phrunt

Whatever you do don't bother with a ProSonic, I bought one for one of my GPX's recently.  The first one arrived with the decal upside down so all the lights and buttons didn't line up, power was the volume button and volume was power and the lights were under the logo instead of in the clear circles for the lights to shine through the decal, so I sent it back and received a replacement.  The replacement lasted one week before it would no longer turn on or charge.   I've since requested and received a refund and given up on that product, the price is far too high for what it is and it's latency.  It's outdated yet they sell it at a price as if it was the latest equipment on the market.

Here is my first attempt at one.

While it did work I wasn't overly impressed with the latency of it either with a noticeable delay.

I was much happier with the Quest Wirefree Mate on my other GPX.

What's the deal with people putting tape all over the coil where they run their scoop over it? I'm seeing it on so many GPX 6000 photos and videos.  It was done to the coil in the second video posted here too, some sort of fashion trend 🙂

Good one Gerry! A good contest idea and very generous of you, also congratulations Jeff, I'm really pleased you won it.  You'll put that Monster through its paces.  I really like the Monster and I'm sure you will too.

I've already asked Minelab if I could buy a replacement pod only as I have multiple coils and a share shaft and arm cuff.  Minelab said NO.  They will not just sell a pod, only if the detector you own is faulty and out of warranty will they sell you a replacement pod, I would assume once they've verified yours is dead.

Yes, a total non-event.  It's at least next year now by the looks of it.  The competition will likely have their new model sitting ready and waiting to release just before this detector hits the market to ensure when this does come out it has a hard time getting anywhere.  They probably would have been better to keep it tight lipped about this detector until it was a few weeks off release, not tell us about it a year or two before it hits the market.

Here was the live stream, you may want to skip through a huge amount of it, looks like it'll be next year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgGbJPoSeQ0

Good to hear it's going to be capable of prospecting.

The main difference I found between it and the standard GPZ coil was the weight, noticeably lighter.   I think with coils the standard rules apply for most coils though with the same winding type, the smaller the coil the more sensitive to small gold and that's what I've been finding.

It's a good thing for people that find the standard coil heavy, and now with the lightweight 6000 out anything to lighten up the 7000 a bit sure doesn't hurt and the NF coil feels a fair bit lighter 🙂 

I've only used it a couple of times prospecting, other than that just some experimenting and comparing.

Yours has the same logo as mine, I believe that was the logo used on the first batch then it changed over to a new logo for some reason.

I stumbled across this video of the F75 finding a silver coin deeper than the Equinox, and then he goes on to show the F75 performing better finding a coin between iron.

What are your thoughts on this one? I never did bother buying a F75 even though a SE edition came up for sale extraordinary cheap nearby to me, my experience with my T2 had me thinking my Nox was better in almost all situations, was I wrong?    I'm a bit puzzled by this video and I guess it could be soil conditions or something but I've found my Nox far better on deep silver than my T2 and I sure have experimented a lot on untouched in ground silvers.

I had a cover custom made for mine, it was the only way I could get one after a worldwide online shopping search.

I'll be in touch Geof, I can sort you out.

Maybe they fixed it on later coils, I have one of the first batch.  That's good news for buyers if that is the case.

She's going Live on Facebook on a group called Treasuretalk.

Here is a link to the group.  https://www.facebook.com/groups/265461581242945

Sorry to hear that Rob, we've been largely so sheltered from it in this part of the world it's very easy to forget it's even happening.  It makes some sense that could be the issue.

Minelab Australia is always outstanding and they respond to emails very quickly, the NZ service agent is fantastic too (A&E Electronics).   You took the right step contacting ML Australia when you were having troubles as it makes them aware subcontracted people or their own business in a different region isn't up to their high standards or are having difficulties for whatever reason.  if you have no luck elsewhere contacting the place you purchased it from is always the best step.     It sounds like Minelab Customer care in the US isn't functioning as intended and Minelab head office in Australia may not have been aware of that but will be now. 

It seems I caused a bit of a stir 🙂

While the guy has his own opinions about things like iron bias his general thoughts were similar to mine, I'm not overly clued up on iron bias, I never really had a need for it as we don't have much iron junk in our soils around here so I just set it to 0.  I don't see how iron bias would limit depth but I find recovery speed does affect it.  Maybe he was meaning with certain iron bias settings the ID's become less reliable so you may pass on some deeper targets thinking they're junk?

I've used my CTX on my local sports field which as some know was a very good producer giving me hundreds of silver coins, I knew there would be more, I seem to never get them all 🙂 The CTX did surprise me with how well I did do in a short time.  I always was a cherry picker though, for me to dig a silver I had to have a pretty good ID that it was going to be a silver or I didn't dig, the reason for this is I didn't want to dig hundreds of holes in a public area.  I wanted to keep my digs to a minimum.  When I went back with the CTX after doing some basic air tests to get the numbers I was chasing I found quite a few missed silvers quite quickly.  Almost all the silvers in this field are deep, regularly at about the depth of my Carrot.  The CTX wasn't finding coins I'd missed with the Nox not getting the depth, I just think it was giving me a better ID. 

Now, why I think the CTX is possibly deeper while still providing a good ID is last weekend i took my daughter detecting at one of the local ski fields, we end up doing this once a year for a bit of fun, she mainly wants to do it as shes so excited about ski season starting so she just wants an excuse to go there, the deal is also that she gets any money we find 🙂

So I put her on the Vanquish, and basically just told her only look for ID's 21 and 22 ignore everything else.  That gets her our gold $1 and $2 coins and that's all she'd have the patience to dig. 

I used my Nox and 11" and had the CTX and 11" with me that I found targets with one and checked the targets with the other, not on every single target, just the deeper ones.  I found the CTX was doing a great job on ID's at depth, but so was the Equinox.  Only some targets the CTX gave a more reliable ID and often the shallow targets on the Equinox were more wild with their ID like a $1 coin buried at only 1 or so inches was less of a reliable ID with the NOX than one deeper.  The CTX gave good ID's on various depths even the really shallow ones.  I'd never noticed that before with the Nox how the ID's are a bit less accurate wth very shallow coins and perhaps that was just the soil type at the ski field causing that.  There was one particular deep $2 coin that the Equinox was very erratic with the ID on while the CTX was quite stable and easily identified it as a $2 coin. 

The beginners areas are always best, they fall over the most 🙂

So in my very mild soils I think the CTX is great as a cherry picking detector, so is the Nox and Vanquish though.  Even my Ace 300i is pretty remarkable with the stability of target ID's in my soils as long as there is only 1 target under the coil.

I think in my area a person could do almost as well with any main manufacturer detector that have target ID's, they may have to dig a few more iffy targets but I personally think I could do just as well on coins with any of my coin capable detectors.  I'm confident if I used my Ace 300 I wouldn't leave much for the Nox to find afterwards if I was willing and able to dig every potentially good target.  We all have different soil types so our opinions on things can vary wildly.

She managed to get 70 something dollars for her efforts on the day, mostly my finds 🙂

It does seem a weird problem like when the speaker is engaged it becomes some sort of antenna or powering the speaker when its very close to other electronics that are very sensitive is generating noise, very odd it would make it to market like that.  I'm sure it's something that will just be remedied in the background without notice and later purchasers won't notice the problem with it as much as earlier owners.   It would bother me as I'd likely be an exclusive speaker user forced to find an alternative to the speaker. 

Maybe they were aware of it and it couldn't be fixed and it's just how it has to be, like many things in metal detecting a compromise, at least it has Bluetooth so there are easy workarounds that are likely better than using the speaker anyway so for most it won't be an issue.

The biggest oddity is the bolt holes being different so you can't use an Equinox bolt, you have to use the Coiltek bolt.  Why they'd do something like that just makes no sense to me and all it would have taken is the bolt hole to be an extra millimeter or so bigger.  I normally have just used the same bolt for everyone of my coils, keeping the others from the other coils away as spares.  Not If I take my 6" and Coiltek coil on a hunt I need to take both sets of bolts.  Not a big deal but an annoyance for no reason.

That's as far as the standard Nox bolt goes.

The sizing is a bit different to advertised too, although I prefer the size than if it was 10x5"

It's pointy noise is really good in rocky areas, and it's the most sensitive part of the coil by far to small targets so great for prospecting and can get into places the 6" can't. The 6" is most sensitive to small targets in the center of the coil so the benefits of the Coiltek really shine when in a rocky or bushy area.

2 hours ago, alaska detector said:

A lot of this could be tied to the chip shortage. I build PCs as an extension of a gaming hobby and it’s been near impossible since September to get a graphics card. It’s gotten so bad that I’m considering buying a whole prebuilt computer just to get the upgrade I need. 
 

Of course a chip shortage probably isn’t the only factor, but it sure as hell probably isn’t helping matters. 

I think the chip shortage is affecting the US more than elsewhere, it's certainly not hard to get video cards in our part of the world, even the high end ones are mostly available.  This is the business I used to be involved with, not an issue at all there getting stuff.  They carry stock in the hundreds of each card though so a shortage is less of a problem than businesses that stock 1 or 2 cards replacing them from the distributor each time they sell one.

https://www.computeralliance.com.au/video-cards

The shipping backlog is hurting more than the chip shortages.   I guess the world shouldn't reply on one small island prone to typhoons and flooding and at high risk of a China takeover to manufacture the worlds chips though 🙂   Over the years Taiwan flooding has caused us involved in the IT industry many headaches with shortages of CPU's and Memory regularly taking place due to events in Taiwan, mostly related to weather.

Yes, really enjoying the CTX and currently looking into the Coiltek coils for it.

The 14x9" Nox coil might be more popular with the water hunters, it seems it was specifically designed for that purpose with the extra weight being heavier than the 15" perhaps being beneficial for in the water?  I'm not much of a water hunter, the waters too cold here for me to be flapping around in 🙂 

Yea I quite like my 10?x5" Coiltek.  Thanks for doing your posts Chase.  There seems to be very few people reporting on their experience with the Coiltek Nox coils anywhere even though it appears they're very popular..  I found the 10x5" to be slightly less sensitive to small gold than the 6" but I guess you would expect that, it's like comparing the Gold Monster 5" coil to the Gold Monster 10x5" coil, everyone is very aware of which is best on small gold. 

Other than that I've found it to be an excellent coil and I'm glad I've got it.  I'm going to give the other Coiltek coils a miss.  I've had a friend get the 14x9" and indicated he wasn't overly impressed with it finding the 11" deeper and give better ID's and the 15" seems to not overly give more depth than the 15x12" which is a shame as that one is one I wanted the most for more depth on coins.  My dealer had me one there but I backed out of it and let him sell it to the next in line when reports were coming in on no real extra depth benefits.

The 10x5" seems the best of the bunch I think.

If the question is does the GPX 6000 have iron discrimination like the GPX 5000/4500 etc, then the answer is no.  It doesn't have iron discrimination.

Glad you've got it sorted.

I quite enjoyed watching El Nino's video, the tones on the V3i sound like an old DOS game using the PC Speaker.  😃

You could invest in a Coiltek Anti Interference coil, they run far better than a DD in cancel, in fact they run really well and maintain quite good small gold sensitivity, I use the 11" and it's small gold sensitivity and depth is very similar to the DD 11" Commander coil and they're outstanding in high EMI areas.  Coiltek claim the performance drop by using a AI coil is only around 5% over the similar size DD in your normal settings (no need for cancel).  Here are a couple of videos I've done with my 11" AI Coil showing how well it handles EMI and it's sensitivity.

I found this little write up on the Equinox 800 vs CTX 3030 to be outstanding.  This person really knows how to explain the differences and why one isn't really better than the other, just different and I think that's what I'm experiencing using my CTX.  Sure, I surprised myself that I'd missed quite a few silver coins and I'm sure there is plenty more missed ones yet, however someone with a better understanding of the Nox knowing the soil conditions and target variety in the area could likely have tweaked the Nox to find most of the missed ones and perhaps it did hit them for me but didn't give me an obvious enough reason for me to dig them.   

https://nwdetectors.com/blogs/news/minelab-equinox-800-vs-ctx-3030

I'm just happy to have both as they certainly complement each other.