Steve Herschbach

Sorry to hear about your back Jason. Having been there done that I can really sympathize. Good news is older I got the less back problems I have had so go figure. Sure some nice gold!

The 8" mono is effortless in the water and for where I was hunting fit better in the bottom of coral pockets and other depressions. Easier pinpointing also which is important underwater. I will probably use the stock coil in fresh water lakes however.

An hour would suit me just fine if that was all it gave me. Sometimes all you want is that one hour more. That said, I will leave it to others to mess with. Presumably with some rewiring and a different battery configuration a person could use the shell to make a backup battery pack, and I am sure somebody will. Just not me. It was one thing to buy a cheap shell to employ AA batteries I have piles of anyway. It is another thing entirely to have to rebuild it and be the guinea pig with the 10K detector. Something tells me going that far would void a detector warranty so I officially give up on this idea. It looks like for the moment the only available battery backup for the GPZ is the smaller CTX 7.2V 34Wh batterry until the full size battery is available in the next couple months.

Hi Fred, Congratulations on the gold! It is not mandatory that the module have line of sight to the detector. I have been running mine on my left shoulder while swinging the detector with my right hand. The sound only rarely cuts out momentarily, not enough that I actually pay any attention to it. Sounds like yours is worse. The line-of-sight thing is just advice that has been offered as a way to minimize any issues people might be having. They had to change the frequency of the WM 12 from that on the WM 10 and I would conjecture that the GPZ itself was interfering with original frequency chosen to work with the CTX. It may be hard to get the system working well around a detector transmitting as powerfully as the GPZ. Have you tried using a paper clip to reset the module and pairing it up again?

Perhaps the GPZ and CTX Li-Ion packs use one pin set. The CTX AA set and the CTX itself may employ the second pin set to direct to a regulated circuit especially for the higher voltage ?

I was thinking of rolling aluminum foil up tight to diameter of AA and cut to length to replace a couple cells.

I tried that. Eight cells at 1.2 volts is 9.6 volts and the GPZ is expecting 7.2 volts. Two dummy cells would drop it to 7.2 volts. I may try that in the morning.

In theory it should work, just like on the CTX 3030. Maybe the GPZ as suggested cannot regulate the higher voltage down properly? Mine GPX was very early off the production line and lacks such a capability? I do not know. I am very curious to see how it works for you so please do report back. Thanks!

I love beach detecting! Gold is gold. And surf detecting is every bit as challenging as prospecting, more so in rough surf. I can only take 3-4 hours at a time. Walking the beach on the other hand is literally a walk in the park, and the digging could not be easier. Beach detecting varies a lot based on the location, and locals have a real advantage by being able to take advantage of storm conditions. There are interesting parallels to nugget prospecting. 1. You need a source of gold. Think about the jewelry you want to find, then think about where the people will be that would lose it. You want big dollar stuff, you have to go where the big dollar people will be. My location in Hawaii is more middle class and the finds reflect that. 2. The gold has to get lost. On the beach the "towel line" where beach towels are laid and jewelry taken off is an obvious target. Anywhere volleyball, football or frisbee is played is good. Hands flinging and tossing. In the water the sweet zone tends to be as far out as people can stand, and lots of action taking places near shore. Sparser the farther out you get. 3. The beach works just like a stream and sand comes and goes. Pockets form, light aluminum and bottlecaps in some places, heavy stuff in another. Deep sand is no good unless recently scoured or a recent drop. Thinner sand on a hard base like I had is best. That is just a few tidbits, and lots more to it than people think, just like prospecting. The best books are by Gary Drayton http://www.garydrayton.com/New_Sovereign_book_.php and Clive Clynick http://www.clivesgoldpage.com/ You really hit the nail on the head though. Gold nugget patches deplete and are gone. The gold takes too long to renew. Jewelry endlessly renews and I will be park and beach hunting for jewelry long after my nugget hunting days are over. The other plus is I can hunt jewelry absolutely anywhere there are people. Where people are people play, and when people play they lose jewelry. My best jewelry find last year was a heavy platinum ring in a city park not far from my house.

Hi Tom,The post and the link talk about the trash situation. I dig several trash items for every "good" find. Unless you consider coins trash, which I tend to do when beach detecting, in which case it is almost all trash. Not unlike digging for gold nuggets in tailing piles. They have sharks in Hawaii but I have never heard of anyone with a metal detector anywhere ever being attacked by a shark, even in Florida.

The GPZ screen is middle of the road scratchable plastic, not unlike that used on many detectors. I just put another screen saver on my new Racer last night. By the way, screen protectors for non-touch devices are better than those made for touch devices. A touch device screen must be very thin. The screen protector pictured is for the old non-touch screen Kindle, and is a thicker, tougher plastic. White's is the only company I have seen that designs the screen to be replaceable and sells them openly. Most White's owners probably do not even know this. The screen on a White's is actually softer than most because it is just a clear decal. But that is what makes it easy to peel off and replace. The GPZ being water resistant however is probably not so easily replaced. The screen we are touching is probably a protective screen over the actual color screen underneath. http://www.whiteselectronics.com/accessories-books?cat=30

There are people saying the F19 has quicker separation in thick trash but I doubt there is any significant difference between the Gold Bug Pro and F19 from a nugget detecting perspective. I like the extra features though and if they ever come out with a black and gold version I may get one. That is one nice nugget Ray! Anytime the scale is measuring in pennyweights I am a very happy guy myself.

The good news is I did not blow anything up. My regular pack is now charged up and I put it on and the GPZ boots up just fine. Instead of a regulator a couple dummy batteries might work but then have an even shorter run time, whatever it would have been. I will check the pack with a meter but I am sure you are correct DDancer.

A post from Doc over on Rob's forum about a customers finds - with photos. http://forums.nuggethunting.com/index.php?/topic/11369-gpz7000-3-ounces-in-two-trips/

The rechargeable battery for the Minelab CTX 3030 is a 7.2V 34Wh unit that will also work on the GPZ 7000 and run it for about 4 hours. I have a CTX 3030 and have used the battery on my GPZ with no problems at all. The CTX 3030 also comes with a backup system designed to use 8 AA batteries http://www.minelab.com/emea/products/consumer/accessories/batteries/replaceable-battery-pack I wondered if this would work at all on the GPZ 7000. I put eight fully charged Duracell 2400mAh NiMH rechargeables in the battery holder and tried it on my GPZ 7000. Nothing, it would not power up at all. I then tried eight new Energizer alkaline batteries. Still nothing. Finally, I tried eight new Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries http://www.energizer.com/batteries/energizer-ultimate-lithium-batteries and still no go. The GPZ would not even flicker. So we know a CTX 3030 will run off eight alkaline batteries but a GPZ 7000 will not. I was hoping if all it did was run an hour at least that would be something. I suppose the battery wizards here can figure a way to pack smaller higher capacity batteries into the adapter but I am leaving that project to somebody else. The 7.2V 34Wh rechargeable battery pack for use with Minelab CTX 3030 is Product Number 3011-0118. It is compatible with the GPZ 7000 and will provide about four hours of running time. It is available for around $149 at various dealers.

Totally lost me there. What tip are you referring to? I do not see where anyone mentioned the battery in the CTX and GPZ wireless modules, though I guess they are the same. I have not opened mine up to look. There is a post with photo of the inside of the module as well as a tip on how to replace the rubber USB charger cover at Link deleted since Findmall Forum update broke all old links

I have done well in Hawaii with my Garrett ATX as told in my previous story at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/102-garrett-atx-review-beach-detecting-in-hawaii/ Most of the details of where and what I am doing, detector settings, etc. are all covered there so I will not repeat it all here. My wife only had a week off for spring break so I had half the time to work with this go round. Still, I think I did all right. Now that I have my system down less time was wasted figuring things out. I used the Garrett ATX exclusively with the 8" mono coil. Discrimination was 3 and Sensitivity 7-8 with unit ground balanced underwater over basalt rocks. I only worked in the water with mask and snorkel. I work right in the trough at the base of the beach slope a lot in 2'-4' waves and so I use 40 lbs of lead weight to help stay in place. Working overweighted in surf like this can be very dangerous if you do not have a very high comfort level. I have multiple SCUBA certifications up to and including my instructors certificate. Official disclaimer - I do not recommend working like this unless you are trained and know what you are doing. Just swimming trunks with tshirt. I use cheap knee brace pullovers you get in the pharmacy area in a general store as knee pads. Cheap rubber coated work gloves to protect my hands while digging. Surf shoes to protect my feet, and a good mask and snorkel. I hook the velcro strap on the ATX armrest around the handle of a clasp closure mesh goodie bag to hold stuff as I recover it. I bend bobby pins before dropping them in the bag or they slip through the mesh. I hunt with mask and snorkel until I get a target. I look around for surfers and boogie boarders, evaluate the wave situation, and do a breath hold and duck to the bottom. I generally fan the bottom with my hand or excavate by hand to find the target, then stuff it in a goodie back hanging off my ATX armrest. Scoops are just one thing too many for me to handle in the surf and no good on hard surfaces anyway. I focus on the area where the sand is tapering into a hard coral or rock bottom that will catch and hold targets from sinking too deep. My main change of strategy this trip was to not dig everything. The ATX makes a hi-lo tone or a lo-hi tone on targets. Lo-hi is high conductive stuff like copper pennies, dimes, quarters, and large iron junk. Or silver rings or very large mens gold rings. Hi-lo is almost all gold or platinum jewelry, zinc pennies, nickels, aluminum stuff, and small steel stuff like bobby pins and rusted bottle caps. I was getting lots of copper pennies, dimes and quarters plus some large junk the first couple days. Dimes and quarters may sound nice but when recovering them in surf at risk to life and limb they are a definite trash target as far as I am concerned, though I did get a large silver ring also. I decided that gold rings were the main goal and with the short week I had no time to waste, so switched to digging hi-lo tones only. I was happy with the results and would recommend this to anyone using an ATX who for similar reasons what to improve the dig to ring ratio. Be aware though certain high value targets like very large mens rings will be missed. I recovered a couple earrings and that impressed me very much in an underwater scenario. The ATX hits gold about as small as is possible in salt water. There was one well made fake diamond ring in particular that would have been my best ever had it turned out real. I recover them underwater, can't really tell but they sure look good underwater, and do not know until I get back to my room and empty the goodie pouch if I have made a big find. I hope the whole rest of the hunt, only to be let down back at the room. Gold rings on the other hand I know immediately are good finds. I also found a couple more old Sheraton hotel big brass keys to add to my collection. These are rare now at the beach as they are large easy finds, but if the sand scours out one will still turn up now and then. All the quarters, dimes, and copper pennies were recovered in the first two days. After that it was nickels and zinc pennies only and I toss the zincs in the garbage. Unless only a day or two old the salt water rots them away to junk. I had a nice pile of lead fishing weights I donated to the dive shop where I rented my weight belts. There was the usual junk as seen on the other page linked at the start of this post but this year I discarded it daily as I have done enough "here it all is" pictures. All in all given that I had half the time to hunt my finds were on par with the last trip though the beach is depleting out. I considered going to other locations but by the time I drive somewhere else and back that is another hour or more that I could have been in the water. I do not hunt just Poipu beach but the next several beaches in a row so there is a large area I can walk to. There are always newer rings lost but it is the combination of many years of old rings and new rings that make it good, and as the old stuff depletes out then all there is to find is recent drops and the pickings get slimmer. Still, the location is far from worked out. I only saw one other person with a detector, a local I saw last trip, who walks the beach at waters edge at low tide. He seems as concerned with being out for a walk as detecting as he covers ground real fast. I like the ATX ability to easily adjust the rod length on the fly from very long to extra short. I did experience a little sand binding in the rods but took care to work the rods and flush them out before leaving the water each time and everything worked fine. I only charged batteries twice on the trip. The 8" mono with rod assembly is now my dedicated water coil, with the 12" x 10" used above water. The water use is rough on the rod and internal cable assembly and so I figure having a coil and rod just for that keeps the stock coil in better shape for normal use. I came away very happy once again with the Garrett ATX. It suits me very well for my style of water hunting. The four 14K rings weighed in at 21.9 grams total. The silver colored 10K white gold ring with five small diamonds weighed 4.1 grams. The excellent gold smelt calculator at http://coinapps.com/gold/scrap/calculator/ reveals that to add up to 14.47 grams or nearly 1/2 oz of pure gold or about $500 bucks if sent to a smelter. I plan on refinishing and selling the rings in the future instead of having them smelted as I have in the past though so they should bring a bit better value that way. This post was promoted to an article

Typical early season "working the bugs out" stuff. Thanks to a Good Samaritan I did not get left out with a dead truck battery! Backup starter/deep cycle battery with charging station and solar panel now ready to go on future outings. Kind of the same deal with the module. I have been experimenting with different audio and harness options. Decided I do not need the full harness setup - my little Camelback style rucksack and bungee setup suits me fine. So now I will put a pouch on the pack just for holding the WM 12 and that will be the end of that nonsense.

I have considered getting a second one. JP always runs stereo external speakers, one on ear shoulder. To do that you need an audio booster and two external speakers, not a cheap date if you get the good stuff. You can pair multiple WM 12 modules to the GPZ so I have toyed around with just getting another and putting one on each shoulder. Something to think about anyway.

A cautionary tale. Chris Ralph and I were out last week prospecting for new ground. Lots of driving and hiking, not so much detecting, but we each snagged a couple nuggets. Chris with the SDC 2300 and me with the GPZ 7000. The very first location I pulled my GPZ out of the carry bag and looked in the side pocket where I just knew I had put the wireless module, spare battery (from my CTX 3030), and charger. No module! I was sure I had put it in there but maybe fell out? It was not on the ground, I looked in truck a bit, and finally just used my Sun Ray Pro Gold headphones for the trip. Got home, carefully took everything out of truck, looked in every possible bag and container. No good. Must be downstairs with my gear. Over an hour of looking, nothing. Hmmmmm - $250 gone missing, this is starting to worry me! And no replacements available for purchase at this time. I contacted Chris and asked him to look in his stuff that was in truck in case it fell in something he ended up with. I starting formulating sad stories to tell Minelab, pretty easy because this was looking sad. Chris reported he did not have it. Next day I proceeded to use this excuse to clean up my mess downstairs. Finally, after two hours I spied the little bag my Sun Ray headphones had been in and which I had put module in before pulling it all back out and putting in detector bag. And there the module was tucked in a little inner pocket. What a relief. OK, that sure is not going to happen again. I will treat that wireless module like a big gold nugget. Luckily the GPZ can just utilize regular headphones but I really have grown to like not being tethered to the machine. And they sure are not cheap to replace. Keep good track of yours - you have been warned! Free bonus tip, do not forget about the hidden reset button on the WM 12 as shown below. Also, keep the module in clear line of sight with the pod on the GPZ. The signal has a hard time going through the human body so keep the module on your side closest to the hand gripping the GPZ.

I will have my Racer out with me all next week but the ground will not be very hot. Be plenty of trash to work in though! I never did try to work with XP as regards the DEUS. I have too much on my plate already and it is just too far away from what I need in a prospecting VLF anyway.

Like it said, not set up in regular Minelab price lists. Dealers or people at Minelab USA need to inquire farther up the ladder to Minelab Australia.

Hmmm, I have to be logged in on Facebook to see it on my iPad. Works fine on my Android Nexus logged into Facebook or not. The video is from the Depar Detector Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DeparDetector?ref=ts&fref=ts

I have hunted in several locations in Arizona and saw nothing that the FORS should not be able to handle about as well as any mid-frequency VLF. I think the conflicting reports are mostly based on expectations. Anyone expecting the Nokta or Makro detectors to be much different than the pile of mid-frequency VLF detectors already on the market when it comes to prospecting is going to be disappointed. They did not figure out how to make a VLF perform like a PI. They are very good VLF detectors but will struggle in bad ground just like any other hot VLF detector. It is handling ground in Australia well enough https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=11147 and plenty of good reports out of Northern California.

Well, I have the Gold Bug 2 and it is really in a separate category - it is not a multiuse detector. Incredibly hot on tiny gold, but lacking depth on larger nuggets in mineralized ground. But for what it does nothing replaces the Gold Bug 2. I also have a Racer and a FORS Gold and I can't for the life of me say one is better than the other. They are just different. People used to swinging a Minelab might just like the FORS more. The Racer is a more traditional setup. Because of the way they balance I like the Racer when running the small coil and FORS when running the big 17" coil. I am hoping the Gold Racer will be somewhat of a tie breaker, but the problem really is we do not know yet what it will do. You would hate to buy one of the others, then find out the Gold Racer was what you really wanted. I do know this. Last time out with the GPZ I got tired of digging junk at one point and wished I had a VLF along. Next outing the Racer goes just because it is such a great "grab and go" sort of machine. The FORS not so much.