jasong

The geology at Rye Patch is pretty similar to the geology found in many other patchy locations in NNV, until you get further East. I am pretty sure the nuggets there are derived from discontinuous pods and veins of hydrothermally derived ore, swarms of them. Most of these have eroded away or been buried, leaving no readily apparant source. A lot of the nuggety gold in NNV seems to originate from the interface topographically speaking between the mountain and the pediment. Rye Patch is one such location. The reason is probably because this is where surface expression of the fault is which uplifted the mountain, and that fault provided conduits in the country rock for hydrothermal fluids to permeate, and some of these fluid channels carried dissolved gold in great quantity. They flash boiled upon hitting the surface, precipitated out the gold all once creating nuggety gold. And left little or lower grade gold buried deeper in the conduit where flash boiling didn't occur. Being largely near surface, or surface occurences, these eroded away quickly, leaving no apparant source for the nuggets. They are also relatively new deposits in a historically arid area, so gold tended not to travel too far. It's also why a lot of those bonanza grade prospects and mines petered out relatively quickly. It's pocket country. So, when looking for new patches, this is why it's important to pay attention to where the faults are in NNV when narrowing down areas to detect.

The Lake Lahontan maximum elevation was somewhere around 4370ft, it can be traced on aerials. The Black Rock desert which is the biggest white splotch in the background was part of the same lake 12,000 years ago. Now it's home to Burning Man. The Bonneville Salt flats (and the Great Salt Lake) are the remnants of another more famous but equally massive ancestral sister lake which has mostly evaporated. But it shows a current example of how freshwater lakes can actually deposit salt when it's concentrated due to evaporation. I believe that the lake sediment caused a lot of placer deposits in NNV with sources beneath the lake level to become buried and so they may still exist at some depth, many tens of feet, or a hundred. I'm not talking about Rye Patch but NNV in general. The lake was quite recent geologically and so it probably came after many placer deposits had already eroded into the soil. While little to nothing has been written about it, I believe strongly based on my own observations that there exists multiple ancient river courses through NNV that originated in the Sierras, Oregon, or Idaho, which are now buried or faulted up into the mountains, much like the Sierras contain similar channels. I believe these old river courses eroding out, which predate Lake Lahontan are the mystery source for much of the apparantly river worn, rounded nuggets found in the middle of the prairie with no sources nearby. A lot of my exploration up there is now centered around locating these old river deposits. Which usually means I find nothing more often than not since it's a lot of ATV'ing around since there are no books or research to start from. I own 40 acres of land just barely visible in the aerial Simon posted. The region is fascinating geologically and from a prospecting perspective. It and other parts of NV represent to me some of the last great exploration opportunities in the Lower 48 for prospectors. This whole area fuels almost exclusively my desire for new detecting technology to be developed which can exploit exploration like this. The amount of ground to cover is massive, and the difficulties due to salt can make things even slower.

I feel like the GPZ with the 8" is perfectly balanced with the shaft extended fully, and it makes swinging it without the bungee a breeze. It's still a heavy machine, but I forget it is because the balance makes swinging it so much less stressful on my elbow and forearm. I haven't made it to the goldfields yet for heavy usage, but doing some tests it feels right. I hope Minelab understands this and updated any and all new designs for proper balance incoporating the GPZ style case. I believe that you can have a heavier machine still be usable with no complaints as long as the balance is proper or at least close. It's when it gets really nose heavy, a user can stress out there elbow and arm due to the balance problem which they attempt to alleviate with the swing arm, harness, J strut, etc. But really, Minelab just needed a lighter coil...literally, that's all. So like Simon says, I believe Minelab would go far by just putting some time into coil development too. For future models, hopefully including this GPX 6000 and whatever comes next.

More than anyone wants to know, but for those curious: The white is actually alkali in that photo, it's in the basins (topographic lows). Alkali is salt but not like table salt, in this case is usually sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. Found that out when searching for lithium years back and getting stuck doing flame spectrometry which made lithium ID impossible because the sodium lines blow out the lithium. Anyways, there are also "normal" salts in this soil too, left behind as Lake Lahontan evaporated and concentrated down the once dispersed salts. Sodium chloride, like we eat. I believe the alkali is derived from both the water evaporation as well as the local sedimentary formations, as it can be found quite a ways above the ancestral lake levels. When wet, the ions from all the various salts out there mobile and turn the ground into one big conductor and it makes it very difficult to detect. Pointless in some areas IMO with the GPZ. Doable with a GPX. Even damp soil has enough ion mobilization to make detecting a challenge. They don't pose nearly the problem when dry. This should be a great season to detect NNV due to the lack of rain. But even a small amount of dampness will mobilize the ions, and we can experience quite significant depth/sensitivity loss in these soils. Even when the soil is dry on top, it may be damp a foot down, and I believe this accounts for a great many missed nuggets in such heavily detected areas up there, vs equally heavily detected areas in Arizona which do not consistently produce so many missed nuggets. Thus, areas like this should logically be places where new technology can still produce a few more nuggets.

It looks Minelab requested a delay in the release of the user manual and test photos until Dec 18, 2020 - "ensuring that business sensitive information remains confidential until the actual marketing of newly authorized devices" So maybe an October release is a little early. I don't want to direct link a .pdf, so here is the website with the request for revised confidentiality letter from which I quoted above. Minelab sent that letter the day after the FCC material was posted here on the forum, wonder if they read this and went "oops"...

122? You can't even safely cook a steak in that. Today in the Mohave.

I ninja editted my post right before you replied to include your DD coil, I forgot you had it. Yeah, for real hot ground you will sometimes only be able to really use a DD coil. Especially, as you noted, in heavy iron areas. Try it in Sensitive Extra or Sharp first, then Fine Gold if you have to. Alternatively, if you aren't going for ultra sensitivity and just want to spend some time detecting and getting the hang of everything and the gold is common and shallow, running in Fine Gold or with a DD in default settings can make it fairly easy as they both reduce the amount of noise your detector gives back, which people find easier to deal with when starting since you will mostly be hearing the good targets. The advice I gave was the way I would do it, but I'm like the detecting version of a car guy who's trying to squeeze every extra horsepower out of an engine he can, in every available instance, even when unnecessary. So take with a grain of salt haha. Also, don't forget that while detecting pocket/lode areas, if you get topographically above the source there may be no gold to detect at all. Unless there was some serious faulting after the gold began to erode, or another source higher up.

Also might be worth mentioning that Sensitive Extra and Sharp timings are generally more sensitive on the smaller, speci type gold than Fine Gold is. Fine Gold is, to me anyways, more of a timing to be used to mitigate hot ground. My experience with the 5000 is limited though, as I stuck with my 4500 since I didn't find much use for Fine Gold in my conditions. Not knowing your ground type, and if I went in blind with your equipment, my game plan would be something like this: 1.) Start with Sens Extra/Sharp with the 8" mono, run the gain up high until the ground gets too loud, then kick it back a notch. Out in the middle of nowhere and with a small coil, you may be able to get rid of some Stabilization and gain a bit of sensitivity to small signals, that setting works opposite how it seems to work when you turn the knob, check your manual. Stabilzation masks a lot more tiny/crystalline type targets on the GPX series than most realize. 2.) If ground is causing too much problem, back off gain to 8 or 10 and then if problems persist, switch to the 11" mono instead and fiddle with gain as needed. 3.) If ground is still too bad, try Fine Gold with the 11" mono. If that quiets things down, try it with the 8" mono now. You should be able to run higher gains in Fine Gold on both coils. You will be losing some depth now in this setting though. The smaller coil will have better sensitivity to smaller gold, the larger coil will have slightly better depth. 4.) If ground is still too bad, a last resort is the 11" DD. It may sound complicated, but that is the routine I would go through to determine how to run that setup in a new place if I were trying to squeeze every ounce of sensitivity to that type of gold out of the 5000. Alternatively, for simplicity you could just put the 8" on and run in Fine Gold at default settings and be fairly safe, but if you want to squeeze performance out I would try a routine like this. As Wes says, an 8x6 would be great for that type of gold and terrain if you can get such a coil up there, and if you can buy a new generation smaller coil then getting one with spiral (flat) windings will add some sensitivity to that crystalline/tiny stuff too.

Is there a reason you are using the 5000 instead of the other detectors? They are all better suited to crystalline, wiry, or lode type gold distributed in quartz than the 5000 is. Generally speaking anyways, depending on what sort of ground you are in though, but it sounds like they all worked well previously in that ground. The smaller the coil the better for small gold on the 5000 though, yes. Mono coils are more sensitive than DD's, especially when it comes to the old style or stock coils. If you are detecting the side of that hill pictured, and you have all the detectors mentioned, I'd be taking the Gold Bug 2 and the SDC.

If this 6000 is in a slightly slimmed down GPZ style case, uses regular mono loops, and has a smaller battery than the GPZ then those factors alone should get it to 5lbs from the GPZs 7.2lbs I would think. I wonder if the shaft might be lighter too as it need not be as large diameter if it isn't accommodating an inner cable or a large mounting knuckle. JANUARY 2021 UPDATE - Minelab GPX 6000 Revealed! I suppose its futile to ask at this stage when things are so mum still, but i might as well try...JP can you say whether you field tested this machine or not yet? Or if we will get public field test reports as we did prior to the GPZ release?

There was that odd 3rd party report that stated the 6000 has "slightly" different capabilities than the 7000 and won't cannibalize it's market. An odd thing to say since PI and ZVT are so different, but it was written by an investment advisor so who knows how much he understands. Anyways, the primary strength PI seems to have over ZVT right now is in salt I think. Significant gains depth-wise could be had in the alkali laden fields with a souped up PI that already has a large coil selection that manages to mitigate salt better than the 5000 while having SDC-like speci gold capabilities. Certainly in Northern Nevada anyways. That report doesn't mention cannibalizing the SDC market, so it makes me wonder if they might wrap some SDC capabilities up into the 6000, with a coil selection pre-built into the market of course, and potentially get rid of the SDC or make it cheaper? Then we have this GeoSense PI mystery, which seems to me not to be GPS but more likely to be related to their patents which deal with correlating the moving coil to data in the screen/control box, and potentially to ground balancing or enhanced target pinpointing/recovery. Or, maybe it has nothing to do with gold machines at all and I'm chasing rainbows there. At $8000 (if that number is true, which I very much hope it's not), all I know is this machine better have more than just an updated screen, control box, wireless, and modern battery to impress the enthusiasts. We also have the NF Z Coils coming out around the same time by the looks of it. If the 6000 can't use DOD capabilities and is just a pure PI, then it's going to compete with the market of GPZ owners who can now buy new coils around the same time. That seems like odd timing for what is likely a ML sanctioned/licensed coil since it's rumored to be chipped.

The test seems to show and talk about the whole metal detector in some aspects, but I'm unclear if the testing was limited to just the BT transmitter or what exactly I am reading. Or if that manual they are going to release is for the entire detector or just for the wireless module.

That website will make the user manual available on October 19th. So presumably we'll have a GPX 6000 release date before or on that date? Or was the GPZ manual released before the machine was, I can't remember? Also, 7.2v*650ma = 4.68 watts. The GPZ battery is 72 watt hours, and is rated for 8 hours of operation. A 72 WH GPZ battery should technically last on this GPX 6000 for 72WH/4.68W = 15.38 hours of operation, though it won't last to zero so less than that. So maybe a lighter/smaller battery, or longer battery life?

Dang, nice find Dave. Lots of info in there... 1.) Bluetooth (probably a WM-12 type thing?) 2.) Attached battery 3.) Some sort of channel hopping noise reduction circuitry. I'm unclear if it's for the wireless module or the detector TX/RX or both. 4.) Design looks kinda like a somewhat smaller GPZ? Am I misunderstanding the data, or are they measuring actual TX pulse times in there too and showing some new timings? Or is that just something to do with the BT since EDR and BDR are Bluetooth methods? Longest pulse being 2.94ms and shortest being 0.42ms. That seems pretty fast if so. What are the SDC and QED pulse times? I'm not too up to date on modern pulse widths. Would be cool if they wrapped in a beefed up, improved SDC into a modernized GPX platform along with whatever other improvements they have included.

The call of gold powers people into many Earthly discomforts apparantly. We have had field geologists and techs working on an exploration project in the AZ desert in 105-115 temps for a month now, few clouds. Not sure how they are doing it. You can't even pick up and hold any kind of remotely dark rock in that weather and the heat just feels like a physical wall of oppression. 45-65 degree AZ winters are close to perfection though in my book.

Now you know at least one. 😀 I lived in the field full time off nothing except my detecting and drywashing/dredging finds for 5 years. And I very commonly would mentally discriminate targets based on sounds and other information in order to increase the ground i cover and to reduce my physical workload, a factor that becomes very important when you detect all day, every day, every week and month and need to remain mentally and physically willing and able to do it the next day and every day after. My experience is that perfect detecting style, including digging every target, is simply not profitable in many places here in the US in this day and age unless just doing it for fun and hobby or only spending time in heavily hit club areas or known patches. When I need to make reliable amounts of finds, I adapt my detecting style to the conditions and often that means selecting targets to leave behind. I can't count how many times I meet people in the field who have spent hours making sure they are emulating the professional advice on forums and then asking me why they aren't finding anything except handfuls of tiny trash. And if I can show them better areas to detect when they are standing within sight of ground i am actively pulling gold out of. Its not about perfect detecting, its about understanding the specific conditions of the area and adapting, in my opinion. Sometimes it really is about knowing what to dig and what not to dig. Based largely on both the feedback your machine gives, and the location you are detecting, as well as correlating specific spots known to be more likely to hold gold or hold trash with what you are hearing on the detector. Technology that would aid in making that technique more reliable would be a boon to those who know how to put it to use and increase finds with it. The more information a detector can give to a user who finds a way to put the data to use, the better in my opinion.

I'm not sure I understand what your graph axis' represent entirely here, but if I understand what you are saying then I think the GPZ already does this. It's what people call the "warble". To me it sounds more like a tone curl than a warble as it "feels" like the audio is curling down or up and then back normal. It reminds me of those portamento things on 1980's synthesizers/organs that you could play by sliding a finger back and forth to bend the tone (or a bit like a whammy bar on a guitar). It's often encountered with tiny iron targets or bits of wire, especially curled or bent. But tiny nuggets, nuggets with odd geometries such as wire, prickly, or bent can also cause the response. And (so I hear) too can deep, very large nuggets, but I wouldn't know about such things. I pretty much ignore "professional detecting style" advice. Along the way, I realized that this tone curl on the Zed can actually be induced on certain targets by not having a perfectly flat swing over the target, and angling your coil up or down on one side depending which way you swing, or by moving the coil up and down slightly as you push forwards and backwards over the target, sometimes angling side to side there too can induce the tone tone curl. Some targets you cannot do this on no matter what. When I can induce the tone curl by moving my coil like that, I can in some specific areas where I'm familiar with the native gold, discriminate targets with a fairly high level of accuracy if the iron junk is mostly wire bits or small tin bits. So, my swing is actually not flat at all most times in those areas, but intentionally skewing about to try to induce different effects on targets in the GPZ audio. I'm not sure if that's what you mean though, as I'm not sure if that audio response is dependent on the signal phase or not, since I don't really understand ZVT all that deeply or how the GPZ processes audio.

The gold not backing currency thing isn't what concerns me, it's a tiny problem when compared to currency to market/bank holding imbalances. Nothing is backed by anything today, so really anything we think has value really doesn't. Consider: There is only about $1.5 trillion in US currency circulating in the entire world. Yet, there is something around $13 trillion held digitally in banks in savings/checking accounts, in CDs, money markets, etc. That's "vapor money". Banks hold many times more money for people than actually exists. So what exactly do they hold? Nothing. It's a macro scale version of the gold not backing currency problem. We have accounts worth currency that aren't backed by currency, it makes no sense. It gets worse. US combined stock markets are worth something like $34 trillion (according to Google in 2018, more now). These stocks are traded daily with money that doesn't really exist, and used as collateral for loans that grant more money that doesn't exist. Same with our housing market, worth something like $33 trillion. And our commercial real estate market is worth something like $16 trillion. And the private land in the US is worth something like $21 trillion. And who knows how much our minerals are worth combined. So, we have about $1.5 trillion in cash. And we have about $100 trillion in "value" for our major economic holdings which derive their value from our dollar. Dollars which can't even cover 1/10th of our bank related accounts if we all withdrew to cash, and which covers 0% of the value of everything we say has "value". So, what is the actual value of our markets and real estate if there isn't enough currency to back them? Well maybe people in parts of the world own a big portion of it then, in global currency? Nope. The actual amount of real currency globally is about $5 to $6 trillion. Total. That's it. There is something like ~$60 trillion in global savings/checking and other bank related accounts though. More vapor money. So, all the money in the world can't even cover 1/10th of the value of our stock market and real estate in the US, ignoring entirely the value of stuff in the rest of the world. Nothing is real anymore. Hyperinflation arrived a long time ago, we just put it off and ignore it, shoveling the problems to the next generations, by not printing the physical currency such as a place like Zimbabwe did and acting like our economy is normal instead. Everyone plays along because the world needs a stable, globally traded common currency, in a stable country. The problem is much, much larger than simply not having a currency backed by gold anymore IMO.

Everything people have mentioned here is old though. Any cheapy phone with access to an app store has a GPS lightyears ahead of the GPZ. Any new high level detector should be expected to have a modern ergonomic design, case, LiPo battery, wireless option, and screen. Even waterproofing. An $8000 detector better have it all in spades, without question. Spiral coils are old news, and already work on the 5000. Even if this new detector included every one of these things, it would only be status quo at best, and 5 years behind the times if I'm being honest. Are people's expectations for an $8000 detector really that low? I'm asking seriously, not trying to stir anything. I just think if that's all this 6000 is, and that sort of release is the new normal, then ML is going to find themselves on the same path as White's when it comes to consumer detectors. I have to believe there is something new, that neither the 5000 nor 7000 has. Otherwise, I fail to see who the customers will be for such a machine, unless it was significantly cheaper than the 5000, which apparantly it is not.

My understanding is that performance on PI's is getting maxed out. And simply just updating to a new case, attached battery, and modern screen hardly seems to justify anyone paying $8k to upgrade from the 5000, or $8k to get those features from current 7000 owners. GPS are cheap, and not a significant upgrade to detectors today. Minelab has never released a gold machine since I've been detecting for gold that is a downgrade from the current flagship. Not that I can recall anyways. It almost certainly has to have some totally new something or another that the 5000 doesn't have, and maybe that the 7000 doesn't have either since $8k is a premium machine price targeted to serious prospectors. Most serious prospectors already own a 7000 and would need some reason to buy a PI again. GPX = PI. So, I'm guessing this machine will incorporate this "Geosense PI" technology we heard about. And I'm still guessing it's something to do with correlating the coil position to the ground and to the target in order to get a better ground balance such as in the patents I posted previously. Or maybe something with improved target signal processing.

It sounds like you may have some kind of metal like lead, tin, zinc etc in your alloy. You probably need to go beyond smelting and try refining a small batch. If its just gold, silver, and copper then it shouldn't be brittle. Arizona gold is often associated with galena and lead. Might try a quick cupel experiment. Look up cupeling, i haven't done it myself and I know very little about refining. But if lead is your problem, cupeling may absorb the lead? Quartz or other iron impurities left over should be visible under a loupe.

Gold is going up globally, but there appears to be more to it. Our dollar is weakening vs more stable currencies like EUR or even the AUD now due to our historically bad economy (record decrease in GDP, record high unemployment still) and our inability to reign in Covid compared to other more successful countries. Check out a chart of gold in EUR for instance (or a similar effect with AUD), it's still up, but they are just above May highs, while we have blown way past that mark in USD. That discrepancy is due to our dollar declining, not just because gold is going up. I'm sure we'll hit $2000 gold and above if our dollar keeps declining. $2500 gold would be great. The effect is mitigated if we end up paying 33% more for a Minelab in a year or two though.

Daaang, nice. Time for me to sell some nuggets to fund some more prospecting adventures this winter! Anyone looking to buy for spot or even slightly under at these prices?

Reg was always helpful to me and other friends in common in Colorado where he sometimes visited when we dredged. He helped me fix my GB2 in the field over the phone when I was prospecting with his brother, and gave me detecting advice on forum PM's. I always hoped I would have the chance to meet in person but we always seemed to be in different places at different times, but I'm grateful I had the chance to talk to him and learn a thing or three while he was here. I will remember him.

ML have filed a lot of patents the last few years regarding "improved metal detectors" or something to that effect. I wonder if this logo might not be a full detector but some kind of technology with it's own logo. Like MPS, SETA, etc etc. For instance, something like this patent which seems to determine the position of the target in the ground related to the position of the coil using some coordinate system, and then plots it on the screen. This patent here is similar, except seems to use similar ideas to improve the performance of auto ground balancing, and specifically references PI machines so maybe the new "thing" has to do with it? I just read the abstract but it almost sounds like it uses GPS coords to "remember" the ground balance it learned at that spot, and uses the same information to re-ground balance to the same settings when you go back to the same spot? I dunno, I need to read the full patent some day, that seems pretty innaccurate since GPS is only accurate to like 9ft on a good day. Or maybe I was thinking about this patent. Similar idea, with some diagrams of the guy moving his coil around. Of other note, there are some patents related to enhanced signal processing (potentially discrim, or better ways to deal with variable ground) and dealing with salt. Also newer patents on constant current machines (the GPZ is one of these). It sure seems like a new prospecting machine should be on the horizon, but it just never seems to arrive... Anyways, cool to have some mystery to look forward to again at the least.