GR Guy

Quick live dig on the side of a very noisy reef, hot rock city, with the  Coiltek Goldhawk 14x9. This area has been done to death and I was amazed as some of the crew where this was found. Area can hold a bit of water and can get some falsing but this was clear as day.

6 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Just amazing the amount of sensitivity and depth the 6000 can achieve with different coil sizes on the tiny gold. Would be really good to see them going through there paces on some of the red nasty variable mineralised soils Victoria is known for, there must be huge amounts of small gold laying in those nasty noisy areas if that’s the results on the quieter more homogenous ground. 😊 

JP

JP,

That video was on a pretty quiet bit of tertiary ground. There are a videos coming from Inglewood/Wedderburn with the coils.

6 hours ago, afreakofnature said:

GR Guy.  Do you have the info to put a list together of gold size vs depth for each coil you used?  We all know that smaller coils are gonna lose depth but I would just like to know how much people are experiencing. I really could use a smaller coil but it isn’t going to be much use if the depth is not there either. Too much loam in my areas! 🤣

I don’t have that list but as Gerry said the 9” packs a punch for those who prefer round coils

In response to previous comments, you have to realise that the area has plenty of shot and other rubbish. To take a full stable video also requires a solid platform like a tree which aren’t always available where the gold is. As there was a lot of surface trash none of the holes were overdug and are very indicative of the depth of the target given the think mulch coverage in areas. I haven’t had an issue with ghosting targets when dug.

1 hour ago, Aureous said:

He obviously hasnt been detecting for terribly long, the way he leaves the cable unsecured at the coil end is asking for coax failure, so typical of recent Coiltek coils (Elite series). Yes, he over-digs quite a few.... Yeah Ive noticed a heap of 'good' signals recently that vanish after digging. I should carry a bucket with me and collect all the dirt from these 'vanishing' signals...pan it all off, just to be sure lol.  Think I'll wait for the NF 12x7 and 8x6 before I buy an aftermarket coil.....or wait for the 6000 adapter info to be released by X-coils. If that happens, there will be a heap of experimentation with older GPX coils going on.....

These are pre-production coils with very shorts leads.

https://youtu.be/WbpbDu7V1Fg

8 minutes ago, phrunt said:

And instances like Bill Southern where his GPX was introduced to a rock in a bad way.

I linked the video to start at the juicy bit 🙂

 

That’s a glowing endorsement of the coil lead. Kept on going strong. I think there was a great point made earlier the way people treat an expensive, sensitive electronic equipment mystifies me. Sure it’s got to be fit for purpose but leaving equipment bouncing around in the back of Ute’s, locked up in cars in stifling heat and never doing any cleaning it maintenance.

24 minutes ago, jasong said:

Well GR guy, it's a day of coincidences haha because I just happened to be finishing typing up the post below right when you posted, this might answer your question a bit?

Not to change subjects, but for what it's worth I decided to go dig my test patch up earlier today. It's out behind a mountain near town and the entire area is being turned into a weekend shooting range and getting absolutely covered with piles of ammunition debris and other trash now, creeping closer and closer to my test patch every year, so it's not much use to me anymore after they shoot it up.

I made this patch when I got my first 12" and 17" spiral X Coils, so I could compare targets. I dug holes with each nugget until the stock coil just barely no longer made a signal, then buried them. The ground is almost totally inert with very little salt and iron component. The nuggets (by memory) are 1/4 gram, 3/4 gram, 1.5 gram, 3 gram, and 7 gram. Not sure of their exact depth, just that whatever depth they are at is where the stock 14x13 coil stopped hearing them. The 12 and 17" spirals both heard all the nuggets, no problem. But that's not surprise.

Anyways, I knew I wasn't going to hit the bigger ones with the 6000, but I was pretty sure I'd get at least the 1/4 grammer to some extent, it wasn't really very deep. 

Not a peep from a single nugget though from the 6000. So I think the GPZ even with the stock coil is outperforming the 6000 over almost all classes of nuggets. Other than maybe 0.1 gram and under or something. This here is another recent reason why I just really think the 6000 needs a bit better performance, it's good, but not quite good enough to be an only detector. But if a good coil can boost it's performance at least a bit without digging into weight, it would sure give me a lot more confidence in the machine when I'm exploring, as it definitely seems to be missing some fairly shallow stuff that I would have otherwise assumed it was tagging with ease.

Must admit my experiences with the 6 compared with the Zed and 45 have been different to yours. I can only remember once having a ghost signal on a 1g at about 8” against the Zed with the 12” coil. Appreciate the feedback.

JasonG - apart from the 6 not having the depth against the Zed, interested in your comment that you feel it’s leaving stuff in the ground. What do you consider are it’s limitations?

Any pics from NF yet?

25 minutes ago, phrunt said:

The chips are in the coils, not in the detector, the detector itself seems safe from counterfeiting, although there are fake GPZ 7000's under the hood they're not fake GPZ 7000's and just poor performing detectors, with the easier to clone detectors like VLF's there are fakes that are virtually identical in performance, with I would guess worse build quality.

So the aim of the chip on the GPZ coil cable, and inside the GPX 6000 isn't to prevent Chinese from making fake detectors, it's simply there to prevent coils being made by anybody outside of Minelabs control.

Don’t get me wrong in a perfect world it would get great all these options. But you can’t say in one breath that counterfeiting exists of a metal detector and then say the coil is off limits though. I’m pretty sure Minelab would put a fair amount of work into their coils as well as the other hardware in a product. 

17 minutes ago, jasong said:

What does aftermarket coil selection have to do with counterfeiting?

Again, coils aren't counterfeit detectors, no one is mimicing anything. Aftermarket coils are detector accessories, and they've been available for almost every model since I started detecting and X Coils designs and builds their own to sell, not copies. Unless you have some kind of inside track knowledge that no one else knows about?

No one is asking Minelab to open up their internal hardware for copying en masse. In your example, it'd be like Apple forcing ONLY Apple branded or approved products to be connected via USB, bluetooth, etc (headphones, chargers, external devices like computers, etc). Minelab is doing exactly this by saying no one can connect anything to their own detector they paid for, unless it's approved by the company. Worse, they are failing to offer approved versions of the things their customers have clearly been asking for for years, so there are no real options for people who paid $10k for a top-tier piece of equipment that historically has always had options.

If there wasn’t counterfeiting of Minelab products they wouldn’t need to put the extra security on their IP. They have just included coils as part of this security.

17 minutes ago, phrunt said:

GR Guy, the GPZ is not old technology to someone who goes down to their dealer today and buys it, it's the top of the line most expensive detector Minelab sell.  If that's how it should be looked at they need to pull it from the market.  It's not old technology, it's the current technology.  If anything the GPX is old technology, it's a hotted up to little gold and dumbed down in settings GPX 5000.

I think your chain of thought is more something that someone at Minelab would have, you're not thinking like a customer, customers don't care about that stuff you're talking about as much as Minelab would, they care about how the equipment they buy works and how it benefits them above everything else.

Fair enough on the old technology with the Zed, it’s the latest at the high end. I meant that the 6000 was the latest released (Geo sense etc..)

I’ll come from another angle. Why should Minelab in the age of Chinese and Russian counterfeits not be 100% protective of their brand and reputation. They are in the business of making the best metal detectors in the world and clearly are doing a great job at it. There will be plenty of aftermarket coils for the 6000 on the way which look to be all verified by Minelab soon. The Zed filled the market where everyone wanted a machine that went deep, now the newer technology comes out in the 6000 that has opened up goldfields of finer gold people expect Minelab to go open slather on older technology to see if another organisation can mimic the 6 on fine gold. Why would Minelab do that. I don’t see Apple opening up the Macs to the rest of the world?