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I spent a few days up in the high Sierra running the 7000 around looking for a new patch, a first patch...not to be this trip and not surprising as hopeful as I tried to be I have also come to terms that finding a new patch will likely be a long term endeavor. Exploring is fun however and every outing provides a tid-bit of new info, view of old workings new to me and more experience hunting that elusive nugget. Paying attention to the sage advice of those far more experienced than me offering their wisdom here for us newbies I allocated a portion of my time to hunting previously fruitful earth. This proved to be very good advice as I've scored one of my most important goals, finding a nugget suitable as a pendant for my wonderful wife (she did give me the 7000 for my b-day, I think that was a good thing). It only took 2 1/2 years, but on the afternoon of the second day I hit a old well known patch and scored a nice flat 9.7 gram nugget sitting on edge down only about 5 inches with another 4 or 5 inches of Forrest mulch on top of the dirt. I had been hunting for about 30 minutes when I got near an area I'd found a small round 1/2 gram on the previous trip. The 7000 was running so smooth with the new update I decided to jack the sensitivity to the max just because this spot has been so heavily pounded...after swinging the coil forward possibly 3 feet I picked up a promising target signal and out popped this little hanger for my sweethearts birthday next month. I also scored another little half gram nugget back at the old patch on the next day to sweeten the drive home. The little round one was found hunting the previous time up after meeting up with forum member relic/park master Strick for a little social hunting. Happy hunting, clark

I must add one more bit of information, all the gold rings I've dug gave an ID of nickel or below. Only two rings have read pull tab and up. Interesting is the fact that most of the gold rings in the world belong to women and most are thinner and will read from the upper end of tinfoil to around nickel.

I don't need more depth! I actually don't need lighter weight either. I need new places to detect.

This ugly one hit at 46 VDI ..... 415 grain of 10k

Hi Steve, D&P-OR and all, I have used both and they are both good, but different. The GM being a silent search has both its advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage is to guys like me who have had a lot of experience with VLF gold machines over the years and all of them have had a threshold! Take that familiar hum away and I just get an uneasy feeling. The advantage of the silent threshold is that you can generally run the machine a little hotter than you normally would, due to low/marginal chatter occurring below the audible level. Also, when you hear a beep, and it repeats, you dig - there is no trying to decipher what to dig among threshold clatter. The fact that the Monster also has auto sensitivity means that a new user can switch on and start detecting with minimum fuss and minimum learning curve. The main thing to learn is where to swing the thing, but watch Chris Ralph's videos and that is covered pretty well! Ground handling of hot ground, and general performance really comes down to your Sensitivity setting. You can pretty much run both units as smooth or erratic as you want, and your sensitivity setting will dictate performance. The difference here is that the Gold Racer has 100 steps of adjustment, whereas the Monster has 10 steps. So the GM is a little more immediate, e.g. if you are using Sens 7 and the monster is playing up a little, you can drop it to Sens 6 and the noise will be gone. In this same scenario on the GR, you may need to drop the Sensitivity by 5 or 6 numbers, and possibly reset your iSat setting as well. So the GR isn't as immediate, but allows for finer tuning. So it really all comes down to the individual, their needs, and their expectations. I sell both, so I'm not biased in any way. When I get an inquiry about what detector they should buy, I probably go back to the customer with more questions than they asked me, to get a better idea of where and how they intend to use it, their experience level, experience with other detectors etc. Their answers will tell me which of the two units would be the better option, and perhaps another machine like a 705, Impact, or AU Gold Finder may be more suitable. But back to the GM Vs GR topic, here are a few differences that may be of interest: Speaker placement - GM wins here. It is on the back of the display and is nice and loud. GR is on the bottom box under the armrest, so okay if coin/relic hunting on grass, but in the goldfield you really want to have the neoprene cover on. Wireless - GR has wireless capability built in so wins here. For the GM, you can buy a Deteknix WireFree system with 3.5mm plug. Balance - Again GR wins here as it has the batteries under the armrest, but the GM with the supplied lithium pack is very light, and balance is better than you'd expect - even better if you use a GPX upper shaft and standard Minelab lower stem. Coil options - at this point the GR wins hands down in coil options. 5" round, 7.5x4" elliptical, 10x5" elliptical DD and Concentric, and 15.5x13" semi-elliptical. The GM only has the supplied two coils. Sensitivity - this is a tough one, but in hot changeable soils the Auto Sensitivity on the GM should be seen as an advantage, especially to inexperienced users. If using the GM in Auto I like to pump the coil up and down and sweep the coil side to side just to give it a change to set itself correctly. Not sure if this is necessary or not, but is a bit of a ritual for me whenever using any units with Auto functions, as you don't know what the last state of the unit was when you switch on. Build/robustness - this is a win for the GM. Both units have waterproof coils, but the GM control box is a little more rugged, and rated as being rain proof. Discrimination - the GM discrimination is really a ferrous/non-ferrous probability scale, and the only adjustment you have is to audibly ignore high iron probability targets. The Gold Racer has two discrimination modes (Fast & Boost), with the discrimination adjustable, and with a Target ID makes the GR the easy winner in this category. Audio - I like the audio in both the all-metal modes, and it would come down to personal preference. The GR does have an option of low or high tone whereas the GM tone is fixed, but is a nice choice that should suit most users, (same as the Nokta AU Finder). Hope that helps. Cheers

All those phobias, biggest fear for me is I`ll be too old for the GPZ 8000.....................9000............10000

Pure fake news...................you know the rule the only time prospectors or fisherman tell the truth is when they call each other bull artists, photos are toooooooo heavy for the internet to handle, thus handling the weight of the finds/catches is enough....................

Yep dig those low tones. Most that I have found are below 12.14 on the ctx with my eyebrow raiser/sweet spot areas being in the 12.03 to 12.08 .... However now I'm paying lots of attention to the rotten zinc penny that read from 12.30 and down..... which may lead to the death of me lol... SECRET with the CTX if I get a good hit with anything below 12.30 and it shows up as a nice red blob on the target trace..then it gets dug. Rotten deep zinc pennies and very old deep pull tabs often give a weak target trace. strick

Swamp, That can't be me. I'm never on the beach in the daytime. I just got off ... found two cell phones and $1.60. Mitchel

Are you ready? Like a bull at the gate Dave, watch Paul bolt when that gate opens.

Well done mate, by the above post your fitness and endurance levels have increased since arriving in the North.So are you ready for next week?

that third pic down sure is a pretty nugget... held in the most excellent manly fingers too!

Went out yesterday for a full day of detecting. Wanted to try the new semi auto ground balance. Went with pretty much basic default settings otherwise. I have to say I was quite pleased with it. I was in one of my beat to death patches. Lots of magnetic iron stones, hot rocks. It ran very smooth. It seemed I could separate the targets very distinctively. The small bits of wire were a raspy on the edges sound. The square nails were bangers. The non ferrous targets were about the same as the gold targets. Had one really weird target sound. I always dig those. But I usually dig everything 95% of the time. But the weird sound was gold. Not sure if my focus was just better yesterday or it was the new ground balance. But my instincts were pretty spot on, on what the target was going to be. But very pleased with the new update and settings. The take wasn't too spectacular, but I avoided the skunk in a hammered patch.

"the principle that supposes most future events are likely to balance any past deviation from a presumed average" Must have been a treasure hunter who ever thought of it. Got a nice 14K band at the park Saturday. 12.30 with the CTX 4 inches deep. I love it when the gold finally pops up after all the junk you dig. I look at every older park and assume that there is gold in it somewhere....Heres to your next gold find strick

I'm about to conclude that nobody ever drops anything on our beaches except pull tabs and bottle caps. I flew home on Tuesday and yesterday I was ready to hit the sand after a week in Tennessee. 5 hours and three beaches yesterday around Melbourne. My fantastic haul consisted of :12 cents, 1 costume earring, a piece of a junk chain bracelet, 8 pull tabs, 6 bottle caps, one tent stake, and one small chunk of melted aluminum. On the plus side, my new Infinium shaft is a big improvement on the stock one, that chain piece was about 6 inches down in wet sand (), and I probably worked off about 2 bites of one of those slices of mom's pecan pie that I shamelessly indulged in last week.

I like how you brought it up that it is running more like the 5000 with the semi auto ground balance. When the 7000 came out, I was trying to make it run like the 5k. But the 7k is a different beast. But since the software upgrade, it does seem to sound like it is running like the 5k in fine gold tuning. All I know is that I like it so far. Going to hit some new areas behind the Johnsville are this weekend. Will be at Ross Camp. Stop by for a cold beverage in the late afternoon if in the area.

I have the light and the heavy, despite that I love swinging the light most times I'm swinging the heavy...

Once again nice going Clark. If anybody had a nice nugget with his name waiting on it...it was you. You have worked so hard! I have a feeling now they will start flowing in. Cant wait to see what the pendant ends up looking like... you being into arts and crafts and such strick

klunker..... come to the 21 century....grin

Gee Wiz Fred! If you like cheating fate and defying death come on up. We'll take the Jeep.

Y'all don't recognize Mitchel when ya see him..? Sheeessshhhhh... Swamp

You are extremely fortunate, Mark.. Around here I'd say it's easily over 500 to 1 (including bottle caps) for silver anything much less gold rings, which is in the four-figure ratio, possibly beginning with a " 2 ".. One would think especially on the beaches Au would be popping all the time.. But it hasn't been, especially in recent years.. Closest beaches to me are what I call "working man" beaches.. Tungsten and the like far outweigh gold rings these days, and junk jewelry far outweighs silver.. Swamp

There is great wailing and gnashing of teeth while nugget hunting, when a real good deep signal turns into a deeply buried pulltab! fred

The many ways to die in Oz are just sauce for the goose...or spice for the cake; it keeps you on your toes. Or you can become one of the natives and adopt the NO Worries-it will be right mentality. The one critter I really abhor Downunder is the bush-roach...primitive nasty creepy crawlies...I hate roaches!!! fred

Can't wait..... But I imagine my real fitness test is upcoming!

Hi Merton, Sorry so long winded! I don't want to sound like I am avoiding a question but at the same time I am not a big fan of simple answers when reality can be a lot more nuanced. It may prove that the GM 1000 would be a worthwhile investment for you but it's not a slam dunk. People are always going to have their favorites, but as far as I am concerned I can grab any detector running at over 30 kHz and do about as well. The detector will not matter to me much as the quality of the location.

If I can ever unass myself to get away from the beauty of the desert bush I'd love to get some fishing in, but I suffice to just sit by a dam and yabbie fish with a slab of coldies and a good book Hehh! The remoteness of it all is one of many reasons I do love Oz. The big smokes have their appeal, some of the cleanest cities I've ever encountered, but even they shutter up like small towns after a time. Not like here in the States where its full on in most places 24/7. Well tomarrow is the hop and in a week it'll be campfires and swinging. Mayhap I'll run into someone from here but I expect it'll be sunrises and sunsets with a bit of gold in my pocket to polish the day. Luck to ya Norvic, Nursepaul see ya in the flip.