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A little update, JW may have found the solution to his bump sensitivity, his coil cable was wrapped so the cable was under the shaft near to the coil, so it's possible the detector was picking up the coil cable, today he went back using it and wound the cable differently so the cable was up above the shaft and he didn't get the bump sensitivity. Fingers crossed the problem is solved. You can see by habit with VLF's and chance more than anything my coil cable was well away from my coil, so this may explain it. Anyway, today he did very well considering the spot is hard to get anything at all, he was only there a few hours and came away with this using his 6000 and 12x7" The .06 bit at the bottom was the bit he found yesterday using the GM1000 that we tested on my NF coil to see the lack of edge sensitivity. I'll do a video demonstrating that soon as I think what I am saying maybe slightly misunderstood.

If you were to read the first couple of pages of this you'll see why Quest don't want to sell into America. Microsoft Word - 5FG5447.DOC (rpxcorp.com)

I think I'll soon record a video to demonstrate what I'm seeing just to clarify when it comes to edge sensitivity. The Police Siren sound gave me a bit of a fright when it first started 🙂

What a pain, it's great to hear you're really liking the machine though and it sounds pretty impressive to get such positive feedback from you. Interesting way to mount it to the handle though.

See the google drive link above

I'll find out, I believe these were 2 of the cons used.

Yup, the bigger the target gets the better the edge sensitivity gets, as the target is seen at a greater distance from the windings when it gets bigger. It's just very small gold the coil is dead on the edges. I did find my detector ran stable all day, my threshold was mostly good except when too close to the power lines it got a bit wild of course, unfortunately both of my videos were right near the powerlines so my threshold sounds a bit wild in them as I'm in maximum sensitivity too. I found it a very stable coil. I hope the Sadie size windings are slightly different to give edge sensitivity as that's a key attribute to a small coil for me and people with small coils like it are generally chasing the smaller gold. I'm happy with my purchase, although I only bought it as I was sick of waiting on the Sadie 🙂

I can see people digging a tunnel and smuggling these across the border. No sign of them yet at our Quest dealer.

Yea, first time gold detecting in a while, Skiing takes over my winter and I've been building a little cabin to store my detecting stuff in, it's almost finished now though just painting and flooring left and that has taken me ages as I'm just no builder so every step took 5 times longer than it would a builder i guess 🙂 I didn't ask if he's going to send it back, I guess now he knows mine isn't bump sensitive in the same spot and same settings he may consider it. It's a really good coil, but so is the Coiltek, someone with the Coiltek doesn't overly need to rush out and buy the 12x7" I think, and someone with the 12x7" doesn't need to rush out and buy the Coiltek unless they want the smaller size and are tired of waiting on NF to release their small coil. I found I was leaving my 10x5" on almost all the time too, then swinging the 6000 feels no different to a VLF 🙂 I should add I ran the speaker all day, no issues at all, love the EMI fix.

I've had this coil for a couple of months now but hadn't got around to using it until today. JW asked if I wanted to go for a detect this afternoon, I was having a day off skiing as the weather wasn't going to be all that great so it worked out well, perfect time to test out the coil. JW also has the coil, he's used it a bit recently at this spot but not overly had any success with it, in saying that it's going over ground that's been done by the GPZ and X-coils along with the 6000 and 11" and I've had my 6000 and Coiltek 10x5" there a few times too so it's a big ask to do well. We discussed his experience with the his 12x7" on the drive to the spot, he's found his is a bit bump sensitive and doesn't have edge sensitivity with small targets, I was a bit worried at this point I'd wasted my money buying one. This time he took his GM1000 and GPZ and 15"CC and I took my 6000 with the 12x7" NF. JW started off using the GM and popped up a tiny nugget pretty quickly, he brought it over to me and put it down on a rock and we ran my coil over it to see if it behaves any different to his, and nope, edge sensitivity is non-existent on small targets, mine is the same. The area of the coil outside of the red line marked with the X is completely dead on very small targets, the target needs to get beyond the windings to the inner area of the coil to respond. I maybe a bit generous with my red line as it seemed with the nose of the coil the gold was under the sticker before it would respond. This is a bit of a typical spiral coil thing, my 14x9" NF EVO was where I first experienced this with the centre of the coil being the most sensitive area, but I was a little surprised as I hadn't noticed the same on the stock 11" nor the Coiltek 10x5", I'll have to check that now but it means it's not an ideal coil for rocky areas for me with no edge sensitivity on small gold. Throughout the afternoon finding shot pellets I was able to verify this and indeed the edge lacks sensitivity. Tilting the coil on edge to locate tiny targets just can't work like it does with a bundle mono on the older GPX series. It's not the end of the world but something to be aware of, especially for those that hunt tiny targets. Now with the negative out of the way the coil behaved brilliantly, absolutely no bump sensitivity like JW is experiencing with his, I made sure of that by being quite aggressive with it on rocky areas and I ran in normal with maximum sensitivity all afternoon and it was fine except when really close to the power lines where I dropped down to about half sensitivity but didn't need to if I wanted to put up with a bit more instability. In both below videos I was in maximum sensitivity even though I was near powerlines. I think it did very well with hot rocks, I only encountered one hot rock all day, quite unusual for this area as it has a lot of them but it had me going, such a faint target from the surface, I dug down and the target was well below the depth I'd expect to find a pellet and still a faint signal so I was hoping it was a little nugget, but after messing around trying to find it for some time it turned out a small hot rock, the size of a reasonable sized coin. Damn! I thought it was going to be my first bit of Xceed gold. I don't use auto or auto +, I don't believe that auto+ can give higher sensitivity than maximum manual like has been said, if anyone would experience that it would be me in my very mild soils but I've never once found auto+ to be more sensitive than manual, the same was said about the GM 1000, I find it not correct, manual is always more sensitive. The NF appears to like pellets, responds nicely on them, near surface tiny targets give a great signal. The pellet to the right is a #9 bird shot, the pellet on the left was the smallest size I was finding, pretty small and a great response on them, I'm confident it will find smaller if there. Here was my first nugget of the afternoon, it was on a bit of a cliff ledge I climbed down onto hoping I was the first to ever detect it, turns out I probably was, pretty easy target, quite a small bit but had a good response The rest of the afternoon consisted of trying to find other ground I personally hadn't detected before while also trying to think of spots others are less likely to have been over before too, detecting the hard to get to spots basically, and lifting and flipping big rocks over to check under them, areas others had yet detected seeing it's such a hard-hit spot. Then, after some time and no success I ventured down onto a little cliff ledge that I found a couple of nuggets with my Coiltek 10x5" when I first got it, figured I may as well try that spot again as I don't think anyone else had detected it so I climbed down and starting going at it, I found 2 pellets down there which was a surprise as I surely would have dug them previously with the 10x5" and the 8" X-coil on the GPZ that have both been there, I doubt they were new but always possible I guess, they were just near surface targets. Then I hit a big boomer of a target, I couldn't remember ignoring any targets here but I must have and I do tend to get lazy with boomer signals especially if I'm tired from the heat in summer, today being winter I was full of beans and ready to dig it all, even my Equinox would have found this one with ease though so I'm pretty confident I was lazy the other times and ignored it, silly me. Quite a meaty bit. I decided I'd keep checking out this ledge after that, and nothing more, I even climbed down lower and risked being stabbed to death by the thorned plants to reach another bit lower down but unfortunately the only target turned out junk, I was able to benefit from the discrimination on my Sphinx 03 pinpointer to not have to keep battling the rocks and recovering this target, it told me it was ferrous so I passed. I used the Sphinx to help recover the previous two gold nuggets and a heap of pellets and its discrimination was accurate, always a green light on the gold and lead pellets and a red light on the junk. For those interested, the Sphinx worked perfectly with the GPX, I noticed no issues at all having it on my belt with its holster and liked it turned itself on when I removed it from the holster and off again when I put it back in, no need to press any buttons. At the start of the afternoon, I did notice I needed to do a noise cancel with it turned on and the GPX sounded like a Police Siren every time I turned the Sphinx on, once noise cancelled with it turned on it was all good. Now the weather was starting to turn and JW's head popped out over the top of the ledge I was on seeing how I've been going, he saw the weather coming in over the mountains and thought we should bail out, wise idea as we only just got back to my car when the rain really hit. Unfortunately, he only ended up with the tiny bit with his Gold Monster that he got right at the start. So, overall happy with the 12x7", ran really well, worked under and around the power lines OK, no issues with stability tilting it and using it on rock ledges, sensitivity seemed great on small targets except for the noticeable lack of edge sensitivity on small targets. No bump sensitivity unlike Jw's 12x7" and overall, a good coil by the looks of it. I still think I prefer my Coiltek 10x5", similar sensitivity but I didn't notice any edge sensitivity issues, both run nice and stable although it's quite possible the NF ran quieter over all, more time will tell there. As for the Sphinx 03, quite possibly my favourite pin pointer over-taking my Garrett Carrot AT, just need to make sure it doesn't interfere with the GPZ now. Here was my junk, not bad considering 2 bits of gold. On my drive home I drove past the ski field entrance I go to the most and the cars were all coming down covered in snow, good call not to go today in the end but great to get more snow for my next time up! Yay!

I guess it's another strong case for my wish to be able to hire detectors from dealers to try before you buy, if I could have hired all the detectors that I've owned I would have bought a third of them. Some just don't suit my detecting at all much like I guess the Axiom doesn't suit yours Peter, some people were raving about and I get them and just don't get along with them at all, others I bought just to see what they're like. I'd rather spend $50 to hire one for a day to decide if I want to own it than having to buy it to find out and by the sounds of it if you had hired an Axiom and tested it out much like you did your own Axiom you likely wouldn't have bought it knowing it's not really suitable for your ground. If manufacturers were confident in their product, they should have no concerns about providing dealers with a discounted detector or even a sample unit that they can use to hire out or loan to potential buyers encourage sales of their product.

No, a guy I know did 🙂 There are multiple numbers as he had more than one sovereign and they detected slightly different for different years.

That sucks Peter, I really think there is some inconsistency in builds going on with the Axiom, I've seen a few cases now where people get under performing ones, some have had them replaced and suddenly it works as expected. It seems no brand is immune to some quality problems on these complex high-end machines, it's just hard to know if it's just how it is or if it's got a problem without having another one to compare it too. I know this problem all too well, I went through it with my 6000.

Half Sovereign – 33, 35 Full Sovereign – 50, 53-54 Air test numbers.

It’s intended purpose is recent drop shallow targets and covering ground quickly, it’s not supposed to be deep and that in a way would make it counter productive, it’s a great coil.

Minelab just sent out a marketing email saying this: Designed for the complete detectorist, the PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer features increased depth, adjustable 5-level sensitivity, Rapid Re-tune, ferrous tone ID, high visibility and handy lost-alarm. With the PRO-FIND 40 discover coins, rings and gold precisely — on land and under water — with unparalleled depth and speed. So they're saying the Pro-Find 40 is the deepest pinpointer on the market? Speed is an interesting term to use, are they referring to recovery speed so you can swing it around quickly in the hole or are they talking ease of recovery with the discrimination feature making it fast to recover targets? Either way, a bold statement with the unparalleled depth. By the sounds of it they think it makes all other pin pointers obsolete 🙂

Nice to have you aboard, with the Axiom and the GPZ 7000 you have a great combination of detectors. Have you had much luck finding any of that big Russian gold?

You think too much as a serious hard core prospector Jason, there is a big market for people that just want to do it for fun and hopefully find something, and for them buying a 6000 or 7000 at current prices is just way out of reality. A detector priced not much more than a VLF has potential to sell very well, even if it is 10+ year old technology rehashed. The 6000 is just rehashed old technology too, almost everything always is, it's just how far they improve the old technology that matters and I really think they could release a rehashed 5000 that's superior to the 6000. For coin hunters the entry level type machines highly likely outsell the high end units, Fisher are still pumping out masses of cheap entry level detectors and selling a lot of them. Vanquishes and Simplex models fly off the shelves. You also think about your situation in the USA, people are running around in Australia finding decent gold regularly with QED's, and the 5000 for the most part is much better than a QED, many still use 4500's and 5000's with great success there, even older models and still do much better than I could imagine of doing here even with the best of the best gear. So a rehashed light weight 5000 at a good price would be a hit in a market like that. A more automatic 5000 with far less configuration options, but still enough to be very useful would be great, they maybe able to close up a lot of the holes in detection the 5000 has after all they did that with the 6000. I think a rehashed 5000 is more than likely capable of sitting above the 6000 in the lineup and the 6000 be the cheaper unit. It could have multiple timings, one of which the 6000's super sensitive one but also a deeper gold timing as part of its options, cutting out some of the small target sensitivity but increasing depth. It could handle hot rocks far better, difficult ground better too all by having some options. The 6000 opened up a lot of small gold people were missing and it's made it very popular for that reason, combined with its feather light weight but they could have made a 6000 "Pro" that was far more advanced with options, even a fixed ground balance option. The 6000's a great beginners prospecting machine as its so simple to use but I can't imagine many experienced users aren't wishing it had a few more options here and there so it does open up an area for a machine between the 6000 and possible future 8000. Someone's job is probably sitting there thinking how can we use this technology we have to release a new model that customers will love but hold back enough of the technology so we can release the next model with minimal investment, this is what happens when there is no competition and I think they did that with the 7000, but something unexpected happened that messed up that plan to some extent.

It sure is going to be interesting how this plays out, a release soon would be damaging, so many have just bought a 6000, they'll be wary about buying an 8000 and taking the loss on their 6000 as they upgrade. Minelab will also struggle to sell 6000's as many people will pick them up second hand still with warranty from those that do upgrade to 8000's so they get an 8000 sale but likely lose a potential 6000 sale in the process. It would also have to be significantly better than the 6000 and 7000 to sell well in a bad economic climate with their big sales market now gone, a tough ask, while the comparison videos Youtubers do aren't aways that great they get huge amounts of hits when new products come out, why? because people are trying to decide if they want one and these "influencers' play a bigger part in the remaining markets, not so much in Africa I would guess. I'm likely done myself, no GPZ 8000 for me, some extra big target depth won't change my life, I have that available to me right now with very large coils that I just won't likely use, finding even smaller gold wouldn't matter either, I can do that with my VLF's in my mild soils. I don't care about the GPZ weight, never once bothered me at all and especially not $8000 to $10,000 bother me however I mostly use small coils on it and I'm ambidextrous and do tend to swap arms throughout the day. I guess in a way my mild hunting environment meant potential new detectors struggle to be better than older ones far more than people in more difficult areas. If I had to run my GPZ in difficult I wouldn't be near as impressed with it, by being in normal all the time it's tough for the 6000 to compete with it even on the smallest gold so I'm more wary than many about any performance improvements the 8000 may bring but I see Aussies that run 7000's in difficult all the time very impressed with the 6000. I'll be excited to see what they've done with it, but highly unlikely to buy it, I'm more likely to buy Nokta's cheaper PI if it comes out, I'd be using an Axiom if it wasn't 6000 price here, I'd like try alternative brands and see how they go and with the Nokta the price isn't going to be at the level you need to consider selling off kidneys, the cheaper they do it the more likely I'll buy it.

It sounds to me like you're trying to bring a good affordable product to market for beginners and as long as your marketing is sincere about its ability and not over-stating its performance then this can only be a good thing if the price is right. Too many brands even the top tier ones over use hype words like Professional or Pro even on rather low-end detectors and even pin pointers. Yes, it sounds good but it gives the wrong impression which can be detrimental to future sales with negative feedback from buyers. At the moment if I walk into local stores and look at generic cheap metal detectors, they're often very over stated, saying they're gold nugget detectors when they couldn't even work in the soil's nuggets are often found and lack the sensitivity to find many nuggets with very low frequencies like 7kHz or say they're beach detectors when they don't even work on the salty sand especially if wet. Many of these detectors brandish the Gold Century branding or are rebadged detectors from the Gold Century range. Your detector is obviously the same detector as the Eenour detector so is it a rebadge of yours or yours their detector that they are branding from your production? I see you've sent some out to people to review and a review from an American Youtube person here I'm pleased it's not running off the stolen Gold Bug Pro or Teknetics T2 software like many of the Chinese made detectors and looks like a built from scratch detector. I think it has potential if it was to appear in retail stores at the right price for beginners and children. I like the shaft design too.

You can use a true 9.6v 230mAh battery in your Pro-Find to bring it up to 2.2WH, a good battery doesn't make a good pin pointer though 🙂 I'm still on my first ever battery in my Pro-Find 35, plenty of juice left in it yet, in saying that its hours of use a pretty low.

A VLF is always going to slam the tiny nuggets in an air test very well, put the nugget into some difficult ground and see which one detects it deepest. Garrett was very nice to send you a replacement coil due to a coil cover not fitting snug. Do you not use PVC tape around the edges of your coil cover to ensure a nice snug fit and keeping the dirt out? Common practice on Minelab machines, not only that it takes a bit of the wear and tear your coil cover would get from bumping into rocks and so on. My Coiltek 10x5" coil for the 6000's coil cover fitment is terrible; it just falls off if you lift the coil off the ground and shake it a bit however tape solves it completely so no problem!

Yes, I was more pointing to the CTX and Nox coils, they won't have to change much to make a Nox 10x5" coil for the Manticore I'm sure. They're all geared up ready to go and make them without any major investment. I'd be super happy if they do a 6" though. Put my name down for it now!!!!

I can see the 6000 dropping down to be the entry level PI when the 5000 is discontinued in the distant future, and the 6500 will be the 6000 with the features it should have had from the get-go, some more manual control, It will have more than the sensitive shallow gold mode it currently runs off it will have the viability of bigger coils which it can't have now as there are really no benefits to doing so, SDC users know what I'm talking about when they throw bigger Coiltek coils onto it, imagine throwing a 19" coil on the SDC, crazy talk, no depth gains for swinging around such a big coil. It's why NF wisely stuck with 16x10" and Coiltek the 14x9" good ground coverage without the larger size coil being pointless with no real major extra depth. The 6000's got some good depth to it, but it would have even more if it could run big coils, and that's where they've left room for the 6500. It's almost like they plan their detectors so there is room to move for a new model, they did the same with the GPZ by limiting coils. With the African market collapsing and revenue from gold detectors falling off a cliff I can't see them in any rush to bring out a new PI or ZVT in the near future, it doesn't make marketing sense to release a detector when sales of it will be quite low, if Africa can somehow recover or another market emerges in South America or somewhere then they may do something. Let's remember the 6000 was released for targeting the African market with the ease of use Gold Monster style, the early images blasted all over their website were showing African prospectors using it to find gold like they did the Gold Monster also, now that's changed a bit the African market has dried up with the current image off the site looking like an Aussie Prospector which is probably their biggest market again now. 🙂 I don't know if you remember the earlier images, vastly different. They're chasing a new market of coin, relic and beach hunters for the time being but it's a dwindling crowd too with the good finds especially for coin hunters drying up, add to that the world economy being stuffed it's not the time to sell high priced gold detectors. I takes a certain level of crazy for people like me to buy high end gold machines, and most people are more sensible than me and refuse to pay the silly prices for a hobby machine, so a lower priced gold detector with 5000 type performance has the potential to be a great seller to get people that are happy to pay VLF prices but not gold detector prices, even Manticore/CTX and Deus 2 prices are way outside of what most people even hard core coin and jewellery hunters are willing to pay for a detector, so selling a lot of people a PI at the crazy prices just isn't going to happen. A PI at the right price has potential to be a very good seller regardless of if it's the best gold detector on the market, it doesn't need to be, it needs to be affordable and good enough to use with confidence.

Nokta have now shipped my replacement Pulse Dive coil, they were kind enough to let me choose the size they replace it with, I went with the big size coil as I'm mostly likely to use it in freshwater lakes where ground coverage would be the most important factor. They used DHL Express so I'll have it in a week. I can see why many people have Nokta as their favourite brand, can't fault their service, I'd lost my receipt and they still helped me out, can't ask for more than that. You better watch out @Erik Oostra, I plan to take my daughter to Magnetic Island at some stage in the next year or so, along with a trip to various parts of the Great Barrier reef while it still exists in its current form so she can see it, I'll be armed with my Pulse Dive and whatever detector at the time I think is best for water detecting. Just keep an eye out for another guy with crazy hair that's not Crusty cruising around in a Moke.