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No, the Joey is for the GPX only, you'd need the special Nox coil 10x5" for it to work on the Equinox.

I've been wondering that about the GPZ 8000 too, I suspect they're just going to lighten it up, put in a faster processor so the user interface doesn't lag so much navigating it especially with GPS enabled. I'm sure they could put an onboard speaker on the 8000 as ZVT is just SOOOOOOO much better with EMI. The downside to the 8000 if it ever exists will be they're going to change the coil plug end again, moving the chip inside the coil. They won't achieve their goal will this but it does make life more difficult. They'll probably have a few tweaks to the ZVT tech maybe even just assisted by modern processing technology. They'll put Bluetooth instead of their WM12 and supply some cheap Chinese headphones with it with nice big Minelab logo's on them. That works out cheaper for them than supplying a WM12 anyway. I hope they don't change the shaft to that flimsy GPX shaft, I was happy mine wasn't one of the ones that twist, until yesterday and it twisted 3 times in half a days use so it's starting! I really like the GPZ shaft, I use force to push down grass and bushes and have had no problems, I call the GPZ the bulldozer and the way I can use it compared to the GPX makes it feel that way. The aftermarket has made collapsible shafts for the Equinox which are nice and light but still strong, they don't twist so I guess it can be done. It should come with a concentric coil, 15 or 17" would be fine although I think 15" is a better all rounder. It could also come with a small 10" DOD coil and then people are pretty well set up. They could do a couple of accessory options of a 22" CC and a 17" spiral and I'd call that a decent range of coils to get started with and with that range it's obviously got big advantages over the existing GPZ, I would say that would quantify as enough for them to call it a GPZ 8000. Standard GPZ 7000 users would certainly notice the enhanced performance to justify their spend. If a GPZ 8000 does come out I'm going to be extremely cautious before buying it, I don't want to buy another expensive detector that I still prefer using my 7000 with it's X-coils over. Detech have made concentric coils for the 4500/5000 series. They've been discussed a fair bit here They're cheaper than you'd think too $510 AUD for the 18" CC http://phasetechnical.com.au/product/detech-18-concentric-coil/ They seem to share some of the traits of the GPZ CC's, like the good sensitivity to small targets, although that's marketing saying that. I'd like to try one out just because I love the GPZ CC's so much.

It also has 10x5", 14x9" and 15" round from Coiltek. https://coiltek.com.au/coils/nox-series/

On the GPZ the concentric coils have an outer transmit and two inner receive windings, and to top it off they're flat wound. I can imagine the inner most receive winding is very small which might explain the super sensitivity they have. Also that outer transmit winding on a 15" CC is a big winding, if you think about the standard DOD design. The central transmit winding on the 14x13" GPZ coil is tiny compared to the transmit on the 15" CC. I have no idea myself but you'd think that might have something to do with why the Concentric coils are so deep. Just a guess of course, I do not know why they're so much better.

It's still there, read the pick section carefully, it'll give you a giggle. Most seem to skim over it and not notice, I know I did the first time I read it.

I was going to dust off my T2 when this coil came out for it, I have a real soft spot for my T2 as it was my first high end detector at the time, although by today's standards its fairly lacking it's still quite fun to use and a joy to swing. Party why I was hoping a Multi Freaker would come out from Fisher as I was hoping they'd put it into the same body as the existing T2/F75 and they'd not chip the coils to prevent the aftermarket going nuts making a big range of coils for them like Minelab and Nokta have done with theirs.

I had to read it again, I missed it the first time, better take a screenshot before it's gone forever 🙂 N is nowhere near L on the keyboard so it wasn't a typo, it was a brain fart, something was on Gerrys mind when he typed that 🙂

I agree with everything Gerry said about the Nox coil differences but there is one more thing to add, the only major advantage I can see to the 10x5" Coiltek over the stock 6" when looking for nuggets is the stock gets the best depth on tiny nuggets at the center of the coil, in rocky areas or bedrock cracks and so on you may not be able to get the center of the coil over the target as well, with the 10x5" the most sensitive piece on the coil to very small gold is the nose and tail meaning you can push the nose up into places and retain the maximum sensitivity giving it an advantage over the 6". Aside from that benefit I prefer the 6" as overall it's more sensitive.

Makes sense to me, NZ has become so expensive in this day and age that you have to be able to afford to live here especially around the Queenstown region where all my gold is found which is why its become known as a billionaires bolthole but its similar the entire country. Australia is the easier cheaper option with higher wages for low paying jobs which these people are seeking. It's quite sad actually, unless you're able to pay over a million for a basic house for a person that's job is sales person with low wages which is impossible then you're better off moving to Australia for a cheaper life and many younger people do who have no hope of living here other than a life of struggle. These normal jobs are filled by people on working holidays from overseas as the income isn't enough for a local to survive on and they're happy to live 10 to a house sharing beds one on the day shift one on the night shift. When I first moved to the area I struggled to meet Kiwi's, everyone was from somewhere else in the world 🙂 It seemed like there were more Aussies, English and Americans than Kiwi's around here and it still does. The good thing is you guys have the most gold, and I'm very envious of that. Fortunately for me skiing is more important to me than metal detecting and the value of my finds means nothing to me, it's more about the difficulty of the hunt so finding small nuggets that are very hard to find means more to me than finding bigger easier ones would as the finds have no value either way, it's the fun of the hunt. 🙂

Australia 🙂 I think I'd rather live in Perth than Meekatharra although the little nuggets scattered all over the ground there would be a nice little bonus 🙂 Perth seems a nice city, my wife went there for her work when we were in Brisbane and came home wanting to move there, I had to put my foot down as it's too far from snow for skiing 🙂 I never went to Perth, like most east coasters the west coast is a bit alien to us. A shorter flight to another country than to Perth 🙂

Why not just move there? I can't say I'd be as excited as you are to be going there, I avoid the place like the plaque as now after living here its too hot for me, I leave my wife to go visit the family without me 🙂 In saying that I now have an interest in gold prospecting which I never had when I was living there, took up detecting 32 years too late I guess.

That is weird as it takes you to Fisher Electronics Amazon store with all products of course out of stock, an American Audio company that was defunct in 2000, isn't that ironic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_Electronics

Bugger, only for the F75 and not the T2, that's a start at least. Thanks for pointing out the coil now actually exists. They're sure trying to hide it, it's not even on the Fisher website although I'd long believed they've lost the password to be able to update that then they surprised me updating it with the Gold Bug 2.1 photos 🙂

At least they got a good pin pointer to market before the heartbeat stopped. I'm quite happy with my F-pulse for a beach environment.

I was doing some research into why the gold is often found inside the schist and I spend my time smashing it out and came up with this document Gold In Otago. Gold occurs in two distinct geological settings in Otago: within quartz veins in the schist (hard-rock gold), and as detrital gold grains in gravels (alluvial gold). The quartz veins which contain the hard-rock gold were formed by hot water (200-400°C) passing through fractures in the schist up to 15 kilometres below surface. The passing hot water deposited the quartz and gold as it rose and cooled through the schist bedrock. Hard-rock gold forms the original source for the alluvial gold, but many alluvial deposits have been derived by erosion of older gravel deposits. Gold is 19 times denser than water, and does not move far in streams unless it is as small particles (less than half millimetre). The history of gold in Otago goes back about 150 million years, when Otago was mountainous, similar to the Southern Alps of today. The mountain ranges extended from Chatham Islands westwards beyond Wanaka, into Marlborough which at that time was immediately west of Haast. These mountains were made up of schist and greywacke as in Otago and Southern Alps today. Beneath the mountains, gold-bearing quartz veins filled active faults formed by earthquakes which accompanied the rise of the mountains. Similar processes have occurred during many times of fault activity and mountain building over the past 150 million years, and are still occurring today beneath the Southern Alps. Marlborough moved along the Alpine Fault nearly 500 kilometres northeastwards from Otago, taking its gold with it, over the past 20 million years. As the mountains rose, they were eroded and gold from the quartz veins was concentrated into layers of coarse gravels on the eroded bedrock. Further uplift meant that these gravels were in turn eroded and the gold was reconcentrated. At least 15 kilometres of rock have been removed from over Otago. All that remains of that rock is the widespread alluvial gold, for which Otago is famous, and small amounts of gravel.

I found the same with detectors with no arm cuff rubber stuff so I bought some sound proofing insulation rubber self adhesive stuff from Aliexpress, it was only a few bucks delivered and super tough and does the job nicely, it also comes in various thicknesses, it's designed for sticking your car for sound proofing so it's obviously pretty hard wearing. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about although not necessarily the one I ordered, I can't remember the exact seller I got mine from, same stuff though by the looks of it.

I did an entire thread on 6000 X-coils as they were being prototype tested and the sizes that made it through were 8" round, 10x6", 12x6", 15x10" and 12" round, you might have been awol at the time, they're not releasing them for public sale now though. I don't think extra EMI would be the reason they're not making bigger coils, that's just something that would bother me where I detect.

Has it gone unnoticed that X-coils also only made small coils for the 6000? Is it just assumed they didn't try make big coils? They were not restricted in any way with their coils. They are fully aware the bigger coils are their best sellers for the GPZ with I'd say the 17" round being the most popular size. Out of interest how do people think large coils would go on the SDC 2300? Like a 17" round or even a 22" or something like that? Just wondering...... I think Coiltek is making the coils they think will benefit the 6000 the most, so is NF while just making different sizes to Coiltek so they're not directly competing, that 10x5" Coiltek will likely be their best seller of their range I think. I do wish they'd consider making DD coils though, the GPX needs more DD's, 14" isn't ideal for many people. Their same range again in DD would be excellent. Yes, they may not suit the hardcore Aussie prospector looking for big deep gold in Australia, lucky they still have their GPZ for that I guess but I think the expectations some have for the 6000 are more realistic for the GPZ 8000. I don't think Minelab has said Hey Buddy, you're not making big coils for the GPX. I do however think they said Hey Buddy you're not making small coils for the GPZ. It would be convenient not needing a GPX 4500/5000 or a 7000 and being able to just throw a big coil on the 6000, I certainly understand the desire I just wonder if the benefits of the big coil would be there as much as would be expected and Coiltek certainly wouldn't want to release a coil they know people are going to rename to the Dog 2. I just think of the extra EMI and my brain hurts, not everyone has to deal with that though.

So was this a hoax or just a desperate attempt to keep their name relevant? At this stage it's pretty easy to say they're no longer in the game and haven't been for years, even the new coil they were coming out with seems to be non-existent. They can't even release a new coil, the Impulse AQ was a big fail and is dead in the water. I had high hopes....... I had high hopes for the Impulse Gold.... I had high hopes for the Gold Bug 3 and then it was a Gold Bug 2.1 which was worse than the Gold Bug 2 and they only did that as they were forced to due to components no longer existing to make an antique detector. It's sad to see another metal detector manufacturer dead but I'm willing to call it now, First Texas is the next Whites when it comes to metal detectors. They may kick on in their current form selling their antiques but to me that may as well be dead. The counterfeiters are making more money off their detectors than they are now, a lot more. 😞

It takes a few edits to get them right, I'm not one to proof read before hitting the submit post button 🙂 Your posts always bring a smile with them.

Although I could rock a flamingo print as good as the next guy I figured American's would call a jumper something different 🙂 No one in NZ understands what we are talking about either but after years of saying it, it's hard to get rid of it. This is a photo of someone in what I'm talking about. What I mean with the signal dropping off is when the small lead pellet is very close to the coil its a boomer of a target but it doesn't take much depth for that booming signal to drop to a faint one. The GPZ while not screaming on the pellets maintains a stronger signal on them from a greater depth. It's hard to describe, it gives you the false impression the GPX is very deep on small targets by how it screams on them when they're close to the coil but you quickly see that isn't the case once the target has moved in your dig out pile and you can't find it anymore without flattening it out. This doesn't seem to happen so much with gold from what I've seen so far, but with shotgun pellets it does and that's in a way beneficial as you can take the gamble of rejecting a pellet because of it. That's how I see it anyway and I've dug enough pellets now to see the pattern forming 🙂 All bets are off if its not a small lead pellet though, this is just with small round lead. I've got a really good MPow aptX LL transmitter that I'll use for my Torus on all my detectors, I'm really happy with the Avantree Torus purchase, the only thing they could improve on it is some level of water resistance.

My DD Leather and Canvas GPX cover arrived today, so I can now give my GPZ cover back to it 🙂 It wasn't really an ideal fit. The GPX cover set is well made and good quality as always from DD. A very nice fit too. It even has a well positioned velcro strap where the stupid headphone socket cover is that spends most of its life flapping open in the wind as it just won't stay in place. I noticed yesterday JW had taped his one shut as it was always flapping in the wind. It was nice to see the Australian made tag on it, with almost everything made in Asia these days its refreshing to see stuff made elsewhere.

Yesterday JW suggested we take our GPX 6000's out and compare them to ensure mine is now working properly as I've had no confidence in it after my woes. Unfortunately we were unable to compare our 11" coils like for like as his coil is still away for warranty replacement, it must be 3 weeks now and no sign of a replacement, they just have no stock to swap it for which is pretty poor, but with the number of faulty ones I've seen on Facebook I'm not at all surprised they have no stock as it's not a coil they'd make a lot of as extras seeing everyone gets one with the detector. JW suggested we go to an area he's used his 6000 a lot with the 11" before it died so he would know how mine should behave to see if anything is out of the ordinary. I just wanted to use his detector for a bit to see if EMI was as troubling with it as it was with mine, so I took it for a spin with the Minelab 17" coil on it, I found it was no different with it's EMI behaviour to mine, in fact I thought it was worse but I guess that's to be expected, a bigger coil. We were quite close to a standard normal power line, not the high voltage transmission ones like at the other area that I wanted to wrap the GPX around a tree and say goodbye to it for good. JW had a fair while on mine checking it out and doing factory resets and just experimenting with it, he thought it ran similar to his with it's EMI behaviour so I guess it is how it is, he had my threshold running reasonable, much better than it was at the other location that's for sure. The other spot with the transmission lines is my favourite area but it just suits the GPZ better as it doesn't care at all about the transmission lines, even right near them its as if they barely exist and you can run it with the normal coil you'd use and your normal settings. The GPX requires the DD and adjusted settings so it makes no sense to use the GPX there, the same reason I didn't like using my 4500 there. Once JW had approved my GPX I felt a little more confident in it, knowing that more ratty threshold is normal, I'm just not good on ratty detectors and feel I'll always miss the faint targets with them by comparison to more stable detectors where as JW doesn't mind a more ratty detector, experience level differences I would guess. I had another confidence booster, the Avantree Torus speakers, I've never been much of a headphone person and the ML-100's that come with the GPX have a high pitched hiss all the time once connected to the 6000 which would give me a headache listening to that all day but the Torus speakers are perfect sound, no hiss and very clear audio and easy to hear even in a noisy environment, where we were has a rushing river nearby with quite noisy water sound in the background but the Torus was fine, perfect in fact. Quick and easy to pair with good sound quality and volume level, I was able to turn the GPX volume right down to minimum to stabilize the machine even more and run the Torus on the volume level that suited me. One thing I will point out is with the Torus on you'll like finding 22 shells, sure the noise is booming but the Torus gives you a shoulder massage every time you sweep over one so you'll find yourself swinging over them multiple times enjoying the vibrating massage 🙂 I like the Torus so much I'm going to use my Bluetooth transmitter on the GPZ and use them on it too, so I can finally retire my harness that was only there as a way to hold my SP01 and speakers. The neck gap on them is huge, designed for someone with a neck like Shrek I think and my Pelican neck is a bit skinny for them but they held on perfectly fine and I had no concerns of them coming off. I'd highly recommend anyone considering these things to give them a try, I doubt you'll be disappointed. They even talk to you 🙂 It started to rain a bit while using them and they're not water resistant but I just put my jumper over top of them and the sound came through it perfectly fine (not sure what Americans call it) and Kiwi's never even know what I mean when I say jumper as it's a Queensland/Australia term as far as I can tell. Once we'd done tinkering comparing detectors we started detecting, I wandered off 20 or so meters away from JW so I didn't interfere with his detector and started detecting some bedrock. I was running my GPX in Auto as if I tried manual 10 or Auto+ it became a bit too unstable for my liking I guess due to the nearby power lines. It wasn't long and I had a good target noise, super faint but very repeatable and after scraping away all the soil off the bedrock I was pretty sure it wasn't a pellet, I started breaking away the schist to try get down to it, I was attacking for for about 20 minutes and I guess JW noticed as he came over, I told him what's going on and showed him my target response at that time, it had improved to a point it was very obvious after smashing some bedrock away. He said lets check my 17" coil over it and see how it responds, so he waived the coil over it, nothing at all, he pushed the edges right into the cracks in the bedrock and nothing, he spent a bit of time trying to get a response from the target and he couldn't get one. We fired up my GPX again and waived it over it and straight away a reasonably good response. After seeing that I'm glad I didn't buy the 17" coil seeing we mostly hunt smaller gold it's not near got the sensitivity of the 11" on this stuff. to be completely blind to this piece when the 11" was getting it pretty easily. JW had also lost a couple of targets he was recovering with the 17" coil so we went over to them with the 11" and tried to find them, the 11" found one of the two lost targets straight away. JW then hung around to help recover the target, he's a lot better at getting gold out of bedrock than I am, I'm not aggressive and hack away at it slowly as I'm so scared I'll lose the nugget, it's happened before 🙂 He just smashes the hell out of it and gets it out quickly. It didn't take him too long and he had it out, as per usual with the GPX once the target is near the coil it ROARS on it, a few inches away and it's a quiet response so once out we had it in no time. The dug out bit of bedrock is below the coil in the photo above. The nugget circled. That's where it was, I was so surprised the 17" coil had no response on this nugget when in there, it was probably on its side in a layer of the schist but still, the 11" performed so much better. This is the nugget. I'm confident the GPZ with my favourite little 8" would have hit this far easier than the GPX did, it wasn't what I'd call deep but it was faint on the GPX and missed entirely by the 17" even with some of the bedrock broken away. Next up I kept detecting around this same bedrock and it falls off a bit of a cliff down to the river below, it's pretty wild on the way down but I went off the edge a bit as I could see an area I could start to get down and detected one of the many ledges on the way down, I found a few pellets down there but also a nugget. It was very shallow and a louder signal than a pellet. It was really only a couple of pick scrapes to remove the grass and I had it, it's lucky I wasn't being lazy ignoring the first pick scrapes assuming they're pellets. The reason I didn't ignore it and I ignore many pellets is the pellets the GPX finds harder to detect, sure it booms on them when you first go over them as they're close to the coil, you do a couple of pick scrapes and move the pellet into a pile of soil and the target signal drops off dramatically to a point they can entirely disappear or be very hard to locate compared to the screaming signal when they're near the coil so you find yourself flattening out the pile. It's a bit of a giveaway with lead pellets I think as gold tends to remain a decent signal as it's not as difficult of a target as a small sphere like a lead pellet. Here is a video of the spot the nugget was, not usual for me to go off edges like this I usually leave the mountain goat stuff for JW 🙂 My threshold was pretty savage in this video, I did a factory reset not long after this as it was starting to go wild. Good ol' Geosense. It's amazing doing a factory reset fixes it up when no amount of noise cancels will. I hope its a bug they can fix and a firmware update comes out some day. I decided I'd go back up to where I found the first one and give it another go, a couple of meters along the same run of bedrock I found another faint target signal that lived beyond clearing the dirt off the schist bedrock. Because I'd just only done the same thing I knew this was going to be gold so I did some filming. I didn't film the entire process as I'm very slow getting gold out of bedrock 🙂 This is the better video of the two to watch as it gives a better idea of the recovery I switch to manual 10 in the video from Auto and you'll see the target response improve, I just preferred hunting in Auto while I'm still getting used to the more ratty threshold of the GPX over the GPZ even though I know I'm taking a performance hit doing so. And the happy snaps. This one was a bit deeper than the last one, took me a long time to smash it out. A bit more of a ball nugget, again the GPZ would have hit it easily. It was now starting to rain a little bit and likely snowing on the mountains above us so our day we nearing the end, we only started around Lunch time so I was pretty happy with my results. JW at this stage had given up on the 17", I guess seeing it entirely miss the first target I got wasn't really encouraging. He'd put on the 14" DD now, I'm sure he wished his 11" wasn't away on warranty at this stage as he'd not found anything yet. I went back towards where we stored our bags and started detecting around there and found my last nugget of the day, another very simple target, it was in someone elses dig hole spoils, they'd dug up the nugget and rejected it, I guess they thought because it was in soil and not on or in the bedrock it wasn't gold, so I recovered it and it was my biggest of the day 🙂 It was right near where the cliff drops off to the river below. I checked with JW, it wasn't his dig hole so someone else had been there, he did point out when we arrived it looked like someone else had been there recently as there was dig holes that were not his so someone donated me a nugget. So overall my GPX was working much better at this spot, it still had its Geosense quirks and is nowhere near as stable as the GPZ, and the GPZ I know is just as sensitive if not more so than the GPX when its using small coils on the GPZ, it'll be interesting to see the improvements with the smaller coils on the GPX. Where the GPX appears to be more sensitive is small pellets near the coil with the way it really roars on them, but any depth on those little pellets and reality sets in, it's just hyper sensitive to targets close to the coil, it'd be good for bedrock hunting with that behaviour. My total for the afternoon. We bailed out because it started raining and only started at lunch time so a good result for me. JW found one little guy at .19 of a gram and that was once he changed over to the 14" DD, he was certainly digging away all day though, I could hear a lot of smashing on the bedrock! Damn pellets! My junk level was really low, I was rejecting known pellets by the strong pellet signal dropping off to next to nothing in the dig out pile quirk the GPX has. Those 22 shells give a nice massage with the Torus 🙂

The problem is millions of users are using each phone, so that hacker pool of people wanting to bypass any security they may have is large, the same with games consoles, the developers of them do everything humanly possible to prevent them having their security bypassed as the gaming industry is now worth more than the movie industry so preventing people copying the games is a huge thing but they never win the battle, most are hacked not long after they're out and people are copying the games like mad. The problem with metal detectors is there is a very small pool of users and to those that do this sort of hacking just have no interest in them, I'm sure if one of these seriously skilled hackers took it on they'd have it hacked in no time at all, they'd find it easy, it's has flash updates and there is no way Minelab are top of the line security experts, I'm sure it'd be an easy hack for the right person and yes I agree that it would be possible to disable the chip security by firmware modification.

Yea, I really think a spiral concentric coil would be a killer coil on the GPX.