phrunt

Maybe strick can x-ray one with his funky machine and verify it.

I asked someone who knows and it turns out the 11" 6000 is partially spiral wound which was the method used in the 12x6" X-coil for the GPX. This method is used as the coil size is too small to fit full spiral windings and still gives some of the benefits of being spiral. While it's not known about the 17" it's likely it's fully spiral as the coil is big enough to fit the windings which might be why people are saying the 17" is pretty competitive with the 11" for sensitivity.

I know someone who bought one, they said it's no deeper than the stock 11" coil, in fact they felt the 11" was noticeably deeper, a lot heavier too. The guy said he wasted his money and has buyers remorse. Stick with the 10x5", it's the good coil out of the three.

Thanks for the story and pictures from Goldtopia, otherwise known as Alaska.

It's reassuring to see the problems aren't as bad as have been made out, that's why I've kept calling them possible problems, as I don't even know how much of a problem they really are. I am a big speaker user though so I'd be annoying if I jumped in and got one and a few months later it's fixed on newer ones and I'm stuck with one where the speaker can maybe on some occasions cause an issue as I'd want to use the speaker full time and wouldn't carry headphones just in case I need them, I don't really understand the speaker issue but my take on it is randomly it makes you need to noise cancel more often if using the speaker and that doesn't sound so bad as they've made the noise cancel lightning quick. If extending the shaft to full was a fix I'd fine with that 🙂 EMI is a funny thing, some may experience this speaker EMI thing due to the type of EMI in their area and others may never experience it I guess, anything is possible with interference. I'd find my own fix for the shaft thing, that's an easier one to deal with although I'd mostly use a smaller coil anyway, the GM just required a bit of plumbers tape on it's thread to stop it's problem. These problems do tend to get amplified by people who have not experienced them and each person the possible problems get passed through they get amplified again and suddenly a small glitch becomes a big issue. I think it's mostly only JP I've heard of the problems from at this stage but he said a lot of it is how fussy he is and others may not even notice, I guess an indication the problems aren't as bad as they may seem. Seeing time is on my side and there isn't masses of people swinging the detector all around my area I'll just hold off for a while and see what happens as I do mostly look for gold in high EMI very close to urban areas. Just a couple of days ago I was looking for gold under power lines right near an international airport with constant flights coming past, and it's a spot I go to most often as it's the closest one to home and I've done what I consider well there. Also seeing it's well hunted I purposefully hunt in the more difficult spots knowing older detectors struggled there, sadly it will soon be developed and works started on that now 😞 I appreciate everyone who owns one giving their feedback on these things, and it seems more often than not they're not a problem for most.

Well I guess we can't be too down on Minelab, if it wasn't for them what would we be swinging? A Garrett ATX? Let's see the complaints about ergonomics and lack of coils then! Or perhaps a Whites TDI? We would still complain about lack of coils as I doubt all the aftermarket manufacturers would have popped up to make TDI coils, then we'd be sad White's collapsed and the detector was too gutless anyway. Or perhaps a QED? Then we'd be sending it in for repairs all the time when it breaks or doesn't perform as intended and we'd still want better performance and all the things we've become accustomed to on modern detectors like not needing to manually ground balance instead having a quick trak or auto balancing and wireless and so on. We need Minelab and let's face it, they come out with some great gear, the best there is by far which is why virtually everyone uses their equipment. There is always going to be something to complain about though, I just hope the complaints are more seen as constructive criticism to be taken onboard in the future products or upgrades when viable and not just a form of attack, that's all my complaints are ever meant to be and I'm sure most other peoples too. Yes, they're not perfect and some mistakes seem so blatantly obvious you'd wonder how they could happen which is being discussed with some of these 6000 flaws, some things obviously fall on deaf ears or were noticed too late in the process although personally I'd always rather wait longer and get a better product, then you can bet people would be complaining about the extra wait too 🙂 That's when good communication from the manufacturer comes in handy, but we won't get into that with Minelab will we? 🙂 I just hope the speaker issue on the 6000 is something that can be fixed and does get fixed, I've been saying since the start of my detecting time these Minelab high end gold machines need a speaker as that's what I'd personally want to use. I'm a bit different as I can't stand headphones. Maybe it's just how it has to be and that can't be helped but it would bother me looking down at the speaker knowing I don't want to use it worried about the side effects of it. It seems the perfect opportunity to thank Minelab for the detectors that I love and also the people involved in making and testing them and bringing them to us. Sometimes things can easily mistakenly be under appreciated. Is my understanding of the 6000 coils correct that the 11" is bundle wound and the 17" is flat wound?

That is awesome! what a cool little guy he is.

Thanks, seeing it's an hour video I'll watch that one on TV with some snacks later 🙂

Thanks for the report, you've done very well on the gold with it already, I'm glad I didn't go through all the difficulty of trying to get a Whites 24k now Garrett has taken it over, now it will be accessible locally with Garrett having dealers here, and I see in the photo above with the power plug there is the AU/NZ plug end available, a good sign 🙂 I must now send NEL an email begging them to make coils for the Garrett 24k, bang a Snake coil on that and I'm set!

Outstanding, great gold there, Alaska is my kind of place. Thanks for your introduction post and welcome aboard. Cool photo of that cute little critter too, I assume it's a squirrel? We don't have whatever creature it is here.

Good to see you out and about looking for gold Gerry and getting some big sales to go with it. I'm seeing a few reports whereby people say the 6000 is finding gold the 7000 is completely missing, I'm going to have to get a 6000 to see if that is the case for me too. I have plenty of small gold areas that are well hunted out with the 7000 and various coils, it'll be interesting if any more pops out. If there is one thing I've learnt is I can go over the same ground so many times and still sqeak a few more out, no matter how done I think it is, perhaps that's a reflection on me not detecting the area as well as I think I have 🙂 I'd rather wait a few months for a newer batch and hope some of the issues like the speaker EMI are quietly fixed in the background as I would most certainly be a speaker user. I wouldn't be surprised if the shaft is improved at some point too as that would be an easier fix. Early CTX models had bugs fixed on the fly like the curving screens and the early ones were prone to getting the tearing lines on the screens too which more recent ones don't seem to get due to a screen brand/model replacement, they don't recall them they just hope as few as possible fail within warranty. You'd think the later Equinox would have the leaking problems fixed that early ones were prone to, and obviously they fixed the wobbly shaft us early adopters all had on our Nox a few months after it was released for new buyers. The GM1000 even had a firmware update that speeds up the ground balance, early adopters once again missed out as Minelab were not willing to pay the service agents for their time to upgrade our older ones with the new firmware instead telling us we can't have the new firmware. It's long been said to wait a while after a detector is released to get one if you can so issues discovered after release can be resolved, and for me that seems logical in this case with a few possible obvious problems upon release, hopefully by the time I'm ready to move on one there will be aftermarket coils so I can have my small coil 🙂 I have a funny feeling there will be! 🙂

I learnt about the deeper targets showing negative from gold prospecting with the Nox, and it carries through to coin hunting too, you're onto it.

Way to go Mitchel! A great score there. No point prospecting for little dinks when you can pull that sort of thing up right near home 🙂

No, nothing has changed. The current battery method is best for a waterproof detector.

I didn't think about the toggles being a dirt magnet, so far mines been good but I'll look into spending $1 and get some toggle switch boot seals to put on them. I guess they could have done the same 20 years ago. Update: Bugger, Unlike with my GPX detectors after checking the toggle switches on the GB2 the ones they've used don't have the thread that would allow just screwing some toggle boots on, so to do it I'm going to have to change the switches completely to threaded ones. A project for another day.

I probably sound a bit harsh on FT, it's because I don't like their false advertising, and there are laws against that sort of thing in my part of the world, I guess not in the US. They're outright lying. Maybe their excuse is they haven't updated their website since 2010 so they just haven't gotten around to adjusting their definitions of their detectors to be truthful. While Garrett were stuck in a rut like FT were, they're crawling out of it now with the Apex and now through an acquisition they have the 24k which even though I am yet to own one believe it's the current top of the line VLF gold detector on the market. And I agree with Mike on one thing, they are the most counterfeited detector on the market. Without a doubt you can go buy a FT detector in my part of the world for cheaper than a cheap toy detector from a department store and you guys in the US may not know this but they're everywhere, easier to access than the real deal by a long shot and it's not just here, it's certainly Australia but it's also all across Europe too. I have no doubt in my mind clones of FT detectors outside of the US would outnumber genuine ones at least 5 to 1 so you have to be careful buying second hand if you're paying a "genuine" used price as you're at high risk of getting a clone. Part of this problem is obviously they've been on the market so long selling the exact same detector they've opened themselves up to being easy to clone, brands that release new detectors regularly it's just not worth the cloners putting the effort into duplicating their models as they can't keep up. It's pretty easy to clone a detector that's been on the market since 2006. I'm very anti clone detector as I would hope detector manufacturers use their profits to further develop detectors so us who buy their products benefit in the long run by having new detectors to swing, however FT have made themselves so easy to clone by selling detectors for decades with only small cosmetic changes. See this article from the UK about the Gold Bug clones, and the guy in it is right. https://detectingquest.com/2020/02/12/fisher-gold-bug-pro-vs-goldfinder-fs2-chinese-copy/ There was a new Gold Bug 2 paint job released recently, I couldn't help think that possibly the reason they did this was within the last 12 months the Chinese counterfeiters in particular have really started pumping out masses of Gold Bug 2 clones, it used to be you'd see one or two sellers on Chinese auction sites selling them and they were charging pretty high prices for them but now, for $150 USD you can buy one, they've absolutely flooded the market with them. Maybe just maybe this new GB2 release was to counter that by changing the look of the detector so people know the real current Gold Bug 2 from the Chinese copy. It will take the Chinese a while to adjust their build and release a new fake to match the new model even though the changes FT did were purely cosmetic and not an actual change to the detectors circuit board it will at least keep the genuine product looking different to the fakes for a while, and Chinese sellers are saying they're got numbers like 9999+ each of the product in stock so they've got a lot of the older model to sell. I guess having numbers like that in stock also demonstrates how many they sell compared to the genuine product. Something Mike said also resonated with me when he said you'd be surprised where the T2 DNA is hiding, and seeing it's such a cloned detector I can imagine it's slipped into a fair few detectors as a base for what they've currently made. The problem with that is, why didn't FT further develop that DNA and make more modern detectors using it? I don't think FT will close down, I just think they'll move out of the detector market, or just pump out kids toys and their days of being a high end manufacturer are gone. They can do well selling detectors to parents for their kids to get for Christmas and so on, that's the market they're really sitting in now anyway, although their marketing would suggest otherwise. I envy your time starting at the bottom with detectors years ago and working your way up over the models through the years Mike, you no doubt know a lot more about detectors and detecting than I ever will, but I'm not going to use a hand saw when I can use an electric saw, I'm not going to use a hand drill when I can use a battery power drill, stuff using a hammer to put in 10000 nails if I can use a nail gun. I'd rather start on a detector I'm going to stick with than work my way up, it ends up cheaper too 🙂 I bought high end FT machines thinking I was starting at the top, I had to replace them all with real top of the line machines once I knew more. Maybe part of my gripe is I was tricked by the dated artificial advertising too. I bought two Gold Bug Pros for myself and my wife right at the start of my detecting time, I ordered them from Australia to be sure they were genuine as I'd read about the fakes, I bought a T2 second hand in NZ and was worried it was a fake and not performing how it should so I bought another T2, the T2 Green new release and while it handles EMI better the performance is the exact same as my suspect clone detector. I bought a Gold Bug 2 which I really like, I'm more happy with it than the others, it's great which is why I was disappointed when the new Gold Bug 2 came out after what, 30 years on the market and it's the same detector with a paint job. By the way, the F75 LTD that I turned down to buy the Simplex+ sold for $284NZD at Auction with 4 coils, the stock coil, a 5" coil, and two aftermarket coils and a spare lower shaft and rain cover. That's about $200 USD. It was genuine with receipt and only a couple of years old, rarely used and looked new in box. Fisher had no hope of surviving in our market when their high end machine can't even get reasonable money second hand.

I felt a bit over my head with the CTX for a few days, took me a bit to get used to it and even though it's got fantastic target ID's I wouldn't tell a beginner to buy it. The Nox I took to like a fish to water, it was so easy and with it's very accurate target ID's it is easier to use than my Ace 350 because of that... It can easily be used as a turn on and go detector and for most that's probably all they need to do, specify if they're in a park, beach or field and start detecting, yes the beach too, and in the water, something a lot of detectors to this day on the market are just not good at. Whenever someone new speaks to me about what detector to get I go straight to the Nox and Vanquish, why? because they can use it anywhere, they have really good ID's which means someone new can just go cherry pick coins, they'll then find out the joyous side of the hobby and can expand from there digging other stuff as they form more patience and an understanding of the hobby. The other thing that makes a detector easy to use for someone new is not having to deal with EMI, EMI prone detectors are very difficult for a beginner and I suspect many go back to the store they bought it from thinking it's faulty, I did that with my Ace 350 when I first got it, it was going off in my backyard all over the place including in the air so I concluded it must be faulty 🙂 To me, as someone that was a beginner not too long ago myself the most important things to a beginner are ease of use (being able to understand the menu system and what the screen is telling you), accurate Target ID's and EMI resistance. These detectors on the market aimed at beginners with 4 target ID segments are going to scare more beginners off the hobby than get them into it, why make beginners spend all that time digging junk and random targets when they could cherry pick modern coins using the target ID's on another detector and really start to enjoy themselves and do well quite quickly. The Simplex is giving people a lot of bang for their buck, but it's target ID's just don't cut it for me so even though it's priced great and full of features I'd not tell some local person that asked me what detector to buy for a beginner to buy it. And detectors like the T2/F75 are just what we in NZ call mutton dressed as lamb. Old worn out things priced and marketed as if they're modern top of the line market leading detectors, usually it's talking about older ladies all dressed up in skimpy clothes trying to pretend they're young again 🙂 A majority of the beginner detectors on the market I would not tell a beginner to buy as it will just waste space in their cupboard. They're better off buying a detector they'll enjoy using and actually use it.

They have yet to update their own website about this new Gold bug 2 release, so they're about as excited about it as we are by the looks of it, although I don't think their website has been updated since the early 2000's sometime, perhaps they forgot the password. http://www.fisherlab.com/hobby/detectors-gold--nugget.htm#goldbug2

No, you can pair any atpX low latency Bluetooth stuff directly to the detector.

It appears internally the same, they're just removed a couple of the knobs and replaced them with buttons, the dual pot was potentially harder to source, who knows but I think they did it to try keep up with the rest of the market and modernize it a bit to try get some sales, it's a competitive world out there and the competitors have modern detectors that perform very similar and are often easier to use and new products generally get the most sales. It's probably the Garrett 24k that's forced them to do this and they think by releasing a new paint job it will generate some sales. The performance of it appears the exact same. The headphone socket on the side will annoy some people. Anyway, I'll post the video here too in case people miss it where they can see it in action, the guys comparisons aren't ideal as he doesn't appear to know how to use his Equinox having the disc on when going over the nuggets. GPX 6000 users might say he doesn't appear to know how to use that either I don't know but it did very poorly on the nuggets too I thought.

Case in point, First Texas just don't seem to have an innovative bone in their body anymore. The Fisher Gold Bug 2 is potentially the most famous VLF gold detector of all time, it was great. I believe it was released in 1995, I could be wrong by a year or two either way and I can't be bothered looking it up as it makes no difference, either way it's damn old and been on the market ever since. Now, not so many people use them anymore, they're still good but lack the features of modern detectors, and many get sick of constantly having to fiddle with the ground balance knob to keep it in tune where as modern detectors do that automatically or with a simple ground grab. Recently Fisher decided it was fine time after 20+ years to update the model, they could have taken the gold prospecting VLF users by storm had they really upgraded it to a current detector, instead they removed some knobs and replaced them with push buttons, added a little screen onto it to make it look more modern but the screen itself is pretty pointless and will just lower the battery time for no real reason, it also moves knobs around to fit the screen into less convenient locations. They basically made the new variant, nay paint job of it worse than if they'd just left it alone. Where is the wireless audio? The ground tracking or ground grab? Where are all the common features on the competitors detectors that First Texas just don't seem capable of doing. If they rebuilt it from the ground up and made it the modern detector many of the VLF prospecting detector owners would be in a line to buy one, now with this mash up of a detector they'll be looking to buy an older model if they want one second hand. See here It's actually quite annoying as I liked some of the First Texas detectors but they're just being left in the dust behind the other brands. I'm seeing the writing on the wall for them, at the moment all they can sell is entry level detectors in department stores, but that market is going to be eaten into by all the other brands. I called Tesoro, I called Whites, now I'm calling FT. Sure the other two were obvious, but to me FT is obvious.

Patience young chap, good things come to those who wait 🙂

Yes, Just another of their famous paint jobs really. They have potentially the best nugget hunting VLF guts available, they just needed to really put some effort in and make it a real new Gold Bug 3. It's the first time a new model of a detector I own has come out and I'm not all excited about it, in fact I don't want it as there is no real benefit over the original Gold Bug 2, I would rather Garrett's offering with the 24k.

As a lot of people don't bother checking out the First Texas thread these days as very little happens there I figured I'd post this here too, they finally upgraded the Gold Bug 2, with a small facelift to bring it up to the late 1990's 🙂 Nothing performance wise seems to be changed but it has a screen now! You can see the original post by Cipher here I also put a Youtube video on that thread where a guy tests it against various detectors including the GM1000 and GPX 6000. He tests it against his Nox but has it setup incorrectly for nugget detecting so ignore that segment of his video 🙂

That is cool, something I've been saying they should have done years ago. Probably too little too late but a good sign they've at least updated the model after 20 or so years 🙂 It even has a back light 🙂 They've had to move the headphone socket onto the side of it to fit the screen. Interesting upgrade. I don't think it has Target ID by the looks of it, the screen seems to just show battery life, backlight on/off and if you're in disc, normal or boost and the minerals level. The top numbers on the screen seem to be ground reject, as in your ground balance number perhaps as that knob now doesn't seem to be the dual knob with fine tune, just a single knob now. This guy has done a video of it, showing it compared to the GM 1000 and also the older Gold Bug 2. -update: so yes, after watching the video it is just the ground balance number and it no longer has the fine tune, that's incorporated into the one knob with a ground balance of 99 levels by the looks of it. Seems to be the exact same detector with a bit of a slightly modern from the 90's facelift. Of course after 25 years or so of remaining the same I buy one and under a year later it gets a facelift. 😄 Ignore when he tests the Equinox over the nuggets, he has disc on blocking out the nuggets, didn't know to press the horse shoe or at least not have disc up so high. 🙂