phrunt

Yep, K'ai Yuan T'ung Pao, was a Tang dynasty cash coin that was produced from 621 under the reign of Emperor Gaozu and remained in production for most of the Tang dynasty until 907. What a coin that old was doing in a creek in New Zealand I don't know, I assumed hanging around the neck of a gold miner, seeing the Chinese miners worked the creek. He possibly got it hooked on something and broke it.

Yea, he had nothing to do with the E1500, and was just as surprised as the rest of us when it hit the market.

Thanks, I'd not seen that video and it makes a lot of sense, good tips in it, sadly the Chinese hit many places around here hard, and it sounds like they were extremely efficient miners not leaving much behind, except perhaps their ancient coin family heirloom lucky charm.

She's very well dressed in very clean nice clothes and even wearing what looks to be makeup, I think perhaps she dressed up to make the video, you can tell it's not some staged thing though and she certainly knows what she's doing, likely does it a lot. I hope she uses protection normally. Good on her, looks like she's living a nice life there, her surroundings are fantastic. Really good to watch and nice to see her pets all helping out! 🙂

For a detector with "no active shield" it sure handles EMI far better than previous GPX models. It would be good if the mods do improve things, I think it's a bit questionable if they really will do much at all though and I've no interest in paying to get them done as I'm fine with how it is already. If there is a new detector coming this year that's another game changer, I'm sure it's not from Minelab, have to wait and see on that one I suppose.

I've used my Minelab Pro-Find 35 pinpointer for finding electrical wires in walls, I picked it because I could easily adjust the sensitivity down to next to nothing to really narrow down where they were, then I was able to cut a tiny hole in the wall to add a power point 😛

The Target ID appears to be very stable, I think part of the reason for this is it's a non-motion ID, so you use the pinpoint function and get the target so it's got the best signal strength, at this point you stop and leave the coil still sitting on the ground, it will then give you the ID, this ID is generally very solid. Even very small targets can give a good accurate ID. With a motion Target ID like the Equinox for example you're swinging over the target over and over again looking at the ID's and they may and do often change around a fair bit, the Algo would too if it was a motion Target ID, as when you're centring the target under the coil in pinpoint mode you do get other ID's not just the actual ID, its only when you've got it centred and sit it still you get the solid ID. I hope that makes sense. Keep in mind it's not an ID like a VLF, it doesn't discriminate iron against other metals the same way. Iron could be anywhere depending on size, a bit of a clue to iron though when you're moving the pinpoint around trying to get it centred on the target it can and often does hit an ID of 99, way higher than a good target like a coin or jewellery will hit during the same process, it's also a lot more unstable when pinpointing it. I'm going to be doing a lot more experimenting with the Target ID and hopefully I make my way to a beach soon and do some exploring there, it's also easier to bury targets in sand so I'll have a play and see depths I can find stuff, then I'll go looking for stuff 🙂 It looks like you would be able to cherry pick the Aussie Goldie coins though Erik. Once I've made it to the beach, I'll film some video of it doing stuff. I think the Target ID feature is one of the coolest and best things about the Algoforce.

I can tell you already the E1500 has no hope in the world of hitting gold that size, regardless of coil, 0.03 of a gram if a nicer solid sort of piece is its smallest size, I'd say more realistically 0.05 of a gram would be its starting point, a little bit behind the 6000. In VLF terms I think of the 6000, 7000 and E1500 all being no more sensitive to small gold than the Gold Bug Pro. Yes, they are often deeper on small gold, but outright tiny gold sensitivity they are similar to the Bug, and nothing at all like the GM, 24k or Gb2 performance. I would never be able to find that piece again, it's in a bottle with a bunch of sluiced gold, I guess I could use some tweezers and try find a similar size piece and compare the 24k, GB2 and GM, I believe the GB2 would win, followed by the 24k and GM being very similar. The real benefit of the 24k is it has no bump sensitivity at all, while maintaining very similar if not the same tiny gold performance as the GM, and it has a concentric coil 🙂

I wouldn't bother, the GB2's primary benefit is tiny gold, losing some of that by putting on the bigger coil just doesn't seem right to me. The small gold is what makes the GB2 what it is. My GB2 came with the bigger coil, outside of testing it out I haven't seen a reason to use it. To me the bigger coil is about as useful as this 1960's seatbelt. Stick with your little Concentric, it's the bee's knees on the GB2. Use your Gold Kruzer if you want ground coverage, the GB2 can be annoying covering ground anyway having to maintain ground balance manually with knobs for best results.

Do you think they are the actual cable used by Minelab? they certainly look like it and I just can't imagine it was worth the effort for a Chinese cable manufacturer to specially make these cables to sell as separate cables, the market would be so small for them, surely the reason they exist is they're made to supply Minelab to meet their demands and also sold off separately this way. Making copy GPZ cables is even more unrealistic as they have no chip, the market for these GPZ cables would be absolutely tiny, so unless the same cable maker was supplying Minelab I just can't imagine they would bother to copy and make an aftermarket cable.

Oh, perhaps that was worded wrong, I'd never complain and of course be super happy to find a bigger piece, but I really enjoy the challenge of the smallest of small pieces, I get more of a thrill out of finding a really tiny bit than I do a .1 of a gram for example which is probably my most common size find.

That was my tactic too., in fact exactly what I did.

The wires are coated in Teflon, heating them up to reshape shouldn't cause any issues. Good you've got it sorted.

It will be their SMF AT replacement for sure, likely an entire lineup replacing the AT Pro, Gold and Max. It's pretty exciting to see what they have done, plenty doubted they'd do much in the gold arena, now they've got the 24k which is awesome, and the Axiom which really is right up there with the best of the best in the class. I still think the Pro Pointer AT is about as good as pin pointers get and I'm a bit of a pin pointer addict. I'm really excited to see what they've achieved with their SMF.

The Axiom seems really good, and now with the new lower price in Australia it's becoming increasingly a viable choice. I quite like comparison videos although they rarely end up being similar results to the ones I get due to my milder soils. They still give a bit of an understanding of how things are going. Something I find meaningful is when they're just waving the littlest nuggets over the coil, the process you would do when you're recovering a target, it can be very telling then how well the detector is performing on small nuggets, you can see in some videos they're saying its hitting it well yet they have to really rub their scoop on the coil to get a response, so easy to throw the gold away in that scenario if it's not on the bottom of the soil pile, others they don't even need the scoop to come close to the coil on the same nugget to get a good response, that's what I like in a detector.

yea, I'm glad they fixed those early cables in later coils, it's a few years now since the coils had those cables on them, my 12x6" GPX coil has a similar type of cable although due to not having curls it makes no difference really just a bit more difficult to wrap. Sounds like you may have a solution Jin, Chet's idea of replacing the cable is a good one too and the path I'd take if your trick doesn't last, you can buy the cables here If you're not confident to do it give David Gibb a call and get him to do it for you, won't cost much it's only joining 5 wires and you'd supply the cable which costs you something like $40. I'd be lucky if that happened to me thinking about it, as I could just cut the curls off and put a plug there, as I have a Chet style adapter too which uses the original curls. Some ready to be turned into Chet style adapters. You guys may find this interesting, it's an original GPZ 14" coil that the security chip had a soldering problem, and would come up coil error. It was able to be repaired by pulling the plug end apart and resoldering the chip. It shows the tiny little chip that has caused everyone so much grief by limiting coils.

Yes, there is no way in the world that is a 0.01, 0.1X somewhere would be more realistic, easy mistake, I do it all the time, it gets confusing 🙂 No surprises in that video for me.

I'm just as thrilled finding a bit the size in the photo below as I am a 1-gram nugget, where as it appears some people wouldn't even bend over to pick up a bit a hundred times the size of this one I do it for the fun, the challenge, so finding a bit like this is often harder than a much bigger bit. So for me, the smaller the better, always a great feeling finding the tiniest bits. I have no interest in selling any gold I find, even if I was fortunate enough to stumble on a lot, I'd keep it all, my little throphys have value to me far more than their money value.

Yep, there are a few by the Garrett sponsored people or associates/dealers. Some examples. They're actually pretty cool to watch, and see it all take place. I'd love to go to a metal detector manufacturing facility.

That's a very thin wire!

I'm sure that shield wire is meant to be connected as it was just a mistake on that coil, perhaps that's why some get worse coils than others for noise, their shielding method at the factory might be a bit questionable with attachment of that wire, and in this case went missed entirely. I hope they're not just masking taping it on. That's designed to fail, might last the warranty period but not a long-life product. There was rumour floating around the chip in some way configures the detector to the coil, and that rumour was only enhanced by the fact in the info section on the GPZ it displays the coil you've got connected. Then again, probably more than half of the X-coil users had their adapter made out of 19" coils, as they never intended to use it so didn't care about getting it cut, and their coils of all shapes and sizes work fine off the 19" coil plug. I did the same, mine was made out of a 19" coil, and I run the 8" coil the most and it works a real treat. As I bought the 12" Z-Search and didn't like it I also got an adapter from its cord, this was going to be the big test for me, will my 8" work differently off a 12" coils cord than it does a 19" coils cord. Absolutely no difference! With the 6000 though, the DD chips are different to the mono chips, that makes complete sense. I have my doubts the Mono chips are different between coils sizes when it comes to "calibrating" the detector, I think the only detector doing that so far is the Algoforce and it makes good sense for it to do it with the large range of GPX coils from various manufacturers it supports, may as well get the best out of the coils.

It would be unrealistic to expect all electronics components to be made in the USA, it sounds like Garrett assemble their own PCB's in USA though, that's about as close as you can get to homegrown electronics in this day and age, like most things in every country, made in "place country here" from local and imported ingredients.

Yes, X-coils did these experiments early on and told me the 5000 coils will not work well with the 6000. Sounds like a problem with no solution, Chet?

A lot of people favour one brand over another, but realistically the 15" will likely be slightly deeper being the bigger coil, the 14" will be slightly more sensitive being the smaller coil. Be happy with your 14" Elite, there won't be all that much of a difference. A Nugget Finder 15" owner will tell you it's better, a Coiltek 14" Elite owner will tell you it's better. 🙂 I doubt many if any have both seeing they're so similar. The Nugget Finder is a bit lighter though.

I think more the Gold Bug Pro sensitivity.