phrunt

I'm puzzled by your dislike of the 5000 and I recall it's because you were worried it missed certain types of porous gold and while you will possibly find the 6000 easier to use as some people do and it will hit on some gold the 5000 misses I think you should really take up peoples offer to let you try before you buy, I wish I did. Your area sounds a nightmare with a 6000 and perhaps your Nox is the best tool for the job. If you're planning on going prospecting all over the place then a 6000 might be worthwhile, but your 5000 would have been too and you offloaded it. Yes the 5000 will miss some gold for various reasons, so will the Equinox obviously with depth limitations, and so will the 6000. No detector is perfect and your expectations are possibly too high. You've got an offer to try before you buy, take that offer.

If a CTX 4040 came out and for some reason I didn't have the money to buy it I'd sell a kidney to get it as the CTX is the best deep old silver machine I've ever laid my hands on and it feels like I could go out blind folded and pull up a silver. I think if it does come out it's going to be similar pricing to the existing CTX which maybe out of reach for a fair few buyers, I think that's partly why the Nox took off so well, it was more affordable. The CTX being pretty expensive seems like it struggled to get the popularity of the Nox even when it was the hottest new thing in town. The Deus 2 faces the same thing, the Nokta Legend is stealing a lot of the Deus 2 sales because it's priced better, a lot of people who bought it are outright saying that's why they bought the Legend over the Nox and Deus 2 and with the world economies how they are price is likely to dictate a lot more buying decisions over the next year or however long. If a Nox 1000 came out (it needs to now they'll losing their dominance) then it will likely be affordable enough based off the existing Nox prices that it will sell like mad even with bad economies. Hopefully they improve build quality while keeping the price right, they'll save money in the long run with warranties anyway. I doubt the GPX 6000's sold well at all compared to when the 7000 came out and the sales it got are certainly not their forecast sales levels. It came out at a bad time and had a rough release. I wonder if more people are giving up prospecting than are taking it up too, bound to happen at some point as the gold gets even harder to find. There was a flurry of older model GPX's being imported into NZ prior to the 6000 release from Africa with people using them as trade in's for the 6000, I bought one of them but they've completely dried up, they stopped shortly after the 6000 release, I might be reading into that too much but perhaps the Africans didn't find it as good as they were expecting or they just didn't have the financial means to justify paying the price it sells for over what they could get a GPX 5000 for so the people offloading their 5000's ground to a halt. I'm glad I got one of the African imports when I did as I really like the GPX 5000 and the fact it's got discrimination for deep coin hunting and on beaches and the crazy good figure 8 anti interference coils and it handles the bad hot rock areas better than the other high end machines. The Nox was at the end of it's good sales cycle anyway as most who wanted one already had one by now so they're due for another release and the longer they take the more sales they'll lose to the Legend and Deus 2 and people who just bought a new detector are less likely to jump on another one. They either release it soon or wait a year or two and just have low sales figures from the Nox in the mean time.

I'm a bit puzzled by Rye Patch, Obviously I know very little about it as I'm on the other side of the planet but some say it's hunted out and coils been over ever square inch, some say it's not and there is plenty of gold there to be found. The results from the photos above to me says there is plenty of gold left there, albeit mostly small, unless Gerry takes his customers to secret spots away from the heavy detecting traffic that are just unknown areas. Those customers presumably quite inexperienced at least with using their detectors to be there in the first place did remarkably well. The Nox users seemed to pull a decent amount of gold, not much different to others really. It's more getting the coil over the gold than the detector used by the look of most of those results. Yes, there maybe some nuggets certain detectors do better than others on but they all did very well I think. I'm sure some of those Nox users went away from the event thinking they saved a lot of money on their detector yet still did pretty well by comparison. Yes I know part of your course is showing some detectors will hit other nuggets better than others and deeper etc, great tool for up selling and educational purposes as it really is a fact, over all I think all of the customers in the photos did pretty well and deserve a pat on the back, and by the way it was described the Nox users deserve the biggest pat on the back as they had all the odds against them and pulled through with the goods. Did we have any first nugget found people there Gerry? Did you break any in! I'd like to go to Rye Patch some day, It'd be interesting to experience it myself. Western Australia would also be on the bucket list especially if the world hits a global cooling period, too hot for me. I like your story posts Gerry, great photos too. Just one more thing, how does the guy in the 3rd photo not smack himself in the face with his pick all the time with where he positions his pick holder? 🙂

Looks like a great trip with a good supply of nuggets, the Nox users appeared to do very well even getting some of the bigger bits, you're very good at what you do Gerry 🙂

yup, latest update is all you need. Firmware isn't like software, you don't patch updates onto it by updating small portions, in fact that'd be extremely difficult, a firmware flash erases the flash rom and flashes on the version you're flashing.

Nenad put up a photo on Facebook of the new 16x10" coil, it looks quite nice. Pretty well defined windings on it.

It lets me install it from here https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bleu122.goterrain For people with an Android phone I've dumped the 32bit and 64bit APK installer files on my Google drive. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MR5x0_Q1VbNr0lvqjabBI2OjDXqZar5h?usp=sharing You can just install it with any APK installer like this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.apkinstaller.ApkInstaller&hl=en&gl=US

Here is a decent video from Tassie Boys Prospecting, he's actually one of the new Minelab detect-spurts. Tasmania detecting is much like NZ detecting, the bushland looks VERY similar, so it might go some way into explaining why I like certain detectors and coils more than others 🙂 One of my favourite creeks is so hard to get into now it's getting near impossible and like these guys it's full of hot rocks that send detectors wild, the problem is there is gold to be found if I'm patient enough and willing to crawl through the bush to get to it.

You might be right about that version of the adapter causing a problem with the detector seeing it JP especially with larger coils, I secured all of my coil cables with a round lump as you can see in the photo below which stops them moving inside the shaft. On the very sensitive coils like the 8" I also have this lump down near the coil to stop the coil cable moving inside the shaft as much like the 6000 the GPZ picks up the coil cable moving when using smaller coils. X-coils don't recommend that style of adapter, it's just something a few of us have done for convenience of changing coils and is best only used with small coils for the reason you point out above. I have both sorts of adapter and my larger coils are all using the short standard little adapter with my smaller coils on this adapter style. I would always suggest people stick with the standard adapter method not this long style one, I just wanted to try one out. I forgot to mention and people have probably already done it but you'll see on the plug end I have a little white line, this makes plugging the coils in so much easier to line up the plug quickly, worth doing if anyone hasn't done it.

That's correct, I can still use the NF coil if I wanted to, you can see in the second picture a new plug end if back on it. I just didn't care about the warranty on that coil as I'd never use it so it shouldn't fail just sitting there, where as I'd rather keep the original Minelab coil intact which is also under warranty as it holds more value to me than the NF coil. I have so much better coils for my needs the NF coil will just never be used so it made perfect sense to use it to make an adapter. In hindsight I wouldn't have even bought it, but with the reasonably good reviews I thought it might be better than it is.

TV in the UK has, at last, released in full, their 2013 highly successful Metal Detecting series – Hoard Hunters. Metal detectorists Gary Brun and Gordon Heritage are joined by archaeologist Mike Webber as they revisit the sites of known treasure hoards to piece together history and perhaps find more artifacts. The series, from ITV Studios, combines history and humour to show what may have been left behind at the sites, with the boys having the advantage over previous diggers of state-of-the-art equipment, technical prowess, and a proven track record. For many viewers, Gary and Gordon’s passion for the hobby led to their own involvement in the hobby and both remain highly respected around the world. Many hobbyists have inquired about viewing the show outside of the UK. So. It is with great delight, and a helpful poke from Gary, that we introduce you to the full series of Hoard Hunters. Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7

The Equinox is switch on and go, that's why it has default settings, park, field, beach, gold.... go into the suitable one and off you go, if you're struggling with the Equinox you're not going to find any other detector much easier to use. These default settings were set by the designers that knew the detector inside out, I have a funny feeling they knew what they were doing when they selected the default settings. The settings are there if you're trying to get the most out of it as an advanced user, you don't need to use them. Turn it on, pick the mode you want for example Park, set your desired volume level and off you go... find stuff. Worse case scenario do a ground balance or ensure tracking is on if your ground is bad and do a noise cancel if EMI is a problem. Have a flick through the manual, it gives a few hints on using it. Changing from the Equinox to any other detector isn't going to make your life easier. Don't be scared to lower the sensitivity, having the sensitivity maxed out can be daunting if you're struggling to understand it, settle on about half way and get used to it, it's still mighty good with a lower sensitivity and far less troublesome for someone learning it.

Awesome, you'll love it.

This is 1,000,000% correct for me, My Teknetics T2 is probably as deep as my CTX, only it tells me all deep targets are iron or are so wild on the ID's they seem like junk, my CTX and to a slightly lesser extent my Equinox tells me if those deep targets are good, almost to the point its unbelievable by comparison to every other detector I've tried, depth means nothing to me if the ID's are so far off they're useless. If I wanted depth with no decent discrimination and no target identification I'd wander down to my coin spots with my GPX 5000 and it makes the VLF's seem like a toy when it comes to depth. I don't want to dig a million holes in public areas so having accurate identification is a must anywhere other than a beach or an farm field which in NZ is pointless hunting as we have no history. This is why I found the Simplex useless, yes it has good depth if you want to dig everything but it's ID's drop off at very shallow depths by comparison to the Nox or Vanquish or even the Gold Bug Pro or Ace 300i, they all do far better on deep targets than the Simple Simplex. Around here if a coins been there for a while it's very deep so depth and identification mean a huge amount to me, we have soft soil, if we get a lot of rain and you walk on the grass you leave a dent about an inch deep with every foot step in winter 🙂 It's even worse further towards the coast, I had to dig deep holes to put fence posts in at my place down there, they took about a two minutes each to dig 20 inch holes. At my other place in the dyer part of the country inland and at a higher altitude I had to dig holes for posts and it took me about 30 minutes a hole with the same depth with the ground being far harder at a similar time of year. So far for my purpose of deep silver coins in public places the CTX is superior to any other detector I've tried as it's very deep and has great target identification. I really hope Minelab make another CTX type detector and don't discontinue the FBS 2 technology in favour of Multi-IQ, both are good and both have their strong points but they're very different to each other and one has benefits the other does not. A little plug for the Detech Arrow too, for an area with fresh drops after an outdoor concert or something it's an awesome coil, it's a shame it's limited to primitive detectors but still, well worth having in the tool kit.

He's a very likeable guy and shows and tells it how it is. I'm glad his misguided rock throw didn't land on his control pod or it would be game over. Might be best to throw down wind next time 🙂 The best part about his videos is he doesn't make out like he finds a massive amount of gold and shows the hard work involved with finding a nugget and he seems just as excited as I do with every nugget find, he keeps it realistic. If anyone found fists full of gold when they went out they certainly wouldn't be wasting time talking on a forum or working a day job. I need to take my 6000 further afield from EMI so we can get better antiquated, I'm sure our bond will grow with more use.

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 one where he should answer NO to the poll question about shaft problems 🙂 I love his attitude in the video, the show must go on!

That's true, it's impossible to know by a poll like this if any improvements have been made with later release detectors. I've no doubt you look after your customers, I've had some contact me saying you were great with their GPX problems. My dealer was also fantastic and just as annoyed as I was with my problems, my problems become his problems so it's not a win for anybody and it costs him money when things go wrong. On a positive note let's be happy we even have Minelab making our detectors, without them we'd be in trouble 🙂

Yes, it seems the competition between users is more fierce than between manufacturers with the VLF's 🙂 The Nox/Legend/Deus 2 thing has gone wildly out of control with even manufacturers stepping in to argue with users and really makes this GPX thing look pretty tame. Even with 70% margin of error those numbers aren't good. It's bound to be something that was beyond their control, and I'm sure it will improve. Prior releases although there have been problems have not been anywhere near like this one. They did this release during a really challenging time around the World and surely that has played a role in the problems. Malaysia was and still is a very hard hit country with Covid. On the plus side it's a great metal detector and plenty of people really like it and we all have our warranties to get problems resolved if and when they pop up. Right now I'm looking forward to trying out some aftermarket coils on it and I'm glad it has a good range of them, a very positive change. JW used a bit of sand paper on his shaft and improved it a lot, if mine bothers me too much I'll do that but it's only twisted a few times so far so I'm not too bothered by it yet and over time plenty of aftermarket alternatives will appear I'm sure.

The poll seems to have reached its peak now with little change in days so probably captured a bulk of the forums GPX 6000 owners, 34 people have responded to the poll, without including the shaft issue 7 have had a faulty detector, 5 have had faulty coils and this is without including the people that have had two coils fail, or sent their detector back in twice for faults, we know for a fact these people exist that were unable to vote twice with their problems. So at least 12 people have had a faulty GPX 6000 with the coil or detector combined out of 34 people. I'm pretty bad at maths but I'd say that is a 1/3 of the people who have bought one have had a major fault with it. Then as I predicted 50% of the 34 people have had a shaft that twists, so that one can either be put down as a fault or just a poor build quality shaft and I'm sure the other 50% will join that club with some more use especially if they use larger coils for it. Those who haven't yet had a coil die or their detector fault remember, it is early days yet, I just hope if it is going to happen it happens inside your warranty period rather than outside of it so clock up those miles with it while you can just in case. I don't see how it's anything but logical people would have a right to feel angry about this for a $6000 USD metal detector, with the competitions nearest performance detector although widely acknowledged the performance isn't near as good is I guess the Garrett ATX at about $2300 so we are paying a massive premium to be Minelab owners which is OK as long as we get the performance we know they deliver, and the quality we deserve for the price. I'll ride out the rough patch and hopefully different coils and a new shaft make it into what I want from it. The Aussies already have shaft replacement kits appearing at their dealers to resolve the twisting problem and they even say they're essential when using the larger coils. The one they have doesn't shrink the detector down as small so I'm holding out for a better one as one of the attributes I like and that is an improvement over the GPZ is that it shrinks down small for my backpack. I can tell why Steve's business in Alaska was so successful, any person can sell a product, customer service makes or breaks a businesses reputation and he knew exactly how to run a service department, as someone myself that spent many years involved with service departments his statement above was exactly how a good business deals with the difficult task of disgruntled customers with faults. You'd be surprised what having a heart and some empathy can do with turning the most furious customer into a happy one and it makes you feel good when you achieve that. I don't expect Minelab will acknowledge the problems as there are ramifications for them if they do, I'm quite surprised this far into the release the problems still exist as if we are at day one of the release though. It's like they believe if they ignore problems they'll go away. They did this with the CTX coil ears breaking, they used the same damn ears on the Equinox and look at the grief that caused, and now they've used the same ears on the Vanquish. It must be cheaper for them to just keep replacing faulty stuff than it is to actually fix the problem and if anyone has any idea about actual manufacturing costs they'd know the GPX is really not even remotely a $6000 USD metal detector so swapping it out for someone doesn't cost them all that much 🙂

Always good to put a mug to a name. It's a shame you didn't find anything worthwhile but Jeff's crazy soil doesn't really help with that.

Those English are lucky to have such great hunting grounds with ancient stuff to find, this woman just sniffed out a 2000 year old silver penis with her metal detector https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/metal-detectorist-penis-pendant-kent-b2091712.html

Gm1000 - Internal speaker failed - replaced under warranty Gm1000 - Coil cracked - replaced under warranty Equinox - Wobbly shaft - replaced under warranty GPX 4500 - Ribbon cable for PCB hairline cracks in wire (outside of warranty, replaced myself with aftermarket cable) Old GPX is built tough. Very happy with my older GPX 4500 and 5000 build quality so can't complain at all about them, tanks! Go-Find 40 - Fold up hinge fell apart - Didn't bother claiming warranty as it's never going to be used, glued it. Hinge seems improved on newer Go-Find 44 model. Pro Find 35 - Unstable / DOA GPZ 7000 - WM12 rubber cover for USB broke in half within weeks - replaced under warranty GPZ 7000 - Lower shaft clip broke replaced under warranty CTX 3030 - Coil ear cracked on 17" coil, fixed myself as what's the point getting it replaced for it to happen again and didn't want the hassles of sending it away and then I'd be doing the fix to the new one straight away anyway to prevent it. Pro Sonic - First one arrived decal upside down so buttons didn't line up, replaced. Pro Sonic - Second one arrived and charged once then never worked again, refunded. GPX 6000 - ! error on startup (DOA), Twisting shaft I think I've remembered all of my problems, I've had so many I probably can't remember them all. I'll update the post if anymore come to mind. I have no problems with Minelab's warranty, they're perfectly normal, just as good as any other company really, the time away and the cost of shipping the products back to them is the big problems with the number of faulty products they sell.

Yes for mono coils you'd need to use the mono coil to make an adapter, for concentric coils you'd need to use the DD coil to make an adapter. The chip tells the detector which type of coil is plugged in, that's it's other purpose. It did it on the GPZ too, my GPZ tells me my X-coils are a NF Z-search when I use my long adapter cable. It seemed the perfect coil to use as I'll never use it anyway so I don't need it's warranty.

I've tidied up my unnecessary comments in the discussion with JP. In respect of JP I thought my comments were best tidied up, they were not important to the poll itself and we were a bit off course with our discussion. Thanks to everyone that has contributed to the poll so far, it can be a bit daunting for a potential GPX 6000 customer to read these big long threads with people talking about their problems with very little balance on the other side of it with how many people are happy with theirs and so far the poll results are demonstrating the faults while they do exist are not terrible numbers like it may seem reading the problem/fault threads other than the shaft twisting so new purchasers will know that is something they can likely expect to have happen to them. That's the point of a poll, to get a real balanced result consolidated into an easy to understand result without having to read many pages and threads all over the place to work it out.