schoolofhardNox

I figured I'd start a post on my impressions of the 6000 as I learn how to apply it to limited relic hunting and beach hunting. I've put it here so I don't bore the prospector guys with coin/ relic hunting pictures 😄 Their pictures are much better than mine will ever be. So, today I paired the headphones. Took me a bit, but I have never been one to pair things quickly. Tried both the 11" mono and 14" DD coil in my back yard. Mono was noisy as expected in an area with a lot of close houses. Noise cancel did help but not for long. 14DD took care of most EMI, especially if you back down sensitivity a couple of notches. I tried burying a Mercury dime at 10" and the 14DD hit it just barely. A signal I could easily miss. I was running manual full sensitivity. Not bad for a freshly buried coin with fairly heavy EMI. I bought it for the beach, so I'm expecting more depth there. I did not try the mono on the dime. I did notice it hits every small wire from all the fences that were in the yard over the years. Headphones feel nice but sound a bit muddy to me. I'll need more time with them to see if I can get used to them. I like a little crisper defined tone and don't like muddy bottom end frequencies.Tomorrow I'm at the Native village. This is the first test for the 6000 for what I bought it for. If there are any minute scraps of brass there it should find them. The 5000 was able to only find a couple of 2x3mm brass beads, probably due to just getting the coil directly over them at the correct speed and them being shallow @2in. There should be more there. My reservations for the machine are still the same, lack of control of settings is my primary worry. In the fall will be the second reason for the 6000, deep coin hunting at the beach in EMI. I probably will never use this in a park or cellar hole. It loves iron. I'm still trying to figure out the tipping point where the signal changes from high to low - to low to high. On the 5000 it's around the zinc penny range. Getting excited to spend around 5-6 hours at the Village. Pictures to follow. Wish me luck 😄......😶

Great couple of hunts. Love the green wheats, reminds me of when I was younger digging in my local parks.... That when they still had coins 😄 Nowadays there is so much trash you can't even move your coil. We have small parks here. I don't think I've ever seen a clipped W/L. Beauty of a ring too. Looks like some fun hunting!

Beauty of a ring! I do the same, keep walking once you get a certain line. Walk until it peters out, then back track if the tides allow it. Great find!!

It's Monday and the replacement machine has arrived!!! Put it together, turned it on and bingo it started 😄 Can't wait to test it in an area that I have hunted regularly with the 5000. I still get things occasionally but there are some sections that I hammered hard. If I even get one keeper from that area I will be extremely impressed. Now I have to do some reading and have a couple plans of attack in case I get nothing.

I think they pick the best size choices this time around. A DD coil will probably not be very popular for nugget hunting, but for me it is the size I would want if I could only get one DD coil. As for the mono coils, the 11" still has enough meat on it to get decent depth while being very maneuverable. The 17" is large enough to punch deep but at it's limit for size as far as I would want. If the price is decent I will get the 17" coil when they get here just for deep coin hunting...... but not until they get the second batteries here.

Just speculation on my part, but I'm hoping the 6000 running in manual with the 14"DD coil set to EMI, will work in the salt too. The 5000 never has issues with salt on my beaches, so I'm hoping there is a little bit of the 5000 left in the 6000 as far as salt handling capabilities goes. Otherwise I'll set it to salt and deal with any EMI. I'm used to EMI anyways with the 5000 🙄

I should have a new machine this Monday. I will test it out on Thursday if there is no rain in the forecast. Out west is in severe drought and here it's been raining a lot more than usual. I know the 6000 is a gold machine and that is what the focus has been on (for good reason), but I'm going relic hunting and in the fall, beach hunting. So a different perspective on the machines capabilities. I'm dying to see how it compares to the 5000 for EMI and fringe depth on coins at the beach.

I've only had a chance to deal with 2 dealers on this forum and both have been excellent. One of the reasons I like this place is the honesty of the people and dealers. I hope to have contact with the other ones as well in the future. A replacement unit has already been shipped and I should have it on Monday. The defective unit will be on it's way back to the dealer. I just hope that everyone understands that Minelab has changed our relations with our dealers, as they have little to no control in knowing when or how many units they may receive, when we are trying and get our hands on the newest Minelab machines. So our dealers usually get the brunt of the complaints and pressure to get us a unit. I just try to remember that timelines and distribution patterns are not their fault and in my case, it's not their fault that the unit did not function either. So as sad as I was about not being able to hunt that day, I have to admit that Bryan at Alaska Mining and Diving has been on this instantly and consistently since initial contact. A special thanks to him for that.

Charged it full and I think it read 8.2v or 8.3v.

No way to install the battery wrong. This is a nicely engineered machine. It slides and snaps in place securely. It's not the end of the world, but it kills the momentum I usually get before a hunt. I'm just dreading the re boxing, insuring and time wasted returning and receiving a fixed one. Gets old after a while, that the consumer always gets inconvenienced no matter if you spend $.99 or $6,000.00. Be interesting to see if anyone else has issues with it. I'm hoping it's an isolated issue or it's my screw up, so that others won't have to deal with the hassle of returns/repairs.

I think it's a dove and signifies the holy spirit - 1/3 of the trilogy - Father, Son, Holy Spirit (ghost)

Nice. I love the way Barbers come out of the ground. They just look so old. Clad halves are hard to find. I've only found a couple and i always rub them hard hoping they turn silver 😄 Nice little hunt!

Ok, so I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the GPX 6000. It got delivered lightning fast and I was really pumped up in getting it so fast. I called and booked some time at the Native American village I hunt at a lot, for this Thursday. The machine was supposed to get here on Tuesday but arrived on Saturday. I was like a little kid in a candy factory!!!! So I charge the battery a while up to 8 volts, and assemble the machine which is a breeze. What a nice looking, nice feeling unit. Even the packaging is thought out well. Here we go. Pop that battery in, hit the power button, watch the circle spin and then it happened. I get the dreaded devil symbol - 😈 "!" Exclamation point. Not the one with the coil pictured too, just a single, flashing "!" The worst symbol on the machine. Yes, I tried both coils with the same results, and I tried to do a factory reset, but you can't do it. You can't even shut the machine off with that symbol flashing, you have to remove the battery. So I think you know where this is heading... unless there is some miracle fix that they can come up with, it looks like I will be shipping this machine back to the dealer or to a Minelab repair center. It didn't even make a sound while I turned it on....silent from the beginning. I'm thinking this machine knows how hard it's going to get used during my hunts and decided to bail on me 😆 So needless to say I will be pulling out that old outdated (but EXTREMELY durable) GPX 5000 for a general hunt at the Native village. Really bummed out about this. I would think that the machine should have been tested before it got shipped. but with high demand come these types of problems. When I do get it working I'm going to run a post about how it does beach hunting in the fall and small relic hunting at the village site. With no discrimination, I may not use it anywhere else, unless I'm in the mood to dig.

Thanks. I never thought of Amazon for them. I just searched E Bay and maybe Google? 🙄 The gloves are not what I was looking for but the cloth is..... Should make a more durable pouch than canvas has in the past. But these gloves are what I'm looking for and you can also get the blue dipped version. Thanks for finding the source I should have know was the place to go 😄. I appreciate it. https://www.amazon.com/1678M-Resistant-100-Percent-Protective-Carpentry/dp/B007SNO2SI/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&keywords=kevlar+gloves&qid=1625406311&sr=8-12

Great mod of the xcal. ❤️ Wow, on how degraded the silvers get. I have only found a couple like that at a long, flat beach a while back. That's melting material for a small ingot 😄

Nice, clean set up. Where can you buy Kevlar cloth and gloves? I want to get some oversized Kevlar gloves to put over my regular winter gloves for beach hunting.

Would be a farthing I would think.

At the beach, war nickels can be caked with black (tar like) corrosion. Generally in regular dirt they come out fairly shiny silver. Yours looks like it was sitting in water for a long period of time, mimicking beach conditions. The other option is that it actual is tar from parking lot construction dirt.

I agree. Going second can only work if you have the ability to quickly revamp and produce your newest machine after viewing what the competition just released. And we know that can't happen. Going next after the Equinox will not work if your machine doesn't compare to it. I would think you want to be first and get what sales you can get, before Minelab releases. It happened to me while I waited for White's to put out there newest machine, the E trac came out and White's hesitated, so I bought the E trac and never looked back.

Oh those things.... they are like pull tabs to us 😆 Seriously we really do appreciate them, but believe it or not, you get used to finding them and kind of expect to find them. It would be the same way if we lived out west....gold coins, silver dollars, meteorites, and S mint coins.

Awesome hunts. Parks like that are a challenge for sure. Same here on this coast. I had a guy that lived near me that was an expert with the E trac which was just released at the time. He showed me that every old park I ever hunted in our area still had deeper coins and silver. I didn't believe it until I hunted with him. It was an eye opener. As machines get better, it's good to know that your park is still hiding many silvers below the 7" range. Just think of what key and semi key date coins are waiting to get unearth. An '09 S Indian wouldn't hurt 😄 Good luck on your next hunt there.

That looks like some tough recovery areas. Lots of nooks and crannies to hide that gold in. I've found a couple of those spikes and I'm thinking they are from late 1700's to early 1800's as a guess. It's the crudeness and unevenness of the head that makes me guess that time frame. Cool area to hunt.

Yep, me too.

I think the biggest mistake made was using wires/cables that would not withstand what a metal detector needs. Instead of using a cable that was over rated, they chose under rated and that makes for a bad perception of the product. All of my issues were wire related. I spent more money having headphones made up and fixing it then I spent detecting with it. I could never give the machine a fair shake, as the times my beach was prime to hunt, the machine went down. I still believe it's a good machine but I'll never be confident it will work when I need it to. My advice if you are going to use it somewhere away from home..... bring a back up detector that you enjoy.

The funny thing about digging a hundred coins in one outing is that you lose count and don't think you have that many. The times I did it, I figured I had 40 or 50 coins. They add up. The lake sound like a good gold and silver place to me, especially if it has not been hunted. That whole area you described sounds great to hunt. Good luck at it!