jasong

Depends on how much you want to spend and if you want powder, irregular shapes, or chips. A general rule of thumb when you search: minerals lacking specific cleavage planes may turn to powder, or irregular chunks. Minerals with good cleavage will tend to chip or flake. For bright, variable hues the coppers ores often lack cleavage so might be more prone to powdering or irregular shapes. These would be the easiest and cheapest vivid colors to work with, but the softness makes getting nice flat chips pretty hard. I would guess the harder ones (turquoise) are probably better for getting workable pieces after crushing. If you want flatter chips/flakes and similar or even more vivid medium blue/green hues, then both gem silica and crysoprase fracture well and carry similar colors as the copper ores. They are very hard minerals though if you are used to soapstone, and they can get very expensive. And they will turn to white powder if you crush too much. Minerals like nephrite can be great medium greens, but they will turn hazy white along fractures if crushed. They need to be cut/polished (or kept wet/oiled) to return back to green. This happens more often with minerals lacking perfect fracture, I believe. Also, some minerals will lose their color if put in the sun (crysoprase, amethyst, etc). So UV coating may be a good idea for stuff left in outside, near windows, etc. A gem silica vein on my claim. It's lost color and darkened due to exposure to the sun.

It would be interesting to know if the issue is coming from speaker acting like an antenna, or if it's coming from interference on the audio frequency band itself while the speaker works. The first seems like it could be solved by replacing the speaker with a transducer, as it would likely be the voice coil acting as the antenna. The latter seems like it could be fixed with optical isolation, optical transmission, or better shielded wire. All seem like things that could be fixed post manufacturing. Or potentially doable DIY mods if warranty allowed. I have no desire to buy another BT unit and hang it off my chest where I already have a WM12 hanging and getting lost occasionally. If we are going that route then I hope they just make it possible to use the WM12 to keep it simple. The 6000 is an awesome prospecting machine for a number of reasons, a big one is because it's one piece, quick to rig up and down, and simple. That's one of its strengths. It should stay that way. Forward, not backwards!

Sounds like a good plan to me. Here's the thing Norvic: not everyone is you. We are allowed to want different things in equipment - up to and including expecting the equipment to work as should be expected. If I bought a 7000 and was told not to use the WM12 because it interfered with the detector I would have rightfully brought up the same issue prior to purchasing one. I only use the WM12 just like I will only use the 6000 speaker. I literally own one pair of crappy old headphones that I never plan on using, the rest were destroyed by using them for drumming. Its important to me. I want to understand exactly what the issue is, and if it's being fixed before I buy it. Don't like it? Tough luck dude. You aren't the gatekeeper of all that may or may not be discussed.

The graphics card shortage, in the US anyways, has less to do with chips and almost everything to do with the crypto mining boom. Graphics cards are way more efficient and powerful at mining than CPUs. The card I bought 2 years ago is worth 2x used on Ebay what I paid for it brand new because miners are bidding graphics cards sky-high. Might let JP know then, because he's the one that pointed the problem out to us and recommended not to use the speaker at all. He works with engineers, I imagine he knows. It's not like we are pulling this out of thin air. I dont use headphones at all. Even in the wind. The only exception is when it's cold and windy enough that I need to warm my ears, or sometimes in wyoming with 50 to 60mph winds. Torus, boosters, volume trick workarounds have zero interest to me on this machine. I'm buying it as a quick, simple, powerful prospecting machine with minimal rig up and down time. The speaker working is a big part of that, and so is not having to stop or slow down to noise cancel constantly. I found the 6000 usable with the speaker (I had my phone on in my breast concealed carry pocket too), but we were also quite some distance from cities, so I'm curious how it does in a place like Arizona with quite heavy EMI in places, or if it's specifically interference from the speaker itself. *(Welcome back Simon, just noticing you are here posting)

Damn, I didn't know you were having all these difficulties out there, sorry to hear about that. Hopefully next trip goes the other way and produces some "payback nuggets" to cover the axle.

I think Mitchell has a legitimate question here, if there is a problem with the speaker then why not fix it before selling it? Are we going to have to mail it right back to Minelab to get repaired after they finally arrive? I actually hope this delay is them fixing units, and therefore preventing further delays. Some kind of update on things is long past due from Minelab at this point.

Weren't we informed the 6000's were already boxed up and shipped to the US some time ago? Can't be manufacturing problems if so. I'm confused why even if there is a shipping port delay, why they couldn't just dropship individual pre-paid machines direct from Australia via air. I know international air cargo is getting through with minimal delay from Asia, my packages have spent 1 day or less in customs.

Not a great time to be stuck with $14,000 worth of detectors when I get a 6000. Man, the used market for Minelab used to be gangbusters and dead on reliable... Meanwhile I just sold a dump trailer and car hauler used and well beaten up for more than I paid for them brand new 5 years ago, and had a line of people waiting to pay me that much. Markets are all over the place these days. I think I am going to Ebay my 4500 and coils off while I can, lucky serial #0000007 as a premium collectors item. 😄 If we see big jump in gold over $3000 or something, I bet there will be a big demand for all those 4500's and 5000's.

I tried getting a Supersede a while back, it was too expensive to ship here though IIRC. I wish Bunk would update the Hermit pick to something better resembling this pick. The shovel end gets ruined after 3 months and needs welded, rewelded constantly until there is nothing left, it's too thin for anything beyond weekend use IMO, and needs bended sides like this one.

I wonder if the total customer base for high end gold detectors in the US is any greater than ~150 people these days? Things seem quieter now. Forums used to have a ton of 4500's and 5000's for sale as people started and then gave up detecting. After the GPZ came out the used market seemed to slow down here, or maybe it's my imagination?

If that came from a place that wasn't already long claimed or private I would be extremely surprised...and if so then whoever found those did a great job. Most the likely places still had snowbanks when I left a few weeks ago.

Rain and hail today again here. Not sure how bad Rye Patch area is getting hit, but some places are going to be wet for a while around the whole area. I retreated to the RV. T-minus a few days before the grass starts growing like crazy and making stuff hard to detect in places.

Between my dog, prospecting, and just living in Wyoming where anything I do is gonna be on dirt roads out in the boonies, I have no pretense of keeping my truck clean or pinstripe free. It's sacrificial for the cause, and like my last truck I just drive it to the ground for decades and then sell for parts when I'm finished with the mess. 😄 I might go spray it down at the carwash once a year though if I'm trying to impress a lady.

In my extremely limited (as in, a few minutes testing) use of the 17" on the 6000, the 15" concentric X Coil was a better signal on the one nugget (1 gram, crystalline) we tested before I had to leave early. I've said this already. I also said how I think the concentric coils and/or 17" spiral are still going to keep the 7000 as depth king in less salty places like Arizona. And how the 10" X Coil comes close to equalling the 11" mono on the 6000 in salt capability and sensitivity, and how the 8" might actually be a little better than the 6000/11" in those two measures. In the same breath, the concentric coil got so much salt response during actual field use outside the test patch that I literally couldn't tell the difference between the salt response in the hole, and the target which I had already dug up and removed, the 6000 could. That said, I still forced myself to spend 20 minutes more running the concentric and adjusting settings, just to see if I could make it work or find a trick, where most would give up in a couple minutes. I also stated how the stock 7000 coil actually performs even worse in this salt than the concentric. Now that said, not everyone is in salt so the tests are not applicable for many people. But it does show that simply looking at 1 nugget dig, somewhere else in the world in who knows what type of ground, is not particulary instructive without more information provided. In other words: context. I go out of my way to provide as much context as possible. There are a lot of intangibles to consider too, which a simple dig on video doesn't show, when comparing two completely different machines . Speed, weight, stability, suitability for the terrain. For instance, this Fat Bastard is detecting in shrubs with the concentric, but mentions nothing about the fact that that 6000 is going to get good signal right next to the bushes, whereas the concentric is going to miss targets hidden in or next to the bushes due to the desensitized rim. And it's going to reduce that coverage all while feeling like a boat anchor on your arm, to get a bit more sensitivity. Are there cases where it's worth it? Yes. As I already mentioned - patch cleaning, detecting wide open areas, etc. Everything is give and take. I try to explain it all. I take my queue from Steve H, who's reviews I've admired since when I first started detecting, because they gave the whole picture that other reviews lacked. Is the 6000 absolute king? no. Is the 7000 w/X Coils absolute king? No. It's more complex than that. What I'm showing is what to expect out of equipment with actual prospecting, in actual places many people on this forum detect, plus how the intangibles affect the whole picture. I can't help but feel this "honest" shot is right over my bow since I'm the one that wrote in the greatest detail about 6000 vs X Coils in the USA. Maybe I misunderstood or something was lost in translation? I'm not upset, in fact I find that when both sides feel something I've said is not doing a product justice over another product, that I've managed to find a proper place in the center. But honesty means something big to me, trust means something big, and if it's about me personally rather than the equipment then I do take issue with that.

Also, it bears saying, for someone in AZ, I'm not sure the case for a 6000 is so strong as in NV unless weight and prospecting are primary factors in a purchase. Keep in mind, the things we are writing are based on using the machine in Northern Nevada. The conditions here are unlike most of the rest of the US. This needs to be taken into consideration For AZ patches, I'll be running a 7000 with the 17" concentric and/or 17" spiral. I predict the 6000 is on prospecting duty only there, or doing patch cleanup when it's down to the dinks only.