Aureous

On 1/13/2024 at 9:56 AM, Chet said:

The GPX 6000 has separated the EMI shield from the coaxial cable shield and run a separate ground wire.

Looks like I'll have to tear-down a 6000 coil just to take a look at that. Very curious..... With your whole-coax-and-chip idea, do you find any bump sensitivity from the external connectors outside the coil?

16 hours ago, GoodAmount said:

Most have already been mentioned, but my favs are:

Vo-gus Prospecting

Victorian Gold Hunters

Goldfields Goose

Digging with Phasetech

Outback Gold Fever

Gold Magnet

Minelab Gold - there hasn’t been any new content posted for a long time, but the old videos are worth watching. Hope he’s ok.

The Coffee Bush Kid - Mostly relic hunting but there a few prospecting vids in the mix. 

 

 

Yeah, I forgot about Goldfields Goose (Daniel and his Mum) and Nenad (Phase tech), my apologies for leaving those guys out. ML gold went to Western Australia and is probably still there, but videos are not on his agenda anymore.

On 1/10/2024 at 5:37 PM, Chet said:

In pursuit of large gold I have experimented with winding some test coils

Just wondering Chet, how far off are the specs on the various coils you are winding, versus the legacy GPX coils? The X coils guys were suggesting that the 6000 and 5000 coil specs are near identical..... say in the 290-350uH inductance and <1ohm resistance ranges. You say that the older coils don't work as well on the 6000 using your adapter set-up???

1 hour ago, HardPack said:

The rumor mill is dead quiet on this exciting 2024 new Garrett Metal Detector pending release. So I am starting my own rumor straight from the horse arse. 

The new Garrett MD is a camouflaged first edition at a price point we can’t pass up, equipped with digital “selectibility” that allows switching between a Discriminating PI and SMF VLF or both, a stock a 10x5 coil switchable between DD and mono, a finds bag, a rebranded TRX Bullseye Pinpointer, three days of training on the rye patch with meals & lodging included. A large selection of switchable coils and…

 

....and don't forget the McDonalds Big Mac voucher for a snack on the way home.... 😉

There's a big difference between informative or instructional... and entertaining to watch. Not many of the US Youtube sites are 'entertaining per se. Pioneer Pauly and Dan Hurd I watch, mainly for the scenery (and Pauly's ludicrous sense of humor) but they are Canadian of course. Bill Southern can be informative, so he's worth a watch. Mount Baker mining is also instructional, but for mining info rather than actual prospecting.

The Aussie ones to watch are:

Outback gold fever

Vo-gus prospecting

West Oz Adventures

Savage Prospecting 

Buckshot Prospector (absolute lunatic lol)

Rob Parsons

Tassie Boys Prospecting

Gold Magnet

JB Heli-Prospecting

17 hours ago, phrunt said:

Nice, he's not going to miss any coke cans with his modded 5000.

A crushed coke can is a fairly good analogy to a less-than-ideal gold conductor. A solid lump of aluminium or lead would be heard far deeper. Aluminium is of course, in the same conduction range as gold, but because the can is not solid, its similar perhaps to a large specie.... Almost 1 meter depth is pretty good. Yeah some X coils on his 7000 would be an interesting comparison for sure....

Blackmans Lead at Maryborough. Ive got gold quite close to that. According to Dunn's nugget book, it was found at a depth of 6ft on 15th Jan 1858. I also first saw the monument back in the 80's. Brings back memories....

My experience with the 17" ellip mono was poor. Way too noisy, had to dumb it down to manual 1 or 2 just to shut it up. Trialed another from a friend, same deal. But others have  had no such issues... I aint buying any other coils except NF ones...but the wait is now painful.

If its the 8" green round coil, then its certainly sensitive. BUT when I owned an ATX, I got a dud one in the box...was terribly bump sensitive. I got a warranty replacement and that one was bump sensitive too...but not as bad. But still, In rocky areas, it was totally intolerable. If you can get a chance to test it before you buy...do that.

4 hours ago, Chet said:

The chip and ferrite housing is inside a blob of epoxy which now is covered with heat shrink tubing. The coil shield is connected by a separate spade connector
 

Ha, you're full of great ideas Chet! Re-use the cable and chip for multiple coils....brilliant! Giving me ideas now... 🤔

45 minutes ago, Chet said:

I purchased a used GPX 6000 Mono coil and removed the cord and chip module together to accomplish the tests. I use a two conductor male and female connector to attach the test coils. I have tested some of these coils on my GPX 5000 which is unmodified. The GPX 6000 results are a few inches better than the GPX 5000. I shielded two of the coils with graphite conductive paint (100-150 ohms per inch). The before and after measurements where the same. The GPZ 7000 coils are more difficult to make and balance but is a better choice so that is that is the way I am preceding.

Cool, thats the smart way to do it, keep the coax attached to the chip and remove the whole lot. Shielding is spot on. Are these results all air tests??? Were you able to ground balance any of the larger coils or were they all board-builds only....without shells???

33 minutes ago, Chet said:

I know of some areas that have produced some large nuggets. So in pursuit of large gold I have experimented with winding some test coils and did some air testing

So you plucked the 'handshake' chip out the stock coils and made up an adapter for these tests? Fascinating results... The 6000 is not regarded as a deep-seeking detector, with both the 5000 and 7000 obtaining better results in all tests that Ive seen. But, these tests seem pretty good. All obviously mono's with but with proper shielding????

Maurice Coppola (a very well known Golden Triangle prospector) has another video comparing various detectors and coils. Well worth a watch.

On 12/20/2023 at 6:49 PM, Ndplumr said:

Getting close?

I asked Dilek directly....she declined to answer which 'normally' means something is still happening...

A magnet on your pick assists in those occasions... 

7 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

So do any of you guys think I should take "wife" off my bucket list ??

Yes......good ones are a total rarity these days, your chances of finding a 'good'un' are low. A great saying is: "Dating in your 50's is like looking into a box of used toys....wondering which one is the least broken"    

From my experience, your odds of finding a 20oz nugget are better than finding a good woman. Plenty of fellas have been lucky....but not me 😞 

I think the boundary between 'picker' and 'nugget' has moved somehow... anything over 1 gram is a nugget in my eye. But I'm sure Reg will disagree 😉 

Ive built a few dozen coils for myself over the years, hardest ones to try are the CC and DD types, where distance and sizes between the 2 loops for tuning, sensitivity and depth purposes are the most critical parameters. Obtaining the inductance and resistance values for said loops is the 1st step. Shielding method is the 2nd. Correct parts (shell, cable, connector and wire) are very type specific too. Lots to think about when you first start out.

Very few project detectors have effective ground balance and therefore, are largely useless for prospecting. All of the PI projects have poor pulse delays (not great sensitivity) and the required CPU coding is often proprietary and not available for further development. Unless someone has recently brought something new to the table, don't waste your time.

I haven't spoken to Nev for quite a while, but a friend knew he was near the end last month. Sold a lot of gold to him in the past and he was always a very fair buyer. Integrity and honesty always. A huge loss to the community here in Victoria. RIP Nev, Your fight is over.... Condolences to his Family.

12 hours ago, phrunt said:

Really cool finds, I'm not surprised by your small gold take increasing, from memory last season you used the 24k and GPX 4500 modded?   

Did you run the 24k this year or has it taken a hike? 

You did very well, sorry to hear about the single and homeless thing, you seem the resourceful type that can bounce back and do better than before.

I sold almost all my detectors to afford getting my GPX6000 in May last year. The 4500 and 24K were the first to go.....sad but at least it paid off in the end. I am paying off a Nokta Legend and that will become my new HF VLF replacement for the 24K....just needed something that was more 'multi-purpose', even though I severely miss the 24K. I'll also be sourcing a Legacy Minelab PI for ultra-deep modding and using BIG coils only.

With every downturn in life, there's always a new opportunity if you let yourself take it. 2024 is just that opportunity I feel. Thanks for the kind words :-) 

1 hour ago, rvpopeye said:

Is that the best you can do ? 🤔

I'll try to do better next year....promise 😉 

I think my last days detecting for 2023 is now done. Gotta head off to catch up with Family for the next 2 weeks and take stock of what I'm doing next year. Single again, homeless and unsure of what direction to take. 2024 is gonna be interesting! But, my gold take has been an eye opener....almost exactly the same weight as last year, around 5.25oz but the number of pieces of gold has skyrocketed! Last year I managed to find 774 pieces...this year its 1604! Over double.....no doubt attributed to the GPX6000. Next year, I'm gonna dabble with getting a Legacy Minelab PI modded up and using CC coils or anything else that gets me depth on the big stuff. By this time next year, I'll see how that has panned out. Think I'm gonna need the money somehow lol. Just putting up a few pics of just some of the gold I've found this year. How has everyone else done? December is 'pic time' 😉  Merry Xmas everyone, and here's wishing you all a golden 2024!

I find the Bounty Hunter section totally baffling.... why so many similar and collectively useless detectors in their line-up? Surely none or very few of these are actually being manufactured? I am hoping they just have lots of leftover stock from decades of zero-investment and sales.... any newbie looking at that website would be totally bamboozled and confused as to what to buy. Fisher and Teknetics are less cluttered but collectively, thats a sh*tload of detector models to browse through.

6 hours ago, GoodAmount said:

It’s sad to see high quality brands lose their edge when they succumb to the lures off-shoring manufacturing.

Its happened in so many industries, its sickening....even Minelab are having their cheapest, crappiest detector built in China now. Manufactured to fail...