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Reasons Not To Get A Minelab GPZ 7000


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Good read! I have a bunch of Buddies out at Rye Patch as I write this note. They have the 7000, 2300 & one GP3000 die hard. Needless to say the 3000 friend has the largest nugget so far of the trip @ 18" deep to boot. All gold metal detectors will find gold! What makes the real difference is the operator and their knowledge of their equipment. You may not own the greatest or latest gold detector out there. if you have a gold detector learn it and make it work for you! Until the next hunt

LuckyLundy

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Glad you brought these points up. All valid points. I asked a question awhile back about some of the cons of the GPZ7000 and got a snippy reply. So I just kept my trap shut and can draw my own conclusions. A few other points I would to bring out.

1. Arm rest strap. If you were to wear a thick coat on colder days the Velcro strap is too short.

2. The clip for the wireless module is inadequate.

3. Gps. Maybe this valid or not. But the info of where you detect. Where does this go? Or where is it shared? I hold some of my patches secret and just how secure this info would be . Either offline or when you interface? Thank you Steve for bringing this thread into the open.

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Great informative post Steve!  You are spot on when you say " I think it is 80% operator and 20% detector and that is probably giving the detector too much credit."  You are also hit home about Ray finding more gold with a gold bug. I live in Rays country and I have a GB Pro, Gpx5000 and an SDC .  Hundreds of hours I must have spent out last year mostly with GPX netted me 8.5 dwt, and half of that came in about 5 minutes on a small pocket. To say the least I have failed far more than I have succeeded and it had nothing to do with what detector I was using. This new year I find myself grabbing the SDC for its pack-ability and sensitivity to hit small gold. I am striving to be a Successful full time electronic prospector and I really am considering a 7000. Mainly for the "first pass, best chance"  performance that I hear it has. Being totally into detecting I would also like to be able to evaluate the newcomer along with the other first adopters. But in the end do I think it will get me more gold? I know it wont! That's something I as a prospector need to figure out. All is not lost though as in late January I did hit my biggest specimen nugget to date. A 12.2 gram piece shaped like a broken heart in a rut of an old road near a creek crossing. It was really just luck that I put the SDC coil down to check that rut as I was walking along. This year I plan on getting out as much or more than I did last year. Will I get a 7000? I don't know yet but I will be watching this forum and Steve's unbiased opinions to help me make that decision.  

 

Jeff

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I can answer the GPS thing. The information on the unit goes nowhere. Unless you dump it to a PC. Then it is on your PC. It still goes nowhere by design but all PCs can be hacked.

If you use a handheld GPS and dump to PC, same problem. It is not a GPS or GPZ issue, it is a PC issue. One solution would be to never dump to your PC or to use a PC that never accesses the internet. If you worry about stuff like that be sure and never use your PC for online banking, any online purchases, or to store any personal information of any sort.

The GPZ actually only holds a limited amount of information that must be erased or dumped regularly so it is not like years of data can be had even if your GPZ is stolen.

The easy fix is to leave the GPS turned off, which it is by default. I on the other hand will be using mine to the max as it is a very useful function for my prospecting efforts and one that with a modicum of care should have no security issues beyond whatever you face already with your home computer.

If anyone on this forum is snotty with anyone PM me. If it happened here Scott I missed it and I apologize.

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I think I just fell off the fence, but I don't know where I landed. haha. I really appreciate your candid thoughts Steve. I am a 5000 user on the east coast of the US. To be honest, I bought the machine to use out west and did pretty well (after a somewhat steep learning curve.) I am now concentrating on areas closer to home and I have been debating re-fitting for east coast hunting, with a smaller coil, and possibly also adding the 2300 to my list of detectors. The challenge here is the overgrowth and also the huge amount of trash.

Then, the GPZ hit the streets, and it has been a two+ week roller coaster ride, re-evaluating which direction to go. There are things that I really like about the GPZ, the top being the consolidation of the capabilities into one machine. I am a part-time prospector, so when I get out, I may only get one shot at a location and there is a lot of competition to get to the accessible land, so I want to make sure I maximize my efforts. This logic is what brought the GPZ front and center. I also believe the machine will do well here with the mineralized ground. The water resistance is also a big plus. 

So, if you are in my position, and if you know a little bit about the east coast detecting, I would really appreciate any more insight into which direction makes the most sense? 

Thanks,

Hound

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Hi Hound,

About all I can attempt to do is lay out capabilities and options. But for each of us at some point we have to weigh those options for ourselves because you can argue it back and forth all day long. In particular, two people facing exactly your same circumstances may come to exactly opposite conclusions as to which course of action is best for them. You can find opinions to support any decision that internally you have probably already made for yourself.

I am pretty good at pointing out the fork in the road but you have to decide which fork to take!

It really like many things in life comes down to a money thing. If you can afford to spend 10K to just find out and afford to take a $1000 hit on immediate resale at a loss if it does not work out then no problem. Some people can get something like a GPZ, go find an ounce of gold with it, and then sell it, with the ounce covering the cost of the experiment. No big deal.

Other people it is much more a stretch financially and all I can say about that is far better to wait then rush into things. There is time to see how it all shakes out and the very good possibility of picking up a lightly used unit with transferable warranty at discount.

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Most definitely Detectorist and familiarity with the machine.   I owned a GPX for 2 years, putting in maybe 80 hrs and considered myself proficient.  As it turns out, not by a long shot.  I went to Moore Creek where I could detect 10 to 12 hrs a day, every day.  I had the time and opportunity to experiment.  If I could get a repeatable tone, I tried different settings, different sweep speeds etc.  I learned more as a detectorist and about my detector in that first week than I had learned in the previous 2 years.   I learned more about low and slow, listening for the faintest threshold change.  Steve was there when I left a double blip tone in the ground because it sounded like a nail.  Fortunately I went back because I got a similar tone that was gold.  Low and behold, a quarter ounce nugget that had the classic double blip deep rising tone that is generally a big old rusted nail.  No offense to the stalwarts that detected Moore Creek, but the best machine and coil combos money could buy,  still did not guarantee results.  Plenty of gold was found in holes that other people abandoned.   The weekly tote board results generally had 2 or 3 people finding more than 75 percent of the gold.  I saw many people with state of the art machines detect for a full week and not find gold.   My point is to reiterate what Steve and others are saying.  A $10,000 machine in the hands of a hobbyist probably won't beat a dedicated prospector with his tried and true, beat up ole trusty steed.  I sold my GPX and worn out a coil cover on my 2300 for decent results, and now trying to justify the jump to 7000.  Maybe you guys want to crowd fund me on the purchase and live vicariously for the results.    I'm just saying, one of us would be really happy with the deal, everybody else, not so much. 

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