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The Competition Heats Up


Norvic

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5 hours ago, Aureous said:

People may be surprised to learn just how much 'noise' there is within a PI circuit, especially when dealing with mineralized ground. This 'noise' detracts a lot from the circuits ability to pluck a real target from the overall signal received from the coil. Couple this with the ability to increase the coil's power, pumping more energy into the soil and you have a very large window of electronic opportunity to improve upon. The improvements in circuitry and components which can function faster and more efficiently also add even more to the picture. Add a final couple of additions in coding (a-la Geo-sense) and coil type/s (CC and DOD etc) and.....you get the picture. Electronics boffins like Eric Foster (RIP), Bruce Candy, Don McCall and Dave Emery all had visions of just how incredible the apex of PI tech for gold prospecting could become, given further, incremental advances in technology. 

We all know that there is a lot of gold outside our reach, its always been the dream that a detector will come along one day that matches the huge 50% Advance that the SD2000 gave us back in 1995. Holding breath......

The 2000 was mind blowing wasn't it. Id never seen one and I was out with an FT16000. A guy wandered over with one to say g'day. Then he showed me it in action and we tested it against the 16000 with some bits he had. A week later I had a 2000 😁

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On 11/26/2022 at 12:06 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

I have to admit I don't care that much. I think we are hitting a wall in various ways, and that a new model is not going to do a lot to change the facts on the ground. Those facts being diminishing returns. Sure, they could make a more ergonomic GPZ, but can they really make it find smaller gold better than what we have now? I don't think so. That leaves what some people want, which is more depth on 1/4 oz and larger nuggets. What can they bring to the table there, and how many of us have ground where that will pay off? Lots of Aussies I suppose. With things as they are now in my area, I would have a real hard time convincing myself I need to buy another $8000 - $10,000 metal detector. But that's just me. What sells detectors is not so much the reality, as the dream, and for lots of people the dream is alive. Going to get that super duper new machine, and go out and find a pile of gold. Yeah!!

I think you are right about hitting a wall and diminishing returns. There's a lot of places that dont have much more to give, many virtually nothing. I pay a lot of attention to all the good areas I know about from over the years. What I have noticed is less and less signs of any action. Many have had people there as you can tell but not much if anything had come out. Many nothing, no signs whatsoever of any digs. There was some good activity when the coiltek and Nf flat winds came out, I had some fun with those but thats had its run too. Nothing to date has had anywhere near the impact the SD2000 had. My 2 cents worth. 

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21 hours ago, phrunt said:

819689937_GoldToolbox.thumb.jpg.dadba0134efa9f876cc8ee34daf48608.jpg

The hidden information in this diagram shows that the SDC finds smaller gold than GM and the GPZ finds everything the others find with the exception of the smallest picker found by the SDC. 🤔

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On 11/26/2022 at 9:43 AM, phrunt said:

Just by flicking my GPZ into difficult I see a decent performance drop and that's without even introducing the bad soil, and that's how many have to run theirs because of their soil, if they could get "normal" performance in difficult ground that would be a big improvement.

Better ground processing in difficult soil would allow for greater depth, without the gold actually being physically deeper than in normal soil. This is exactly where I believe technology can improve. I get your point that for mild soil this does not matter much, but in other parts of the world this would be a game changer. In many areas I have no choice but to hunt in general/difficult (volcanic tuff). Switching to HY in either normal or difficult would make the detector completely useless, even general/normal would not work. Here is where a lot of improvements can be done, so I completely agree with you. BTW, for those areas I don't even bother to take the 6000 or the SDC. Another reason why a high-end top line gold detector needs settings options (!), and I think the current GPZ strives a good balance by having just the right settings menu to choose from. What would make me not want to buy the GPZ8? A "smart" machine that would do the thinking for me, ala 6000, with only little settings options to choose from. I love the 6000, but it has serious limitations to a point where it is unusable, i.e. in the areas that I was describing, where literally every rock is a screamer (6/14 makes no difference). With all the greatness of the 6000, it kind of sucks to have a $6000 machine, and you can't adjust any settings to make it usable for these specific tough grounds. Half of the Mojave Desert is littered with volcanic hot rocks, and that is right where the gold bearing areas are. And I am not just saying areas with hot rocks here and there that you can kick away, I mean large areas with shallow and deep hot rocks and that's all there is. Go and take a swing with the 6k in these areas, and you know what I mean. Just for that reason, I would be very interested in the Axiom, had I not the GPZ that would come to my rescue (in general/difficult). However, the Axiom could even have an edge over the GPZ in those specific circumstances. I would love to make a head-to-head comparison to see which detector would recover better small gold that is stuck to serious hot rocks. That is how you find most of the gold there.

GC

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Of course the technology can be improved, and people are working on improving it right now. What won't improve is the amount of gold in the ground available to most people. If people really want more gold, they have to get off the known patches and find new ground. But anyone that has done that knows it's no magic bullet either. You have to find something good eventually, because the cost is weeks if not months of finding nothing. Most of us are not full time prospectors, with endless time to spend looking for gold in places where it has never been found before. Another reality there is most of the good stuff relaims on land that needs special access, permission of some sort, and is beyond the reach of the average person who can't get that permission. So quit waiting for and dreaming of a new detector, and just do more research, find better areas. That is how a person will find more gold, not some detector that gives us another 1/2 inch of depth.

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I tend to agree with you Steve, but those areas I was describing also have a lot of trash, meaning not many people are detecting there due to the challenges with the ground. I suspect there is plenty of gold still there that is currently difficult to recover. But for most other areas I agree, and the Motherlode is a great example for that. However, I also think hunting gold where gold was found before remains a winning strategy, perhaps not the only one though.

GC

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It is interesting to speculate about the next detector and hope for the improvements that would make it not only easier on ones body, but also gain more of the gold that is in the ground, on the first sweep of the coil.
 

I started with a Gold Bug in 1988 and the only really large gold getting improvement I have seen in all those years was when Minelab introduced pluse induction into the game. I also think the 45k,5k with the NF Evo coil line was a big enough improvement to warrant a upgrade. I didn’t buy every new model Minelab came out with but I have had 6 of them. I went from a Green Box SD2200 to a GP3500 and I really liked getting rid of the constant SD threshold wobble, but I didn’t find that the 35k gave me more depth on bigger gold. My old patches were cleaned out of the bigger nuggets by the 22k, not until the 5k with the Nugget Finder Evo coils did I pull any more multi ounce deep gold off of my old patches, these were few and far between compared to the SD2100,2200 days. I now use mainly a GPX 5k and have given little thought to buying a newer model. I know my machine very well and continue to find gold with it. As for the invisible nuggets, I have a VLF detector that finds those, and after days of using the 5k it is nice to use the light weight VLF for awhile. 

If I could change anything about the GPX it would a bit cosmetic and a bit internal. Such as wireless, a lighter weight platform and a external speaker. Minelab could work on getting rid of the loud screeming start up signal, the EMI wobble when the detector coil is scanning a side hill and a discriminator that cancels out small iron nails and bits of tin. I believe discrimination may be possible on small iron due to the detectors ability to cancel out iron rich hot rocks. In the fine gold timings I have dug nuggets past rotten small nails that the detector sees as hot ground. So is it possible to have a timing built for patch hunting that cancels out small iron?  I have no problem forking over some dough if I don’t ever have to dig another boot tac, small nail or piece of wire!!

I like the ability to adjust the detector to my liking for the conditions at that moment. So having that ability is a plus for me with the GPX platform. 

So I believe there are improvements to be made but not like we experienced when the PI technology first became available.  Like others have stated get to know you detector and due your research, it is a big part of being successful at nugget hunting. 

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Did you ever own a GPX 5000 Gold Catcher? Sounds like a detector well suited to your needs.  The 6000 does need more control for the operator than its got available to it, that was always going to be an issue with it, just like it's an issue with the Gold Monster before it, ease of use obviously sells. 

I expect the GPZ 8000 will have something similar to Geosense automation and few options, perhaps wanting to keep it the top of the line model they'll give a bit more room to move than a fully automatic detector though.

I also think the GPZ 8000 will remain quite heavy if they stick to ZVT which they'd be crazy not to do so, the DOD coils have a lot of wire in them, having 3 windings is always going to weigh a lot more than a basic mono.  Even if they take the concentric path there is still the mass of wire with 3 loops and if they were wanting to do similar to X-coils this is laid out flat, but if they do a Concentric for it I doubt it would be the primary coil as they're not as good for patch hunting as they are for cleaning up known gold areas.  It would need DOD and Concentric offerings.  They could lighten it up at the same time weaken it's housing, putting heavier coils on typical GPX coil ears probably wouldn't be a good idea.  Yes, they'll get it lighter, but not significantly without causing another ice cream container detector.

I think the 6000 could be the last of the PI's, they've worked on PI for decades, ZVT is still in its infancy with only one detector using it and you would think they'll be able to push it further in many ways than the initial release.  It's excellent on small gold, deep on small gold, excellent on big gold, deep on big gold, can handle ground and hot rocks very well, It really can do it all and they must be able to refine it further.

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There are a ton of Minelab patents that are now quite a few years old and surely some of them are going to work their way into a new GPZ, or maybe a new detector entirely.

  • Offhand I remember some new ZVT type coil designs for increased sensitivity and greater EMI/ground immunity. The old, heavy coils might be a requirement of the 7000 circuit more than ZVT in specific, so I wouldn't necessarily assume all ZVT coils will always be as heavy as the 1st gens. 
  • Depth ID. I'm still hoping for this one. In some cases 90% of the trash is no deeper than 4-5" so even just rough depth discrim to avoid the shallow stuff would save me a ton of digging and time. I'll give up tiny surface dinks to save that time, and just not use depth discrim when I'm dink hunting. This is and has been close to the top of my request list since making such lists for the 7000 prior to it's release. I'd almost prefer it over target ID/target discrim but I'd definitely take both. :smile:
  • Hybrid machine. By recall there was something resembling a hybrid between either a PI and VLF or hybrid between ZVT and PI. Or both? I can't remember now. That would give you the ability to run a heavier DOD for patches, and a lighter mono for prospecting. Potentially also target ID/discrim if you could press a button and switch into VLF mode for IDs. 
  • A number of new signal processing algorithms for EMI and ground noise reduction. This is the most obvious way to increase performance - noise is the big target killer.

I know I'm forgetting some other stuff I thought was pretty cool too. But off the top of my head this is the stuff that I haven't really seen in any other machines yet and so have to assume some of it is going into a new prospecting flagship.

*Oh yeah: there was also that oddball patent about relating the location of the target to the coil in terms of XY coordinates, and then plotting the location of targets all onto a screen. Seems...eh, ho hum at first. But in the back of my mind I always hoped that was an indication of some kind of evolution from the coil-on-a-stick model to something automated (if just really low resolution) like a drone prospector or something. Now THAT is pie in the sky hot air imagination on my part, but hey, a guy can dream.

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They certainly love their patents to keep the competition away.

patents.jpg.9bbc49e63690c291a522a50c8166accc.jpg

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