jasong

It sounds like the Axiom was already more or less on par with the 6000 months ago. Unless they are still tweaking hardware, I would think it'd be in their best interests to get the Axiom out before that. Do some firmware updates as needed via air drop to customers. A lightweight 8000 showing up out of the blue would take a lot of attention and sales away, especially since the prerelease excitement of the Axiom was burned and gone early. I hope the changes and tweaks are worth it. Seems like now would be the time to release if at all possible, as time is not on Garrett's side here. The 6000 fix is already going to lose customers for them if some people can make do with what they have. I know you are on the inside Steve, and your opinions are more than opinions in matters like that. But from the outside, I wonder why the delay. AZ nugget season will be over by spring too, making 2 seasons missed by the Axiom since it's announcement, if it's not released until then.

NASA's Dart was successful in diverting Dimorphos' motion more than anticipated, results are in. So we've basically ended the era of 4 billion years of major impacts by the looks of it, as we should be able to scale up no problem if needed. The "Anthropocene" era is more aptly named with every passing year, our impact on the Earth is now larger than meteors (pun intended).

Really? I can't find anyone interested in buying my 6000 used. Even if this fix makes it work as it should, I am getting so tired of Minelab's business practice that I think I may just use an Axiom instead on general principals, even if performs slightly worse. So, if you know someone in AZ looking to buy a used 6000 this winter or whenever the Axiom is released, let me know. Comes with a Coiltek almost new, 2 batteries.

It would definitely be pretty interesting to be able to open up a control box prior to the fix, and after. Just to get a clear picture of what exactly is being fixed and what the problem was. But I doubt we'll ever know unless someone wants to void their warranty. If it's an issue along the lines of what I posted, then it's definitely a design flaw. Which also brings up the question that if they are replacing main boards, does our warranty get extended too? Or do we get to find the problem for them, find the fix ourselves, and then also get to beta test a fix for them too with problems that might take longer than our existing warranty period to discover for them again? It is a great detector when it works right though. *One potential change that might occur and be visible is switching speakers out for something that has built in shielding around it. Though if the cone looks the same as the old ones, it'd be hard to tell.

Good to hear @Northeast! @phrunt I might see the problem. Looking at that FCC photo of the main board, any idea what that pinkish/reddish wire is coming from the coil? It's going straight back to where the speaker is at, but it's not audio it's a coil wire. TX, based on gauge? It looks like that wire lacks shielding at it's termination. "The Fix" may be Minelab had to move the wire and the associated circuitry away from the speaker? The circuitry back there could be exposed to the speaker EMI too if not shielded properly. Might have had a feedback loop situation where the detector's own audio output noise is fed right back into the coil via the TX line (including times when the RX is sampling still), induced onto that line from lack of shielding, causing it to eventually go unstable after it reached a point too much for the noise circuitry to handle. IE - speaker noise injected into the coil via unshielded TX, meant more feedback, meant more noise injected, meant more feedback, etc. Just like an electric guitar facing an amplifier that feedbacks on itself. *also occurs to me the speaker itself has a coil loop in it. Which means that basically it and the audio driver circuit is inductively coupled to EMI outside the control box and could potentially reradiate EMI to adjacent components inside the control box even the control box itself is shielded and the speaker is off. In theory anyways. It may inductively couple to the Earth itself too, when the detector is set on the ground?

Interesting pdf, will take some time to read through that one. Big difference between surface of moon and Earth is active tectonics too, that's what brought this old fossil impact field back up to the surface as the Rockies rose up. There is actually another huge impact structure here in Wyoming that was discovered by O&G drilling and/or thumper trucks (geophysical), but it's not exposed on the surface at all, it's buried 4000 feet deep. The structure itself can still be discerned underground though. It's about 200 million years old, and it just goes to show that some of these older fomations are probably covered with paleo-impact structures all over the entire planet. They tend to form anticlines. Which means buried impact structures could be economic oil and gas traps - in fact this one has wells on it. But some Carlin-type gold mineralization also likes anticlinal type structures as well, so there is a potential that buried impact structures in Nevada could contained enriched Carlin-type mineralization. It would be an interesting method of theoretical gold exploration that I bet few to zero people are doing right now. Notably, the KT Boundary also contains a number of of precious metals from the fallout dust from the meteorite that killed the dinos. Iridium is used as a marker element, for one.

I think it's the same one, based on some various stuff I can't get into. But honestly, I'm still unsure what exactly we are getting here in the US and I haven't been too successful trying to get more specific info on it. I do know that after I get this thing back into the field for a few days I'll be able to tell right quick if it fixed the stability problems though!

They actually got back to me after hours and it hadn't been put on the truck yet. So it sounds like it's been corrected, I updated my post. They must either watch this forum, or check their messages after hours, so I gotta give them credit for that, as it's like 7:15 PM on the East Coast now. That saved a ton of potential lost time, as this upcoming trip is probably the last before blizzards and bitter winds/cold.

Well when it rains it pours. I just got home from work, saw they sent a tracking #, and my detector is now on it's way to the wrong address to someone in Winnemucca, NV. I live 800 miles from there. Of course they are closed now - being on the East Coast. Seeing as pretty much all of us prospectors live 2 or 3 time zones away, having a repair center somewhere even remotely close to us and operating on the same hours would probably be good. Not sure why they got rid of the facility in Vegas. So unless they correct this, I'll be taking my next trip with no 6000 - exactly what I took pains to avoid. Argh. *Update - In a testament to the repair center, they either saw this post or checked their messages after hours. Sounds like it didn't get on the truck yet and can be corrected still, thankfully. ? I was sure this was going to be weeks of lost time and about ready to just give up and sell it whenever it arrived. Back on track though. The 6000 is a great machine when it works, very much looking forward to having a working one and hopefully getting some end of season exploration in places I couldn't work earlier.

Alright. Called again to ask about the fix, left a message, got an email update about 15 mins later. No problems found other than just doing the "audio update". So, just as I was saying for months - no problems with my machine in specific and it's a design/manufacturing issue. I knew this already, I'd travelled enough and seen enough other 6000's to know it wasn't unique to mine. In case anyone didn't see it a while back, I posted some videos of the detector losing stability entirely (I also linked these to Detector Center and pretty sure they were given to Minelab too a month or more ago) - completely unresolvable by noise cancels, and highly location dependent. And again - something I've observed on many other 6000's other than my own. Sometimes the owners didn't even realize it was happening until I pointed it out that it wasn't normal. And I'm still postive there is some part that physical location plays in this whole thing. I believe there are some frequencies that affect the 6000 greatly, only exist in some locations, and it lacks proper shielding for them is one of the most logical explanations. My guess is older/legacy cell tower equipment or something to do with higher elevations and perhaps increased EMI effects from solar radiation or other space phenomenom which would be normally filtered more by more atmosphere at lower elevations. This could explain the instability at ground too, as electrostatic field potential increases with elevation and the tops of objects like mountains, buildings, or lightning rods actually develop a good electric potential difference (voltage), so the field gradient is higher on mountains and moving from chest to ground would actually bring the machine through a compressed band of high potential vs being in NV for instance. So, we'll see if this so called audio update fixes the propensity for the 6000 to go completely, entirely unstable in some locations too. And if it fixes the problem I've pointed out numerously of it losing stability entirely when set onto the ground too. If not, they still have problems to fix. Will report again once I get my detector back and am able to revist some of the locations in the videos I posted - it may be 10-14 days as I'm stuck in town for a number of reasons right now. "Update Subject: Diagnosis Message: Audio update has been performed. I tested the customer's rear control box and coil with our upper control pod and battery. Unit operated well with this set up. No other issues found at this time. Please contact us if you have any questions in regards to the repair of your equipment Detector Center Minelab Authorized Service Center"

I haven't been able to find out myself yet what they are fixing. I sent a number of emails (and included in my original report) that I specifically wanted the speaker/EMI fix but got no responses to them. The guy I spoke to on the phone was not aware of a fix, but said the tech's might be when I got one assigned. After I got one assigned I sent another email saying I wanted the speaker/EMI fix but didn't get a response to that one either. I also just finally said something like "the same thing done on TBoykin's detector that got a 1 day turnaround" to perhaps make things more clear. Haha sorry to invoke your name man, but lacking response I wasn't sure if I was going to get the thing I sent my machine in to get and end up stuck wasting 4 weeks sitting there just to come back to me with the same problem, which was the thing I was trying to avoid all along. Still no responses to my inquiries, but maybe they are busy this week now or something, who knows.

Detector Center let me know they received my 6000, they seem to be on the ball, hopefully things go quickly. I 2nd day aired it to them and they picked it up on a Saturday. They haven't responded to the 3 times I've asked to get the speaker/EMI fix performed in specific, but I'm hopeful to get something much improved back. Also interested to see if they find any additional problems in addition to "the fix". I sent my coil in just for the heck of it too, just in the off chance I had both a bad OEM and Coiltek coil, cover all bases.

People did, and they got back another defective unit. We were told no problem existed, it's just the nature of the beast and just noise cancel or use headphones instead. Nothing to fix here. It's not that bad. Only amateurs use speakers, just buy a torus, etc. (BTW, necklaces and tight collars literally make me vomit and gag, I'm not wearing a ring around my neck). There was supposedly no problem, so what exactly would sending a detector back do except get another faulty unit at that point? The problem needed a fix first or all else is moot. The only logical course of action was to proceed to prove there was an issue and not just a few random faulty units, so that we could all get an actual fix and not waste our valuable time. This is 100% on Minelab, not the customers. Sending units in was resulting in just getting another defective unit sent back, $50 postage wasted, and 4 weeks of lost season, I had no desire to waste my time and money like that. What was done was what needed to be done when all other avenues were exhausted along with patience.

https://trib.com/news/local/casper/a-wyoming-crater-field-may-offer-insights-into-our-solar-systems-workings/article_0e0eae2c-4426-11ed-bcf6-e7dbc7b57469.html There are varying theories as to the origin - including that we once had a second moon! Or maybe smaller orbiting sub-moon type body which got shattered by an impact and rained onto Earth. The article doesn't cover this, but of note is that the formation in which this massive field of fossil craters is found in matches up with the largest extinction event in history - the Permian-Triassic extinction event - which is much larger than the one that killed the dinosaurs 200 million years later. In any event, this is an extremely interesting discovery. I believe this field probably extends beyond just Wyoming and may be a national scale, or maybe even potentially a global scale occurence with more research. The craters themselves are visible on aerials if you look closely, but are so old that any actual meteorite material has long since weathered away, but shock glass is still there.

I doubt if all (or any?) dealers in the US were informed by Minelab prior to this thread coming out. It wasn't even clear the US repair center knew about this until after this thread was posted. This stuff is one part of the reason this thread exists because though some of us knew there was a fix, it wasn't clear after a year of talking about the problem if it was even available to us. If Minelab corporate won't do the right thing after being shown extraordinary amounts of patience, customers will do it for them. And every time this post gets bumped up they get a prescient reminder of just that. I would expect many dealers were kept in the dark just like us though.

They need to publish a range of affected unit serial #'s so the public can know. It's just basic business ethics. People have lost $1000+ selling their 6000's they could not get to work in their locations and were unable to tell if it was a bad machine, operator error, bad EMI location, or just how the machine acts normally. Letting more people take losses because they are unsure if their detector has a problem or not is unethical business IMO. They also need to detail exactly what this fix address - is it just the speaker, or fixing more EMI issues? Or are we going to potentially need to send our units right back for a fix #2 next year? Do they even acknowledge there are EMI/stability issues beyond just the speaker issue? Do units currently manufactured still have issues? Are dealers still carrying/selling units that just need sent right back for repair as new? Who knows. They need to tell us. 6 months ago. This is the part I was trying to drive home on the forums a few months back too. After I left Arizona last winter and travelled around more I realized that there was some kind of strange issue where the location itself seemed to be affecting the 6000 with regards to stability and EMI. I found the same thing - some places just totally undetectable, while I get on my ATV on ride a short distance away and I can detect again. Go back to the first location and it was still undetectable. Also the setting the 6000 on the ground and losing stability thing seems to affect a number of units as well. There is the speaker issue, that's one thing. But there is something more EMI related too. Bad shielding? overwhelmed firmware/CPU resources? I have no clue since we can't even open the box up to see ourselves, but something is happening there. So it seems to me that either there another fix #2 coming, or Minelab is not disclosing the extent of both the problem and/or the extent of what the fix addresses at this time.

Minelab could take some lessons from Milwaukee. This is how a company which respects it's customers responds. Summary: Milwaukie released a new impact wrench with a redesigned mechanism inside, and it failed for a number of people. Milwaukie responded within a week, stopped production. They explained what the problem was and that they had investigated it, which model #'s were affected, admitted the design was flawed and didn't stand up to the brand name reputation and quality, acknowledged the customer feedback, and described how to get a replacement tool for free that was guaranteed not to have the problem, so there was no question what was or wasn't being actually fixed. Further, they acknowledged another problem pertaining to electrical issues which some users experienced and others didn't - leading to questions about if it was really a problem or not (sound familiar?). They published that too just so that it was clear that there was an issue with products with a specific part # users could reference to clear matters up. If Milwaukee can do it for $200 drills, then Minelab can do it for $6000 detectors. Yet a year down the road, the fix is still hidden to 99.67% of the world still today (if not for this thread). That's a real number.

It will be interesting to see if they replace the case or just the board. I'm positive there is a general shielding issue on my 6000 as well as a number of others I've been around and seen in action. I can put my phone - turned off - against the box and it interferes. That isn't right. Especially if the official excuse is this detector is so ultra sensitive. That's a design flaw to not shield properly then, knowing that. I also feel this problem is related to the detector losing stability when set onto the ground, though I haven't quite worked out why yet, but it has to do with proximity to the ground of the badly shielded control box I think. This type of issue would affect detectors independent of the speaker, and it would also make detectors more sensitive to EMI variations at different locations, making some places undetectable and others just fine. I think it's likely both design and manufacturing issues based on what I've seen. I wish I could have opened my control box up without voiding the warranty to see inside and compare to a newer 6000. I'm positive it's more than just a speaker/EMI problem though. I tried to make that clear on the forum and to Minelab. I guess we will see what this fix does though. Mine is in the mail to the repair facility. Will be interesting to see what comes back

Haha yep, same. Those concentrics are the only reason I still own a GPZ right now too. I ran both of them in some deep ground in AZ last winter and they produced almost everywhere I took them. Oddly though, a lot of what I was pulling out was just smaller like 1-5 gram stuff, but down at crazy depths for their size and I'd be thinking every dig as I got to my arm's length that this must be a half oz'er at least... I think these coils set a minimum performance bar for whatever the next GPZ is though, which is good news for everyone.

Likely, given it's location. Usually they were built for 2 reasons - either to get water elevation for hydraulic pressure to work benches/terraces in the canyon, or to divert into a dry area outside of the current river channel (dry washes, hillslopes, etc) to hydraulic/ground sluice/etc other gravels - for gold mining. If you follow it up to it's highest elevation you might find the remains of a diversion dam, gate, or channel. And if you follow it all the way to the lowest elevation you will probably find some old placer gold workings, or various points where smaller flumes/ditches branch off to other workings. On ground it can be difficult to know where it ends or just washed away, but you might be able to see the whole flume course on aerials or high resolution LIDAR. Farmers often made ditches that are basically like flumes for irrigation, to get water up onto elevated fields prior to pumps. But if that one is on the Yuba river then I'd say it's a safe guess it was built by gold miners, farmers wouldn't really build such a complicated structure out of wood either, theirs were mostly ditches.

Nice work! Glad to see the concentric scoring some deep ones for someone else too. That thing really feels like having the equivalent of a GPZ 8000 to me, in terms of just comparing depth gain to stock. The 15" actually comes close in depth too while being lighter, I think all around it's probably a better swiss army knife do all coil. But that 17" definitely is a bit deeper when going for all out depth.

Minelab gets my finger wag of the month award for poor business ethics here. I'm glad there is a fix, but that took like a year of some stressful hair pulling, and I'm not sure Minelab would have done anything at all if not for the continual posting by some of us bringing the problem up, not letting it drop off the radar, and not normalizing it. What I'm curious about is if this fixes the stability issues in the places that seem location specific (I posted a video of one of them a while back). My theory almost from the start is that the 6000 can only deal with so much EMI. Call that max amount X. Right off the bat, the speaker takes up like 80% of X. So, if you encounter a location with local (radio, cell, wifi, aliens, whatever) EMI levels above 20% of X, you've met or exceeded the total 100% amount of EMI the detector can deal with, and it looses stability, whereas the same detector running headphones would be stable still as it's only dealing with local EMI. It only has resources to deal with so much, thereafter it bogs down, confuses itself, and loses stability. Thus, both a speaker and a location specific problem, and something not everyone would see unless they detect enough different places. I've been to enough places that I see a definite pattern though, and it's related to the speaker somehow, I've been sure of that since the start. In other words, my gut feeling up to this point is it's more than just a speaker/EMI issue. It's an issue with EMI in general and the 6000's ability to cope with it past a certain amount. The speaker just adds so much EMI at once that it makes the problem more readily obvious. And that's what I hope they have fixed. Hopefully I can get my machine back in time before snow socks those locations in, so I can see if it's allowed it to run stable in those previously undetectable locations. If not, then they still have a problem IMO.

The "fix" must be an entire main board or maybe control unit swap. I called them earlier today to get the return initiated, wanted to speak to someone directly to make sure this specific fix is available, and they said they were 3-4 weeks out for bench repairs, but issues that just needed swapped units would take less time. So, that seems to indicate it's just a clean swap happening if TBoykin's got turned around in 1 day. The guy I spoke to didn't know anything about a 6000 audio/EMI fix though when I asked. Still waiting for repair center to get back to me with shipping instructions, they closed now. Going to next day air this thing to them tomorrow. Wish they'd let their extensive dealer network work for them and deal with swap outs instead of a repair center 2-3 time zones away from most of us, this could be done far quicker, seeing as it's not a repair. But will just be glad to have a working detector finally either way.

I think WesD is right. There is a similar thing in Colorado called "Hanging Flume" which looks pretty much identical. It was used to get water above the terrace gravel levels so they could be hydrauliced. The boards in that case were salvaged (the ones easy to get anyways) for other projects after the flume shut down, likely happened to the flume in your pictures too.

Thanks, that's good to know. I have a little break right now, so I was really hoping to send mine in now, but didn't want to waste the month that all my friend's GPX's took to get returned if no fix was available here yet. I guess it's up to us customers to both discover the problem, discover the hidden fix, and discover if the service center has the ability to perform the fix.