jasong

I did a bunch of experiments as you did Wireless guy, but there is always outliers to the data, piece that don't follow the patterns. In the end I don't think there is enough of a pattern anywhere to reliably discriminate unless you are in such a trashy location that there is no choice but to do so. After realizing that though there is honestly not much reason to keep using the GPZ over a good discriminating VLF.

While iron discrimination is a bit touch and go and sometimes in the head, I think it is possible to discriminate hotrocks or lenses of mineralization. 

Most lensy mineralization whether ferrous or salt that I ran into in NV was low-high and I got into a bad habit of avoiding digging low-high's altogether for a short time. But there is a solution to that problem, if a piece of gold is big enough to give a low-high signal in HY then it's going to be big enough to give a signal on Extra Deep as long as the original signal wasn't really faint (try it out). So I generally rechecked every low-high with Extra Deep mode and if the signal disappeared, which was basically every time, then I didn't bother digging it. It's not iron discrimination, but it is mineralization/salt lens discrimination. It's not 100%, but when you are digging 100's of low-highs every day all of which are ground noise then it's pretty useful. Of course you still have to dig the faint ones since this isn't reliable on them. I don't suggest anyone tries this unless they test it first for a month and dig all those signals and see it for themselves in action before just passing them over and not digging them.

This is also one of the reasons I have been almost begging Minelab to make the autotrack trigger multifunction so that we can easily switch between presets or combinations of multiple modes quickly, it takes too long how they have it set up in the software now.

One thing that may worth looking into, I've mentioned it a couple times here before but no one else seems to notice it but me so maybe its just in my head, is that Difficult may be less sensitive to iron objects than the reduction in sensitivity it experiences in gold (after switching from Normal). Let me try to explain that better: Difficult is without a doubt less sensitive to iron targets than Normal is, just like it is less sensitive to (most) gold targets than Normal is. But the *amount* Difficult is less sensitive to iron is greater than the amount it is less sensitive to gold. If that makes sense. Iron target sensitivity seems to drop off greater in Difficult than it does with Gold.

Even in the field the people I've talked to haven't noticed this. But I swear, it's not in my head. And if it isn't (ok, I'm willing to admit I'm crazy though if I am) then that may be a consistent pattern of discrimination that can be used - especially if we are given a quick track trigger multifunction so we can switch between modes quickly. You could switch between Normal/Difficult and listen to the rate the signal drops off. I've had success doing this, I can generally tell when it's iron. It works less with smaller bits of tin and better with larger metal.

Concealed carry/tactical shirts are great in tandem with a cellphone or GPS. They have quick access velcro or plastic zippered breast pockets that keep the device from falling in the water or into your diggings and its real easy to pull them out and look at them without interfering with the harness or a hydration pack since the pockets face inwards and not upwards.

I haven't noticed cell interference, but the Z will start talking on channel 20 or 22 (forgot which one) on a radio if you get radio within a few inches of the Z control box so talking on that channel might also interfere with the Z. It also interferes with my pinpointer (or vice versa) unless they are about 4-5 feet apart.

BCN is awesome, I just record every excursion I take and export to KMZ and look at all my tracks on Google Earth, annotate them, and find those little hidden washes I always missed somehow or avoid backtracking over past unproductive sites. It's not accurate enough for final gridding but it is accurate enough to find little 10'x10' islands of missed land within large patches and humans being humans we all tend to walk similar paths and miss those exact same little patches and they can hide some nice stuff in plain view of real hammered places occasionally.

Watching his videos it sometimes looks fairly impressive. But his testing methods are limited to some weird coil inside a home lab and seem dubious. The EMI filter is tested outside and seems pretty effective, but many of the reviews I've found online are completely counter to what he shows in the video and generally seem to be ineffective.

I've never run into anyone in the US running one of his GPX mods but he told me he's done quite a few for guys here in the states. Is it totally bogus? Anyone out there actually paid for the mods and put some field time in with it? Anyone bought one of those EMI filters?

JP, IIRC I read another post a month or so ago where you said something similar to the effect that the benefits of General will become much more apparent with the release of the larger coil.

Can you elaborate a bit? Is there a reason a larger coil compliments General more than High Yield?

Also, if a smaller coil is released do you have any thoughts about potential ground issues? As sensitive as the machine already is I've been wondering if a smaller coil might be "too" sensitive and end up with a lot of ground noise issues.

In the grounds I am in (NV and AZ) It is almost always more sensitive (and quieter) in the end to stay in Normal by lowering the threshold and go into low smoothing than it is to switch into Difficult. I'm a huge fan of running the threshold lower than normal even for every day detecting, I keep thold around 10-15 and keep my sensitivity around 16-18. I read a lot in the beginning that the sens on the GPZ doesn't make as much difference as it did on the GPX but I've found that generally to not be true, the difference between 10 and 18 is huge especially on the smaller and deeper stuff and just like running in Normal mode I will do what it takes to be able to run higher sensitivity whenever possible.

High smoothing and a low threshold helps with the salt too, it makes it detectable when it gets real bad and water saturated. Also cuts into a lot of the lightning, which is sometimes worse than the salt to deal with. What I miss by culling the audio is, in my experience, far less than what I miss because of the cacaphony of sounds due to ground and lightning when you get into those conditions and don't use the audio processing.

And oddity, I haven't gotten it on camera yet, but I've found that maybe 5% of nuggets are actually louder on Difficult than Normal. Has anyone else noticed this? Sometimes I think it has to do with the bad ground and Difficult just cuts through it all better. But I've actually found nuggets that I couldn't hear on Normal in the ground, and even after digging them and putting them right on the surface they were still a markedly less intense signal in Normal than in Difficult which must be due to geometry? All of them were small, maybe 2-5 grains-ish. All were in heavy salt ground too which maybe has something to do with it.

I did the same with my Tacoma (is it the US version of a Hilux?) and a Bilstein strut trying to push across a steep wall wash in 4 low going too fast.

It's hanging on the wall in the service bay at Les Schwab Tire in Winnemucca, the kid that took it out said it was the first they'd seen snapped in half like that.

A mono on a GPX will often give a signal from a good sized barrel or saguaro cactus too actually on normal or sensitive extra, just not to the same degree as does the GPZ. I've hit tree roots with the 8 and 11" monos too. The first week I tried my 4500 out I spent an hour dissecting a 10" diameter root because I thought there had to be a target in it...

I think it's like salty ground, the water in plants is filled with various ions the plant uses to grow and that makes the water conductive just like water becomes conductive when rain dissolves the salt in the ground. 

Right, for me it's only about 30 degrees but enough that it bothers my delicate sensibilities.   Mine is getting worse with time though. At first it'd happen maybe once or twice a day, now it's probably every 20-30 minutes. I've put a lot of hours on my machine so maybe its wearing down, no clue.

So it looks like custom modes are a popular request. I wonder if Minelab still reads the input on these forums now that the general new release is over? That would be awesome to see some user requests make it into an update.

Hmm I can twist mine with my hands in the locked position. It's tight but not tight enough to keep it from rotating bit by bit as you swing the detector back and forth and apply torque to the handle. It happens when I'm pressing up against scrub or detecting wash walls too.

There is really no way to assemble this incorrectly but I have to say -

can only think if you haven`t assembled incorrectly than there is variation in machines, which considering modern assembly lines is a wee unlikely.

You clearly do not have Harbor Freight in OZ. 

Yeah. Every 20-30 minutes the shaft and thus my coil twists around probably 30 degrees from where I set it (and thus about an equal angle off the ground for the coil). It does bother me because the reason I notice it is when my elbow and wrist start aching from having to twist them to compensate and keep the coil flat to the ground.

Seen other people post about this issue too, but it could be some clamps are working better than others or some shafts are sized slightly differently if you haven't noticed it all. No idea, but its definitely an issue that they need to at least address and IMO repair since with daily use RSI is a real possibility (yep, playing the safety card).

I agree numerical (1-20) audio smoothing would be great.

Making the quick-track trigger multifunction is the direction I am leaning. Click once and go into a preset user mode, click another time and go back into the first preset user mode. Hold trigger in for more than 1 second and go into quick-track. Far and away my #1 request if I could have anything.

Some other stuff like a ground mode between normal and difficult or a more useful detecting mode than General/Extra Deep to compliment HY. Not sure if any of that is possible though but definitely on my list.

I don't touch the GPS either. But I actually would if there were some changes to it which I've talked about it other threads. Right now I just velcro my phone to the top of my screen.

But before Minelab does software updates they have some hardware design flaws that need to be addressed first IMO. I'd like some kind of clamp that keeps the shaft from rotating and making the coil go askew (tape should not be essential for any new purchase) and a screen replacement since there is no reality where the plastic they use there is intended for every day use. Also a better bungee clip that stays put on the shaft and not built of plastic that breaks after time in the sun and bearing weight (carbon fiber would be nice).

Hi Swifty I remember this video when it first made the rounds.

I'm certain that the target is in the side of your hole about where the dirt changes from grey to brown and at about the 11 O'clock position to you as you are standing over the mound digging.

Notice that the target is very loud at the first boot scrape, even a solid 2 gram nugget at 14 inches won't sound that loud. Also, the target gets appreciably louder - almost screaming - on your first pick scrape at about 1:30 but never really increases in volume for the next 4 minutes of digging deeper, I think it's because you haven't dug any more dirt off the top of where the nugget is until you scrape the side of the hole one the final digging pass. At 5:50 you can more clearly hear the nugget is not in the bottom of the hole but the side as you push the coil vertical and pinpoint (notice it screams when detecting the upper vertical wall but not the bottom side part).

I think you were almost down to it by the first pick scrape, looks like 5-7 inches. Give it a try, wave that same nugget in front of your coil. I'll eat my words and my hat if you can pick it up at anything close to 14". 

Anyways, I've noticed this in a lot of other videos of people digging small targets, I've done it myself a lot too when I was first figuring out the new coil and where it was sensitive.

I think the odds are pretty high that it was in the side of the hole or you over dug this one. It's easy to do especially with this new coil. 

Give it a test, it's not possible for the GPZ to hit a 0.20 gram nugget (even a solid one) at 14 inches unless maybe it was squashed out to the size of a piece of a notebook paper.

^{On my first time out using the Gpz I dug a 2/10 of a gram at around 14 inches}

What Chris says is the most likely cause for most of the cases, But I've given this same thing some though too, why it seems some see more depth increase then others, and I think it's interesting to talk about because in metal detecting everything is so relative to the operator and conditions that terms like depth are hard to quantify.

What were your settings on the 5000 when you cleaned those patches out initially AUddicted? And which coils did you run? Here's why I ask:

While I'm impressed with the 7000 as a whole, I'm not completely floored by the depth increases as some others are either and I believe it may in part relate to how I or any person was running their GPX. With the 5000 it's pretty common for people to not stray far from Fine Gold/Sens ~12/Stab ~10/17x11 EM even in mellow quiet areas and if a guy ran like that he'd be a lot more impressed with the GPZ depth on average than a guy who was running it a lot hotter and using a wider array of coils. If a guy detected in areas requiring Enhanced a lot then HY or Gen/Diff is definitely deeper. So it's relative.

Also the weight of the coil on the 7000 almost forces a person to maintain good detecting habits, that is to say low and slow. Even seasoned veterans are guilty of violations, I see it all the time. A person swinging with the coil much lower to the ground with a slow swing is going to hear more and deeper targets than a person who doesn't keep good habits no matter what PI they are running.

And, in some videos, especially the ones with smaller targets 0.1 gram to .5 gram, in many it's plainly obvious that the nuggets are in the sides of the hole and not in the bottom and so I think the depth estimations are exaggerated in some cases. It's also real easy to dig past a nugget and assume that once you got it out it was at the bottom of the hole but it might have been 2-4 inches up, I do it myself too.

The last thing is, from both my experience and the Bruce Candy White Paper I think just in general the 7000 depth increase is more pronounced on the smaller bits so that's the bulk of what is being pulled up out of patches. And a lot of people are only specifically recovering old patches at this early stage.

These are the conclusions I've come up with after many hours of wandering thoughts while swinging away as to why the depth increase is completely amazing to some and to others is less so. Interested what others think.

Good job as the wisdom goes, the next ones come easier now. You never forget that first day you finally pop your first nuggets out of the ground though!

Hey Rick, yeah give me a shout when you come back out. I've been doing a lot of driving mostly but I can swing again now too and better every day. Good luck hope you pull a couple out of California too in the meantime!

Worthy of printing out and keeping in the truck, good explanation.

One question I have is during the initial startup phase when you only see the Minelab logo on the screen, is the detector actively sensing ground information and calibrating itself? Or does that only begin once the threshold becomes audible and the modes/options screen comes up?

Success! That feeling when you hit the goal mark...aww yeah. 

Good stuff Lunk!

Thanks guys, looks like I'm not the only one in the bad back club! Able to sit up sideways and hobble a bit now so making good progress. Thanks for the stretches Bill, I'm able to do a couple of them lightly.

Spencer, I'll probably be back next month depending on my back. Yeah I'd be down to drink a couple cold ones, never actually met another prospector from Wyoming in all the years of wandering out there. I've explored quite a few forgotten old areas out there when I was starting out. Did you know there is about a 50foot tall pile of pyrite cubes out there on the way to South Pass by Jeffrey City? I found it when I was 19 or 20 so maybe my memory exaggerates itself but it was crazy looking just a huge stack of ~1/2" cubes with a little bit of gangue material. From an old WW2 mine where they produced Sulfuric Acid from it, there was supposedly gold found nearby but I didn't have any luck. After I discovered I could pop pickers out of the bedrock right in downtown Deadwood while my ex-GF could go and have a nice coffee next door I ended up looking outside the state borders a bit more. 

Alright detect on! Hopefully see ya guys out in the field here in another week, I'll be the guy staying about 20ft from the truck at all times, stop and say hi. 

Awesome Russ that makes me really happy to hear!

Thanks guys!

Ray sounds like a good price. If you were here in person and traded for gold I'd probably go for it. No mailing address though

I was going to wait until I finished 30 days of swinging and post the results but I've ended up reinjuring an old disc in my back and have been in bed for the last 3 days. So from here out if I'm able to get up and able to detect again I'm going to have to stay pretty close to roads and easy to drive into places so not really expecting much more unless I get crazy lucky, never know.

This was 17 days total of swinging, 1.1 troy ounces or 34.84 grams, 36 nuggets total. I like to shoot for 2 grams a day when I'm in full time mode and I hit that mark almost on the nose so I'm pretty happy with the Z overall. Especially since Nevada is almost completely new territory to me and I didn't know a soul up here when I started last month so most of my time was spent wildcatting - though now I can say I'm glad to meet the folks that I was lucky to run into and hope to see you guys in the future!

Also looking forward to taking the Z to home turf on some of my patches in Arizona this winter and other more familiar ground and seeing if I can pull some big ones up from the depths out there in places I already know they are at and spend less time exploring. Though I love NV detecting so far, the weather up here is perfect and it looks just like Wyoming so i'll definitely be spending more time up here.

An aside, but all the gold I find is always for sale. Update: the Nevada gold is now all sold. I also have about 2 ounces of Gold Basin nuggets left and some smelted gold. In 1 ounce lots I'll sell any size, shape, or weight for spot. Some of this NV gold is almost specimen quality though the pic doesn't do it justice so spot is a pretty good deal. Cubic structures, chevrons, wire, etc. If you are in the Winnemucca area and interested then once I can get up and walking again you can look in person. I'll also trade for a Fischer F19 or other potentially interesting small scale mining related opportunities.

Nice haul Russ! Think there are any monsters left deeper when the big coil comes out?

That's a nice nugget no matter who you are! 

What do you think about the F19? I'm thinking about picking one up too.