phrunt

Here is JW's 6 bits from the day from using the GPZ while his GPX 11" is away on warranty replacement. Smallest .04 biggest .16 So the day was JW - 6 / Simon - 0 Next time I'll be using the GPZ.

I just love my CTX, and it's really thanks to strick I bought one, one of the few detectors I've purchased other than the Nox, 24k and GPZ I really love. The rest I could have done without and probably regret buying them more than I'm glad I did. Good hunt strick, glad to see you giving the CTX some exercise, it's fat enough without spending its time resting at home.

I believe they got a few detect-spurts to compete with the Nokta Nomads and Garrett whatsyoumahcallthems that other companies are using. I don't really hear much from these spurts though, The old treasuretalks used to be good but I guess they were more designed for those with a technical interest, it's all about hyping things up these days with over excited people doing artificial videos and maybe Minelab can't be bothered with that. Marketing has never been their strong point from what I've seen, although they don't need to do much marketing, we the users do it for them, and there is no better marketing than word of mouth.

Not sure, lead solders are getting harder to get these days because of the crazy Californians I think. My lead solder is 60% tin, 38% lead and 2% resin flux. Most solder now is lead free to satisfy the hippies. The problem is lead free solder just isn't as good for long lasting quality joints I believe. I don't think pellets end up a good comparison unless people are using the same pellet judging by Jeff's results and my results and mine #9 test has been done on two detectors so it can't be blamed on one not working properly unless of course they're both duds, always possible with the QC at Minelab. This video is a good demonstration of performance difference with different composition pellets. Here is mine on a #9 lead pellet, this same pellet is a screamer on something like the 24k, GM, GB2 or Nox. The 11" Mono does no better at all.

Yes, CC coils on the 6000 may catch it up a bit to the 7000 with a small coil on small targets, It might be something that needs to happen for the 6000 as it might help with the EMI issues too.

I find it impossible to detect #9 shot on either the 11' or 14" DD coil on the GPX even touching the coil. I've tested the same #9 shot on a friends (JW's) GPX with 11" and it also didn't see the number 9 shot touching the coil. The problem is not all pellets are equal, it seems there are ones made of lots of different things, mine are very old shot I find and I'm confident they're the old lead shots, others may not be testing with pure lead shot, a more modern magnetic type of pellet gets far better detection than lead shot and I think half the people who are happy with their lead shot performance are not actually testing with lead shot at all, the problem is a lot of the modern shot isn't magnetic either. Initially Carl Moreland sent me my #9 lead shot testing pellet from the US, It was the one I used on JW's 11" coil where it didn't detect it at all before I bought a GPX, it fell off the stick while testing his so it's gone but I've plenty of other old lead shot that I'm sure would be the real deal. It would be good if people could find actual old lead shot and compare air test depths on various size shot to form a base line of what people should expect for sensitivity to small shot but really they'd need tested with the same pellets as the composition of pellets varies so much. If Jeff's does hit pure #9 lead shot like he's saying his GPX is a hell of a lot better than mine. I don't doubt Jeff's integrity, I just doubt his shot is the real deal lead stuff.

That made me spit out my coffee onto my shirt. I wasn't expecting that and just had a sip before I opened the thread.

Looks like you got a nugget that looks a bit like a KFC drum stick too 🙂 It's a shame you didn't get to test the 12" on in ground targets next to the GPX 11". I think you'll be pleasantly surprised 🙂 The 12" is the smallest of the fully spiral coils.

This thread is an interesting read, especially now most of it has played out, I'd highly recommend people read it all again now that time has gone by 🙂

It never crossed my mind it'd be OK on the Simplex as the Simplex target ID's are quite reliable for shallow targets, I bought it for my AT Gold and avoided the Simplex due to the poor target ID on the Simplex but I didn't think about the coil's focus is shallow targets. I quite like it on my AT Gold though and it's very sensitive to small gold considering the detectors frequency. You did well with the Arrow and you've perfectly used it for and demonstrated it's strong points. It's a really nice coil.

I'm in love! Yes, in love! the GPX 14" coil is great, performance is pretty good but it really calms my detector down and I feel I could use it for a day with this coil and not feel like wrapping it around a tree like I do with the 11". I ran it over some little nugs and I thought its performance was similar on them to the 11". It's very noticeable that the left side of the coil has the target signal, the right side is almost dead. The good part about this is I could use the left side as a form of pinpointer. This is the first time I've felt happy about my 6000, I went and put it right under high voltage lines that run from a wildmill farm and it worked remarkably well and would be quite usable under big power lines, not near as good as the Coiltek AI coil on the older GPX model but still, good enough and on par with the GPZ with concentric coil for stability under power lines and seeing the GPX doesn't seem to loose too much in the way of small gold sensitivity if any with the DD I will be using it a lot more often now. I really hope the aftermarket guys make DD coils for it, and hopefully their coils are a bit better in EMI than the 11". I noticed the coil cable on the DD coil looks thicker than the 11" Mono's cable. HAPPY! Finally! My 11' is going to become a sacrificial lamb for a better purpose 😛 Aureous, I had another guy contact me overnight on Facebook, his 11" was faulty too, his was noisy and erratic and it felt like it got worse when it was in use for a while. His detector was randomly shutting off too, they couldn't fault the shutdowns but after having his detector for 2 weeks of testing swapped his 11" over and he's happy with it now. Maybe my 11" isn't quite right, doesn't matter It's not going to be used, it will be replaced with aftermarket alternatives. Is this plastic defect normal on the 14" DD up near the coil ears?

JW often talks about you Lanny, I'll pass on your hello although he may end up reading this anyway. JW's 6000 worked in this spot on previous days, not perfectly of course but was quite good, this is the spot he was using it when he tried the factory reset to calm the EMI and his coil died, it should be far enough from the power lines, where he went yesterday it obviously wouldn't good for the 11" as he was right under them so we separated for the day and I went to where I found the 4.1 gram with the GPZ and he went to the power lines to a spot he'd not been to since he used his GPZ with stock 14" coil a couple of years ago and he recalls finding 1 piece, maybe 2 and I last used a 4500 at that spot and found nothing, well tried to use I should say (EMI). We've both noticed with past older detectors like my 4500 some days EMI is worse than others, we obviously can't work out why but it could be wind direction, moisture in the air (fog) draw on the lines during peak times or any number of things, this issue isn't new and we often detect in areas with them so start to see patterns forming with things like this. There was a lot of rain in the area the day before, I wonder if because of that the Hydro dam feeding the lines was pumping out the power more so and caused worse EMI? This day was just a particularly bad EMI one I think and the morning started out with a fog and fog was always bad news for my 4500 for EMI and not likely the detectors fault. As the day went on my EMI woes started to improve. My lesson from the day always carry the 14" DD just in case, part of the learning curve of a new detector, I've not even touched the 14" yet. I hope the aftermarket guys at some point consider making a small DD coil. 14" is a bit big around the bushes. In the video I look up a bit and you'll see the thyme bushes everywhere, a 14" coil would not be suitable. A little mono might end up helping a bit with the EMI too, the little Coiltek Joey 10x5" mono made my 4500 work better in this area than using a larger coil, I can't wait to get aftermarket coils, I'm going to get one of all the brands in the size I like to see the differences and work out which I prefer. This days problems weren't the detectors fault as it was finding plenty of small pellets at reasonable depths, it was just the EMI, I guess my motto is I'll never die wondering 🙂 I like to try things and work out which I prefer, I hate wondering if something else would have been better. As you can see the detector was working fine, plenty of pellets and these are the pellets I had to dig to recover, not surface pellets I rejected all of them unless I was right on the bedrock which wasn't much of the day. I didn't find gold as I didn't go over any I guess, better luck next time I hope. Not sure what size the smallest pellets were, plenty of these little ones, but they're a bit bigger than a #9 (which the GPX can't detect by the way) Almost all of them are lead, at least not magnetic. There is no reason for shooters in this area to be shooting modern pellets as there is no pest wildlife like rabbits that they need to control, I only ever see some birds so I think most pellets have been here for a very long time. Next time at this spot it's the GPZ again with 8" coil, and the GPX with 14" DD. Both get to come along for the ride, it's over a 4 and a half hour drive for me so I have to go prepared. My Avantree Torus and DD leather GPX cover set will arrive in the next few days from Australia so I'll take it back again soon and try again.

We went back here today, JW used the GPZ and 15" Concentric and found 6 pieces of gold. I used the GPX 6000 and found zero gold, my first skunk at this location in who knows how long, I can't even remember my last skunk here. I got a number of pellets though, I'm still puzzled why pellets are such booming signals near to the coil, It's really hyper sensitive to small targets near the coil like these little lead pellets with a big booming signal, but if you do a couple of pick scrapes and try detect them in the dug out soil they're difficult very faint signals and you spend a while messing around trying to find them, my solution has been to flatten out the soil so I can get the coil close to them again. In some shallow bedrock areas you just have to investigate these near surface targets. I had the Nox with me with the Coiltek 10x5" and cross checked a few small targets which ended up pellets, the Nox did a better job overall, in signal strength and ease of recovery. The Nox is great on tiny lead pellets though. Next time the GPZ and GPX are coming along, this time I purposefully left the GPZ at home as I wanted to force myself to use the GPX to give it a chance and if the GPZ was there I would not use the GPX. That's never happening again, if the GPX comes, the GPZ comes. I was having endless troubles with EMI and using noise cancel all the time, never was one press enough, normally 2 to 3 presses did the trick, I'm 100% confident it' not an intelligent noise cancel, it doesn't look for a clean channel, its just randomly moving channels, it can't get it wrong so many times if it was searching for a clean channel, more often than not using it made the EMI worse not better. This spot does have the big transmission lines through it, my older GPX had a lot of trouble here too which is why I bought a QED as it handles power lines better until I bought the GPZ and combined with the Concentric coils power lines are no issues at all. JW of course with the GPZ had no trouble with EMI and was able to go detect right under the high voltage transmission lines, I stayed hundreds of meters away and was still troubled badly, JW said I should have had my 14" DD with me, and he's right, I didn't even think about it, lesson learned. I couldn't detect the area JW found his 6 nuggets, the EMI was too bad to go that close to the power lines. His 6000 11" coil is away for warranty after dying, the service agent doesn't have one to replace it with, nor does Minelab so he's got a big wait ahead of him it seems. I guess they've had to swap out too many and run out of stock. If you want to see me suffer watch this video, this should have been gold, I was 99% sure it was going to be gold. A nice good deep target in the deep gravels, it makes no sense it wasn't gold. Don't worry about my high gain, having a low gain made absolutely no difference to EMI so I saw no point running it low, may as well run it high if it isn't beneficial to lower it. My fault, I should have had the DD with me, or just used the GPZ in a high EMI environment, as with it I can run in HY/Normal gain of 20 and not have an issue. I also checked the spot I found the 4.1 gram nugget with the GPZ and 8" coil the previous weekend, I'd missed nothing there the GPX could find, I was hoping the bigger coil on the GPX might find another one deeper. I'll try again another day with a bigger coil on the GPZ.

Yea, I don't really enjoy the over excited clowns they use in lots of the metal detecting "reality" slows in the US, it's like they've drunk about 50 red bulls and sucked on a bobble of nitrous oxide for an hour before they start filming. They seem to favour using loud obnoxious hyperactive people and if I ever watch them I've got the wife on my back telling me to turn it off or turn it down as she can't stand hearing the people either, jumping up and down all excited then running around in circles and yelling because they find some old crusty bullet. The Detectorists is just good old comedy with a nice story that detector users can relate to in some way, it even got wife approval, extremely rare for prospecting or metal detecting related TV stuff 🙂 People who have no interest in detecting can watch it and enjoy it.

I agree El Nino, the 6000 is a great performing detector, it has very impressive performance and I'm confident problems aside everyone will be happy with the results the detector gives them, that I have absolutely no doubts in my mind. It will find gold they've missed in the past with other detectors 100% guaranteed and is a bit like a skunk buster to those using the standard GPZ or older GPX. JP knows a lot more than me what the detector is capable of, that's for sure and for that reason I understand the defense of the product in that way, when you're passionate about how good something is and you really love it you defend it. I really look forward to turning my negative experience into a positive one and getting out there and having some fun with the detector. I can't wait until I get a small coil for it. This is my last post and I'm having a break from it all now and a fitting end to it all, now time to get positive and have some fun!

I'm not intending to insult you, I just don't understand why you're defending them, surely you've seen what is going on, look how many people are having problems? I know you likely can't say your failure rate as that wouldn't go down very well with Minelab and I don't expect you to say it, no dealer in their right mind would. I don't consider my other issues imaginary like the headphone hiss, others don't either and have pointed out they've got it too. That's you insulting people saying what they're concerned about are not even problems. I don't want to argue with you JP, and I understand your position. I will keep quiet about my GPX problems now, I've made my point clearly enough. Let's change to a new topic from now on, my next post hopefully is me finding some gold with it, tomorrow it's getting a new workout. I'd be happy for this thread to be locked or removed, I just don't care, enough people know of the problems now.

What I mean by 50% is including faults you don't consider faults like shaft twisting, hissing headphones etc etc. If Nokta for example had the Legend with shafts twisting, customers would be getting a new shaft, The Equinox had a wobbling shaft when it came out, Minelab replaced the shafts under warranty, even I got a replacement Nox shaft for the wobbling problem. Ok, so whats your percentage of returns JP, how many have you swapped over DOA or how many of your customers have had faulty coils or detectors that you know of that have returned them to Minelab instead of your store?

We have a lot of outdoor concerts here in the summer, mostly in the grounds of wineries, we also have big fireworks events on the lakefronts in the various towns which is just river gravel beaches with thousands of people. My idea for the coil was to hit places like this covering a lot of ground quickly and plucking out all the recent good drops, and it's quick and easy for pinpointing near surface targets. The limited depth is actually beneficial and I was going to run a low sensitivity to limit that even further.

Thanks, yes I just did that this morning, I put my 6000 on charge overnight so I couldn't test when I brought it up, you're right, it's only hissing when connected on Bluetooth, weird.

It's not about me and never has been, I really don't care as its getting resolved anyway, it's not even my primary detector and I prefer to use my GPZ. I'm just one of many people with problems. The point is to take a stand, to make a point about how poor the reliability/quality is of this detector. They want Ferrari prices for a basic Ford with a great engine thrown into it, for the price you expect Ferrari all over, not just the motor. I'd not be at all surprised if the failure rate or at least problem rate is as high as 50%, and this is in a short period, what's it going to be by the end of the warranty? Those who have good ones now maybe joining my club in a few months, time will tell, if their detector doesn't fail their coil likely will. What about the weekend warriors that only use their detector occasionally on weekends, they may not use it enough to develop any problems while still under warranty which is likely going to be me, as I'll be using the GPZ the most by far, even worse for those that go detecting a few days a year as they live a long way from any gold locations so it requires them to go on a trip once a year for week or two at Christmas or something. These people are going to be the ones that really luck out when it fails for them outside of warranty. If this was Nokta Makro that made the GPX 6000 then Dilek would be on here apologizing, stating what they're going to do about it for everyone involved and highlighting how they're working to prevent the problems in the future. Minelab prefer just to keep silent repairing and replacing detectors and hope we do too. No one is asking anyone to read the thread, and maybe if somebody does buy a faulty 6000 with problems they'll find it more interesting to read.

That 14" DD might turn out to be a secret weapon for power lines spots. It's a sensitive sucker. I certainly won't be scared to use it thinking my performance will suffer much. So far you've dodged a bullet getting a reliable working GPX, as you can see by your friends one it's a real gamble. I think Minelab need to change their slogan from Performance is Everything to Performance maybe Everything, but Quality should matter too 😛 You're going to have to work twice as hard tomorrow you've shot under par with half a gram today! 😄

For those hoping for another season it's unlikely, however there is a 75 minute special episode coming and that's good news! I liked that show, it was a bit of fun. Feature-length Detectorists special commissioned Wednesday 11th May 2022, 5:30pm Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook are reuniting in a new Detectorists special The one-off programme will be feature-length at 75 minutes It promises to "bring viewers up to date with the lives of Andy, Lance, Becky and the Danebury Metal Detecting Club" BBC Four's acclaimed comedy Detectorists is coming back to screens for a new special. The feature-length, 75 minute episode is to air later this year, updating fans of the cult hit series on the lives of its characters, five years since the end of Series 3. Debuting in 2014, nineteen episodes of the sitcom-cum-comedy drama have aired to date, focusing on best friends and metal detecting enthusiasts Andy (Mackenzie Crook), Lance (Toby Jones), and their fellow local metal detecting club members in the small town of Danebury. The last episode concluded with Andy and Lance stumbling across a stash of gold coins, having very narrowly missed the hidden trove of ancient treasure for the previous two series. Written and directed by Crook, like his recent new television incarnation of Worzel Gummidge, the series is noted for its mix of light drama, whimsical humour, and beautiful rural setting and scenery. Production on the new special of the triple BAFTA-winner is understood to begin shortly, made by Treasure Trove Productions, Channel X North and Lola TV. Crook says: "It was 2017 when we were last in Danebury and I miss my old friends in the DMDC [Danebury Metal Detecting Club]. I've had a story percolating for a while and I thought it was worth getting Lance, Andy and the rest of the band back together for. The affection expressed for Detectorists over the years has been incredible and I hope fans of the show will enjoy this new, extended episode." Producer Gill Isles said: "It's absolutely thrilling to be spending the summer back in Danebury with Mackenzie and the team. There is so much love for the show that I can't wait for everyone to see what Mackenzie has in store in this next chapter." The news was announced by Jon Petrie, the BBC's new Director of Comedy, in a speech at the BBC Comedy Festival in which he revealed the corporation is set to invest extra £10 million into comedy over the next two years. A number of other commissions were announced today, including new series of Bad Education. Full story

Yup, that's the place I bought mine from.

It should only kick in once the Bluetooth connects if its the same high pitched hiss I get, prior to connection there is no noise at all. I should try them on the cable and see if they do it with cable, that'd be a good test.

That's a good point, people with less than optimal hearing may notice the hiss more if they have their threshold turned off. I wonder if your ocean noise is the same hiss but slightly different with your hearing. Either way, it's a noise that should not be there on good quality headphones.