afreakofnature

Nice Chunk!!!   Awesome find Lunk, that makes going back to the grind a little easier 😂😂

 I started running extra deep for my last swings through a patch. I started doing that after reading what JP was telling us earlier about it. This winter with all my research on the GPZ it has immensely helped in the beginning of this year.  Usually I start out similar to what Lunk‘s original settings were (he was my teacher afterall), after I pick up all the garbage and easy gold, I like to go back through using Steve’s Mega Hot settings (which so far has pulled out targets I missed), then go back with extra deep (nothing yet).  Just like new detectors and coils, new settings open up old patches again too!

7 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Good chance Jason and I may hook up before then so Jason can use my 6000 and compare to his gear. So if nobody answers, wait a month instead of eight. 

The GPX 6000 can hit sub grammers as good or better than a stock 7000. But I guess you need to see it with your eyes. Sure, you can put a Nugget Finder or X Coil on your GPZ to get it up to 6000 performance. If that's the question, then getting the Nugget Finder or X coil is the way to get there.

Nice I will look forward to a month ( or 8). 😁

Yeah i like to see, feel, touch, research, over research, and then have a massive internal debate with myself before making the plunge.  I am definitely Thomas who must feel the holes before making the leap of faith. 😂  So I really do appreciate all the input from you guys!

I am starting this thread to ask the folks who have used both to give their thoughts, opinions, comparisons and experiences with both.  I have only seen JP and Rob post on the Nugget Finder coil and have only seen it in action on the Outback Gold Fever Channel.  We all know that the 6000 blows away any competition with weight and ergonomics, but would still like to know if it gets any closer to this with Z and the 12”. 
 

Performance wise is really what I am after and these two sizes are only an inch apart, but 2 different techs.  I am on the fence, do I buy a new coil for my Z or sell/save for a 6000?  I am truly in the middle on this based on my terrain, age and gold I am after.  
My terrain: is the woods and broad gulches.  There is always overburden and vegetation so I need the power to bust through that to get to the start of the bedrock erosional surface and hopefully close bedrock.  However, wearing a harness does not work and is cumbersome for detecting in this environment, its never flat so you never feel the help from a bungy, its pointless for this area.  
My age: is 45 and I can go about 5-6 hours max before being whipped, thats not just from detecting but digging and hiking in and out too, so I know as age goes on the hours will be less but new tech could come out too.  
My gold: is sub grammers, that is the majority.  We have hit larger pieces but the bread and butter is sub grammers and the Z is getting them through all that overburden but I am not sure if the GPX6000 would.

So my “dream” detector would be ZVT tech in a compactable SDC form with interchangable coils, light and ergonomic.  Is that to hard to ask? 😂😂😂😂

So, in the interim, it’s either a lighter coil for the GPZ that supposedly is more sensitive and can get a little deeper and reduce the weight for non bungy users OR a new detector that is lighter, that is also more sensitive at least on surface gold, that we have seen so far, but has the possibility as more reviews come out to see if you can actually hit small gold at depth like a GPZ.  Can’t have both, the coil I could afford, The GPX would require selling off the Z.  I also don’t have the ability to drive to the closest dealer that would have both in AZ.  Thats a two day drive one way.  So please, if you may, would love feedback on this vs the two.  In the end it sure helps me out and probably many others too.  Thanks!

Norm -  My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family.  Keep on truckin my forum friend.  Even though you might not get to post finds anymore, please keep on posting your thoughts, knowledge and experience.  That alone is still a great asset and much better than gold pics!  Still wishing for the best for you Norm!

Nice dinks Lunk!  The title of your thread made me think of that song “afternoon delight”. I think you should change the title to “afternoon dinklight” 🤣🤣🤣

I love.......gold 😁

So probably should have been called the SDCGMGPX6000. 😂😂

Maybe the GP stands for gold prospecting.  And the X for extreme.

24 minutes ago, AussieMatt said:

The SD series was the Super Detector so:

SDC = Super Detector Compact?

I originally thought that the GPX6000 should have a prefix change too as a new series & look but it is still just a technology advance on the GPX5000 + PI technology.

As a GPX it's probably more still in the right bracket of the Minelab range for marketing & standard technology base.

Yes SD was super detector and SDC was super detector compact, at least from my basic research.  I always assumed the SDC was an SD in a compact form.  I am not sure what the GP stands for on the old ones or the added X.  I assume the Z in GPZ is for Zero Voltage Transmission.  I don’t think they were named based on there looks otherwise the GPZ should have been named the CTZ since it looks just like the CTX3030.  The prices though can not be coincidental with the name in US dollars but sure is interesting that the Equinox models, Vanquish models and now thhe GPX6000 are pretty much spot on. 😂

I’m not trying to put it down or anything but that’s a pretty big piece so not surprising 🤷‍♂️.  I found the head of a shotgun shell with an SDC 2300 at 18 inches and a 1/4 ozT nugget at 14”. So I don’t really find that super impressive. I’m really looking forward to the i found a 2 1/2 g nugget 24 inches deep.  Maybe I’m wrong 🤷‍♂️.  But either way impressive nugget and nice depth.

Do you think that the GPX6000 should have been classified as a GPX?  Steve mentions in his review that it was "like" the SDC he always wanted.  So maybe this should have been called the SD6000 (gotta keep the price in the name 🤣)  Or maybe this should be the GS6000 for Geo Sense, a new line of detectors.  I do not know the the history of the SD vs GP vs GPX in technology but I think Minelab might have gotten a better response if they named it different and showed it off as a "different new" detector vs an upgrade in the GPX lineup.  Unless of course it really does belong in the GPX line up.  I have never used a GPX so I am just guessing here, I started detecting when the SDC came out, my first detector.  Would love to hear some philosophical technical input here.

Damn Jason!  This is definitely above my pay grade.  I will wait for the reviews 🤣🤣🤣

Also learn how to research and where to find gold.  That is probably even more important than learning your detector because if you don’t put the coil over the gold you will find nothing.

Harty har har.  It was 3 inches or well it was out of GB2 detection depth. 😁😁

Get training!

Yup like this

But I am still curoius about the big boys being on par with each other like stated above Nugget Finder 12” on GPZ vs 11” Mono on GPX (minus weight and ergonomics, although thoughts and experience on weight would be nice too).

10” coil?  You were you were using something much smaller than a 10 inch coil 😂😂😂.  Why you jacking my thread 😂😂😂😂.   Yes you found much more than I did that day but not as deep 😁😁.  Pretty sure I found this right next to one of your holes. 😁😁😁

JP -  would it be possible to do a performance comparison between the Nugget Finder 12” coil on the GPZ and the 11” on the GPX? I think they would be pretty close coils to compare the two.  We already know that the GPX beats the GPZ for ergonomics and weight, but the new Nugget Finder from your review and from watching Outback Prospecting seem to be much more sensitive for smaller gold at and depth.  But what I am not sure about is how it might handle the different soil types versus the two.  Just was curious on your thoughts and what you might have found out comparing the two. And if you also wanna compare the weights that would be all right too 😂😂.  I have to go by what people write on here because there is not a dealer anywhere near me that has any of these. The closest for me is Arizona which is a good day and a half drive, and I cannot afford at the moment to take four days off from work just to test a coil 😂😂.

Had to hike in last weekend to get the tiniest piece I have ever detected.  Packed up the SDC and off we went!  Atleast it was not a skunk day but dang, if you like small gold the SDC can hit it at 3” with an obvious signal.  Took me longer to get it in the scoop than dig it out of the hole 😂.  Also added to my square nail collection 😂.
Dinks!  Its what the world is made of 😂😂.

Awesome Steve can't wait to hear your thoughts on the machine!!  So they really did customize it for you! 😁

Trolls are few that ruin for the many.  Just remember there are the many that are not.  A troll is called a troll for a reason and live under the bridge for the same reason.  Forums need a "block caller" button for members, then people a user don't like would never have to see there degrading posts, then they may wonder why they never get a response. 🤣

Its sucks too because we sometimes have critical responses that we want to know opinions on but the trolls set off people and then those folks get thrown under the bus too.  I have learned to ignore, I had a blow up once on a Pickleball chat, it pissed me off, but after the blow up I was still no where closer than I was after reading the trolls post.  Blah. Little people behind a big keyboard.

Ah Steve just report now 🤣.  If these are your final detectors what are they gonna do to ya, take it away? 🤣🤣 

Well this is good to know

15 minutes ago, jasong said:

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 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. 

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.

Please keep in mind that I do not know if the hack will work with a Mavic 2. I just know that it will work for the Mavic original.  

16 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

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 where are you? 

After seeing the latest test vid in the other thread my big question now is.........Why?  It was hitting a 1/2 ozt at 18" in EMI in Difficult and Sensitivity at 4.  I would think with the 17" coil you could hit a pounder at 3 feet 🤣

I am also impressed!  Like Jason was saying these are the vids I wanted to see too.  I would like one though with the same weight at different depths, large and small.  I can see why though they added no threshold as a setting.  The threshold sounds just like an SDC, never silky smooth.  So SDC owners will be used to that and used to how very faint targets sound.  One thing is clear though, this this is so sensitive I could see people not digging targets that overload like that thinking its garbage because the old machines it would sound like garbage.  So for those who do not dig all, be prepared to now dig all 😁