Tortuga

There's a picture of this big specimen in the latest GPAA magazine "Gold Prospectors".

Pretty cool 

Based on the price of the detector, and the unique "two in one" construction of the coil, it wouldn't surprise if the price is around $1500-2000. I'm still interested in getting one tho.

Yikes... will probably be more of those monsters in the field now.... 

Pretty cool accessories.

Must be going around because I took a good slip and fall over the weekend with the GPZ in hand too. The coil landed first and I was still holding onto the handle when I hit the ground so the coil got kinda turned around while the shaft was still locked in place. Seemed to make the usual "GPZ twist" I get from the coil turning when I detect even worse. I think the little locking bar is wearing out. Might need to replace the lower shaft eventually.

1 hour ago, DDancer said:

Only two things I've had fault with are the "feet" on the detector housing 

I broke the feet on mine too. The CTX 3030 uses the same part and I was able to buy it for $10 from Kellyco.

7 hours ago, klunker said:

I somehow get the feeling that this shaft was designed on a computer by a computer genius who's computer told him that this design was adequate. It's not.

Pretty sure you're right about this. I believe there was a shot of the engineers using CAD CAM or whatever it was in that video they produced showing what it was like inside the Minelab offices. The ears on the lower shaft have an "extruded" design (not sure if this is the correct terminology) that basically uses the least amount of material they can get away with while still maintaining its structural integrity. This is supposed to make it lightweight and strong. The plastic crossbar in the Pro-swing harness is the same thing. Sounds like they should have just made it a solid piece of plastic instead.

That's some nice looking country. Makes the desert down here in Arizona look like a wasteland.

5 hours ago, Swifty said:

Has anyone heard the rumors about a new 20 inch coil for the Z due out in March?

 

This is what I'm interested it.

Won't be fun to swing (gonna be heavy) but would love to take it back to some deep patches I've already found with the 14" stock coil on my GPZ.

Dang that's some nice gold. Not easy having a day like that these days, talk about few and far between. If I find anything it's usually just one, sometimes two nuggets.

Is the gold price low? On Jan 3, 2000, the first official price day of the 2Ks, gold stood at US$288.50 per Troy ounce. Been some ups and downs since then but I am happier looking for gold now then I was then, even though a buck is worth a little less now. Anything over $1000 an ounce suits me fine. I am not so sure about over $2000 an ounce because that means a good gold price but probably everything else is doing real, real bad. Be careful what you wish for.

You have a good point. Silver seems really low too but I guess in the past it's probably been worth 50-60 cents an ounce.

I haven't gotten around to reading the latest Melman article in the ICMJ yet but I hope it goes up.

I can't understand at all why it's been down so low. Whenever economies are unstable I thought precious metal prices were supposed to go up. The economy in this country is still in the crapper and there's still tons of people out of work. I don't believe for a second the reports that come from Washington how rosey they say everything is right now.

It looks like there's even a small "rail" section, like for a pistol or rifle, on the top of the MarsMD shaft. Guess you could mount a laser or a flashlight on it if you wanted 

Thanks Tortuga;

I would expect it to be sensitive at the tip(jeez?), my concern is if it will be so sensitive that touching the sides of the hole will cause false signals. I would not even bring it out until I had a 12 or 18 inch hole dug. It is only the real deep stuff that stuffs me...

I read a review that touted the sides as well as the tip as being very sensitive, I do not see why that is a good thing...why would you call that a PIN-POINTER? That is why I am asking dumb questions...

fred

I wouldn't worry too much about falsing. The pinpointer isn't super sensitive. Unless you're digging a hole filled with trash all over the sides, it will only hit on the single metal target you're trying to find. They're easy to use. Once the tip gets near anything metal it beeps and vibrates. Works very well and will save you time pinpointing targets. You can even ground balance with the Garrett too.

On February 2, 2016 at 2:16 PM, fredmason said:

I have never used a pinpointer. However, some of the deep targets I get with the GPZ have nearly worn me out-which ain't all that hard to do these days...Is the Garrett carrot only/mostly sensitive at the end. I am concerned that it will signal on all sides and the end which would nullify its effectiveness on deep targets...

I doubt I would use it much coin hunting, I just need to reduce the work involved in digging big, deep junk while i hope/wait for the thumper nugget...

fred

It's most sensitive at the tip (jeez...) but you won't be finding any deep targets with it. Everything I've ever pinpointed with mine has been within a few inches of the pinpointer.

It's really helpful when your hole gets too deep to put the coil inside anymore and you have no clue if your target is on the side of the hole or at the bottom.

When you get close to your nugget you don't want to damage it with your pick either so the pinpointer really helps with narrowing down where the target is so you can toss the pick aside and start scraping away with your plastic scoop or a small stick.

Are there detectorists in the novel?

The GPZ would come in last place, imo.

But I love it anyway.

I agree. The hard plastic grip just isn't very comfortable to me. I wrapped it in some thick tennis racket grip tape and that helped a lot. It's really hard to beat the adjustability and comfort of the foam grips on the GPX models.

Most comfortable to me was probably the Fisher F-75. It was the first "expensive" detector I bought and I remember assembling it was like wow this thing is a Cadillac compared to the Tesoros I was using before.

Some guys report getting better responses from their detectors in wet ground. I found a nice nugget at depth once after it had rained the night before so I'm a believer. However I hadn't detected that ground before so I can't say with any real certainty if it helped. Wet ground might help with the conductivity of metal targets a little.

I have found that General punches way deeper than HY on target's larger than about 15g but the signal is more subtle but carries way further than HY, and the response can be more complex....

So you definitely want to be digging any complex warbely sounds

That's interesting I might have to revisit a few areas using General. I've never used that timing at all, just High Yield/Difficult since the update. Should try General/Normal some time.

Second that warbly sound. It's my favorite noise on the GPZ. I've dug some seriously deep targets after getting that tone. Sometimes trash, sometimes gold. It can be so subtle that it's really easy to miss it in all the ground noise.

I believe they tested this new one out on an episode of Gold Trails.

Ah ok, so initially it was a boomer, like trash. That was a pretty deep hole too, but then again that was a big coil and a big piece of gold.

You never mentioned if it was a whisper or a boomer with that 18" coil? Did you say it sounded like trash?

Wow that thing is beautiful. My favorite kinds of specimens are the ones worn a little bit like that. I love all gold but I've got a few (much smaller) specimen nuggets that look sharp and jagged, like they just fell out of the vein. I like specimens like yours, that are solid and look like mother nature worn them a little bit.

My dream is to find a gold nugget "river rock" specimen like they find in tailings piles in Alaska that's just a smooth, round stone shot thru with gold.

The gold on your piece looks nice and yellow too. Really pure.

I've got a bigger N52 magnet than what you have on the head of my pick. I'm sure it's not good to get it near the computer part of my detector so I'm just careful when I'm driving and stuff. Pick goes in the back, detector up front. I can't imagine it would do anything to the coil, just a bunch of copper wire in there.

As far as using too strong of a magnet to pick up black sand I don't think that's possible. The stronger the better. All the black sand I've collected on my magnet that's on my pick rubs off easily or I just whack the side of my pick (not the fragile magnet) on a rock and that does a good job of shaking the sand off.

Very nice bit of research and successful follow up.

WARNING:

Pictures taken with a smartphone are geotagged unless that feature is turned off. It is relatively simple to determine where a smartphone picture is taken if geotagged.

Once they're uploaded to the forums and are being hosted on the server I don't believe you can look up the geotag data anymore but I could be wrong. I'm good with computers but no wiz. If you text or email someone the original picture all that data is still intact so that's where you might have a problem.