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Gpx-6000 1 Year Anniversary. Is It The King?


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Norvic - You are correct about the 6000 still being quite young and us still learning it.  The Settings I used and trained customers with when it 1st came out are different than what I train/use today, as it took time in many areas and fine adjusting.  Now the 6000 doesn't have as many adjustments, but I agree 100% that it is deeper than many folks think.  Time across the many gold fields by a variety of hunters with great selection of coil options and we'll see improvements.  After all, we don't have 16", 18" or 20" round coils for the GPX-6000 yet.

Jasong - Yes I too would like a GPX-6000 housing and it's abilities to find the gold it does better than the GPZ-7000...but also have the smoothness and the few extra inches of depth on larger gold.  What would you/I pay?  Depending on what other detectors are on the market at the time and the price of Gold itself.  If gold is $2K an oz and there is no other detector manufactures making anything close in performance, I'll bite and pay around $6 to $10K as I know I'll pay that detector off.  If gold price is $1000 or less, then I'll not be as big to pay top dollar, maybe $3 to $5K.  For me, the KING of these 2 models, is the one getting me the most gold...period.

Aureous - I feel like you do about the gold is there, but just out of reach.  Hopefully this dream machine comes out before I get too old to dig that 4 and 5' deep hole.

Gold Catcher - I agree 100% that there are areas and situations the GPZ-7000 is BEST.  Heck I still have 2 Field Staff Experts that own them and have not moved to the GPX-6000?  But the majority of my Staff have with great success and smiles, moved from their 7's to the 6.  There is no right or wrong in answer and my opinion is for the majority of my detecting in the variety of areas I hunt for the different kinds of gold.  And yes there are a couple areas I know, the 7is the preferred tool.  But the overall Success is how I award the title KING.

Norvic - You said "Tis amazing that we debate passionately about two competing machines that are not made by competing manufacturers."  Yes it's kind of funny and Minelab is sitting back and laughing at the other manufactures.  It's kind of sad in a way to see but that's what it's been for the last 20 yrs. 

Hopefully other manufactures are trying to crack into this high end market more than what they have in times past.  I don't know if it's been because of lack of the right Engineers or lack of deep pockets.  You would think the old PI technology with todays new coil schematics and lighter materials would allow a different manufacture to come out with something similar to a GPX-5000 or GPX-6000 but at a better price point.  I just think it's a matter of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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On 6/20/2022 at 7:59 AM, strick said:

I was unable to use my 6k couple weeks ago in a remote area. I could not get it to shut up despite multiple noise cancels and even a re boot...I tried to use it at its lowest setting.. still arcing squirrely...very disappointing...I’ll be calling  Minelab so they can check out the coil to see if there is anything wrong with it....my Xp Deus works fine however...

strick 

Do you have access to another GPX-6000 to try the same day/site/time?  I feel like there might be an issue, but hard for me to know without testing it myself or one of my Staff.  If you want, I can send you my own unit to compare or I can have you send your unit to one of my nearest Field Staff and he can compare.  Sorry it has not been working out for you like the rest of us.

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13 hours ago, Rob Allison said:

I get more and more calls each year of customer that purchase from Amazon, as they can get the detector in some cases the same day and use incentives from Amazon.  

Right, but they can't get the customer service that you and Gerry offer...

 

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Prince Charles calls his Ross Royce dealer about an unusual problem he is having with his car.

 

Dealer: Hello, thank you for calling Rolls Royce Westminster, How may I be of service

Charles hmmmmm I'm not very happy with my Roll Royce

Dealer: You must always be happy with your Rolls Royce, they're the best cars on the planet

Charles: yes very good cars, very good, but my car has a problem

Dealer: Rolls Royce don't have problems, you must be doing something wrong.

Charles: Well if I turn on my stereo to listen to some music while going to visit the Queen my car becomes very erratic

Dealer: yes

Charles: This is my problem I can't use my stereo system

Dealer: yes

Charles: Can you fix this

Dealer: No, this is not a problem

Charles: Well, I want to listen to my entertainment system while being driven around, I have good songs to listen to like Crazy Frog Axel F

Dealer: You can listen to your music

Charles: yes but the driver tells me if I do the car becomes erratic and he gets very annoyed

Dealer: yes, well you could always use headphones

Charles: I don't like headphones and the photographers taking photos of my every move would wonder why I am wearing headphones in the Rolls and put photos in the magazines

Dealer: Well, Rolls Royce are the best cars so if you want to continue to drive our cars and listen to your music you must wear headphones

Charles: I was talking to the young boy that comes to cleans up the deification from my mother the Queens Corgis and his Rover from 1982 has speakers that work well, he can listen to whatever he wants to and his vehicle operation remains unchanged while doing so

Dealer: yes, so is there anything we can help you with, Rolls Royce are the best cars on the planet fit for a Royal such as yourself.

Charles: Why did you install speakers if I should not use them?

Dealer: Customers like speakers, anyway Rolls Royce do not have problems, so how can I help you today?

Charles: No there is nothing you can help me with, thank you, everything is great with my car and it's fit for a King.  I will be King one day

Dealer: yes, yes you will, good bye now and please tell everybody how great your Rolls Royce is.

Charles: Thank you, bye for now.

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Phrunt - You said "The GPZ is like fine wine, it's only improved with age. 🙂 ".

I used to say the same thing with an SD 2100, then GP-Extreme and after that the GPX-4000.  Each series has gotten better at depth on smaller and course gold.  Each series also added more Timings and Fine Tuning.  Many owners were afraid of the GPX series and left themselves short.  For those of us who took the time to learn it, were rewarded with more Au.

I also agree about the ZVT having more upside than the old PI. 

I'd love to see another manufacture prove us wrong.

Norvic - You said "So just maybe we are better off where we are. Yes/No".  I'm not much of one to settle.  I'm always wanting more options and something better.  I've yet to find the 1 best for all situations.  And I agree with the rest of your above comments but hope some other manufacture will step up their game.

Steve H - You said "The real problem is the gold patches basically playing out, and “going deeper” is not going to make the majority of them come back to life. We have lots of relatively shallow placer here, and with the last small bits getting hoovered up, there simply is not that much left in most of the places that most of us have ready access to. It’s a good thing you are getting near to retiring Gerry, because I don’t think gold prospecting detectors are a growth market anymore in the U.S."

I have thought that out the last few years with the GPZ-7000 and then we were given another option of the GPX-6000.  Where can it go from here is very interesting and has me scratching my head.  I think Minelab is also aware, so their next new KING will have to be something quite amazing.

Yes, my retirement is now being thought of a little more, but I still really enjoy the training of customers and helping with them as they find their 1st gold nugget, 1st Indian Head Cent, 1st gold ring etc.  I'm not pulling the plug anytime soon, but I do see the writing on the wall.

JP - Yes the truth hurts and a good amount of us long time DP members on here are in fact getting to the age that our body is not keeping up with the desires of our mind.  Gone are the days of a 3 week Prospecting Hunt as my body is giving out before my mind and or the detector.  Heck, I'm pretty dragging ass after a week of the hunt.  But boy does the desire of thinking a new patch or a nice 1+ oz'er keep me going. 

Few a select few of us, it's almost unbearable just thinking about putting on a GPZ-7000 and having to swing it a day, but for those certain occasions, I know I still will try.

Rob Allison - You bring up some great points.  But I'm going to point the finger back at Minelab and their greed.  You/Chris/Doc/I and a select few others remember what our margins were back in the day.  We also remember the promises made and not selling in retail stores.  Now Minelab USA cuts the margins even more on their higher priced detectors.  Minelab almost forces the smaller dealers to not want to sell them and only promote and sell the smaller detectors.  Which the dealers do, because the margins are greater.  

What's going to be funny down the road is when guys like JP, you, I and the handful (small amount) of dealers decide enough is enough.  Who is going to promote their top end products then?

I can't wait soon enough for the day another manufacture (anyone) can make a decent high end gold detector and that manufacture offers decent margins to award those who sell it.

Why our margins in the US is so much less than Australia is silly.  Heck, ask for a free hat on a $50K order and see what happens.  Minelab has totally changed from when we 1st signed up.

Oh well, theres only so many more waves I can ride and then I'll put the board away.

mn90403 - I know your question was pointed at JP, but if you were to ask me the same.  I would not recommend getting into detector sales as a fulltime job if you want to make decent money.  One of my main reasons for being a dealer today, is I still enjoy the tax write off benefits.  I'm much more different than many dealers as I do so many styles of detecting and some of you know I even organized many group adventures to different states and countries.  Most are tax write offs for me as I also test and promote new products.  Thats part of why I still enjoy traveling as it's part of my job.  If I just sold a few units here and there, it's hard to justify to the tax man, a write off of trips to Bahamas, Cancun, HI, AK, England etc.

Just to make a living selling detectors with no write offs.  Stay away folks, as you'll be living a lean life.

phrunt - You said. "Gerry could sell steak to a vegan. 🙂"

Probably if I tried.  But I do know, I'll sell about 7 GPX-6000 for every 1 GPZ-7000.

 

 

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17 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Jonathan,

Just to test Steve's 'theory' (and Rob's brutal honesty about online, etc.) would you have a son or daughter go into the business of selling detectors?  What would you give as their business horizon?

I'm sure it would be longer than someone answering the same question here.

Mitchel

I’ve tried to encourage my sons to become more involved in the business but alas my hunger for sales is waining faster than their interests in making money. It’s hard to explain but young people should be given their head to explore ideas and make mistakes so going into a family business where their passion doesn’t currently lie is not a good idea at a young age. Both my lads have worked in the business in junior roles (one is as we speak).

One day they will be become money orientated and then its a matter of working hard and getting ahead in whatever field provides that opportunity and as such our shop would be an ideal opportunity for them to get ahead through the injection of youthful enthusiasm. If all that was in alignment right at this moment in time I would have no hesitation in allowing/passing over the reigns as the market is growing but it now requires progression and Social Media skills (something all young people possess in spades in this day and age).

I feel the key to growing a metal detector business, with gold finds waining,  is to increase customer skills through inclusion and training, there is still plenty of gold to be had but it requires more refinement in skill set that is harder to obtain coming in inexperienced.

So yes I see a good living selling metal detectors going forward for at least the next 10 years and beyond so long as dealerships are progressive and provide/offer an inclusive approach that more fully nurtures a customers learning curve. Dealers in years gone by have been extremely fortunate to have Minelab constantly releasing innovative metal detectors that sell themselves, personally I feel the days of box shifting are well and truely coming to a close.

JP

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Sorry just sitting in the cafe at the ski field the past couple of hours trying to entertain myself. Got up early for first tracks and they've had a power outage, should have went to a different ski field but didn't think it'd be out this long.  

The USA customers are lucky to have dealers like you and Rob that share a passion and are not just about raiding their wallets.  I'd like to go on one of your classes Gerry, it'd be interesting. 

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On 6/20/2022 at 2:34 PM, Jonathan Porter said:

Steve I agree with the Ford versus Holden debate (Ford V Chevy in the US), but dang you don’t have to be so brutal about your opinion on the gold being played out!! 😞 I’ve spent my whole career being told ‘the golds all gone’  that I’m ‘too late’ and ‘there’s none left’. When I went pro we hardly saw anyone out in the goldfields because VLFs were a dying art and the gold was all played out. Yes I understand I live in a country with a large land mass and small population, whereas you guys have a huge population and shrinking detecting areas etc.

The truth hurts to read I suppose especially when I’ve shaped one of my mental success tools around optimism based on telling myself a place is never cleaned out till I’ve had a crack at it. I am however finding as I get older my body is starting to restrict my capacity to invest in the positivity of enthusiasm, basically I find myself doing less hours, covering less country and not working in extreme heat as much as I once did, as a consequence my gold tally has lowered as a result.

I also find that I’ve gathered a vast knowledge base of past success locations that gets dimmed when I revisit those old productive areas and find nothing, that fact is hard to take. But the passion is still there along with the desire to continue looking and trying, it is this part of my psych that is struggling with your brutal honesty. Truth hurts I suppose, but I am still happy to be content in the hopes that I can find some gold somewhere, if that means it gets smaller and smaller so be it.

As I get older my ability to roam further and further is going to shrink so hopefully future tech will keep up. 😂 The 6000 has come about 10 years too early for me, I’m still hell bent on finishing areas with the GPZ7000, but I will be honest I do from time to time grab my 6000 and go have a dabble in the lighter easier carefree world the GPX6000 has opened up. 

JP

I sure was not looking to bum anyone out! For me it's just a simple recognition of reality here in the U.S., and there was no intent on my part to imply the same of Australia, or anywhere else for that matter. For me, everything has a season, and I am not one to grasp after things when it is their time has passed. I've many interests beyond metal detecting or gold prospecting, and if I quit both tomorrow it would not trouble me unduly. But that's just me.

There will always be gold for those with the intelligence and willpower needed to seek out the overlooked areas that still exist. And they do still exist - the dream is alive for those who want to pursue it. It's just harder now than it used to be, and I very much admit I'm spoiled by better days gone by. I was commenting to Condor recently how people would pay happily pay big bucks, and spend entire vacations, to find the amount of gold we find in a single day... but we whine that it's not enough, not like the good old days. Waa, waa, waa - old cry babies! :laugh:

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A big problem I see is that Minelab has done a great job effectively pricing a lot of younger people out of the gold machines. I started as the youngest person on the US forums in my early 20's and now in my early 40's I feel like I'm still one of the youngest people posting on the US sites, which is ridiculous to say as a middle aged man with graying hair and wrinkles.

There seem to be more younger people doing it in Australia where you can reasonably expect to pay your expensive detector off still. But I would think there might be a cold winter coming in a decade for US gold specific detector dealers because most the people I've met in the field are 65+ years old, many are getting past 75 or 80. Combine that with nugget depletion and the future doesn't look too incredibly profitable to me. Also clearly the dealer margins have shrunk significantly on the 6000 because trying to get a good deal on one was harder than any detector prior, and they'll probably shrink even more with the next release because just like Ford now getting rid of dealers for EV's - the next step to saving money is slowly eliminating middle men in most other industries too.

Minelab continues to basically entirely ignore the very people who made coin/relics so popular and kept Garrett in the game too, which is a huge mistake on their part. Those people being content creators, primarily Youtube, who can give them millions of views which equates to more advertising value than they could ever pay for on their own. Putting detectors in the hands of people that essentially promote them endlessly for free is also more effective than ads because it reaches a demographic that doesn't consume normal ads, and in a way they trust rather than view with suspicion since it's not actually ads but just people showing them doing things they like doing with products they choose to use on their own. I've told them this multiple times, they don't care and seem to think they can do it better themselves.

If they want to have any hope of keeping a good market in the US then they need their good prospecting machines at $2500 or under and they need to start putting them in the hands of younger people that will go out and use them daily and post about it. Otherwise I think the US gold-specific detector market is probably on a long, slow road to eventual death by attrition even if there were more nuggets here to find.

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Hey Guys,

Quote

Right, but they can't get the customer service that you and Gerry offer...

Swegin - You are right, but those customers are becoming less and less.  The support and training is valuable to a point, but the flip side is - customers feel they don't need the support, training and such anymore and just purchase where they can get the absolute best deals.  

That being said,  Gerry and I appreciate everyone's continued business with us.  

Quote

Heck, ask for a free hat on a $50K order and see what happens.  Minelab has totally changed from when we 1st signed up.

Gerry - I have to agree, I remember the days of getting 20+ hats, gloves, bags and such per order.  I don't even dare to ask about a freebie, heck they now charge us for shipping ..... 

 

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