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Finally Minelab Take Responsibility For Screwing Up The GPX 6000 Speaker


phrunt

The GPX Audio Fix Poll  

17 members have voted

  1. 1. Have you had the audio/EMI fix done to your GPX 6000 - if you plan to get it done please don't answer the poll until you've got it back and tested it

  2. 2. Did the fix improve your built in speaker EMI stability

    • Yes
    • No
      0
    • Not sure, possibly
    • Not sure, I don't think so
      0
    • Don't care, not getting it done
  3. 3. Did the fix improve overall stability or improve the detector in some other way?

    • Yes
    • No
    • Not sure, possibly
    • Not sure, I don't think so
    • Don't care, not getting it done


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The only country that can see that notice is Australia, even though AU/NZ share the same website I can't see the notice without using my Aussie IP address.

It will be because they need to build up stock of whatever hardware they need to replace surely, why else would they be hiding it from everyone? They don't want the flood of EMI machines all coming into service agents that don't have the stuff required to fix them.

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The "fix" must be an entire main board or maybe control unit swap. I called them earlier today to get the return initiated, wanted to speak to someone directly to make sure this specific fix is available, and they said they were 3-4 weeks out for bench repairs, but issues that just needed swapped units would take less time. So, that seems to indicate it's just a clean swap happening if TBoykin's got turned around in 1 day. The guy I spoke to didn't know anything about a 6000 audio/EMI fix though when I asked.

Still waiting for repair center to get back to me with shipping instructions, they closed now. Going to next day air this thing to them tomorrow. Wish they'd let their extensive dealer network work for them and deal with swap outs instead of a repair center 2-3 time zones away from most of us, this could be done far quicker, seeing as it's not a repair. But will just be glad to have a working detector finally either way.

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Yup, I'm confident its a mainboard replacement.  It could also be why they're quite tight lipped about it and not making it an easy thing to find out about.  The cost of the repair for them would be quite high.   They're not really making it obvious which detectors need it, date ranges or anything.  I would not be surprised if its a year or more worth of detectors and they're just hoping most people think the problem is normal behaviour and don't contact them for warranty repairs on it. 

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Minelab gets my finger wag of the month award for poor business ethics here. I'm glad there is a fix, but that took like a year of some stressful hair pulling, and I'm not sure Minelab would have done anything at all if not for the continual posting by some of us bringing the problem up, not letting it drop off the radar, and not normalizing it. 

What I'm curious about is if this fixes the stability issues in the places that seem location specific (I posted a video of one of them a while back). My theory almost from the start is that the 6000 can only deal with so much EMI. Call that max amount X. Right off the bat, the speaker takes up like 80% of X. So, if you encounter a location with local (radio, cell, wifi, aliens, whatever) EMI levels above 20% of X, you've met or exceeded the total 100% amount of EMI the detector can deal with, and it looses stability, whereas the same detector running headphones would be stable still as it's only dealing with local EMI. It only has resources to deal with so much, thereafter it bogs down, confuses itself, and loses stability. Thus, both a speaker and a location specific problem, and something not everyone would see unless they detect enough different places. I've been to enough places that I see a definite pattern though, and it's related to the speaker somehow, I've been sure of that since the start. 

In other words, my gut feeling up to this point is it's more than just a speaker/EMI issue. It's an issue with EMI in general and the 6000's ability to cope with it past a certain amount. The speaker just adds so much EMI at once that it makes the problem more readily obvious. And that's what I hope they have fixed. 

Hopefully I can get my machine back in time before snow socks those locations in, so I can see if it's allowed it to run stable in those previously undetectable locations. If not, then they still have a problem IMO.

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I never thought this was an EMI issue. I had it occur where EMI was simply not possible. But I was wrong, in that I thought it was a GeoSense software glitch of some sort. It never seemed to me that a hardware issue could be the cause - have to admit JP was right all along on that. It does also explain why a software update never came for the issue, as that could not fix what is wrong.

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I never actually noticed the speaker to be that much more stable than the headphones.  As in the headphones dont clear up the emi warbles. I remember early on that JP posted the headphones were more stable, but on my 6k its bad either way.  Hope this is the fix...

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It was blamed on it being such a high sensitivity detector, while possibly a contributing factor it's clearly not the cause.  What we don't know and likely never will was if it was a manucturing error with some detectors or a design flaw with every detector that's been corrected in seemingly much later builds which I think is the case.

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It will be interesting to see if they replace the case or just the board. I'm positive there is a general shielding issue on my 6000 as well as a number of others I've been around and seen in action. I can put my phone - turned off - against the box and it interferes. That isn't right. Especially if the official excuse is this detector is so ultra sensitive. That's a design flaw to not shield properly then, knowing that. I also feel this problem is related to the detector losing stability when set onto the ground, though I haven't quite worked out why yet, but it has to do with proximity to the ground of the badly shielded control box I think.

This type of issue would affect detectors independent of the speaker, and it would also make detectors more sensitive to EMI variations at different locations, making some places undetectable and others just fine.

I think it's likely both design and manufacturing issues based on what I've seen. I wish I could have opened my control box up without voiding the warranty to see inside and compare to a newer 6000.

I'm positive it's more than just a speaker/EMI problem though. I tried to make that clear on the forum and to Minelab. I guess we will see what this fix does though. 

Mine is in the mail to the repair facility. Will be interesting to see what comes back 

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On 11/23/2021 at 6:43 PM, oldcoinhunter said:

My first 6000 was faulty out of the box which they replaced with a new one. I've had the new one for 21 days and probably used it 8 days before it went bad.  When i was boxing it up to ship back i heard something rattling inside of it, not good. In researching i found that they've known them to have major issues since March or April, yet they have refused to address the issue with a production stop or at least look at the different production runs and recall those units. I think when it's all said and done there will be a substantial number of them that are faulty worldwide. As it stands now, Detector Center states that there is a" temporary" 10- 14 day time frame for repairing them. My bet is that it's not going to be temporary. If this failure rate continues there may be grounds for a worldwide class action lawsuit, who knows. Oh, and i owned a business for 40 years. Not a very smart way to run a business. JMO.

This is what I said last November and several people thought I was talking out my a**. Jim

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2 hours ago, oldcoinhunter said:

This is what I said last November and several people thought I was talking out my a**. Jim

yep, some were brutally defensive.

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