Finally Minelab Take Responsibility For Screwing Up The GPX 6000 Speaker

[jasong]

1 minute ago, GotAU? said:

The chokes (1) make sense, and the coil (2)- but what is that “possible” part?

It's an inductor too. "L" is the variable for inductance and is used to designate inductors on boards and schematics. This one is also back towards the speaker.

[GotAU?]

… so they are doing board level repairs?  That’s labor intensive and ripe for errors! It would be interesting to see what they did to fix it after my warranty runs out.

[jasong]

6 minutes ago, GotAU? said:

… so they are doing board level repairs?  That’s labor intensive and ripe for errors! It would be interesting to see what they did to fix it after my warranty runs out.

I can only speak for myself, but I posted yesterday that somewhat lackluster results I saw seemed to indicate a board redesign/replacement was unlikely. My time is admittedly very limited running this "fixed" machine though. 

I'm hoping others have much better results, and that mine are much better when I get further away from town too. 

[phrunt]

You have a keen eye Jason. 🙂

Yes, they are doing board level repairs, unusual but the cost to replace main PCB's on every 6000 ever sold would be too high I guess.

[Northeast]

Used mine for a decent amount of time last evening with speaker and headphones.  To be honest, I don’t think there is any difference between speaker and headphones now.

The ‘fix’ certainly hasn’t been an EMI fix as EMI was still an issue at times with a couple of noise cancels required.  But, the real nuttiness when using the speaker and tilting the detector on its side seems resolved. 
 

Certainly hasn’t affected performance as multiple tiny pieces of lead shot and other crap found.  1 decent, disfigured lead slug (22-250 projectile or something) was found deep in some wet, red gravels.  Thought I was onto a nice bit  🙄

[jasong]

34 minutes ago, Northeast said:

Used mine for a decent amount of time last evening with speaker and headphones.  To be honest, I don’t think there is any difference between speaker and headphones now.

The ‘fix’ certainly hasn’t been an EMI fix as EMI was still an issue at times with a couple of noise cancels required.  But, the real nuttiness when using the speaker and tilting the detector on its side seems resolved. 

I think this here is the real key, IE - determining just how different it acts in the same place/time with speaker and with headphones. To take external EMI (aside from the speaker) out of the equation. It's likely my proximity to town was adding EMI in that sounded just like the speaker EMI, and I didn't have headphones to compare with. I also kinda hoped in the back of my mind it was a general EMI fix.

GotAU's video I think shows the best way to test if the fix is working or not if it's just a speaker fix. Basically switching back and forth between speakers and headphones and seeing if there is any difference with the detector sitting still.

I need to retry it again tomorrow doing that method to really see the difference I think. My quick test just using the speaker was prone to too many external variables.

[Qlden]

Ok, sent board in for repair/upgrade and asked for proof of work carried out…

Feeling confident…..

 

[GB_Amateur]

7 hours ago, Qlden said:

Ok, sent board in for repair/upgrade and asked for proof of work carried out…

Feeling confident….

"Don't try this at home!" 

[Sourdough Scott]

I'm really disappointed at Minelab's total lack of communication with its loyal customers. Honestly, what would it take to email all the customers that have warranty registered their machines?  Let them know what is going on. 

And then provide them with a prepaid shipping label to and from the repair center. ( correct me if I'm wrong on who is paying for the shipping) 

And as many of you loyal customers that have spent $5000 to $15,000 of money  on detectors over the years, here is a token of appreciation from Minelab. Here is a voucher for $50 bucks off on a new battery or something like that. 

I personally am going to wait on see how the repairs go on machines sent in. This so called fix might do nothing or make it worse. Who knows.  

But the arrogance and lack of communication from Minelab just irks the shit of of me. I sure hope the Fix works wonders. 

[phrunt]

My service agent was as always fantastic, I sent it to them on Tuesday, it arrived to them 4pm Wednesday, they contacted me at about 4.15 saying they had received it and booked it into their system.  Then, by around lunch time Thursday they contacted me with a tracking number saying they've got it on it's way back to me, so with any luck I'll have it back today.  I've never had a bad experience with the NZ Minelab service agent, they're always quick and reliable and do good work, so a little shout out to A&E Electronics in Christchurch.  JW's arrived a day after me as he shipped it later in the day on Tuesday so he missed the flight, so he will get his back Monday as it's there now being done today I would say.

I agree Scott, an email from them for all registered machines mentioning the problem would have been nice, but the workload on the service agents would be too much all at once so they're making the problem less well known so the repairs come in as a trickle and then the service agents can provide a better service.  If it was done with that method of sending out an email to all owners imagine the queues to get the repair, at this early stage we can get our repairs done near instantly. 

I have full confidence in my repair centers work, they do board level repairs on cameras so replacing some inductors would be quite an easy task for them.  I'm now looking forward to using my GPX again, it's been a closet Queen for most of it's life so it'll be good to take it out and stretch it's legs.