A Couch Potato Or Gold Prospector? To Buy Or Not To Buy 6000

[phrunt]

1 hour ago, aerospace guy said:

Phrunt...see pic (missed by 5000) according to Gerry

Yup, 5000 would likely miss that in any timing and if you were in an area with a lot of that type of gold then yes, the 5000 isn't the best choice.  VLF's love that type of gold though and the 6000 is meant to be better on it than the 5000.  I think the GPZ is better on it too, I don't need to worry so much about gold like that as we don't seem to have it here.

Just yesterday out of interest I tested my latest 12 nugget finds on my GPX 5000 with 10" X-coil, I used that coil as it's the most sensitive coil I own being the smallest fully spiral wound coil I have for the GPX 5000.  The nuggets were all 0.067 of a gram (1.03 grain) and smaller, down as low as 0.036 of a gram (0.55 of a grain) which is the one that has to touch the coil on the 5000, I guess I should clarify what I mean by touching the coil too.  It means I doubt I'd find it in the wild as the smallest thing like some small gravel on the ground or grass on the soil would prevent the coil getting close enough to get a good enough hit on it that would make me find it, it'd have to be on pretty flat bedrock to find it.  The interesting thing was the GPX 5000 hit the smallest nugget fine with quite good depth on most the nuggets I thought, it was some of the mid size ones it didn't hit at all or needed them touching the coil.  Out of the 12 nuggets (flakes I guess some would say) the GPX 5000 hit 8 of them. 

The smallest nugget of the lot the GPX 5000 hits when it touches the coil at 0.036 of a gram or 0.055 of a grain.  Interestingly the 3 the GPX 5000 misses are some of the larger size of them all, the one on the left very is 0.069 or a gram and the one on the far right is 0.067 of a gram, both around the 1 grain mark.

This would be a demonstration of that ground balance gap that makes the GPX 5000 miss some gold more so than other detectors like the GPX 6000 and GPZ 7000 that appear to have a smaller gap of missed targets.

All of these nuggets were found with the GPZ 7000 except a couple which were GPX 6000 nuggets, either way both the GPX 6000 and GPZ hit them all, overall the GPZ hits them all deeper in air tests by using the 8" coil on it.

It's hard to believe the GPX 5000 completely misses this one even touching the coil when it hits well on far smaller nuggets like the one pictured below it gets a few inches on

I'd not used the older GPX models in ages now and I was in fact surprised how well the 5000 with 10" coil did on this really small gold.  It's inspired me to take the time to compare it to the 6000 on some small gold in the near future and just see how much better the 6000 really is on this small stuff.  I might do some video when the weather improves, we've just had our biggest snow storm in decades a few days ago.   The 6000's target response is certainly louder/more agressive but the 5000 appeared to get some good depth on the really small ones too.  My 5000 settings were sensitive extra, gain of 20, audio boost and the rest on default from memory, I should check that.

[Steve Herschbach]

The problem with your 5000 is you are laser focused on what it can’t do, and ignore what it can do. All detectors have weak areas, which is why most proficient detectorists own more than one. Your Equinox misses deep gold a PI easily hits. Does that mean it’s worthless? Long story short it seems you sunk you teeth deep into Gerrys little demonstration of an outlier issue, won’t let go, and completely ignore that the 5000 is one of the best PI detecting values available on the market to this very day.

Given that the 6000 misses gold a 7000 can hit, you would face the same issue. It’s not a perfect detector, it misses certain types of gold. It bangs on hot rocks a 5000 can easily tune out, and is a real squirrel with EMI issues. So why would you be any happier with it than a GPX 5000? Which by the has a halfway decent ferrous discrimination capability the the 7000 and 6000 completely lack, and which could have been used to great benefit where you hunt.

Best bet is to stick with what’s working for you, and get out and use that Equinox some more. Congratulations on a truly excellent find!  If small gold is your concern, the Nox can hit stuff smaller than the 5000/6000/7000 can touch.

https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/7468-my-tips-on-nugget-detecting-with-the-minelab-equinox/

What timings are you running on the 5000 Simon? Sensitive Extra I assume? As you know the “hole” moves with the timing and ground balance settings, and so trying Sensitive Extra, and then Sharp on the same targets, might be interesting.

[phrunt]

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

What timings are you running on the 5000 Simon? Sensitive Extra I assume? As you know the “hole” moves with the timing and ground balance settings, and so trying Sensitive Extra, and then Sharp on the same targets, might be interesting.

Yes I was only in sensitive extra, it was blowing a gale the day I did the testing and it was freezing cold so I went home as quick as possible, I just wanted to do that experiment for myself really.  I've been meaning to go back and do it properly trying different timings and and see if I can change the results as it would be useful for me to know this information.  I'd actually forgotten how good the earlier GPX series is on small gold but I was also seeing why the 6000 pulls gold on so called flogged ground that looks like anyone should have found it previously with their other detectors, it hits these weird bits the 5000 struggles on perfectly fine, as does the 7000.  If in flogged ground everyone was using a GPX 4500 or 5000 and all in the same timing as it was the go to timing for the area then I can now understand how they left gold behind and the 6000 users can go in and find all the missed stuff so this demonstration was good for me just to get a better understanding of it all. 

I really like the 5000, yes it has its limitations with particular types of gold but in many ways it's a fantastic detector and as you pointed out handles the most difficult ground and hot rocks extremely well, and I just love the Equinox, which is why I think it was crazy to get rid of the 5000 over this one little issue with it because a 5000 and an Equinox is a truly awesome combination of detectors for prospecting.

[Optix]

On 6/11/2022 at 7:22 PM, Aureous said:

 My ratio of gold to junk sits about 40:1!

40 gold to 1 junk? That's pretty good!

[Aureous]

1 minute ago, Optix said:

40 gold to 1 junk? That's pretty good!

I wish it WAS that way around...... Yeah I should've made it more specific lol