4 and used the 11" mono coil. I started out by digging every signal just to confirm my findings from the initial testing and to see where the targets fell in the tone range, high vs low. Most of the wire and nails (whether high or low tones) were identified by the double beep they give, but were dug anyway just to confirm. If you refer back to Steve's original post found here: 

He discusses where targets fall based on the timing used with the mono coils (this will most likely differ when using the 14" DD). What I dug in the photo below, top of the picture low tone, bottom of the picture high tone. Cutoff off for targets on one end whether high or low appears to be right at the .22 brass range. Shorts are a high tone, longs are a low tone. So this puts small round balls, pewter buttons, all gold coins (except maybe the $20), cuff buttons, coat buttons and bullets in the low tone bucket. On the other end, flat tin, most nails, .22 lead, percussion caps, and other really small brass/lead items as a high tone, this would also include silver coins (except maybe half dimes and trimes) and I would assume belt plates unfortunately. So based on what I found (for my soil conditions) I could setup the GPX 6000 and dig only low tones virtually avoiding most junk targets. One could go one step further and evaluate all  the high tones as well and only dig the ones that had the right sound, size and shape and pick up the occasional deep coin, you would also be digging flat tin. So if a person ran over a site with a VLF and picked out all the high conductors (which usually happens anyway) grabbing the silver coins and possible plates. You could then hit it with the 6000 digging only low tones and pretty much clean the rest out avoiding most unwanted items.

[Steve Herschbach]

Thanks for posting Andy. If anyone wants to go even further down the GBPI rabbit hole, a lot of technical information can be gleaned from the following thread and included links. The methodology works for any ground balancing PI (GBPI) detector. Minelab SD/GP/GPX/GPZ, Garrett Infinium/ATX, White’s TDI, and Fisher Impulse AQ, the launching point for the thread.

 

[MSC]

Very well put abensen and Steve, things I have to keep in mind during my next outing with the 6000.