Gold Catcher

Spot on. With all the greatness of the 6000 this is a severe limitation. That's why my 7000 is always in my truck (also since I don't own an Axiom...). 🙂 GC

We are dealing with the same type of hot rocks (mostly volcanic). Here is a flavor of what I am talking about. Literally every rock screams like a beer can. There is alot of gold in this ground. But good luck getting it. These rocks go all the way deep. If the old gpx with the Xcoils can work here and outperform the gpz in general/difficult, I am in! BTW, despite all that I have recovered small nuggets that were stuck to these hot rocks with the GPZ. Just to show the power of the GPZ timings. The 6000 is totally useless here, doesn't matter the configuration.

The gpz/Zsearch in general/difficult is the only remedy for me when it comes to hot rocks. It is not perfect, but better than all I have tried. The difficult timings of the 6000 don't do anything for the hot rocks that I encounter. Difficult only seems to help somewhat for mineralization, but not anywhere close to the difficult timings of the gpz. Curious to know if the cc xcoils would make an improvement with the older gpx series. I would be willing to buy any detector with any coil configuration if it would outperform the gpz on hotrocks, without loosing much sensitivity. GC

The only "discrimination" I do with a PI (or ZVT) is the boot scratch method. If the target is gone after a boot scrape (or a quick surface scrape with my Hermit pick) I won't go after it. Have I missed a sunbaker or super shallow gold that way, perhaps. But I have saved myself recovering a ton of trash for sure. Other than that, I dig it all (unless I use a VLF). GC

Yes, at 7 or 8 I see that as the Auto wants to dial up. But what I was meaning was that switching from manual 9 or 10 to Auto would not make things better, and the threshold would even get more erratic at times. GC

Thanks, JP. I usually use max/manual but don't shy back reducing gain and enjoy the smoother threshold if I know the gold is shallow. I have tried Auto as my first line of defense when manual/max get's too unstable, but found that reducing gain is often the better option. Good to know that in auto the gain can be increased, even though the gain was already at max or close to max in manual. I wonder though why the Auto algorithm would not notice that the gain is already too high (probably the main reason for instability if everything else is optimized as good as possible) and reduce, rather than dialing up. But for sure, a lot is going on under the hood and thanks for your detailed explanation. Love my NF 12x7, hardly ever change it. Same for my Zsearch 12. 😁 GC

I mostly use manual (threshold always on). Auto appears less stable for me most of the times. Re manual, don't be afraid of reducing gain if needed. It will remain very sensitive with only a marginal loss at depth. I like 7 or 8 in Normal. It then will get nice and smooth, so nice for a change. And I never had a single case where I heard a signal at 10 but not at 7 or 8. 🙂 GC

Thanks for the insights JP, and welcome back. Please don't make it another year....😁 GC

I got my HipSticks from Rob 3 years ago. The designer is Chris Porter. Mine came from "detectoraid" in NV (I believe). I don't think they distribute them anymore. Rob would know. Yes, the HipStick can be a bit in your way, but boy does it work well (I wear suspenders with belt). Finally, no need for a harness anymore in 100 deg heat. Use it religiously with GPZ and SDC. GC

Fantastic finds, Gerry. Congrats! People always say RP is (mostly) dead. You prove it wrong every time. If you put your heart and soul into it, RP always rewards you. Also good to see the good old 7000 producing. Still my favorite machine and without a doubt the best detector ever made, when performance is the metric. GC

I don't own the NF17 but read/heard owners praising it for its depth. I would imagine that size is not the only thing that matters when it comes to depth performance, but would love to hear from someone who is actually using both coils. GC

Awesome job ,Lunk! Any reason why you chose the 19 ML beast over the 17 NF? I would think the NF would be at least as good as the 19 depth wise despite slightly smaller size. I only hunted a few times in extra deep, mostly becasue I use the 12 NF as my default coil. For that size General covers most of the depth I need. GC

I enjoy the swinging and hiking. Also, this sort of heavy machinery would only work in open terrain and with large coarse gold deposits. Not many places in the Sierras, nor in any mountain terrain for that matter, that I can think of where this would be of any use, not even for the "professionals"...Australia perhaps. But even if this would work one day, if I then just had to press a button to find gold I might loose interest in prosepcting 🤠

The reason why they dropped the Zsearch could just be lack of capacity. The Xceeds are in huge demand and they might just focus on those to ramp up production. They are after all not a mass producer. GC

Weired though that they removed it from their website. This has been a very popular coil and most of the other gpz owners I know have one too. GC