Steve Herschbach

Good question. So far the smallest nugget (flake) I have actually found in the field with the GPZ weighs 1.7 grains (0.11 grams). If the SDC will not pick it up your gold I doubt the GPZ will. In my opinion the SDC has the edge over the GPZ on the tiniest stuff. The stuff I was finding was stuff the GMT missed specifically because it was big enough to signal on either the GPZ or GMT but too deep for the GMT to find.

I am over it and not going to bring it up anymore. I apologize for detracting from Russ' thread.

I have not been doing that myself Chris so will try and see if it makes any difference. Once set up if I shut the machine off I just turn it back on and go. Been fine as far as I could tell but without trying I guess I could not know.

Same as you a mix. GPX 5000 or various VLF. White's MXT and Fisher F75 were a couple favorites. Been giving the Nokta FORS Gold a go lately. See http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/605-steves-2013-alaska-gold-adventure/ Lots of tailing tales at http://www.detectorprospector.com/steves-mining-journal/steves-mining-journal.htm Anything marked Ganes Creek or Moore Creek is tailings. Kind of my specialty.

Guess I need to watch the video!

Most of the gold was gold found with the GPZ that I missed with the GPX and GMT. I wanted to try air tests with the GPX at max settings to see if it could detect the gold at all. Most of the smaller specimens are invisible to the GPX. Story of original in ground location of gold with GPZ http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/742-my-eureka-moment-the-rest-of-the-story/

Howdy JP, I posted to argyle first than saw your post. One of my dogs got me up for a late night walk so here I am. Yes, I am finding the GPZ to be more subtle than I thought. I am also starting to think it may favor us more in the US than I initially believed. I am very excited to have my prospecting season kick into full gear soon!

100 hours may be bs for you Argyle but I feel differently. I have had poor impressions of several machines initially that eventually turned out to be the reverse of what I thought given more time. I was not impressed at all with the GPZ on the first go but am becoming more so each time I use it. It certainly is not a machine for everyone though. We all need to use what works best for us individually. What is your favored machine these days?

You ever run for office you have my vote. I mean that as a compliment!

Well, I have to admit I quit using the Pro-Swing harness. Two years ago at the Minelab conference in Vegas I got a free Minelab branded Camelback type rucksack. I did not use it until last summer, when I decided to use it with my ATX. I used the bungee and strap off the Pro-Swing but just clipped it to a loop on the shoulder of the harness. It worked great, I had water to sip on, and a place for my camera, first aid kit, etc. Now using it with the GPZ and works great. I do not seem to have shoulder or back issues that require hip stick or Pro-Swing setups that shift weight to the waist. I just need to get it off my arm. The backpack is just handier to grab and makes sure I have the stuff I need with my without having to resort to a separate backpack. The backpack is not the one Minelab currently sells which does not have the Camelback water bag like the one I have. May have been special for conference attendees.

16 years. The story at this link was written in 2002. https://www.detectorprospector.com/magazine/steves-mining-journal/first-gold-nugget-with-a-metal-detector/

Hi Mike, Seriously, I only just got it and used it a bit. It finds the nails in the hole that should have been big gold nuggets real well.

Absolutely great post Barry! Thank you!! I think I am one of those people who are overly worried about this stuff based on more on hearsay than direct evidence. My experience with government types has been overwhelmingly positive. I guess horror stories about federal overreach down here are like bear stories in Alaska. Really scary but not really all that common either.

My old gold mine at Moore Creek, Alaska produced many pounds of specimen gold with GPX detectors so I know they do the trick. The area the gold Chris and I have was hunted earlier with SD and GP models and way more gold was found with those machines than we found later with the GPZ. What was left was the gold the GPX did not do well on. In other words, the specimens we have were already missed by multiple Minelab operators and so are exactly what a GPX would miss. The scary thing is you would never know they existed until a SDC or GPZ came along. As Tom Dankowski constantly points out, how do you know what you are missing if the detector you have can't find it? I would love to put a GPZ over the ground at Moore Creek.

Nobody is saying a GPX can't find specimen gold. The idea is not to trash the GPX but to offer clues on how best to score with the GPZ. There has been a ton of specimen gold found with the GPX. Just that the GPZ will do even better. Very nice specimens whether GPX or GPZ - thanks for showing!

Just posted to YouTube, 1 hour 22 minutes video shot by independent operators (no Minelab ties) in Australia. I am speaking at the local club meeting in an hour so am just going to post this without viewing and run. You guys have to watch and offer your thoughts for me when I get back in three hours!

Please do not take this as definitive but I think the GPZ has the same issues with higher grade magnetite rocks that the GPX units do, including high magnetite content basalt. Maybe even more so because I get the feeling the GPZ cannot be dumbed down as much as the GPX to compensate for said rocks. But I still have lots to learn with the GPZ so jury is out for me on that question.

The GPZ combines the hots of a good VLF with the depth of a PI. If I was not seeing it for myself I would have said it was not possible to like up targets like that without also lighting up the ground. I still want to learn more about how the GPZ is working its magic. I can understand however why the unit may have issues with salt ground. It is lighting up salt range gold targets. I need to try it on fine gold chains, ear rings, and other micro jewelry.

The more I use it the more impressed I am with the 14" x 13" coil and its across the board performance. Minelab did a good job in that regard. It does however make some real complex warbly sounds on small nuggets up close. I am having a tough time pinpointing those little ones and digging holes far too big for the nugget size but I will figure it out eventually. Basically I just need to pay attention and try harder! But another reason a smaller coil would help me chasing dinks - easier pinpointing. Lots of good suggestions here. Kind of belabors the obvious that both a larger and a smaller coil are desired. It will be interesting to see what sizes are eventually brought to market. These coils are incredibly complex though so I guess I had better be patient.

Wow, that's awesome Paul. Good man!

The SDC sees this kind of gold well, but is limited by its small hard wired coil size in the maximum depths it can attain. My ATX does see this gold better than the GPX but not as good as the SDC or GPZ.

Place a metal item on the ground. Wave the coil over the item. Adjust the tone setting for tone your ear likes best when signal is weak. I am blind without my glasses and can't hear without my hearing aids. All I need now is a set of false teeth!

You are talking laws Barry. I am talking what gets people in trouble with law enforcement in the field. They interpret and you pay the price right or wrong. Anyway, no doubt you are correct on the legalities. I will stick with my assumptions, and I assume this is one area where people can get in serious trouble. This is one of those areas where discretion is the better part of valor - in my opinion.

Much has been made of the Minelab GPZ 7000 ads and the depth comparison claims. People of course see what they want to see and an amazing number of people seem fixated on 40% while forgetting the "up to" part of the claim. The is a huge difference between a detector going 40% deeper than another detector and "up to 40%" deeper. If I say "there are people in Los Angeles that are up to 7 feet tall" how many 7 foot people do there need to be in LA for that statement to be true? That's right, just one. Similarly, for Minelab to claim that the GPZ can go up to 40% deeper than the GPX 5000 they only have to prove one instance for which that is true. I warned people at the Minelab dealer convention that the 40% thing was going to cause problems with people wanting to believe 40% across the board versus what is actually being said. I also said that I personally believed from my own experience that a larger number, like 100% or 200% was just as valid in the context of "up to". Doc was at the convention and picked up on what I said, and it made it into a short lived post on Rob's forum. Still, seeing it again yesterday was a shocker in that this time we were using a GPX 5000 with 11" mono on Sensitive Extra with Gain cranked to 20, and it still could not see my specimen when rolled on the coil right over the edge next to the coil windings. Yet I had banged this specie out fast and sloppy with the GPZ with no trouble at all. We compared using the GPZ in Difficult and the GPX cranked to the max just to make the comparison conservative and still it blew the GPX away. Forget percentages, it is the difference between finding and not finding. I had wanted to do the test because I had used a GPX 5000 with 14" x 9" Nugget Finder mono in Sharp mode, Gain 16 when I had originally hunted the ground and found nothing, only to find gold later with the SDC and GPZ. I wondered if Sensitive Extra would have made any difference. It just was hard to believe the GPX could not find this stuff. Chris and I debated whether to post about this at all. I almost did last night and then decided not to. You can lead a horse to water...... go and look again if you have not already at the second half of my first official post on the GPZ. I made the post knowing I would be able to point at it for years and say "told you so!" Here is the 2.7 gram specimen that is invisible to a GPX 5000 with 11" mono on Sensitive Extra and Gain 20. Detectable above the ground at 6-7" with GPZ 7000 in Difficult ground setting, High Yield, Sensitivity 12. UPDATE: gold was found as described in this new thread http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/742-my-eureka-moment-the-rest-of-the-story/ I have a few days hunting in a few different locations now with the GPZ since selling my GPX and not for one second have I regretted the decision. If anything I like the GPZ better each time I use it. It is less a machine I instantly like than one I learn to appreciate over time.

Then there is metal detecting in tailing piles. I made a trip to Ganes Creek, Alaska with three other people and we spent three days. The tailing piles have been mined several times and mixed up multiple ways. Gold, gravel, and trash is randomly mixed and scattered. We would all walk up to a huge pile of tailings material. We would randomly choose sections to detect. I would walk right into my section and bang a one ounce nugget. We would then all furiously hunt some more but little or no gold would be found. We would move to another pile. Same scenario would repeat. By the middle of the second day I was actually apologizing. It was just too weird. I wanted my friends to find gold also, but I seemed to have a near corner on that activity for the weekend. But at the end of three days I had over a pound of gold, the other three had a couple ounces among them. Now, I like to think I know what I am doing, that I have skill and knowledge, and that I work hard at what I do. But there is no doubt in my mind that weekend I was just plain lucky.