phrunt

4500 has far more features and more versatile, is still quite good on small gold and I've found below 0.1 of a gram with it down to about 0.05 of a gram from memory as you can put very small coils on it, it's also good on bigger deeper gold. Just because it has a lot of settings doesn't mean it's difficult to use, it's only complicated if you want it to be. The SDC is more switch on and go, the GPX does require some setting selection to set it up for your location. Look at the size of the SDC coil, and look at the area you want to detect.... The GPX can run coils from 6" to 20+ inch and there are literally hundreds of coils to choose from where as coils are very limited on the SDC.

X-coils are currently working hard on making and testing various models of coils. They've now competed an 8" Coil which is working very well. This one would be one I would have to have for the 6000 as I love this coil on my GPZ, it's really one of my favourite coils, the other being the 15" Concentric although I'm not sure if we will see Concentric coils on the GPX, who knows...... 🙂 Here is a video of it being used. And here is it next to it's 11" coil that went through open heart surgery to allow the X-coils to live 🙂 Things are progressing well for them and another size that I would desperately want is currently being made but until it's tested and verified as a good working size that's kept under wraps.

You need to fix that little advertising thing at the bottom of your posts advertising the hipstick, I click on that and it takes me to some foreign gambling site with spyware on it.

I find it quite painful you're not digging targets 25 and up, I used to do the same thing just to dig all the common coin types that fall mostly between 9 and 22 here, then I was finding minimal silver, I changed to digging everything over 25 and my junk intake didn't change all that much but my silver intake grew rapidly.

That's the ticket, plenty of good spots to find for those on the hunt, that's a decent collection of stuff. Looks like you were likely the first to hit that area.

Depends on your location, have a good popular beach nearby and a poor performing gold field and the beach hunter wins hands down. Have a top notch area looking for gold and a lousy unpopular beach nearby and the gold prospector wins by far. From what I can see a few prospectors do extraordinarily well, ounces and ounces of gold a year easily enough to make a tidy living by, and a few beach hunters find 100 or so rings a year... they're the extreme end of each type of hunting and a lot of it is based upon where they live or have access to that dictates their success. For the average Joe with average areas to hunt it probably makes little difference either way, for me especially.... I am pretty sure I could find about the same amount of rings by weight each year as I could gold nuggets if I spent the time looking, I just prefer looking for nuggets. If I was budget conscious I'd be better off looking for rings, easier to access locations with a shorter drive thereby costing less to do, and to have a top of the line detector for rings sure costs a lot less than the over inflated prices of prospecting detectors. Finding a ring is cool but to me it's just something someone has lost, there is something far more special about finding a gold nugget.

Garrett probably replaced the PCB as a precaution more so than they found a problem with it, we used to do similar in the computer service center I worked for in my younger days. If we were unable to find a fault we'd just replace the component anyway for customers that were sure their unit was faulty, if we missed the fault the problem is resolved and it keeps the customer a bit happier that you did all possible to resolve their problem. It popped up time to time that a customer wanted to play one particular game and the game kept crashing yet the machine was in spec to easily handle the game, yet the game kept crashing and all other games worked fine... Sometimes it came down to an entire machine being replaced for them to see the problem was the game and not the machine. If the problem still exists on the detector after the PCB replacement it's not so much a fault as a limitation, or in the computers case a likely compatibility problem. Sounds like the Apex MF method just isn't up to the same standards of ground handling as the Multi-IQ MF method for your soil type. Garrett did all they can do from a customer service standpoint I guess, other than replacing the coil too although it's harder to reuse that, your faulty but not faulty PCB will likely go into another repair at some point.

Great way to spend a morning! Well done on the ring too.

To top this story off the 6" Concentric coil and coil cover I ordered from the USA never arrived, it passed the Ebay delivery date whereby buyer protection starts to run out so I contacted Ebay and said it never arrived, they did their checks with USPS and refunded me the money, so it's Ebay and Ebays Pitney Bowes shipping company that loses out, not the dealer in the US as they were only responsible for getting it to Pitney Bowes and they did that, then Pitney Bowes is responsible for getting it to me. The things I go through to try buy products that for others are easily accessible... 🙂 In a way it's a good thing as I ended up not needing it anyway after buying one from Australia, I only bought the US one as I thought the Australian one was never going to arrive which I explained earlier in this thread What a nightmare this process has turned into. Shipping with any courier other than DHL is terrible at the moment with Covid going on for parcels to New Zealand. With DHL I would have had either coil order in around a week at the most. Who knows, maybe the coil and cover will arrive in 3 or so months like happened with the Sampson T Handle I had shipped from the US, it was considered lost and over 3 months later arrived at my door but it's tracking showed it made it to Australia then went back to the USA and a couple of months passed and then it's tracking number came alive again and eventually arrived in NZ 🙂

That is a shame to hear how bad the CTX can be in the water, I've not used mine in the water and never intend to, it's the new model with the gray washers obviously but now I just don't trust it. I can't be bothered dealing with warranty if it drowns. I'm not a big water person anyway and I can use the Nox for that when I do want to get a detector wet as I know my Nox handles water well, it spent two days and two nights in the bottom of my Spa being tested for leaks when I first heard about Nox leaks 🙂

I feel I'm really missing out not having easy access to these European machines.... One just has to be in my future, although it might be difficult, they are not even on Ebay.

Fortunately we don't have any of those critters and creatures here so I have little to worry about prospecting other than losing my scoop 😉 They're some tiny little nuggets you've got there.

Gerry, what are your thoughts on the grey seal upgrade kits for the older 3030's, I've seen them around on sale for cheap prices, would this resolve his leaking issues if it's an older model?

I wouldn't be too worried, I've found in my area the CTX beats the Equinox for deeper small silver coins and it's target ID accuracy is a real joy to use in a place where you only should dig if you have to. Don't get me wrong I'd never get rid of my Equinox as I use my Equinox for gold as well and in some areas it will be better than the CTX possibly if I strumble into a really trashy area, but I choose the detector for the task at hand and now I've got a CTX 3030 I'd never be without one. I hope you've fixed it, must be some weird sand to cause that.

Here is a link to the video 🙂 https://ae-cn.alicdn.com/9f8e1de30350cb41/nHtCXMJOlMy5HbbUnSU/WyN768JqueQgXIxaCqW_320679396375_mp4_264_hd.mp4

The reason people often want small coils isn't just about increasing the small gold sensitivity, it's often about necessity, the elliptical shape somewhat helps with the small size and ground coverage and also gives you a pointy nose to get up into spots rounded coils can't do. Having a big round coil, and yes I consider 11" to be quite big is just useless in a lot of places where you can't get the coil to the soil. Gold is where you find it, sometimes it's in big flat wide open spaces, other times it's in a rocky rough terrain where a standard coil on something like a GPX/GPZ will really perform poorly as you just can't get it near the ground and it's just awkward. Where I hunt often using a GPZ or GPX with their Minelab coils would be pointless, and I'd be forced to use a different detector. It can be quite annoying having a very expensive detector that you just can't use and have to pick up your cheap VLF instead as at least it has a suitable coil. VLF gold hunters knew the 10x5" Coiltek Nox coil would be popular before they even knew how well it worked, why? Because everyone's always wanted that size, it's one of the necessity coil sizes for a VLF gold detector. I was not at all surprised by the demand for that coil, it was a given. If a manufacturer makes a coil that is more sensitive to hot rocks or whatever because it's very small, if they just put that in their sales blurb that the smaller more sensitive size will respond more on certain ground types and hot rocks people would accept that, as long as they're aware of it then it's a non issue. Coils designed for a certain task that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do is a good thing and opens up opportunities. I see coils as more a tool in the toolkit, you have certain coils for certain situations, not so much one coil for every job. This thread clearly demonstrates the demand for smaller coils in different parts of the world, I expect a similar thread on an Aussie forum to be the other direction with people suggesting larger sizes from 14x9" and up. 12x8" is quite a nice size but the nose is quite rounded still, 12x6" gives a skinnier noise to get into rocky spots, 10x6" is a good size.

I love CRC silicone but wouldn't use it for switches or electronics, proper electronic cleaner is best for that, silicone leaves a film that could cause contact problems. The silicone is great for lubrication and restoring and protecting plastics and rubber though.

Are you sure it's not EMI, have you lowered the sensitivity and obviously done the noise cancel? You may have a bad coil, I assume you don't have a second coil to try on it? You could try a factory reset on it if you haven't already.... with the detector switched off press and hold the power button, it'll turn on and play the startup tune, keep holding the power button down until you hear a low tone and then release the button, a menu will come up and go to Reset All. The other thing you could try is checking if it has the latest firmware, if not update it, long shot but worth a try. Are the numbers all over the place in air tests? Say waving a coin over the coil will it give a solid ID? If it does that sounds positive... I assume you tried a ground balance too? A video of your problem would be helpful but I've read in the past someone with a problem like yours with a CTX and they had a coil where the cable was damaged internally where the cable comes out of the shaft down near the coil, so a replacement coil was the solution so if you've got someone you can borrow a coil off to try that'd be helpful if all else fails.

Well if the Scottish could manage to clone Dolly the sheep in the 90's I'm sure the Chinese could clone a Gerry the Detectorist/Detector Salesman in the 2020's. I think you're onto something strick.... we will now have clone Gerrys selling clone detectors all across China to deal with!

It seems to me a discriminating PI is the holy grail which might be why the Impulse AQ crew tried to make out in their marketing that's what they had...... although not quite. Hopefully in my lifetime one is made, I don't want to get old and have to dig everything and I find beach hunting to be an easy sort of detecting, easy to dig and finds readily available, it's something I plan to do more of at some point in time as a summer activity. If VLF tech has truly hit it's depth limits then I will want something deeper at some stage as I've used my previously owned QED on the beach and saw the beauty of a PI on the beach, the nice big coils for ground coverage (I used the 15" round X-coil) and screaming on old deep coins my Nox didn't even sound off on at all as I tested them side by side. I would like to use a rig like that as a beach detector but only if it had discrimination and ideally Target ID. Is it that no one has bothered to make Target ID on a PI or is it an impossibility with current technology?

I'm very tempted to buy one and put bad reviews up all over the place....

The Chinese have gone nuts flooding the auction sites with fake Whites detectors since Whites closure for very cheap prices and instead of blanking out the brand name they're taking on the Whites names even in their marketing and on the detectors. They used to edit the photos of them hiding the branding I guess to keep the brand names from complaining and are doing that far less now Whites is out of business. They've even been so bold as to use one of Gerry's videos for their marketing and branding the video with their GPoint brand logo at the start of the video acting like Gerry is endorsing their detectors. I doubt there is anything you can do Gerry but if you want the direct link to the detector being sold with your video on it as advertising I will give you it, I won't post it here as I don't want people being foolish buying one of these detectors thinking they're getting the real deal for a cheap price as they're not the real deal, and they will likely not work near as well either. It's sad to see this happening but I guess it was inevitable with Whites going out of business they'd get more bold with their fake detectors.

Yes, Nokta seem to have a way to keep the imported prices so they're not heavily inflated and end up a reasonable price.

Small town ball parks have paid off well for me, looks like you're onto something 🙂