phrunt

The v1 coils are more sensitive, without a doubt, the v2's handle ground better, to me it makes no difference as I'm in milder soils.so I'd not have any interest in using a v2 coil. If I was in mineralised ground, I'm sure I would appreciate and benefit from the v2 coils and greatly benefit from them being less sensitive. In bad ground less sensitive means better performance. In my opinion the biggest flaw with everything detectors are they make things work for everyone, people in mild soils suffer for those that are in difficult ground. Coils are an example of this I know personally first-hand being given prototype coils that would never have a hope of working in bad ground but wow, the performance they can give in mild ground is impressive, if they were sold as "general purpose" coils they would flop, as many owners mostly in bad ground would say they're terrible however owners in milder ground would be singing their praises. Manufacturers tend to take the middle road, products that will work in everything. I personally would label products to suit conditions, for mild soils I'd have a range suitable for the inert ground, for mineralized ground I'd have another range, the problem is consumers are not all that clued up and would buy the wrong coil hoping for the better results. The problem is this complicates the process, there is a reason Minelab are making their detectors as user friendly as possible, with everything completely automated, turn on and go...... You see it across all detectors from all brands, why can they run in full sensitivity, and I cannot? My detector or coil must be faulty. Most manufacturers make their detectors run at maximum sensitivity and run stable, why? it makes them look good, to the savvy user, this is a massive letdown. I want a detector I have no hope of running in maximum sensitivity even in the mildest EMI free area, I don't want to ever be able to max out my detector. If I can do that, my detector isn't meeting my needs. Gloating about running max sensitivity in the best timings isn't a positive, it means the detector isn't good enough. I run my GPZ in High Yield / Normal / Maximum sensitivity with the 8" coil all the time, when doing so all I think is the technology can improve a lot, I shouldn't be able to do this. Manufacturers have come to the conclusion it's better to restrict sensitivity than to leave it wide open as the general user base believes unless they can run it maxed out, they're losing performance, when often less is more. Automatic cars vs manuals come to mind. The Axiom and the Manticore have gone to the "red line" on this, and who knows if that's beneficial for them or not, to some educated users it's great, to others which seems the majority they complain they can't run in high sensitivity settings.

I've waited multiple months for a reply from them previously however one eventually came, my last two emails to them many months ago sometime near the start of the year went unanswered. Great coils, customer service can be a little lacking especially communication. I have no idea about their junk filters they're using however whenever emails never get answered it's always a possibility. A very public email address like their own must often be flooded with junk mail. Might be an idea to try email them again from a different email address and hope for the best.

With no built-in wireless is there much they would even need to do? When I read FCC reports on detectors its always all about the wireless audio transmitter.

With you owning the 8" I see no need for the 10", too close of a coil, the 15x10" DOD sounds a reasonable choice for your needs, especially if the spirals have trouble in your soil, although a lot of the spirals are now v2 which are slightly less sensitive than the v1 spirals, but they handle the bad ground better. The 10" is only very slightly less sensitive than the 8", they've pushed the limits of the GPZ's potential on small targets. The 12" spiral is a bit of a sleeper, not enough people own that being so close in size to the stock coil but it's a killer coil, I think it has all the sensitivity of the 8" coil with more ground coverage and depth. It's now a v2 coil, I have the original and the v2, I prefer the original for its extra sensitivity but if its noisy in ground like yours the v2 is likely a better performing coil. I prefer the v1 spirals as I have mild soils, but I'm sure people in worse soils appreciate the v2 coils although plenty seem to get away with using the original v1's with no issues in their ground across Australia but seeing you're finding you have to wind back the sensitivity with your v1 17x12" you likely would have to do so with every v1 spiral.

You just disable the wireless in your GPZ (Saves battery) and plug this into the back headphone port on the GPZ Avantree Relay | Bluetooth Adapter for Airplanes A very good combination for the GPZ.

I've not used any of their bundle DOD coils except the two small ones that are bundle DOD because they have to be to fit the windings in, the 8" and 10". I have the 15x10" spiral and it's very close to the 10" in sensitivity because the 15x10" is spiral and the 10" bundle, I believe offering a bit more depth and obviously more ground coverage, the bundle DOD version won't be as sensitive as the spiral version though. I've not had any interest in the larger DOD coils preferring the spirals, DOD's are more suited to people with very bad ground which I don't have, and I want the best small gold sensitivity I can get being in an area that really requires that. Think of the stock 14x13" coil vs the NF 12" which are both bundle DOD's , and reduce its size in your head to the 15x10" and that's about the performance you'll get I would think with the added sensitivity towards the tip and tail of being elliptical. I like the 15x10" form factor for its ground coverage while still maintaining pretty good small gold sensitivity being only 10" wide.

I wonder what price it would have to reach before Reg Wilson would make the effort to bend over to pick up a subgram "flake" 🙂

That exists in the way of a Bluetooth dongle, just ignore their built in wireless and use your own dongle, problem solved. It's nothing to do with programming languages, it's the Bluetooth modules configuration, basically the headphones handshake to the detector's Bluetooth module, and to do so they require authentication, much like a password, on their devices the authentication is included in the product so they can connect to the detector, 3rd party headphones try connecting without having this authentication password and can't connect, but they may not connect even if they did if they're not capable of the settings running on the detector with the bitrate configured. You may have noticed on some Bluetooth devices you have to enter default password like 0000 for them to connect, same thing except the ML products auto-authenticate. There are a few reasons they could have done this, one is so we only buy their equipment, they have a track record of liking that approach, another possibility is the bitrate, as detectorists we want a very low latency to assist with finding targets accurately, LE's default latency isn't ideal so what they can do as part of the handshake is have the bitrate pre-configured to a lower rate on the headphones and detector, this affects sound quality a little but makes the audio really fast. I doubt detector audio would be a case where the lower quality audio would be noticed but it does majorly improve latency. Generic LE headphones will want to connect at the bitrate they're designed for, which is very unlikely to be a low bitrate due to the audio quality being less, they're designed for listening to music more than anything. I give Minelab the benefit of the doubt on this one that it was done for audio latency as they're no longer using aptX Low Latency which was a standard codec we could buy any aptX LL compatible headphones to use due to it basically being discontinued they had to move on, and this was the best path to take. Phasetech's post here is an interesting one in why ML may want you using their headphones more than generic music headphones too.

No wonder you make such good prospecting picks with all this experience on the tools. I spend winter skiing and summer is my detecting time with the odd exception detecting in winter although coin hunting can be good in winter in some spots with the softer soil and no damage to the grass, you'll see the brown ground below in this spring video which is why I avoid coin hunting when the grass is dry as I don't want to cause a mess and problems being able to detect spots in the future by damaging the ground. I spend my winters skiing down mountains and my summers walking up them with a detector in hand. Late spring to early summer the grass is greener and safer for coin hunting. While skiing I'm often looking down on prospecting locations and thinking about the finds I'd made down below. Ski fields are also outstanding detecting locations in summer after the snow melts, especially under lifts and around the base building/cafe area. Rings come off with glove removal, and mighty big stacks help with stuff in pockets being lost, if it sinks into the snow it's gone until summer, so beginner areas are great for finding stuff as they stack the most. People are constantly removing gloves on lifts to use their phone, and the touch screens don't work with gloves on. I've seen stuff dropped under lifts that I say to myself I''ll go back and get in summer, some stuff is dropped but the person who dropped it has no hope of skiing to where it was lost, so they have to accept the loss, the next time it snows a few days later it is gone until the melt, that's if it doesn't sink straight away. A last-minute decision on the last day of skiing for the season was to make a video of the day, I was so ill prepared I had to try charge the action camera on the drive to and up the mountain in the car, it hadn't been used in a year, it didn't get enough charge to last so I turned off the microphone which gives it a fair bit longer runtime. Stats are a little out of whack as we all often forget our phones that record them, particularly my 13yr old daughter who only has a phone to record her stats and never uses it otherwise. For anyone bored here's the video, shows some of the skiing in NZ and the land below where gold can be found. The video was done with the action camera on my daughter's helmet.

I once dropped an open gold bottle on the carpet in my house, you can imagine, NZ tiny gold, carpet. Bad mix.... I lost quite a bit.

How you find these things I don't know 🙂 I see the guy in the video is using an X-coil, looks like the 15" CC to me. The guy with the 6000 looks to be having a bit of trouble.

You should start a detector museum; you've got a great collection.

I'm in those ideal conditions of clean soil with very low mineralization and the bigger the coil the better for me, some detectors plateau and bigger coils don't make much difference, the T2 was an example of this for me where buying the 15" coil was a pointless exercise as I barely got a centimeter more depth over the mid-size coils for some reason. I didn't have the boost version which is said to improve upon detecting in longer grass and overcoming the air gap problem some detectors seem to have. The Nox also doesn't seem to like an air gap so didn't work as well in long grass for me as the CTX does, the Manticore seems to be fine with the air gap of long grass like the CTX still finding the deeper targets. The Manticore and Nox both benefitted from their 15x12" coils over the 11" for depth so I expect they may give more depth with the 18" in my environment, I've had a bit of trouble buying an 18" for my Manticore with no access to buy it locally and I never bought the one for my Nox 800 as the CTX was significantly deeper with its 17x13" coil on the silver coins I was chasing. I intend to get the 18" for the Manticore soon and now have a path to buying it sorted out by Coiltek directly so should be able to report back in how I'm going with it. I think it's going to be excellent for my conditions and the Manticore seems the right detector to buy it for with it's obvious to me extra depth over the Nox.

yep, here's an example of it happening where a guy's coil failed on him, I've seen a few people have the problem over the past few years. It's why I said Minelab would need the original coil to prove it was caused by it and not an aftermarket coil, as it's the exact same problem, exact same message, exact same fault. Out of warranty you'd be all out of luck. Jin on this forum is an example of a person that had the original soldering fail inside their GPZ's cord on the plug end that goes into the detector, it was causing stability issues but fortunately didn't short out on him, if it did, he'd be in the same boat as this guy. Here is an original GPZ coil where the soldering failed that was able to be resoldered and repaired. Out of these cables I bought from faulty coils from a dealer in WA, one had failed at the coil plug end so was not able to be used for the purpose I hoped without being repaired.

yes, it's a shame that as early adopters and experimenters with the coils we had a mishap with the GPZ, repair cost of about $1800 USD too, but they were early days and it wasn't overly known at the time the results of incorrect wiring, now with more knowledge and experience and preventing customers making their own adapters that problem is fortunately a thing of the past, thousands of coils out in the hands of users now without a single mishap with the professionally made adapters. It's not the coils that would cause damage it was incorrectly made adapters, Aussies are lucky they have a highly experienced guy there making their adapters now and he's made a crazy number of the things without a single mishap. It was a mistake at the start offering instructions how to make adapters though, and in our case we didn't even have that, just a picture with some foreign writing on it and some numbers showing how to wire it and it didn't go to plan, all part of being experimental at the time, I don't think you could even buy the coils at that time they were just test coils. For you in the USA without someone making adapters with a lot of experience making them, I wouldn't use them either. X-coils make every type of coil you can think of, not just Concentrics, you hear the most about them as they're the most popular coils, but yes, they make spirals, semi spirals, bundle coils, mono, the lot, they are the only brand that's made spiral DOD (Super D) coils for the GPZ too as the NF and Standard are just bundle coils, and the Concentrics have been done in bundle and spiral but the spirals of the Concentrics are superior. The good thing is X-coils are real innovators of coil technology, much like Coiltek, Detech and Nugget Finder have been too, and that ends up indirectly benefitting people that don't even use the particular brand of coil, as in the end other brands even the detector manufacturers may end up using techniques these coil innovators come out with. The coils themselves don't void the warranty on the GPZ, Minelab can't void your warranty for using one, at least in Australia and NZ, not sure about US laws but it would be crazy if they could. They can only void your warranty if the damage to your detector is caused directly by using the coil, such as the coil shorts out and damages your detector, and that's not different I would think if you're using a NF coil that does the same thing. The stock GPZ coils aren't immune to that either, I've seen a few now that the stock coils failed and taken out the detector with it, however ML do the right thing in that scenario and if the detectors still under warranty they cover it whereas with an aftermarket coil they don't need to. They'll know the part on the PCB that fails when a coil fails, and unless you can provide them with the genuine coil that has the fault that would cause that problem then they will be weary of the cause, they'd have the replace the faulty coil and repair the detector. Woodys in the same situation with his 6000 adapters he's doing in these videos if he starts making them for people to use their older coils on the 6000, They can't void the 6000's warranty for using an older GPX coil on it if it fails like the screen or speaker dies, unless the coil or adapter ends up being the reason for the 6000's failure, although I'd probably be just as worried about the 6000 failing by its own quality issues than by the adapter/coils being connected to it as long as made by someone capable like Woody. The problem Minelab face is how do they know 100% if people were using something that caused it.... I've had warranty on my GPZ twice, but none of my problems were associated with coils so it was easy for them in this case, one was my WM12 and the other my shaft clip, you can bet they know my detector uses aftermarket coils so they'd have more scrutiny with mine if the detector itself failed checking to see if they can void it somehow 🙂It's just out of warranty now I think anyway.

The initial chip is an identifier and can tell the detector what coil is plugged in which is how it knows a DD is installed or how your printer knows the correct cartridge is installed. The other component isn't a chip.

The good thing about the Detect ED shafts is you can easily put your stock lower shaft into it if you want to and still benefit from its collapsing design. They're good quality, I've had one for years and it's had a rough life. At one point I believe Minelab service agents were trying to associate the leaking problems of the 800 with people fitting aftermarket shafts, not sure how true that is, probably just didn't want people buying aftermarket shafts as they intended to do Cabon fiber on their next model 🙂

Nothing showing on the FCC applications, last thing was the WM09 for the Manticore. Minelab Electronics Pty Ltd FCC ID Applications (Z4C)

For coins it's the only coil I use, more depth in milder ground than the 11", quite a bit more and the extra coverage makes me feel better about the big area I'm about to detect 🙂

It's quite hard to explain and my understanding comes from translated text which doesn't always come out exactly how it should and make complete sense, I think the example was more like you can't expect the 6000 to perform like a 6000 if you use these older GPX coils on it, the performance drops back a bit so it's better running proper coils designed for the 6000 on the 6000. I guess example above like Aureous mentioned being able to run smaller DD's that don't exist any other way might be a practical thing to do. The full spirals just seem a struggle running on a 6000, and the bundles have the performance loss (relating to small gold sensitivity) that comes with bundle coils, the sweet spot is the semi spiral design that the 6000 comes with and the aftermarket manufacturers are currently making for it. I'm really fussy about small gold sensitivity so when explaining it to me they would know I wouldn't be happy running a bundle wound GPX coil on my 6000 and the small gold performance loss that would bring 🙂 Chet did a good chart somewhere where he measured depths with various older GPX coils on the 6000, I can't find it right now, he posted it somewhere on this forum. An interesting experiment someone should do would be putting a large coil on the 6000, and the same large coil on the 5000 and comparing the depth of a deep target. I might just send my NF 12x7 Exceed off at some point to get the surgery and get an adapter made up out of it so I can play around, I'm unlikely to use that coil much anyway as I prefer my 10x5" Coiltek. I don't want to take that on myself, for a start I don't know where to cut the hole to do the open-heart surgery and I'd like to still have it in a usable form rather than me hacking it up 🙂

I wonder if the GPX 6000 is too sensitive to have full spiral windings through and it paid off to use the partial spiral windings in it, the 11" size on the 6000 could have been full spiral as it had the space for it, but they chose not to do so, whereas on the older GPX you can easily have an 11" full spiral although the manufacturers mostly seemed to go for 12" to be different to the stock coil size I guess. On the smaller sizes like the Sadie where spirals don't fit then the semi spiral design works very well on the older GPX series, it would be interesting to see how a GPX 6000 ML 11' would go on the older GPX but I think the 11" full spiral coils that already exist would likely perform better, ground permitting, in very bad ground the 11" semi spiral ML 11" stock GPX 6000 coil may prove worthwhile. I say this as someone that has a 12x6" semi spiral and a 10" full spiral for the older GPX model, I'd pick the 10" full spiral anyday. It would be a cool experiment though, to go the other way around and use the 6000 coils on the older GPX and see how they go, it should be easy if Woody made his adapter like X-coils made theirs with a stock GPX plug end on it, any coil he's made to fit the adapter would fit straight onto the older GPX, usually the donor 11" coil he took the plug off to make his adapter and took the chip out of, you just bypass the chip inside the coil and seal it back up for use, unless it was a dead one. You can see here they patched up the donor coil after surgery and fitted a GPX plug end to it to use off the adapter, in this case the 6000 stock coil would plug straight into a earlier GPX and I suspect for a GPX 6000 coil to work on an older GPX it would need the chip removed such as was done to their 11" stock coil below. If you zoom in, you'll see how their adapter was done. Also, I was thinking about what you said about Concentric coils @Goldseeker5000 and many ways you're right, it appears to me the detector with the strong point for concentric coils is the GPZ and it was said by JP some time ago they did experiment with Concentrics on it prior to release for its bundled coil but went with DOD instead at release, the early GPX has had them for years from Detech and maybe other brands?, not many gold hunters really use them so they don't seem much of a hit for gold hunters and maybe the relics people like them more, I was given a prototype 15" Concentric X-coil for the early GPX last year, it was following on from how popular the GPZ ones are, I didn't think it was worth them continuing development on it, it's just not the same as the GPZ ones, it worked and did what it was meant to do and had discrimination and all but just wasn't the same as the GPZ versions with their wow factor and figured I'd prefer to stick to a spiral mono on the early GPX. They made an experimental Concentric for the Axiom, it wasn't ideal either, along with one for the 6000, the first coil they made for the 6000 due to the popularity of them, again not overly suited much like the earlier GPX, so I think where Concentrics shine is the GPZ more so than anything else, and may explain why the other manufacturers of detectors aren't using them on their detectors.

That's truly awesome, looking forward to your next post with a bunch more good stuff.

He's now out using his home-made coil in an 8.6 shell on the 6000, really love these mad scientist types tinkering with stuff, didn't even bother changing out of his slippers, something I'd do 🙂 I would not be surprised if he gets a lot of people wanting him to make them up adapters now.

I hope this run of gold continues for you, what was the depth? one and a half to 2 pin pointers deep? An absolute monster nugget, I'm sure you're motivating many in the US back into giving it another go 🙂 Very happy for you Gold Catcher, I really hope it doesn't fade out no nothing soon and lasts a while yet.

Ahh Ok, I do like the Concentric coil design best, yes, they suit me well and do really well at finding gold I think once you get used to the differences, not great at covering ground quickly though. No idea why other brands don't make them , maybe they don't find them good, or there might be other reasons, I'd just be guessing, I do hope other brands come out with them someday though, I always thought maybe the GPZ 8000 might have one. I also like the spiral mono coils from various brands for the older GPX, and the new Coiltek Goldhawk 10x5 is my favourite on the 6000, closely followed by the stock 11" coil. I've been a big fan of the Coiltek 10x5" on the 6000, perhaps you missed my many posts praising it and how much I liked my 14x9" EVO on the GPX 4500, still one of my favourite older GPX coils. I do like using a good variety of coils though. And no, I'm not a social media influencer in any way like the Nokta Nomads, Minelab Deexperts or the Garrett ones, not sure what they're called, although I can see how you might think that as I'm very enthusiastic about stuff I like. I run the X-coils facebook group and have regular contact with the X-coils people so get some extra information that I share but very rarely post on the X-coils group, I just sit back and ban the spammers and let the other users of the coils show their finds and whatever they want to post, maybe if you looked into it you'd see there are many very successful finds with the concentric coils from people that have bought and are using them for gold, so they do well at finding gold not just relics and coins, the concentrics are their most popular coils for gold hunters and that's easy to see in that group.