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1st silver of the year, and I have been detecting since the snow was on the ground, its marked 925 LATH , It has a bit of tarnish on it from being in the grass for a wile, its not plated, I was running the Gold -1 program on the ORX and i got a solid 83-82 VDI , well the drought is over , maybe some Gold will come along to . It says on the pendant the words, Faith, Hope ,& love, my setting in Gold 1 where 84 gain, 14 khz, 2,5 speed, 2 IAR,

A few days ago, I saw a popular YouTuber telling his viewers that if a signal disappears when you turn on it, it’s going to be iron, and digging it would be a waste of time. I can’t tell you how many silver coins I’ve dug that only hit in one direction, and would completely disappear if you turned just a few degrees. Seems like the moment some of these guys get a few subscribers, they think they’re some kind of Detecting Guru and start slinging out “pro tips” left and right. Nothing wrong with sharing knowledge, but actually knowing what you’re talking about and having a little humility never hurts. As for Merrill, I’ve enjoyed watching his videos in the past. I believe he is a fairly knowledgeable detectorist, therefore I’d have to agree with the others that some of his recent antics are done solely to get more views. I don’t let it bother me too much. YT is purely entertainment value for me, so if I don’t like what a particular channel is doing, I simply stop watching.

You cats are raking poor old uncle fester over the coals here lighten up a little! I need more likes.

Things like ground and EMI handling can make all the difference in some places. Also, the 6000 suffers from auto adjustments in an opaque way that makes it impossible to tell if it's adjusted down or failed to adjust sensitivity back up, and this in my experience has caused a number of instances I've missed what should have been some very easy targets. I have no idea if the Axiom does this auto adjusting too, but to me it's a deal breaker in a machine the way the 6000 does it after I've used it and understood it more. If I was choosing between the two right now I'd personally try an Axiom just to see for myself. I personally feel the 6000 is a subpar detector for both EMI and opaque auto adjustments, it does ok with ground but I suspect based on reports the Axiom does better. For weekend detecting or working small areas it probably makes no difference though. Where it makes a difference is covering 50 square miles of land and then wondering at night if you need to go redetect weeks worth of work because you can't trust if the detector was running right or not, that's incredibly annoying. If it didn't seem like the next GPZ had to be on the horizon I'd try an Axiom just to see how it does in field and experiments. Been tempted numerously to buy one just to see then inevitably figure the 6000 will be good enough until the GPZ. Too expensive for an experiment at this point it seems, as I'd rather replace the 6000 with a light weight GPZ if such an option presents itself, which at this point may or may not even happen and is looking less likely, who knows...

Sorry, I think I forgot to say which one I chose...the Equinox 600. Thanks, I think I have a 1926, I found at a church with the MX7, these are the two oldest for me.

A Gpx 6000 user spent 3 days prospecting this cut on the Taft claim near Red Chiapas coming away with 16 nuggets. I came along after with my Garrett Axiom and found a nice nugget he missed!

I think what makes this coil a winner is the size and shape are ideal for hunting uneven bedrock areas, and ground other than flat. The bonus is they limit the emi noise and have a noticeably more stable threshold which is definitely easier on the ears. Id agree too that sensitivity and depth is comparable to the 11. You're not going to find piles of missed targets going over ground you already hunted with the 11 on totally flat terrain. Possibly a nugget masked by emi. Throw in craggy bedrock, bushes, rocky areas, and its game on for the 12x7!

Running in manual will avoid the auto adjustments and you always remain in full control. I often run at full manual max and only go to auto if I run into issues, kind of as my first line of defense. Both NF and Coiltek coils run more stable at full gain than the mono stock coils. The 17 inch is great for ground coverage albeit a bit unbalanced. But still practically no sensitivity loss compared to the 11, however only with marginal depth gain IMO. Overall, a great choice for most conditions. Re new gpz, this might take a while and I won't jump the gun with the first production series, given the track record of the 6000. So, at the earliest this would be late 2024 for me for the new gpz if it were to be released late this year. The axiom is tempting and i still consider getting it too. GC

Some Interesting Finds From Last Fall And The Long Wet Winter. Pictured Above And Below Is A Very Delicate And Translucent Obsidian Curved Knife Blade. Below Is Another Blade Much More Stout And Serrated Notice How Some Of The Artifacts Take On An Almost Chameleon Effect. Below After A Wash. Next A Very Large Blade. Below Are Bird Point (So Called) And A Very Small Micro Blade (Scalpel) The Next One Is One Of My Favorite Forms.I've Found A Handful Through The Years. The Final Piece Is A Real Crier A Damaged Bird Adornment Or Charm Carved From Slate. Thanks For Looking.

June 14 2002 We continue to take turns on night watch but there has been no sign of any hooligans as Jacob would call them. There has been no let up in the heat and the forecast is for more of the same. We shoveled gravel in the morning like there was no tomorrow. We all have gold fever in spades. Even Jacob has it I think. The crew took a long break between 2:00 PM and 3:00 PM. We all had a beer and a little bit of food and Jacob brought over the gold weigh from yesterday’s 44 yards of washed gravel. He had a big smile on his face and we knew it was going to be a good one. I could hardly believe what he told us the weigh came to. There were 19.4 ounces in his jar. Jacob laughed and said that if we hadn’t been so almighty lazy and would have shoveled into the tom another half hour we could have hit 20 ounces. We all had a good laugh and cracked open another round of cold beers before returning to the dig site. By day’s end we had processed another 40 yards of pay gravel. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

Jim McCulloch - "Paps", You have been an ambassador and inspiration for this industry for at least 30 yrs and probably longer. Names like Jimmy Sierra Normandi, Hoss Blackman, Larry Sallee, Jim Straight, James McCulloch (you), Woody Woodworth were all the bigger names when my puppy ears started listening for the nuggets. Sure I go back to the early 70's for Coin/Relics, but it was not until mid 90's I started taking gold detectors seriously. Thanks for the comments on my article being worthy of a magazine. What is a magazine anyway and are there any left?

Have fun with it! Should really open up some new possibilities because of its technical differences from the MX7 and it’s a tad lighter, too.

Likely from a spring somewhere up high on the mountain. The old timers in 1936/1937 used it too.

The problem with Merrill and his YouTube channel is that he needs to just shut his mouth a bit and just stick to things like showing the controls on a unit or the little outings he does. Otherwise, he really isn't all that knowlegable when it comes to metal detectors. One of his biggest things is he talks about how many he owns...like 21 or something like that. Big deal.....plus he has a website called irate metal detectors. Heck I personally have went through over 3 times that amount of units through the years that i have messed with them just to get to where I am today. I try to be careful of my opinion on certain units I have owned that I did not give a good go with because someone else may have taken the time and would be able to give more correct advice toward a specific unit. The problem is this, too many people can put up videos these days and the people who do not know any better take their advice.....whether it be good or bad.

We don't know the source but it's been tested & is pure. We've drank it for years. Cold & delicious.

Nice find, my wife says throw single earrings back. 😀 She wants both. Good hunt! You're doing well with the ORX.

A pipe that comes down out of the mountain that is potable & is still there to this day.

Simon, You have described your experiences well. It's as if you are a fortune teller. Now I have gone to the same general area but a different spot that still holds a lot of trash. My settings have been refined between the volume of the detector and the SP01 and it really makes a difference to my ears. I was out on an overnight trip. The first day I found one little nugget, the largest at .22g and then the next day I found 3 more for the total of around .7g. Some of these pieces were just as you described, small and deep with one getting near 5 inches. None of them were surface nuggets. I did go back to the previous location and it seems that even with the dumbed down settings I've gotten it all there. This new location is quite different even tho it is near. It has had much more digging activity and other trash has been added and it is still left. You had to 'pick and choose' what to dig. It's a club claim and we also didn't want to spend so much time on it that we took it all. My total hunting time for the two days was about 4-5 hours. Two other detectorists had lesser results than mine. What I was able to do was 'hear the gold!' I didn't dig everything after a time. There were some targets that had a 'sharpness' to them that didn't say 'dig me.' And I can clearly remember each of the 3 targets on the second day with their nice mellow sound. After a scrape with the pick or a boot scrape you knew it was the sound you were looking for. That didn't mean it was going to be a quick recovery. Once the dirt gets moving then it becomes difficult to focus, scoop and recover. I'm a bit of an impatient scooper. I've had to change my style so I don't scoop, wave and throw out the target and have to re-scoop. Anyway, that is my story now, but the bottom line is that there is more gold at this new place than the other places nearby. Thanks for the videos, tips and advice on this coil. I wouldn't have it without you. The .22g first day nugget. The .11g 1st nugget of second day that took me 15 minutes to scoop. I thought it was smaller but it had the nice mellow sound we all like. I was on my way to take a break and 'show off' my tiny nugget and I got this flat .18g. And finally getting near stopping time for the day before we were off to do other stuff I got this .16g that said 'dig me!' It was down a bit over 4 inches.

Agreed. I don't want to get too much off topic, but a lot of that has to do with the education system teaching kids what to think, instead of how to think. Our education system is sorely lacking in teaching kids critical thinking skills and objective reasoning. The comments in the video are evidence of that.

Jeff, the nugget got stuck to the pick via the mud sticking to the pick when I was raking back the material. When I pulled the pick out and put it up on the ledge, I tapped the pick on a rock to free the mud in a spot I was aware of. This has happened before. Very common. Gold Ryder went to throw out a rock from his hole and it had two nuggets stuck to it from the clayish mud.

I would say it depends on your needs, which is better in hot rocks for example. The Axiom also doesn't have any aftermarket coils on the market yet to determine if they provide anything to it like the aftermarket coils for the 6000 have. With time that will change. There is always the fact you might need the Axiom while you're waiting for your 6000 or it's coil at the service agent every few months.. 🙂

June 13 2002 It was another peaceful night on the claim. The only movement I heard was a black bear who had ventured near camp and circled us a few times until Jacob let loose with the Thompson to scare the critter away. It no doubt smelled the remnants of our supper but was too timid to come all the way into camp. We got to work early and tried to send as many yards through the tom as possible before the heat came on. And come on it did. With a vengeance. By noon it was over 90 degrees and we took a short break for lunch. This time I gave in to my yearnings and had a cold beer as did the rest of the crew including Jacob and man, did it taste good. Jacob had the gold cleanup done and we drank out beers and looked at the pan of gold. All 11 ounces of it. And from only 35 yards of gravel. It was unbelievable but it was real gold. I even asked Jacob if he was tricking us and he just laughed and said to enjoy the view. We got back to shoveling gravel and worked until dark. I didn’t have any sweat left in my body and had drank gallons of water. The entire crew was shot to all heck but we had processed 44 yards of pay gravel. We were all pretty damn proud of ourselves as we sat down to supper. We were becoming a rough and tough crew like the old timers. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

Good advice VL, but the 600 is just as waterproof as the 800 🙂 I've dunked mine a lot and had no problems.

Today was the last day I could get out before a week long relic hunting and possibly water hunting trip. It's been raining since Saturday night on and off, windy and in the 60s so I didn't expect to find much at the beach I went to. I recently updated the D2 to V1.1, did some air tests to create a new beach program. Used Beach Sensitive, disc at 10, no notch, no Silencer, Bottle Caps ended up at 5. High Square Full Tones audio. Gotta say I really thought XP had got the iron falsing under control with my air tests, even aluminum makes a distinct "brassy" sound with this program. However, all that glitters is not gold. 🤣 This beach is rough, at one end there is a motel and the beach is almost all pebbles, you cannot go barefoot or wear sandals if you have old feet. 😀 In the middle it's a mix of sand and pebbles in bands, and the other end it's a mix of sand and red clay. Ground balance varies from 79 to 95 depending on where you are. Got here early hoping at least someone braved the weather and came to the beach, it looks like some did and I was the first to hit it. 3 other people showed up later and complained they weren't finding anything, I sort of had to bite my tongue. 😏 Iron did false until I changed bottle caps a bit, there is quite a bit of junk in the sand. Pushing disc to 10 helped a little, I'm glad they fixed the audio. With disc at 10 most iron will disappear. (Thanks Andy!) Most pull tabs have that brassy sound, I dug a few to prove it. I think one was in the 70s so I dug it anyway. That one fooled me. I was getting coins here and there, they jumped out sharply with very close IDs. Managed to get at least one of every US denomination, and a nice 1945 wheat. That was a great sign. On the pebble beach I got a 47 and found this tiny ring, I doubt it's anything good but it was a solid tone and ID. It was just in the surf, and pretty deep. Next one was this bling ring, a hard 85. Looks like it's been there a while. My best ring today was this tungsten carbide and malachite ring that my wife took immediately, it was a 54: About $15-$30 on Amazon. 3 Keys Jewelry. Here's the total take: And the trash: The doll swims if you tighten the innerspring by spinning the arms. 😀 Second small doll I've found there and second pair of tweezers. 😵 It was interesting to see the difference between air testing and real world, never done it before. Think I'll stick with real world.

Most roads in Goler Gulch are like this or worse, which makes dodging the gullies challenging.

Found this today. Top pocket find... I think it finds gold, just fine. 14.6 gr. 10k.

GAU, Aye between the 6K and the Axiom choosing depends on the users experience, capability and ground which will suit them best, thus "the piece of string". If what one of us do well with cannot be assumed to be so for all.

Wow .... neat finds! Thanks for posting photos.

I could never use a Vanquish because it ONLY has multi-iq. No other options. Many times EMI is so bad you must exit multi-iq and go into a single frequency.

This rings true in soooooo many cases.

🤩🤩🤩🤩

We all know that Steve has run both detectors extensively. I would go with the advice that he gave. I have not read Lunk‘s article yet, sorry amigo 😉 , but whatever he has to say, I would go with that as well.

Is Chris G. still the Nugget Finder Distributor for the US?

Yup yup Doc ! Never heard those poles called pikes . 🤔I would have thought "pokes" more appropriate though ! I was just guessing the big rocks were from a river , guess an old glacier could have been the source too? Probably both wrong.🙄

One of the old timers who lived there full time said not to worry about the water & we'd get used to it LOL. But that guy was permanently preserved by alcohol.

Now the water up in Paxton was another story back in 2015. It came from a water tank up on the mountain & was sent down to the lodge via gravity pipe. After awhile some people were getting sick & they had it tested. It had spider poop in it. We had to boil our water or go to town and haul water in there. They got it fixed after a couple of weeks but we stayed clear of it.

Yes I'm sure it is since it's coming from a pipe, I'm willing to bet it's coming from a underground spring. My father and I would drive through the Blue Ridge Mountains and every so often you would see a pipe driven into the rock face cut for the road with the best water I have ever drank coming out of the pipes, we would drink our fill and drive on.

Very nice. Beautiful pendant.

Strick, Dual batteries would be nice and I wish I thought about that before I screwed my Winch connectors in the extra battery slot! Anyways, further diagnostics on my SxS with my limited Mechanical Mind: I fueled it up, after a ride between more afternoon rain and I noticing a strong smell of gas when I parked it in the garage. 🤔 I thought! Next morning the garage had a very strong odor of gasoline. I looked under the Buggy expecting to see a puddle of fuel, nope. Then I removed the passenger seat to have a look at the fuel tank and seen the fuel tank air vent hose. I followed it to the engine area and it had a section full of water in the low spot of the hose as I turned up. I fired up my air compressor and unhooked hose from fuel tank and blew that water out the other end. I just may have found the real problem with Little Red. Took her for a long ride after that and gas free smell. Watching Local News last night Weatherman said, 3rd wettest May on record for Reno. I’m sure in parts of Northern Nevada it’s the Wettest ever, but no one lives there to measure it, lol. Rick

What's most concerning about the video, is the comments. Many were saying things akin to, "Thanks for pointing out the problem with the Manticore", or "I was going to buy a Manticore, and now I'm not". It gets my ire when newbies are being misled by erroneous information and half truths.

Start of another nice patch of small tiny nugglets with the new 6000, seems to be going good, but have not tried the Axiom cheers dave

Notwithstanding Steve's having told me years ago that alluvial gold in Greenland is probably scarce due to glacial activity...I keep look around to find encouragement. Google's new Bard, AI assisted search engine is fun to play with, so I had some fun just now. So I asked.. is there any notice in the last 3 years of finds of alluvial gold in greenland Yes, there have been a few reports of alluvial gold finds in Greenland in the last 3 years. In 2020, a team of prospectors from Canada discovered a large deposit of gold in the Kangerlussuaq region. The deposit is estimated to contain over 100,000 ounces of gold, and it is the largest gold find in Greenland in over 50 years. In 2021, another team of prospectors discovered a smaller deposit of gold in the Isortoq region. This deposit is estimated to contain over 10,000 ounces of gold. These discoveries have renewed interest in gold mining in Greenland, and several companies are now exploring the possibility of developing these deposits. Here are some of the details of the recent gold finds in Greenland: 2020: A team of prospectors from Canada discovered a large deposit of gold in the Kangerlussuaq region. The deposit is estimated to contain over 100,000 ounces of gold, and it is the largest gold find in Greenland in over 50 years. The discovery was made by a team of prospectors from the company True North Gems. The team was using a helicopter to explore the Kangerlussuaq region when they spotted a large area of bedrock that was exposed by erosion. The team landed and collected samples from the bedrock, which were later assayed and found to contain high levels of gold. 2021: Another team of prospectors discovered a smaller deposit of gold in the Isortoq region. This deposit is estimated to contain over 10,000 ounces of gold. The discovery was made by a team of prospectors from the company Veritas Gold. The team was using a ground-based exploration method called induced polarization (IP) to search for gold when they identified a strong IP anomaly in the Isortoq region. The team then drilled a series of test holes, which confirmed the presence of gold in the area. These discoveries have renewed interest in gold mining in Greenland. Several companies are now exploring the possibility of developing these deposits. However, it is important to note that these discoveries are still in the early stages, and it is not yet clear if they will be commercially viable.

Just a bit alright, "discrim... groundhog... " , We are spoilt rotten now days

Well done, old son. Perhaps the finest and most informative article you've written to date. If I was still at "Treasure" magazine it would certainly get published. After 40 years of wearing out my knees digging the Most Happy Yellow Metal, I (k)need all the help I can get. HH Jim

Some of these video guys get more wrapped up in view and follower numbers, rather than learning the machines.

Very nice days reward on the gold, and I am glad that you had another place to sluice. Good luck on your next hunt. Grandfather used to use a couple of burlap sacks with some weights to catch some gold when the water was to high. He said that the water moved faster and would also move some of the gold when things got high. When the water went down some we could pull the sacks out of the water and sure enough there was some gold in them. We kept the sacks close to the banks and held in a position with some nylon cords. I would like to know if you had ever tried that method and if so did you catch anything.

Thanks ya'll... Didn't even know they made multi frequency detectors. The Equinox 600 is within my price range, found one on Amazon with two coils, for $600. Still doing more research, and comparisons.

I'm a sucker for new tech. That's what usually does it for me. Other users don't usually influence my decision. I have to see for myself if a machine fits the bill or not. Most of the time, a machine I don't like gets sent down the road to someone else. The trouble I've often had with lesser known name brands is, you get stuck with them unless you give them away. That's what always has me hesitant about Nokta stuff...You'd best hope you love the machine you get, because chances are you are going to have a tough time reselling it. I've got that Legend package in the classifieds now and not even had an inquiry or offer for it...and that's exactly what I mean.

well for me a 7inch wide x 9 inch long DD coil and it would be nice to have the good tones sound louder

In All Metal, give it a ferrous tone and a non ferrous tone to go along with the + or - target ID's. I don't look at the numbers normally since the display is underwater most of the time..... I just try to make out the + or - next to the numbers. With two tones in all metal, I'd probably never look at the screen. Maybe a brightness control for the backlight. Lots of good comments above mine! Cliff