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I'm working on it Reg, the Tumonz software is fantastic. It's been very useful for boundaries and finding out the owners of the land too.

You're doing very well, I love your buggy, I want one! the places I could go with one of those suckers. Most of my hunts are one or two bits too, but it's certainly better than a skunk!

Here is a video showing the nuggets, I only wish I could find something like these one day.... just one will do me, I'm not greedy 🙂

Try find it at a UK dealer, UK generally has cheap shipping and their shipping is Royal Mail shipping is super fast, not like that USPS rubbish that can take months.

Yes I was only in sensitive extra, it was blowing a gale the day I did the testing and it was freezing cold so I went home as quick as possible, I just wanted to do that experiment for myself really. I've been meaning to go back and do it properly trying different timings and and see if I can change the results as it would be useful for me to know this information. I'd actually forgotten how good the earlier GPX series is on small gold but I was also seeing why the 6000 pulls gold on so called flogged ground that looks like anyone should have found it previously with their other detectors, it hits these weird bits the 5000 struggles on perfectly fine, as does the 7000. If in flogged ground everyone was using a GPX 4500 or 5000 and all in the same timing as it was the go to timing for the area then I can now understand how they left gold behind and the 6000 users can go in and find all the missed stuff so this demonstration was good for me just to get a better understanding of it all. I really like the 5000, yes it has its limitations with particular types of gold but in many ways it's a fantastic detector and as you pointed out handles the most difficult ground and hot rocks extremely well, and I just love the Equinox, which is why I think it was crazy to get rid of the 5000 over this one little issue with it because a 5000 and an Equinox is a truly awesome combination of detectors for prospecting.

This is more 22" CC gold, the guy got a video of it too that we'll get to see soon once he gets it uploaded.

according to the BBC it's pretty significant. Gold exports were worth £12.6bn ($15.4bn) to Russia in 2021 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61941589 So that's likely around 15.6 billion USD less gold on the international market. That has to push up the price.

Yep, they did the same with fuel and look where that got us, so if fuel is a good indication Gold price is going to sky rocket.

Thanks Gerry, I ended up ordering the 14x9" Goldhawk as I've now also ordered the two smaller coils from the "other" Aussie brand and I'll get some of the X's too given time. That should just about cover all bases. I just preferred the other Aussie sizes in the end, I really wanted a 10x5" but then I decided I'd prefer smallest available coil for the most small gold sensitivity and then getting a 10x5" seemed too close in size so I went with the other brands slightly larger size instead of the 10x5" and their smallest size too 🙂 It's really great having a good range of coil sizes to choose from right off the bat this time. The other Aussie brands coils are more expensive though so the Coiltek's are certainly the better priced coils. The 14x9" is costing me less than the smallest size in the other Aussie brand. I always liked the 14x9" size on my 4500, good ground coverage and decent sensitivity on them but that was obviously spiral/flat wound coils, this time around with the 6000 it doesn't seem that is the case so I'm hoping the extra sensitivity the hardware of the 6000 provides makes up for the coils being bundle wound, it certainly will on the smallest sizes, not sure about the 14x9" though.

Here is a Youtube version for those not using Facebook

Thanks guys, I already have a black sand magnet gadget and it works well, it does suck up some fine gold in with the black sand but not terrible. I was hoping more to get something to try make it so I don't need to rip my sluice out of the river every hour when it clogs up with black sand as if I leave it in I'm losing gold, sometimes I can clog it up in as little as 20 minutes we just have crazy amounts of black sand. I collected it one day and filled up half a bucket with black sand in a days sluicing. My dealer also sells this gadget that looks pretty good, but again it's for after the fact, I want something to help prevent, that first item the Magnetrap seems good as I can pop it on and off easily without taking the sluice out of the water. This is the other black sand separator, this one looks good.

I've long been saying USA shipping prices are a joke, those prices are not uncommon when you buy from the USA Erik, it's ridiculous. There is no way it should cost that much to even ship a large item, something is wrong in the USA with their shipping. I can order from any other country and get reasonable pricing, just not the USA. I'm just glad there really isn't anything worth buying that I don't already own made in the USA as I don't want to pay their shipping prices ever again.

Has anyone used a Magnetrap before? It seems to be some new gadget for catching black sand before it enters your sluice Here is a video of it. Now, I love gadgets, especially ones that work so I'm going to order one for my Keene A52S. Our rivers have so much black sand I think I'll be cleaning it off after half a bucket of gravels, I can get 35 ounces of black sand in an hour of sluicing stuck in my sluice, I have to clean it out every hour in some rivers or it clogs up really bad so something like this seems a viable quick way to control the black sand. What I don't know is how much gold is going to get stuck in the black sand using it, when I clean out my sluice there is always a lot of gold stuck in it, if I use my magnet to remove the black sand from the pan I lose gold every time so I have to try pan out the black sand as well to make sure I don't loose too much. Something like this seems a viable option. If nobodies got one I'll let you know how it goes in a few months, no way am I entering the creeks or rivers for some sluicing in winter, I value my limbs. 😛

I'd like metal detectors to be sold with an option of no coil and accessories like headphones and gimmicky rubbish we don't need. A bare bones option for a cheaper price where we can then buy the accessories and coils we want, this holds especially true for Minelab detectors, I've got two WM 08's I'll never use, 3 pair of ML80 headphones I'll never use, ML100 headphones I'll never use, a few Commander coils I'll never use, a $1600 New Zealand Dollar GPZ 14" coil I'll never use etc etc etc, the list goes on and on. That GPZ coil alone could have bought me another Nox 800 and had a good chunk of change. I'm paying for stuff I don't want all the time, I've got a cupboard full of rubbish, yes I could sell it but that's effort and I can't be bothered, I'd rather not buy it in the first place. Even VLF detectors it'd be cool if you could buy it without a coil, or have an option to pick the coil and pay the appropriate price for the coil option you choose. So many detectors I'll never use the coils that come with them.

I nominate for post of the year! Thanks Northeast, great post and one where we could follow along with the journey, my favourite type of post, and excellent photos too. You had such a great successful trip and you did so very well, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy you certainly deserve it and what a great guy Bill is taking you along on such a journey, you'll remember that trip for the rest of your life. again, well done on the post, and the trip!

So what would you say the benefits of this 9" coil are over the stock 11" other than a slightly smaller size? It's difficult to know which coils to get.

You're doing very well, I was wondering when your next update would be. The more shallow gram style pieces that an 11" coil on the 6000 would pick up would have been picked up with the earlier technology I would guess, unless of course it's some weird specimen piece missed by them but the GPZ users would have claimed those bits.

Yes, well explained Norvic, it's why peoples opinions offen differ so much and it can cause conflict too. Watching that dealer marketing video the first thing that hit me is why on earth have the VLF users not gone in and cleaned out all that easy surface stuff, VLF's here can do remarkably well not just getting surface gold but getting some depth too. JW indeed thought the SDC was a piece of crap, he even sent it back to Australia to be examined as he thought it just had to be faulty and they couldn't fault it and said its performance is within specification, he was likely better off using a VLF but his 4500 at the time flogged the SDC on small gold. He wouldn't even sell it to me when I offered to buy it to get my first PI as he knew I'd be disappointed. The same conflict goes on with the VLF's too especially lately, with some far better than others in certain peoples conditions and situations, now lately its started to cause conflict there too and the VLF users were always such a peaceful crowd with the rowdy bunch being the grumpy prospectors 🙂

Stumbled across this on Youtube, first episode.... --- update: looks like the person had to take the video down, they must have been naughty and not allowed to put the video on Youtube.

This is my favourite one with a 22" CC, Also a Victorian nugget, Victoria seems the place to be for big gold, what was really good about this one was it was 165 grams, it was the guys first day using the 22" CC he'd only just bought it and he caught it on camera. This is the recent big lump found with the 22" CC With gold like that around I can see why you're excited to be getting a 26" CC James so hopefully it can find some decent size lumps even deeper, I am so jealous of the gold in your hunting grounds, it makes my little 0.03 bits seem quite embarrassing 😛 Ask these guys which detector is king 🙂

I saw that first hand the other day when I was playing around with my GPX 5000 and tested it over the last 12 small nuggets I'd found mostly with the 7000, and it saw 9 of them perfectly fine, I was in fact impressed by it and it was quite competitive with the 6000 on of the ones it did see, but it missed 3 of them for no apparent reason even touching the coil. The small target sensitivity on the 5000 using the 10" Spiral wound X-coil I thought was quite competitive although keep in mind I can max it out in sensitive extra so in a real world situation in hotter soils all bets are off there with the 6000 taking a clear lead I'd imagine, however the missed targets was just odd. The 5000 hit the smallest 0.03 of a gram nugget yet would get no signal at all even touching the coil on a .06 of a gram nugget. I think this is part of the reason people are liking the 6000 so much, it's finding these bits the earlier GPX detectors missed entirely that should have hit fine but the makeup of the gold made it undetectable with the technology. Maybe there is just lots of these weird bits still around as they were missed by earlier GPX users and for the 6000 they're no problem. They're also no problem for the 7000 but that is using an aftermarket small coil of course, I have no idea how well the standard coil would go with them, probably the smaller ones might be missed or if they were too deep for a large 14x13" GPZ coil to see they'd be missed so the 6000 again has the advantage there. So I do understand why people like the 6000 so much, I can see where it has a clear advantage compared to the previous detector that they were using.

yea, it's gotta be the crazy ground, I find videos like that hard to find impressive, but maybe to a local it is.

so why would they miss them, surface gold, reasonable size? makes no sense.

All I can say is WOW, what a rotten video. He finds some bits of gold and some pellets that he didn't even need to dig for, sitting on the surface basically, he could have dug any of the targets in that video with one scoop of a teaspoon and he's carrying on how great it is. Come on, that's just embarrassing. Hopefully a proper video comes out for it to correct the damage this one has done in my head on this coil. His first target especially the pellet had a very poor signal response I thought, he was running in manual 1 though, a setting I'd never be using. Maybe I'm just jealous I can't wander around picking gold up off the surface. I think if you're going to show a coil off you'd want to dig for the nuggets, old digger Dave could have went out for the day without even taking his pick, he didn't need to dig a thing 🙂 I hope that coils a lot better than the video shows it, as it's the first on my list.

My dealer said July in Nz with the smaller one coming sometime later for some reason.