Gold Catcher

Don't forget the espresso machine 

5 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Heck, As a dealer and one who is taking Pre Orders, I am almost embarrassed to post all the new info coming up (with their short 30 second clips) of hardly nothing

I start to wonder if they have serious production issues. That could explain why they are so muted.

And then of course the speculation about the "8000" will also start soon. We will keep ourselves busy I have no doubt.

What a good and productive discussion this has been. Thanks afreakofnature for having started this thread. There are clearly differences in opinions, but I note how much better our discussions have become, void of any personal attacks or nasty comments like we had back in the "X-coil days".  

1 hour ago, Jonathan Porter said:

 On the GPZ there is also a lot of other things going on at the same time when you introduce Audio Smoothing and is why I always use that control on OFF and will be recommending ML on any future models to not include it at all and instead mirror the way the whole concept has been approached on the GPX 6000.

Thanks for your valuable comments, JP, as always! I find your comment regarding the history of the smoothing feature on GPZ interesting (that it is some sort of relict from the past from operators who are afraid of loosing control). When the info about the 6000 started to appear, I wondered why there is no smoothing anymore, now I understand why. I have always advocated to use sensitivity wisely and control ground/target response conservatively via volume and threshold function in Normal, or eventually going to difficult but leaving smoothing off. For me personally, this means that I can go only so high with gain, perhaps to about 10 in Normal and 14 in difficult without loosing my mind after 8 hours detecting, or without compromising to hear faint targets (a more serious matter than just loosing my mind...). At least in the grounds I hunt these gain numbers are about as high as I can go-on good days. But IMHO, this is enough power to hear just every target the GPZ is able to find as long as no filters/processing is applied.

3 hours ago, PhaseTech said:

I cover a few different combos of Audio Smoothing and Threshold in this video. 

Volume Limit I pretty much leave on 8 and never touch it. If I'm in a thick trash area and getting consistent loud blasts, I turn my enhancer down a touch and drop the Volume Limit to 7. 

If Minelab ever did another software update to the GPZ, then my No. 1 wish would be to just bring back the Stabilizer 1-20, and add threshold 26.5, but then I'm just one of those guys who loves analogue pots. The immediacy and fine tuning ability of them. 

Thanks for sharing, Nenad. This is a very nice demonstration. I usually shy away from high smoothing but I agree in your case this was a nice and clear target ID. A good example of how the Zed can operate in high EMI conditions and still be productive. 

23 minutes ago, Gold Hound said:

My philosopy is that since I own a ferrari Im going to drive a ferrari.

I like Ferrari-gold. There might be different ways to get there however...;)

10 minutes ago, afreakofnature said:

I have read them all, believe it or not.  It took a hell of a lot of time and I have read them more than once.  First when they were posted and then again doing all this research to make a complete GPZ manual.  As well as many others posts from this forum too.  It was a huge community effort to put all this out and then to take all that and for me to try to summarize it all up.  I will have most if not all of JP's posts in that PDF manual that I will eventually share.  This has been my winter time goal.  To become "completely" knowledgeable in ZVT and GPZ functions so when spring hits I can begin testing all of this and see what I might have missed because of my prior ignorance.

What a great motivation and attitude. The more you know about your detector the better you will use all available settings to your advantage! I find the GPZ to be an incredible versatile machine. Although each of us have their own to go settings, no settings are universally applicable for all situations. Knowing the underlying principles for each function and how they relate to each other will make you an expert. Alot of gold is waiting for you 🙂 

I suggest to go into JP's posts and read what he has written over the years on this topic. There is such a wealth of information in his posts and I highly recommend to read it. I don't think many questions will remain about GPZ settings after reading through his posts. He is by far the most qualified to speak on this topic. 🙂

40 minutes ago, jasong said:

Normal loves high sensitivities. When the ground thaws, do your own testing on test nuggets rather than taking my word for it. The difference between 18 Sensitivity and 10 Sensitivity is huge. There is no ground, and no part of the USA which I have found any place necessary to run below 12 gain where you can't get better performance by instead running higher Sensitivity and using audio to process the boosted signal isntead. RX Sensitivity is the first thing you want to maximize because if it's too low then your detector will simply miss entirely a lot of deeper nuggets. 

This is a matter of opinion. I prefer to run sensitivity in more conservative ranges but keep all filtering off, whenever possible, and make adjustments to volume/treshold if needed. Works great for me.  An to quote the "man with the ring":

" High Yield Normal has oodles of sensitivity even with sensitivity set to 9. Do not be afraid to lower the Volume right down to 4 or 5." (JP)

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2 hours ago, Magoo said:

Something to try next test lower sensitivity and see if it hears my test target. Cheers

JP has written about the settings extensively and I recommend to look into the previous threads on this topic. Some really good info there. My bottom line, everybody runs the GPZ somewhat differently. The general consensus is (with some few exceptions...) that HY/Normal/ Smoothing off/ semi-auto GB gives the biggest bang for the buck, assuming the ground allows it. Some of the main differences come from how you prefer to ID your target. Some crank the sensitivity all the way up and tolerate a very noisy threshold with alot of ground/EMI signals mixed in, some others (like me) prefer to reduce the gain to make the target stand out clearer, but the response might also be fainter. However, gain up or down does not matter that much in Normal as you will always hear your target, it just depends how you want to hear it. Normal offers alot more tolerance to parameter changes than Difficult which filters out alot. Here, you need to make up for it by increasing gain and volume. HY/difficult/smoothing is very much reducing the power of the GPZ, but seems necessary for many Au soils to ID targets. My starting settings are HY/Normal/smoothing off, GB: semi-auto, gain 6, threshold 25, volume 9. Then I adjust from there. Threshold-volume is incredible sensitive and reducing it from the default 27 to 26 or 25 has already a big impact. At sensitivity 6 I usually also never have the problem to do GB with the ferrite. In contrast, at sensitivity 12 or 13 in mineralized/conductive grounds I often can't get the ferrite quiet during GB.

Cheers

GC

I find the treshold volume and volume controls to be the most imapctful GPZ funtions. Together with low smooting (if needed) you can rescue Normal mode for many difficult grounds. Sensitivity in Normal is somewhat less important. I keep it at around 6-7 and that has plenty power. 

3 hours ago, stampa said:

But, I can not understand why Minelab does not pay the necessary attention with the presentation of new models not to have iron discrimination, thus making the Gpx 5000, which has been around for several years, as the best option we could have.

Very good point you are raising. I think the problem is that high-end gold detectors by nature struggle with discrimination in the high performance mode because both ferrous and mineralized soil produce the same type of signal (called +X). Non-ferrous targets produce -X. This obviously causes a major problem, as the soil signal interferes with target ferrous/non-ferrous measurements, especially because the strength of signal from the soil is often much larger than the target signals (small gold nuggets embedded in large +X producing soil). For large targets or targets very close to the coil this works better, but for typical gold machines that specialize for very subtle changes in X and R signals the discrimination is a challenge. That being said, I totally agree with you that this is a missing feature. Perhaps Bruce Candy will figure this out one day! 

That looks awesome. For how long does it last?

On 2/17/2021 at 8:59 AM, WesD said:

I cant imagine guys just ditching their 2300s  for this new release.

 

For sure not me, for several reasons!

1 minute ago, Skookum said:

That’s an interesting thought. Do you have any experience with comparing the noise canceling buds to stock the over the ear cans?  I’ve found the fit on the stock GPZ and SDC leave a lot to desire. They blunt the wind noise, but not enough for my liking. 

I am not thrilled with the ML headphones and mostly use the Grey Ghost, or Bose if needed. But this is a matter of personal preference. The Grey Ghost have a volume control which is great when used in combination with the SP01 booster. I set the SP01 to a bit higher level and then fine regulate with the volume control of the headset.

Thanks for sharing, Steve. Very interesting. Two things I noticed

11 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

But still investing at very strong levels and have quite a strong pipeline of projects about to come to the market like the GPX 6000

So more to come for sure.

11 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The objective is to try and keep play into some of our competitors with some of the new product releases that we have coming and try and get up towards the 60%, 70% as time goes on over the next couple of years.

He was referring to the consumer products (which presumably is everything else than for pure gold). That suggests more products in the consumer section are about to come soon.

Overall great news. Looking forward for these new products to show up. Fasten your seatbelts... 

46 minutes ago, Skookum said:

he last couple of times I’ve been detecting gusts of wind were up to about 20 mph. Today is forecast for gusts up to 30-40 mph. How does it affect your approach... or attitude?

I always hunt with headphones, so with strong wind I just switch to my noise cancelling Bose earbuds. Otherwise nothing changes much. You definitely want to keep listening to those faint threshold variations. That won't be possible with speakers in these conditions.

8 minutes ago, Jin said:

I think that Steve Hershbach "and his comrades" will discuss this device and will experience "the full program" - this is their "theme".

This is our "theme" indeed!...Right comrades? 😁

And those pictures are mouthwatering! Thanks for sharing.👍

Fantastic write up, Gerry! 100% agreed on everything you write. Also, a reminder for desert operators who mostly look for brutal force and depth that many terrains here require a different approach and equipment, mostly enabled with some sort of discrimination. This is a must have in super trashy old gold mining areas to be productive, and currently no high end gold machine is fitting that need!

PS: A high end gold machine (PI or ZVT) with advanced iron probability meter, kind of a supercharged and more sophisticated version of what the GM has, would make a nice next gen. flagship detector, and worth likely >$12k. Of course, the ultimate (and perhaps pipe dream) would be to discriminate for lead as well. I wonder if this would be possible in my life time.

Now, it will be interesting to look ahead from here. The next ML flagship machine needs to be substantially better than both the 7000 and the 6000. Tall order? 

Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing Steve. I noticed the gold monster and SDC are still shown in the fleet. So apperantly no change there as of now.

2 minutes ago, Lunk said:

One more thing: Debbie said that Doc's Detecting is already busy designing the protective covers for the GPX 6000. TIA Doc, you rock!

Doc, put me on the pre-order list! 😁