Tortuga

Two types of responses come to mind for me for targets at depth with the GPZ. The first sounds like repeatable ground noise. I'll be going along swinging and particularly in Normal, which I've gone back to using a lot more, I'll be hearing the moans and groans coming from the ground. But sometimes the ground noise will be a little tighter and narrower on a spot and repeatable. Hot ground, tree roots and hot rocks are often repeatable on my Z but the tone comes from a broader area. No little gold nugget in the ground is going to have such a broad tone so I know I can pass on those responses. But if I give the ground a little scrape and I'm getting a repeatable signal from a lot shorter sweep in a small area I know it's a metal target. Pretty basic detecting technique. The second deep target tone I get from the GPZ which I love is an odd warble or chatter. It's been a few months since I've dug anything deep from this response but I've found gold this way. It's just an odd repeatable sort of crackle tone I get sometimes. It only gets my attention cuz it's repeatable. Then I'll usually scrape about an inch off the top and get a faint, repeatable metal target tone so I know it's something I should dig.

I'd love to hunt an area like that, maybe Quartzsite? I haven't been there yet. I'm always on the prowl for the "whispers" with my GPZ. Have dug one nice 2oz gold/quartz specimen that was about a foot and a half deep. Deepest target I've dug so far and took over an hour to excavate it. All the other gold I've found has been down about a foot at the deepest and some of it has just been sitting in the topsoil.

I've been really surprised in the difference running Normal on the GPZ makes. Since I got my replacent detector I've been revisiting some spots I pretty much exclusively ran in Difficult. I guess after taking a summer break from detecting for a little bit my ear doesn't mind the ground noise from Normal. A few days ago I dug a deep, fat nail down in about 12" of clay in an old patch that wouldn't even give off a response in Difficult.

Being able to discriminate would be nice, but not 100% critical to me. I do pass on many areas that have too much trash with my GPZ but then I can still find gold in other areas with less trash. If a spot looks really good that's covered in trash you have to do things the hard way and dig all targets. And while the SDC is very easy to use I've gotten to a point now with my GPZ that I find it very easy to use, just turn on and go after I ground balance if I'm in a new area. The menu system is a big improvement over the GPX. The only thing that would make the GPZ perfect in my mind is if it had the same weight as an SDC...

Garrett Carrott here too. I find it pretty useful for nugget shooting on deep targets. The GPZ has such a big coil that it will find stuff deep, but it gets hard to pinpoint with. I break out my Garrett Carrot then find what's in the hole a lot faster and easier. Also helps me recover the target without damaging it. If it's close enough that the pinpointer detects it I usually grab a stick and start carefully scraping the dirt away.

Leave it natural. Nice gold. What settings are you using?

Got some nice chunks there. What's the weight on the biggest nugget? Any chevron gold?

That's an incredible nugget. I hate the laws there but Northern California is one of my most favorite places in the world. Hopefully one day I can load up a camper and just bum around in the mountains up there prospecting.

This is not a cheap hobby and spending all that money on a GPZ 7000 just to find out you don't like metal detecting can be a tough pill to swallow. In the past your choices might have been buy a Gold Bug Pro first, use that for awhile and see if you like the hobby then upgrade to a GPX. That's what I did several years ago. But honestly these days I would recommend getting an SDC 2300 first then get a GPZ 7000 just to give yourself the best chance at finding gold. I say this from experience because I never found anything with my GBP or GPX but I did with my SDC and GPZ. But this can really vary depending on the user.

I had the same problem as the OP. Also I began to notice whenever I set my control box down to dig a target the machine would also false on me. It was extremely annoying. I had one of the early machines that I purchased in April of last year. I used the hell out of that machine, I literally hunted with it once a week for 7-9 hours a trip every single week for a year. I also added a lot to that during camping trips that lasted several days. After approximately a year of owning it I think it just kinda fell apart on me. I've been pretty busy this summer and haven't been detecting at all but I finally sent it back to Minelab about two weeks ago. They promptly replaced it within about a week and all I need to do now is pick it up at the UPS Depot. Minelab told me they don't repair these machines, if there's an issue with it they just replace the whole thing, which is awesome. I'm going to be a heck of a lot more gentle on my new unit which out in the desert here in Arizona isn't easy. I do lots of hiking with my detector and it gets scrubbed and knocked on all kinds of rocks and rough ground so I'll be doing my best to protect my replacement unit.

It's 1 foot by 2.2 feet long. Wonder how it could be so heavy? Must be dense like a gemstone.

Wow that's a nice specimen. I dug a lot smaller specimen like that down in some hard packed red clay a few months ago. Was just a very faint little warble in the threshold and it was out in the open too only a few inches down. I'm sure lots of guys had walked right past it. Gotta have a 7000 and some skill to find nuggets like that!

Very nice. You don't read about a lot of ATX finds.

Wow looks cool. You're sure it's on Discovery?

Nice! I actually wore out my Miner John GPZ cover out here in Arizona. With the rocky terrain here nothing lasts long. I ordered another one promptly. Way better than the stock cover.

That looks bigger than twelve grams. Must be a flat one.

Aww too bad you nuked the quartz off it but it's your gold. Much better to relive the experience when it's in its natural state. But if you're selling it or mounting it must customers unfamiliar with natural gold will like it cleaned up.

That's gotta be the most entertaining detecting video I've seen in a long time!

Wow those are some nice looking nuggets. One of these days I'd like to dig up some of those solid, water-worn slugs. We've got a lot of 'spiky' gold here in Arizona

Nice one. Weight and got a pic of it cleaned up?

Cool video. Heck of a patch he found. I've never dug large shallow gold like that before. I have to focus so hard on the whispers here in Arizona sometimes when the threshold warbles I think it's all in my head. You could probably use a Radio Shack detector to dig those bigger ones. It looked easy to detect but I'm sure it took some serious prospecting on the front-end to get to that jackpot.

I don't want anyone to get ripped off but it looks like a prototype to me. Don't know why anyone would go to all the trouble of designing a "GPC" logo instead of just copying an SDC one off the internet. The whole thing is strange, that's for sure.

That's weird as hell. No chance Minelab wasn't testing an SDC in a F3 shell? I could see them going from the GPX to GPC. The seller has decent feedback too.

The open design is to keep the weight down and as close to the stock 14" coil as possible. It's probably a "two in one" coil design like the stock 14" coil. Small coil in the middle, big one on the outside. Check Steve's pics of the inner guts of the 14" coil to verify this.

The picture is from the new Minelab video that Steve posted about how they make metal detectors at their headquarters. Watch the video carefully and you can see that prototype coil and another guy testing it outside next to a standard 14" GPZ coil. It's being discussed on Bill's forum too.