jasong

No prospecting detectors have any kind of API for control, data logging, or interface. At least, not a public one. It's something I always hope is made available, but never is. About all you can do is either data log the audio feed, or capture the RX/TX on the cable to the coil by putting some kind of logging module at the connecter at the control box. An oscilloscope would be more useful than a multimeter if you want to actually see what's happening and how things change. You could build your own from an Arduino where all the data and control is open already. George Overton wrote a book on a basic project like that.

For sure. Same thoughts been running through my mind going back and forth. In my case, I vacillated back and forth long enough, waiting for the Axiom, that it looks like the coils arrived to help in time before selling. In the end I figured the only that matters to me right now is just not wasting a season though, so I decided to get whatever I could to keep me running right now. Had the Axiom been available for purchase last Friday, I'd have sold this 6000 to fund that purchase in a heartbeat though. Still planning on doing just that once the Axiom is released or the snow hits, whichever comes first, just on principle and to support a company that hopefully places a bit higher value on their customers.

It's a great detector - when it works. The stability definitely varies highly by location though, so there will probably always be those who claim it runs perfect, and those who can't understand how anyone can possible detect with it at all. Gotta say though, while I'll be glad to have a working machine, this whole experience has left a pretty sour taste in my mouth regarding Minelab and their complete lack of resolution or communication on the issue, so eventually I'll probably get an Axiom anyways when time isn't of the essence like it is right now. Just because I don't really think Minelab deserves any kind of public support for selling what appears to be a defective product and leaving some customer's out to dry to fix the company's mistake. A lot of people here are retired or have extra money, can shrug things like that off. I'm not one of them. I expect $6k detectors to work if I drop a chunk of change like that on one.

Here is a 1/4 oz'er that I got out of that general area he's showing in the vid with the boot scraps/old dig holes, that was in 4500 days when there was still some nice pieces left due to so many guys running their detectors ultra-conservatively. Max gain, Sensitive Extra, minimal stabilization, 17x11 mono = 1lb winters back then. Those days are long gone now though, it's all claimed solid now anyways too.

Good to hear another positive report! I have high hopes it gets me running again in the spots I had to abandon due to stability. I went with the 9" round, figure if it's actually a shielding issue on the stock coil that there is no need to go much smaller than stock to reduce EMI. The stock 11" size-wise was about ideal for my uses, just slightly too large for brushy areas. So the 9" round seemed like the best choice for me - weighs the same, just slightly smaller. I also don't want to overly sensitize the 6000 with too small of a coil since 0.03 grams is already smaller than I need to chase. 😁 Hopefully receive it mid-next week, won't have it for my upcoming trip yet though unfortunately as I'll be in field when it arrives. I'll have another field trip shortly after that though to give it a spin.

Awesome finds.

Well, there is a time for super slow. And a time for fast and ground coverage. To learn and start, everyone should go slow in known patches I think. To develop pattern recognition. But as you learn where nuggets are, and where they aren't, you develop more pattern recognition and can speed up to bypass the chaff and concentrate on harvesting the good wheat. And in the end it pays better to spend time finding new patches than trying everything in the book to squeeze another drop of juice from a dry lemon in old patches. Most old goldfields are dry lemons these days. 1 single virgin patch produces more than a lot of people have found detecting in a decade in old beat up patches sometimes. It's a matter of maximizing yield, which is factoring in both production and time spent to make that production. These new lightweight detectors like the 6000 and Axiom seem custom built for just this kind of exploration to me.

Problem is in Arizona there isn't as much exploration to do, it's more patch cleaning. I use the GPZ far more than the 6000 in Arizona unless I'm trying to quickly cover lots of ground. So I'd also use the GPZ more than Axiom based on the reports I've read regarding performance. The strengths of the Axiom and 6000 aren't in places like Gold Basin. Quartzsite, or any old common goldfields if you ask me, it's in a light, quick detector to explore new places efficiently. That's also the future of gold detecting in the US IMO too, and I'm one of the people that is going to demonstrate that.

Thing that confuses me is that Garrett coulda been capturing some market share now over here right now, the 6000 has problems. I'm pretty surprised we can't even get an ETA on the Axiom shipping. Been almost 3 weeks since announcement. It's cheaper here, and it looks to run a lot quieter. They could take some ML customers away while the 6000 is ailing over here with issues. I was chomping at the bit to get a working Axiom in my hands and ditch the 6000 finally. But, I had to finally go buy a Coiltek though, so I can keep working this season. And its like - ok, now I just spent another $400 on the 6000, and if it'll actually work now, then do I even have as much reason to buy an Axiom? I guess it depends how much the aftermarket coil helps. Scratching my head why we couldn't have even gotten an ETA on shipment. Can't sit and wait forever when there is work to get done now and the clock is ticking before snow ends the season. Now it looks like I'll probably stick with big blue if this coil fixes things, seems pointless to sell a working detector, take a $1900 loss, just to get one that is more or less equivalent.

Are these 3 ring bullets worth anything if they are found outside of the Civil War areas, like Western States? Or is it the location/history that makes them valuable? I've found probably a hundred of them over the years, just ended up throwing them away though for the most part.

This picture just gave me an idea. If I get rich and famous I'm going to make a few 12 gauge shells full of solid gold pellets and go reseed the goldfields like some sort of modern Johnny Appleseed.

If an aftermarket coil fixes the stability problems then at the very least Minelab should be responsible for covering the cost of the coil required to fix their own problem.

Is there by chance a chart someone has made somewhere listing the weight of the various Coiltek and the stock 11" weights? I'm going to have to swallow my pride and pay $400 to fix Minelab's own stability problem for them, and get a coil so I can get on with my season while waiting for the Axiom. Hoping to find a coil that is the same weight as the 11", or lighter.

Minelab.com seems to have most of my city's IP's blocked for some reason, everything on Spectrum anyways. So, best I can do is just ask my magic 8-ball, it gave me this: I also agree there is some kind of additional issue happening beyond just EMI. It's a stability issue. And it seems to happen when the control unit/Geosense/whatever gets overwhelmed with too much stimuli. Myself and others have been posting about it fairly regularly. ML is aware of it. The 4500 had a somwhat similar type issue, stability related anyways, and had a total recall/main board replacement to solve it. Not even so much as an acknowledgement there is a problem with the 6000 though, let alone a fix on the horizon. At some point it just becomes useless to pursue if there is a 2nd option to move to instead.

Cool, glad I motivated someone. Usually I can't even motivate myself. 🙂 There are quite a few sort of oddball gold occurences out here worthy of investigation. Often history is slim on details, they aren't in easy to find books, even in the cases some paragraph was written somewhere about them. Often there are no modern geologic maps. And few to zero people are detecting the areas so its kinda like being the first with a detector back in the 70s or whenever for those early guys, no old 2 tracks leading to dusty forgotten patches to find on aerials though, like in NV and AZ. Takes patience, but can be rewarding. I find it's best to leave the detector at first, and take lots of pan samples. Then come back and run the detector specifically where the panning showed color to narrow down the area, concentrating on shallow ground and bedrock. Otherwise it can be a lot of detecting with no results! After finding a new patch, then it can pay to take the big guns in and detect deeper. Hope you find success!

Hmm actually, hey Simon? What phone do you have? I keep mine off when detecting, but after realizing the Garrett pointer interferes with my GPZ even when off I'm wondering if certain phones might interfere with the 6000 when off? I had an S20 down south this winter when I didn't have as many problems. I broke it and got an S22 a few weeks before coming back north where the problems got bad. That's the only thing on my person that changed. 6000 went unstable even when I kept my phone at the ATV though too I'm pretty sure, but now I can't swear to it, so figured I'd cross one final potential problem off the list if I can. If you have an S22, I'll have to wonder.

Not sure. Only explanation I've heard that makes any sense is coil shielding. But my 6000 acts about like the other 6000s do, in the same areas. So if its coil shielding, that either means quite a lot of other coils are bad too, or it's some design problem inherent to all the coils or the 6000 itself. I'm over it though, I'm switching to the Axiom when i can get one in hand. Wasted too much $ on gas and time already to waste more. I do need to sell my 6000 though to fund the Axiom, so if Simon's coil is bad then as a responsible seller I'm going to have to send my 11" coil in to be checked also before I sell it. I want to sell it as a working unit, not one with potential problems. So that's why I'm curious how his turns out. Mine works just fine, except some areas it just won't. And these are remote areas, not close to infrastructure so I don't even have a good guess what is causing the problem. Buried nuclear missile silos?? No clue. I have suggested almost from the start there is some issue with the 6000 getting overwhelmed with too much sensory input and losing stability. I still suspect something like that, because I can make it loose stability by running over lots of hot variable ground when it sounds like it's verging on unstable from the EMI already, but not quite there yet. Also can force it to go unstable sometimes by turning my phone on, and even turning it back off again, the 6000 will stay unstable. That suggests a problem with the programming or hardware to me. But again, this isn't unique to my 6000 either.

Very encouraging write up with regards to the EMI and improvement with Coilteks, thanks. I'll be curious to see what the repair shop says about the 11". Mine does basically exactly what yours does, except only in certain locations, but mine also purrs along just fine in other locations. Please update with results when you get it back...

I am for the right price, if you are serious. But my price and your price probably are quite a distance apart, since I can weld one together myself. Post that sucker in the classifieds if you are serious!

Check out that link I posted on the other page. This was a ferrite I bought 3 years ago. I told Rob about when I bought it. If the ones they are selling now aren't shiny metal iron underneath the paint, then the ring they are selling changed since I bought mine. What you see in that post is exactly what I got off Ebay at the time though. *Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think the Doc ring (at least, at first, maybe things changed now) was just a solid iron ring some manufacturer sold as "ferrite" or something. It was probably sourced from China, and I know a lot of times I get inexpensive Chinese components, they aren't actually what they say they are - they are just whatever is cheapest to make that performance "roughly equivalent". If the ML ring is actually powdered iron and not ferrite, that's the only logical explanation, and also explains why the other ring rusted after sanding paint off it.

Heard, but I still don't think the ML ring is powdered iron. At least, not if that's what the other ring is, which it has to be because it rusts and is much more dense and highly magnetic. The ML ring is painted yellow, not black. The black is the ferrite itself after I sanded the yellow paint off. Density, magnetism, conductivity all indicate it's ferrite when compared to the other ring. Looks, walks, quacks like a duck... But I'll try to find those rings again and throw them on the XRF just to see for certain. I'll post back here if I can find them, all my unused stuff is packed into boxes right since I'm moving so I'm going to have to do some digging. It'd be good to know, whatever the case may be. What I can say for certain is this: the ML ring balances out on the 7000. The other ring does not, it sounds like an iron target. So they are definitely two different materials and one probably isn't doing the job it was intended to do.

Hard to understand until it happens to you. In my case, the 6000 worked ok this winter, EMI was there but I could deal with it. Yet, as soon as I travelled up north and started trying to prospect different areas I discovered that the 6000 won't work in some places. Like - at all. No stability. So much wasted gas and time. I don't know what the problem is, but I'm not compensated to figure it out for Minelab. I paid for a finished product. I don't detect on weekends, I am a prospector and this is part of my income and business, I pay taxes on it. I expect my detectors to work when/where I need them to work, or I sell them. Great detector in certain locations. Useless in other locations. I made no secret that the 6000 was my favorite detector to use - until it stopped working in places I needed it to work. So, if a better alternative is available, I'll take it.

ML themselves seem confused on the issue then. Because if you grind the paint off the official Minelab ring, you will see it's actually black ceramic ferrite under the paint, not metallic powdered iron as they apparantly recommend. Unless the powdered iron look black also? In which case, the Doc's ring was some kind of pure iron then, it was shiny and metallic and extremely magnetic. The two types of rings respond very differently on the 7000, the metallic iron rings will not balance out and sound like more like an iron target than ground noise. I found the thread where I showed the difference here. You can see the black powder on my hand from the official Minelab ring too.

To add onto Swegin's question, what's the updating process like, out of curiosity? Do we need a program like XChange to install the update? Or how does the process work?

I'm stoked there is finally another choice/competitor out there, and I'll be putting my 6000 on Ebay too the minute I know I can get an Axiom on my doorstep the next day to replace it and keep me up and running. Normally I'd be raising a stink, posting videos of the problem, trying to encourage some kind of fix. But for the first time in my detecting career we all have a choice and I can simply speak with my wallet instead of my voice now. That's a nice option to have at long last. Looking forward to trying this Axiom out, I could care less what company makes the best tools, I just want them to work, whoever makes them.