Steve Herschbach

The first time I put my new GPZ battery in the charger nothing happened. I actually was using my CTX charger which I know to be good. I unseated battery, reseated a couple times, nothing, so just left it be a few minutes, and it finally started charging. Am not sure what was up with that, it was like battery completely dead but that would be odd. Seems to be fine now, it ran detector just fine. May be a contacts issue with battery or detector or both. My guess is Minelab wants the entire thing back to 100% get to the bottom of it. It is early in the game and I bet they are being extra careful regarding new out of box issues like this. Sorry to hear about the delay Fred.

The WM10 is $275 Australian and $249 U.S. and my guess is WM12 is the same?

Looks like some of my table top shots - good going. Nothing for it but to keep digging targets. Main thing is go where the tourists congregate in the water. I toss the zincs, the rest I usually just wash under water enough to get attached sand off. At that point a Coinstar machine will accept them. The zincs are usually too corroded and not worth the effort.

Good going - and Happy Birthday Rick!

Almost no US dealers can ship out of country because of distribution limitations.

No DDancer, I totally get and respect where you are coming from. Just tossing my own commentary into the mix. I tend to be posting to a wider audience so was not posting to you specifically. I just do not want some thing taking life beyond what is warranted. Thanks JP for elaborating.

I think too much is being made of the idea that something is not right with the GPX until time has passed. I doubt there is much difference between me doing a cold start, Quick Track, and testing a target, versus standing in place waving the coil over the ground for twenty minutes, and testing the same target. The benefit of time would be in wandering around on variable ground and getting a cumulative ground balance. Staying in place or wandering homogenous ground would see less benefit. Next thing people will be afraid to turn their detectors off and trying to invent aftermarket systems that charge the battery while running to keep it on for weeks at a time.

As long as you stick with well known name brands they all work. You just have to sort out which detector comes close to having the features you want in your desired price range. Good luck!

Hi Rob, good to see you here, thanks for posting. Nice nugget!

Excellent! I have used the scrape and detect method a lot over the years with hot VLF detectors, and now the SDC 2300. You do not need more depth - just get the gold closer to the coil! I did an article on it recently at http://www.minelab.com/usa/treasure-talk/scrape-and-detect-with-the-sdc-2300

I was initially excited by the idea that the GPZ 7000 might be able to use the same wireless module as the Minelab CTX 3030. I own a CTX also, and I figured it would be great for a backup, or to run dual modules, one on each shoulder. Unfortunately, I was told there was an interference issue, and so the CTX WM10 module is running on a different frequency than the GPZ WM12 module. I have not given mine a try, but the theory is they should not work. Bummer.

Chinavasion "Nugget" specifications https://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Electronic_Gadgets/Cool_Gadgets/Metal_Detector_Nugget_-_9.5_Inch_Detection_Plate_Water_Resistant_Metal_Type_Recognition_Hard_Carrying_Case/

I would cancel the order immediately. If this is a 9.6 kHz detector with a 9.5" coil and they are quoting depth to 3.5 meters than I do not trust the company. That is a pretty outrageous claim. Detectors like that find coin size targets down to a foot at the very most and larger items at 2-3 feet at most. Better to be safe and do more research - you can always reorder later. What are you going to use the detector for? Frequency is a basic factor in determining the performance of a VLF metal detector. Under 10 kHz are normally coin detectors. 10 - 19 kHz are "do-it-all" detectors. Over 20 kHz are dedicated gold nugget detectors. Multi-frequency units are good for most anything except prospecting. They are the best choice for salt water. These are generalities only, not carved in stone. Gold nuggets have been found with multi-frequency detectors and coins with 50 kHz prospecting machines. Some metal detector reviews can be found at http://www.detectorprospector.com/gold-prospecting-guides/steve-guide-gold-nugget-detectors.htm

Well people can just go right on testing the GPZ vs GPX and trying to prove whether the GPZ is any better or not. Frankly, I have moved on in that regard. As JP says at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/748-the-subject-of-the-gpz-7000/ "The GPZ 7000 is what it is, you can either believe or not believe. I believe!!!"

I used Grey Ghosts for over 10 years, switched to SunRay Pro Gold. Basically same headphone but leather ear muffs instead of vinyl, less slick when sweaty.

No, but I am going to buy or make a magnetic rake to remove surface trash.

I was wondering about that - thanks Rick! Probably not so hot on the tiniest surface ferrous trash either.

Scott posted on another thread but I gave this its own. No real details in the video about the nugget. Yeah, I know, a GPX would have found it! Short and sweet though and good audio example of large nugget response.

This will be sort of the "Holy Grail" of the GPZ 7000 that will be pored over, picked apart, and interpreted for quite some time. There is a lot said that answers many questions and raises others.

The names are not very good. As good as can be is a couple words maybe but too much left unsaid. Very Deep does not really appear to be very deep. More like "as deep as possible in really bad ground". It is instructive that Very Deep is the best setting for salt ground. This means it has a relatively long time constant, which in turn simply means it is less sensitive to all but the largest nuggets. Still learning myself though. Is it better to run High Yield at moderate Sensitivity, or General with max Sensitivity? Better to run Smoothing off at lower Sensitivity, or Smoothing on at high Sensitivity?

Here it is folks. Loaded with tuning tips! http://www.minelab.com/__files/f/254716/KBA%2024-1%20Basics%20of%20the%20GPZ%207000%20Technology%20Zero%20Voltage%20Transmission%20(ZVT).pdf "A significant technical achievement of GPZ 7000 ZVT technology was in creating the ultra‐stable transmitted magnetic field during the receive period, to ensure that the large reactive component of the soil signal, X, is not detected, in the same way that it is not detected in PI." Figure 2 shows a comparison between the ZVT VRM soil signal and the nearest equivalent PI soil VRM signal; both transmitted magnetic signals being bi‐polar, with the same fundamental frequency and same rapid change of magnetic field period. It should be noted that the PI receive period is half that of the ZVT period, because the PI system shown in figure 2 transmits for half the time and receives for the other half of the time, unlike ZVT that transmits and receives simultaneously just about all of the time. The important difference in the VRM signals is that the PI signal decays away substantially faster than the ZVT system. This indicates that the receive signal for PI is less sensitive to longer Time Constant (TC) components compared to shorter TC targets than ZVT, and this is one of the main reasons why ZVT technology is better at detecting large nuggets compared to PI; another main reason being from the double length receive period in ZVT compared to PI for the same fundamental frequency.

I agree Russ, I would run General/Normal or General/Difficult if hunting an old patch looking for missed bigger, deeper nuggets. For most regular detecting High Yield is still likely to nail the big nuggets while doing much better on our more common smaller nuggets. In other words, people should not be afraid of missing larger gold when in High Yield. As strick notes sometimes you just have to use Difficult Ground. That is what it is for.

This shows that a GPZ 7000 can be made to work on a salt water beach, at least enough for a video. It was not mentioned in the video but the TDI used for comparison was probably run with ground balance off. The TDI is a formidable beach detector in straight up non-ground balance mode.

Tom, the easiest thing is to get geologic maps or geologic reports for the area in question.

The settings are not small nugget, medium nugget, big nugget. Ignore that aspect of the icons. From JPs Treasure Talk blog at http://www.minelab.com/usa/treasure-talk/introducing-the-gpz-7000 "GPZ 7000 Search Modes = Similar GPX 5000 Timings High Yield/Difficult = Fine gold General/Difficult = Enhance High Yield/Normal = Sens Extra General/Normal = Sharp/Normal" However, the GPZ IS NOT A PI and so these are only approximations, guidelines to help you on your way. My recommendation so far for the U.S. is always use High Yield. Use Normal Ground if you can, Difficult Ground only if you have to, and leave Smoothing Off. Sensitivity as high as is stable. I always use the ground tracking system. I only use the Quick Track button when hitting a totally new area, otherwise I have just been letting the automatic tracking build a good set of data points to work with for any given area and leave it alone. When I turn the machine off I just turn it back on and get to work, and my unit has been happy and stable doing that. I do not do another Quick Track just because the unit was turned off and back on unless I have moved to a different ground type condition. If the machine ever gets weird, just do a factory reset and start over fresh. That said, there IS NO MAGIC SETTING for all locations. If there were, the settings would not be needed or included. The GPZ would just have a power switch. Severe ground such as found in Australia calls for settings more designed for taming the ground than what we have in the U.S.