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Today was a day at the beach like many others except I was out at a time when lots of people were at the beach. There were not that many targets but I managed to get a steel ring for my efforts. On the way back I decided to go dry sand and I happened to be near the area where I found the old costume ring. I just picked a line to my parking area and I got a strong signal. I was digging into the harder packed sand but it was starting to sound like an aluminum can with numbers at 33-34 on my 800/15 in Park 1/multi/23. I always expect to catch the edge of the can with my scoop and pry it out of the hole but not this time. It was out of the hole and I knew it was a 50c piece but it wasn't a Kennedy. It was a Franklin. My first ever at the beach and maybe ever but certainly I haven't had one of the big silver coins in a long, long time. Some of my joy was delayed because I didn't have my glasses but I thought I saw the 2 but I also couldn't ever remember seeing a sandwich Franklin. Here it is just out of the hole. Now I have it on display. Just under the Half is a 1949 wheat that I found about 40 feet from the Franklin.

The 6000 is all about light weight and amazing sensitivity on the sub gram stuff with good outright 5000 depth performance of which we are already very familiar. This has all been bundled into a modern electronics platform with the inclusion of GeoSense PI so the 5000 outright depth aspect of the 6000 will have a positive effect on its overall use. The 6000 does an amazing job at what it was designed for, namely pulling gold out of thrashed areas, everyone talks about not wanting to lower themselves to chasing ‘fly chit’ gold but at the end of the day its fun to go home with a few bits and pieces in the jar. For me the situation has not changed except in one aspect, I no longer carry around an SDC as a mop up beeper for when the tiny pieces are plentiful and instead use the GPX 6000. For those times when I do not want to ‘rig up’ a 7000 the 6000 is just plain fun and if I do get my 6000 coil over a nice piece then at least I am now in with a chance. At the moment I’m seeing so many people making little comments about ‘why get a 6000 when I can still get tiny pieces with my GPX 5000 or GPZ 7000?’, it grows so tiresome seeing this type of remark!! The 6000 has not magically stopped the other techs from finding smaller pieces. The 6000 is going to be very popular with the hobbiest who just want to find a little nugget without all the weight and complication of other machines, they just want to switch on and start detecting and have half a chance of finding some gold no matter how small. In the mean time my main stay detector is the GPZ 7000, it is still king of the mountain in spite of that mountain being huge and cumbersome. 😂 JP PS do you have any idea of how repetitive this sounds? 😡 For the past 20 odd years I’ve been saying the exact same damn thing every time a new detector comes out!!! Probably the worst machine in all those years was the GPX 4000 and it was still revolutionary thanks to the Sens Smooth type timings!!!

And that was in the difficult ground setting and the sensitivity set at only 4.

You know me, I've got to have all the right tools for the right jobs. Unfortunately, I've got a champagne taste on a Pabst Blue Ribbon budget. I've got to keep that Doodle Dog in tennis balls, she destroys 2 a day and I'm buying them by the gross.

Are JP et al trading in their Z7000s in favor of the 6000? Is this the "Go To" machine for everyday prospectors? From initial reports it would appear the 6000 excels at sub half gram nuggets in OZ soils, but isn't expected to compete with the 7000 on bigger/deeper gold. Here in the US, will I have to sell a kidney for the luxury of having both detectors? It may be some time before us CONUS prospectors even see the availability of such a machine, do I sell the 7000 before the market is flooded? Does anybody know what the recovery time is for a kidney donor?

Minelab have made clear that the GPZ 7000 is the top dog, especially for larger, deeper gold. I would expect vey few serious operators to ever take a step down, as the drive is always "more power, more power." JP already made it clear the GPZ is and will continue to be his main machine. Long story short it will not be a market dump for the 7000. This is not a deal where everyone is upgrading to what is being sold as a more powerful replacement for the GPZ. Most power users will stay with what they have, or maybe add a 6000. I think this is aimed at people who have a SDC 2300 or GPX 4500/5000 etc. type detectors, but for whom the GPZ 7000 was too much weight and too much money. GPZ 7000 owners are last on the potential customer list I would think. The ones that are considering the 6000 are probably more in my camp. Willing to give up the chance of hitting a one pound nugget at three feet. Guess I'll only dig mine at 2.5 feet. The 6000 targets the bread and butter around here. I'll not worry about the big one going beep if I get over it. I'm the target customer, not JP. So which are you?

I think these pictures sum up the GPX 6000 very concisely and also how I feel about those people who continue to suggest my input is biased or just marketing hype!! Tiny piece at stupid depth for its size, a typical target for a GPX 6000!! 2 Deep 2+ ounce gold content specimens retrieved at 2 feet with the standard 11” mono, both were very good signals at surface. How I’m made to feel when all the nit pickers come out of the woodwork at a product launch!!

Finally some actual measurements...thank you very much to these fellows! Add me to the impressed list as well, I think the 6000 had a better response on the big deep nugget with both coils, and clearly better response on the smaller, shallow stuff. Definitely curious how they both do in Normal and at high gains now.

I'm trying not to fall into the NursePaul philosophy of buy high/sell low and what don't get stolen you can give away. If I had 20% of the value Paul's stuff that's been stolen, I'd buy 2 6000s.

Her kidney or the 6000????

JP, I've followed every one of your reviews and tips way back to the first GPX and I well remember the heat you have taken on each new Minelab release. The old Finders Forum was a hoot because for me it's a hobby and the unbridled opinions and malice expressed by its members defied logic. My post was rhetorical, just bringing some of the various internet comments and questions to one place for a little pre-release exposure here in the US. Me and most of the DP members are anxiously waiting for your unrestrained views and experiences with the new 6000. Your expertise is always appreciated.

Impressive Only thing I would add in defense of the 7, he did say they were in Difficult ground setting, which is a filter and does not run the detector at full depth seeking powers, unless of course soils dont allow for Normal setting

Got a keeper ☺️ Been in the hole together with a rusty screw..

We pay 'attention' to it all. You just have to be at the right place at the right time and of course ... treasure is where you search for it. The more places you search the more treasure you will find.

Nice silver. Guess most people pay attention to the surf and coin line and don't consider the entrance/exit. That's where I found my gold ring, and foreign money. Great finds!

I have lots of thoughts. Who told you to run some of these setting? What is your IB? Think you really need to get down to basics and understand why Minelab recommends the initial settings of each mode. Here is what I run: Beach 2, Tracking GB [a must], 1 tone, IB FE 6, Recovery 6, Sensitivity 22-24. Run in HORSESHOE mode. Anything that shows ferrous scale and double rings, DON'T DIG it, it is iron. ANYTHING that double rings with a plus VDI dig, as well as ANY target that does not double ring or breakdown, as you work around the target 360 degrees. Center target to dig in discrimination [if necessary] I also own two machines. I have done coil modifications that help decrease effects of black sand and moving salt water.[Not ready to share this yet.] HOWEVER, one of my coils is WAY NOISER than the other in the same conditions [wet sand and moving salt water]. But yet this coil works 100% perfect in dry sand or on soil. Consider trying another coil on your pod. Dave

For those of you that carry a PLB or EPIRB, I’m not sure which Minelab or PLB and EPIRB models are affected, but there’s an interesting discussion and a Minlelab advisory about accidental activations due to a PLB sitting too close or touching an active coil. Just something to look out for if you carry one when you’re out and about. They recommend keeping it further away than 10 cm from a active coil. https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=35628

I probably will try that hack at some point. It seems easier than trying to fool the altimeter. Anyways, just wanted to comment on that since the question was asked about using a drone in the mountains in AZ and the Rockies, that's the main issue I had. In AZ I've been able to find high enough launch points, but a few times I've had to use the optical zoom after hitting the restriction. In the Rockies it turns into a real limitation though where mountains with prospects can be 4000ft+ prominence above the highest launch point you can drive to without climbing the mountain. When I bought a DJI Phantom like 9 years ago there wasn't really any mapping programs available, and I bought it to do my own high res aerial mapping for a Geocommunicator replacement website I made at the time (now defunct) called Virtual Prospector, with the idea of providing up to date high res aerials of the popular goldfield areas, for free. But I gave up on it because hand stitching the maps together and then georeferencing them manually was beyond time consuming, plus the distance limitations made it incredibly limiting (even with tons of aftermarket mods I barely got 1 mile in wide open Rye Patch), and at the time I had to hand attach a GoPro to the drone and couldn't get rid of the fisheye'ing entirely which made accurate georeferencing impossible even with days worth of hand correcting in photoshop. But I see a post that there are mapping software available now, and with the longer flight distances of these recent drones and awesomely high res cameras built in today, someone may try to do that again. Like Mylandmatters. Hint hint.

That may be a rule, but there is an absolute height restriction of 500m from launching point on the Mavic 2 firmware, so it's not possible to stay 400ft above the ground when flying up mountains. Unless I'm missing some setting that disables it, but I tried and couldn't find one, thus I have to find the highest possible point to launch. The drone does not appear to have any capability to measure height above surface, only altitude from original launching point (it probably uses an altimeter, doesn't measure distance above surfaces). It doesn't care if there is a mountain under you increasing height as the drone increases height, it only cares about how high from your launching point the drone is now. So, I can be 20ft above the surface of the ground the entire flight travelling up a mountain, and then hit the height restriction halfway up and it won't let me fly any higher to get to the top even though I'm still only 20ft above the ground. 1600ft isn't much, that's a hill not a mountain, so it requires finding a high enough point to launch from, which ends up cutting into the time saved by using the drone.

I should mention my hunting is mostly turf, looks like you are a beach hunter Erik. Abenson and others will be able to speak more to the beach performance... which I will be taking note of as well - as I am planning on increasing my beach hunts this year on the Gulf Coast of Texas. ~Tim.

I've had both but not at the same time. Got rid of both too. Although I didn't compare them head to head at the same time. I do have a coin garden I ran both of them through and spend hours changing settings and modes to optimize depth. In either case the bigger coils got very little depth advantage over the stock 11" in my soil on a dime sized target. If I had to chose I think I would go with the ML 12 x 15 coil just because it's a little lighter. The only reason I can see getting a bigger coil for the Equinox is for ground coverage. Unlike a PI, I generally see very little depth advantage with bigger coils in my soil. I have not used the bigger Equinox coils on a beach. But I would assume they would act similar to the FBS machines in that low mineral beaches you do see depth advantages but black sand beaches you see very little and sometimes worse performance.

Somehow a metal plate found its way into my EGR a while back, I've no idea how that happened- :)

Nice, haven't seen one of those in ages.

We have found only 2 Chinese coins and 1 Chinese lock. The Chinese coins were 100 plus yards apart. I would think there would be more but no so. I think out of all the coins (11) we have found here, all but 1 was next to a piece of slate sticking up from the ground. It is a very interesting place that gives up a little at a time at this point.

Latest Q & A on GPX 6000 from Nenad. https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=34961&p=23 Q. So Nenad, now the 6000 is released can you tell us how the Geo-Sense works? Also, how do you compare it to a 5000 and SDC? Cheers A. No idea how Geo-sense works from a technical point of view, only know that it does. It picks up the same type of gold the SDC likes, but at better depth. I got a faint signal with the 6000, scraped the surface and the signal was louder. Checked with the SDC and nothing. Scraped off 2 inches of ground and the 6000 was singing at this point. Tried the SDC again, and it now got a faint threshold rise. I dug it out, and then couldn't find it in the dirt with the SDC. I grabbed the 6000 and it clearly saw the target, and it ended up being a 0.3g bit with a lot of personality. Re the 5000 if the gold is of a solid or waterworn nature, then it'll be able to hold it's head high against the 6000. But on spongy / reefy stuff, it doesn't stand a chance. Some of the gold I've found with the 6000 I tested on the 5000 and 4500 later, in all timings, and the best I could get was "something" in the audio while rubbing the target on the coil. And these were bits found at 4 inches on the 6000. Hopefully I can demonstrate this in future videos. Q. Have you compared to the zed Nenad? I’m guessing at 4” the zed with standard coil would also have no problem? A. With the Zed it gets a little more complicated as there's a more blurred crossover point between target orientation, size and depth. One thing that clearly does stand out though is the Zed in normal gives more of a boost compared to the 6000 in Normal. And Zed starts to win more as target sizes increase. In simple terms, on most targets under a gram the 6000 will do as good if not slightly better than the Zed, particularly when the Zed is in Difficult. But not all targets. I found a reefy 5.4g bit with the Zed and 12" Z-search coil. Later did a quick test with the 6000 and there was hardly any difference, the 6000 maybe giving a slightly more "peaky" signal due to the monoloop coil. On a more solid 5 grammer, and I reckon the 7000 would have shown it's true colours, particularly in General.

Those EGR plates were obviously put there by aliens....they've been here too !

Taking the pictures with the drones is not the problem, there are many apps out there than can lawnmower an area automatically. Some even allow you to use shapefiles from your GIS projects and kmz files if you want to draw your areas of interest in Google Earth and set up all the paths and overlap necessary. I personally stick with DJI's apps because they allow you to set the zoom angle if using the Mavic 2 Zoom (my work drone). The real problem is stitching it all together and it takes cloud based processing to really get anywhere, if you try to do it on your own PC it might take days even to process it all. With cloud based processing it might only take about 4-6 hours to stich together a 1/4 section's worth. Big name companies are DroneDeploy or Pix4D, but my employer won't pay for the subscription so I use OpenDroneMap Lightning. You can pay per map or monthly and it is way cheaper, not very user friendly, but Jason I am sure you could figure it out. For hacking your drone I used drone-hacks.com Again at your own risk of course.

Personally I wouldn’t use any of the hack programs, they’ve been known to be unstable and some have lost drones with them. When flying in the US, and some other countries, one good thing is you are allowed to fly it 400’ directly above the terrain it is above or next to, thus you can be in a valley below a peak that’s 5000’ above you and still be allowed to fly 5400’ above your head as long as the drone is within 400’ of the summit or the side of the mountain. I find this rule actually allows me to fly it a very hilly area with terrain over 400 feet above me without any issues. On a Mavic 2 pro, you just have to accept the elevation limit warning if you’re going above 400 feet, no need to hack it- it will let you go as high as 500 m above you. One thing to watch for though is you can’t see what’s on the other side of a hill or ridge if you are below it, and sometimes aircraft like to fly close to them, so being able to see what’s around on both sides is important!

My problem is that it acts like it is set up for: iron grunt (if horseshoe enabled) target tone (mid tone) falsing or black sand exact same mid tone high tone = quarter, dime, occasional zinc penny Anyone else but me get annoyed that the detector seems to remember the last tone and use it later for any falsing target? Also annoying is a constant tone on every sweep (one direction only though) I found a stainless ring by realizing the target tone was present and the same character as I moved around it. But within a foot were same tone same amplitude false targets that changed character as I moved. Given these are same tone doesn’t that mean that iron bias will not help as the detector is not differentiating them or I’d hear a different tone for each? i suspect setting IB higher would just cut out the whole cluster and I’d only be finding isolated targets. I first tried my wiggle test at home but EMI was too high. Went back to the original location later in the day and I suspect you guys are right - the coil wiggle, not cable wiggle causes the sound. But I did see something very interesting: if I move the coil even a little in the sweep direction I get the sound - even if I move like 3’ from the car. But if I change to up and down motion (in line with the DD center) it doesn’t sound until I get to maybe a foot and a half of the car - and not a varying tone, a firm normal target sound. Too difficult to capture video with my iphone. I’ll have to get my wife to video it. Says to me in black sand we may have to move the coil real slow or we’ll get the falsing. Add waves and all bets are off.

I magically had one appear in my other car’s EGR aswell 🤔 completely unsure how that happened.

50+ years? Most silver coins had disappeared by around 1970 because their bullion value exceded face value. And since Franklins were never minted in clad (unlike Roosies and Washies 😏) they were especially easy to notice and remove. Could this coin have remained 'high and dry' in the sand, seldom ever experiencing salt water? I suspect Franklin halves are harder to find than Walking Liberty halves, due partly to their shorter time in circulation. Their mintages weren't high, either, relative to the earlier design, unlike their smaller denomination brethren. Nice find; I'm envious!

Welcome aboard ! Plenty here to read and just ask any questions you have. Plenty here are using an Equinox too.

Very nice find and it cleaned up really well. Good luck on your next hunt.

Just a bit of information on the Vaughan area as shown on old and new maps. The drone footage was over Ballarat Hill with the maps showing the same area.

I hate hype. Now every ML detector has had a 20% increase in performance in their hype. If they mean for a nugget that the SD2000 could get at 6" deep (the norm for VLF detectors.) Then SD2000 gets 100% so SD2100 gets 120% and the SD2200 gets 144% and the GP extreme gets 173% and the GP3000 gets 207% and the GPX4000 gets 248% and the GPX 4500 gets and the GPX5000 298% and the GPZ7000 358% in depth over 3½ times deeper than the SD2000. This is not the fact as I got a 5 oz specimen 19+ inches deep (with an old VLF 1980) if this was the case the GPZ7000 would have to detect it at 66½ inches or over 5½ feet deep most wimps today would quit at 3 ft and the power required to achieve this would exceed 2000 times that of the SD2000 and it battery would be dead flat in a few minutes. However ML would not lie so the thing is that they are using a yard stick that is different than most people think. MY way of thinking is that they are comparing the worst case scenario of the previous detector with that which the new model excels in. So when you look at advertising details keep this in mine. There appears to be some excellent improvements in the GPX6000 that would be of high advantage for me that I would consider but not yet.

Welcome to the forum and I also have an equinox 800 that I got from my grandfather. Take your time and learn the unit and it will surprise you with many nice finds.

Besides seeing the coil is sensitive enough to pick up your hand it's hard to tell if there is a coil fault. Tapping the side of a coil to see if it is knock sensitive may show more. As for falsing. large coils are tough to use in the salt and bigger you go the more you may need to drop your gain. There is a limit on what a vlf can do in the salt. Stock 11" should be plenty. For wrapping the wire have the wire go straight along the lower pole then wind the rest from the mid pole to the control box. Make sure you have just enough slack on the lower so the coil can move and make sure you don't wrap too tight and have the connector to the control box as straight as possible so it isn't crimped.

I have had the Coiltek 15" out a few times. I hope to run some pure comparisons in wild dig settings this coming weekend between the ML 15 and the CT 15. My initial impression after a few isolated hunts, I didn't notice any improvement over the ML, but wasn't running them head to head. I found it a little more difficult to pinpoint, though the wiggle back method was accurate off the front and back of center. I will post my findings when I have some direct comparison results. ~Tim

I've got some Girl Scout Cookies about to mature. We'll do some horsetrading.

Yes it’s definitely only a handful of people. Heh, love the idea of planting identifiable fakes, that’s a really smart idea! I’m just thinking that one over... Nowhere near as cool as an EMP cannon though 😉

Hey Chuck, I only need to sell a kidney if I can't possibly get by with one or the other of these high dollar Minelab tools. I've already held on to a Deus, a Tarsacci and an Equinox. Maybe I need to cut back on my detector addiction.

Condor If you’re the donor it’s said it will take about two to 4 weeks to get back to normal daily activity. On selling your 7000 it may be a good thing because less weight if we talking about the above person being you. Chuck

revealing finds, chines coin may indicate that after the good stuff was found they moved in to finish up . and the seated saw at least 20 years circulation, I supose it was easy to loos things in the mud and dirt, and clothes where falling apart.

As others have noted, Beach 1 and Beach 2 default settings are exactly the same. Internally, Beach 1 has a higher overall average frequency than Beach 2 when their simultaneous operating frequencies are averaged. They both have the ability to adjust to black iron sand mineralization by automatically lowering the transmit frequency, oops I meant.....amplitude/gain, before overloading. Whether setting iron bias to F2=0 has any effect on that.......I don't know since I assume that the iron bias filter is only on the receive side of the processed frequencies.

Our bed rock is garnet schist its like a clay the gold does not go into it we take about a foot of it we have run tests with only bed rock there is nothing in it lower on the creek they have a quartzite bed rock there's is real blocky they take about 8 feet of it to get most of the gold we have a real mineralized layer that is real hot when we find it when we do a cross cut we see old old creek channels in the cut the old channels are gold free meaning the gold was put in before the old channels came into play we have found a few old fossilized bones but no tusks yet that would be a real trophy hoping that it melts the snow and ice soon I'm so ready to get up there we are almost to eagle summit take care doug

Just from the short video detecting your car, your Equinox sounds and acts like it is operating perfectly. Mine will do the same thing within 3 feet of any large piece of metal. Default Beach 1 for most of the beach, dry or wet. Default Beach 2 when Beach 1 becomes unstable or for use in the surf. If your beach has a lot of black magnetite or basalt sand you may want to hunt in 2 tones instead of 5 or especially 50. The same goes for if 50 tones is causing personal audio overload which sometimes happens to me. I often like to hunt beaches with nothing discriminated and -9 to +40 accepted. At some of the San Diego area beaches I have hunted, I had to reject a little bit of the iron range to deal with the black sand. I ended up hunting them with -3 or -4 to +40 accepted and used 2 tones. I also owned a CTX for awhile. The tone lengths on the Equinox and CTX are very different no matter where you set the recovery speed on the Equinox since Equinox is a very high gain, very fast detector which comes remarkably close to XP Deus speeds and sensitivity considering it is an SMF detector. It will detect one millimeter sized targets even below the surface. It will never sound or operate like a CTX.

The Porcupine Ridge Rd area is reputed to have produced some larger gold. Surprisingly little historical information compared to other areas. A very interesting area full of promise still. Lots of bullets on the hillside above the river, rabbits still hopping around. Met a very large brown snake who didn't stop to say hello, thank goodness.. I'll be spending some more time in the area. The mineral water at the spring tasted awful.. not going back for seconds. Ballarat Hill is quite distinct and even more so from the air. Pity the larger portion being on private property. Took me a while to work out the boundaries but once you figure it out there is still a decent area to detect. Moving south there is less private land and things open right up. The lack of a 4x4 has hampered my efforts to some extent but I've got a decent pair of boots that compensates. I think I left a few bits of my car on the Wewak Track. The sound of my car crunching and scraping on rocks is equal to fingernails on a chalk board, just more expensive. The situation with the bridge is a disgrace and symbolic in so many ways with local governments priorities not reflecting community needs. Years ago I drove over the bridge on a few occasions and it always looked as if it was ready to give way.. I've just spent a bit of time in Eastern Victoria and the scrub was so thick it was challenging to swing the detector.. with a Red Bellied Blacksnake for every hundred meters of creek.. Vaughan is a much easier place to prospect despite the occasional brown..

What an adventure. A lot to tell about the experience but short on time. Dug a lot of trash, nothing good but this. It's hard to put words to the happiness the family members are experiencing. ?