phrunt

I think this one is just AI generated. I knocked one up now and they appear to be using the same coil type.

Tried it on various detectors, did nothing. The QED added them on to prevent the detector EMI going outwards, not the EMI coming in, a shortcut to doing it properly. Detectors like the GPZ have them internally at the coil cable entry point. The GPZ From the QED manual.

I hate that big thump in your stomach when you buy a new Minelab product and it's a dud when you first fire it up. Happened with my 6000. In fact, I've never bought a product from them EXCEPT the Manticore I've not had a warranty claim on for some reason over its life, I guess it's early days for the Manticore. The funniest one was my Pro Sonic with the upside-down decal so you wouldn't even see the lights and the buttons were in the wrong place to use them because of it 🙂 I'd like to know what their failure rates are, I'm sure they have to be well above industry norm. I don't think Minelab products are even remotely tested prior to being packaged, rolled off the production line and out the door, not like the old videos I see from the Garrett and Whites factories where they're testing with objects to ensure detectors are meeting specifications, I'm not even sure they work that way anymore at Garrett and Whites died, they're old videos, I think those days are gone with these mass produced detectors, not that it is unusual, most electronic products would never be tested before being packaged up and sold, they just rely on the product quality meaning the DOA levels would be very low.

Do you think people have been digging out under that bank to look for gold, there was a spot around here that was very similar to that, I kept smashing away the edge of the bank and finding gold in the collapsed soil. I kept going and going until it ran out. Prior to smashing it up no gold was detectable in the soil. Mine was a lot rockier than that though.

It was a great visit by Mitchel and his family, very short though, he's so rushed I can see why he's had no chance to put up photos, by very definition it's a whirlwind trip. We made use of the time we had, unfortunately my wife came down with covid a couple of weeks ago, last weekend JW and I went detecting while my wife had it and I didn't, I even tested myself the morning of our detecting to ensure all would be well and I wouldn't spread it, I came back all clear. JW found 7 nuggets that trip, I was skunked. Fast forward to this weekend and JW is down for the count in bed with Covid, damn it, bad timing! So, he was unable to join us for our adventures, not wanting to spread it to Mitchel and his family while they're on holiday. I did my best to take Mitchel to spots I hoped he'd come away with a piece or two, places I thought I'd have hope of finding something, but gold is gold, if I knew where it was, I'd have it all already so I just took him to productive areas where I'd found gold. We also went to the local gold shop, where the guy that runs it is a very experienced detectorist and had been detecting my local area well before even JW came into town, he was telling Mitchel all about the areas we were detecting and how much gold he used to get out of these areas, let's just say Reg Wilson would be happy to detect these spots back then 😛 The shop also has lots of big nuggets found in the local area on display, including a 500 gram nugget found on the West Coast and plenty of large nuggets found locally, even in the river right beside the shop. Mitchel got some great photos, I was not using my phone much for photos or anything as I'd forgotten to charge it, I plugged it in before taking off but I forgot to plug the other end into the charger plug so it was just plugged into the cable!!! I had to conserve whatever battery I had and I didn't have a charge cable in my car to use while driving. Either way, I hope Mitchel had a good trip, short but sweet, now he'll know when I do my gold posts what I've been going through to the find the gold and the basic idea of the areas I'd be in, a bulk of the gold I've shown found on this forum has come from the two places he went to including my two biggest nuggets, one from each location and both just over 4 grams. Mitchel was very kind and used some of his suitcase space to bring me over an F19 from the Fisher fire sale, I got this for my daughter on the odd time she comes up to the ski fields looking for coins and rings after the seasons over. It's about the only time I can get her to use a detector as it's at her favourite place, the ski fields and her favourite detector is the Gold Bug Pro. I have some really great Nel coils for the GBP and the Detech Ultimate 13" so the F19 is a good update to give me volume control. Now the other wonderful thing Mitchel did is bring both JW and I a selection of his finds, we each got a little baggie with some [Place name of them here, I've forgotten] and a meteorite. As Mitchel likely knows, meteorites are a massive deal in NZ, they're impossible to ever find, and when one hits people go by the hundred in organized groups to try find it, it's something I'll treasure forever. I can even look like an American now crusing around in my new Santa Monica T-Shirt. 🙂 Day one we went to a place Mitchel had a good chat to the gold shop guy about, we only had the afternoon there with it being such a busy trip. Its a place my best patch was over 15 grams with the biggest nugget being over 4 grams. I used the 6000 and my favourite coil on it, the 10x5" Coiltek. I managed to get a short little video of the target when I first found it as I was starting to clear the dirt off the bedrock, I knew at this point it was very likely to be gold as it was inside the schist, not on top of it like a bit of junk or pellet would likely be so I walked over and gathered up Mitchel and his wife to come have a look. As you can see, even my sparkly new F19 would have found this one. This is after the bedrock was smashed away, Mitchel actually helped doing that as he was using the heavier pick which was better to smash the rock away, his wife I believe filmed the whole thing so he maybe able to put up a proper full video when he gets home. Took us a while to get it out of the rock. And this is it. Close to half a gram, not too bad. A shame we didn't find any more than this the entire two days, but that's gold for you. A real shame JW wasn't with us, I think he would have found a few more, he has the special knack. The next day I went back to old faithful, my GPZ with 8" coil, one of my favourite combos, probably should have used the 15" CC in this big open country area but I'd previously done well at this spot with the 8", probably the combo that's found my most nuggets there, and one of my biggest, a 4.1 gram. This is the only photo I took yesterday. It shows all the exposed bedrock Mitchel was talking about. And here are the videos of my best two days in the area. These are for you Mitchel, the 8" At the spot we went yesterday. And the 15" Concentric when the patch was found They were in the same general area you were in yesterday, walking distance from where we were and I could see where the 4.1 came from while we were there detecting, so you can see why I had hopes we might find some gold around there. You'll probably recognise the area a bit when the camera moves around 🙂 We stopped in to see JW on the way home, Mitchel got to see JW's gold collection, thousands of bits. Anyway, I hope you make it back to this side of the world again Mitchel, and I hope next time you have a lot more time to spend here to give finding some local gold a really good shot, thanks again for coming to meet us.

Waiting doesn't work anyway, I waited over 12 months for the GPX 6000, still got a dud 🙂

I run HY/Normal/19 all the time on my GPZ, they may be considered insanely high settings but to me they're normal, they're not ratty, if the GPZ let us put up the sensitivity to something like 25 then it would probably become ratty, the reason I don't go to 20 on the sensitivity is it gives that little bit of instability that 19 doesn't. I haven't noticed an improvement in performance using 20 over 19, so I just prefer to keep it purring along perfectly at 19. The GPX on the other hand even on lowest sensitivity is more ratty than the GPZ on 19. Well at least for me it is as soils conditions don't create noise, so I guess a way for someone to replicate that would be to run their GPZ holding it up in the air away from soil 🙂 I find the little 8" runs really nice too as it's just not affected by EMI as much as bigger coils being so tiny. I understand people loving the GPX for its performance, it's great, I'm just a GPZ type of person, and I'm not at all bothered by its weight. I get no more worn out swinging the GPZ all day than I do the GPX, it's not my arms that get tired, it's my legs 🙂

I have neither, but do have the 800, Manticore and Deus with both HF coils which is almost the ORX, I'd pick the Manticore first, Nox 800 second and Deus with HF coils 3rd. The Nox with 10x5" is more like the Deus performance wise on small gold in milder soils, with the 6" coil I find the Nox better for smaller gold. At this point for me, buying anything other than the Manticore is settling for second best. I just hope the Manticore gets more coils in the future from Coiltek.

I used my GPZ again after some time of having it stored in the cupboard to try get my monies worth out of the GPX 🙂 I just love my GPZ, it's a detector that suits me, I like the stable threshold, I like the double blips on pellets from the DOD coils, I like that I find it easy to use, I like that it talks to me in a way I can understand. I've always liked really stable detectors, and always struggled with ratty detectors, the GPZ maxed out is so much more stable than the GPX on low sensitivity. I guess I just like the GPZ more no matter how hard I try to like the GPX. My GPX is dramatically more stable after the fix, if you recall my earlier posts on the GPX I hated it, I can now deal with it, but just prefer the GPZ. It may be detrimental to my detecting as the GPX may find some gold I'll miss with the GPZ, no way to know, although I'm sure that goes both ways. I just gel with the GPZ and the GPX is something I put up with.

I think they're behind in the single frequency VLF gold detectors, with Garrett in the lead there. They have stated they're moving away from single frequency detectors although broke that already to bring out budget models, but their next Gold VLF is likely to be some form of multi-IQ, but needs to give something they've not already done to the multi-purpose units. They can't just give it better coils like nice solid ones and think it'll sell well; I'd not spend the money to buy it when I already have the Manticore. Maybe they'll release one, but it's not going to be a smash hit with people rushing out excited to get it. I'm wondering if we are at the end of dedicated gold VLF's even being viable, and even then, they'd have to be cheap seeing a multi-purpose machine can do it well now. The GPZ is a tricky one, the more people that have invested in aftermarket coils the harder it is to bring out a new model unless its significantly improved. Can they significantly improve it? I wouldn't buy it if it were lighter and added discrimination. That's not worth 10 grand or more to me, it would have to blow my GPZ away to think about buying it, the hard-core prospectors that find a lot of gold will buy it and think it's great, but they're a much smaller portion of the market, Minelab needs a lot of people to buy it, just not the very successful gold finders as they need sales to bring in a good profit especially with the African market being close to dead. I wasn't blown away by the 6000, but its small gold sensitivity over the stock GPZ seems to have the market excited and has likely taken over as their best seller by far and they're going to happily let that be the sales winner for them for some time so they don't need to rush a new detector to market, competitors are starting to nibble at their heels but nothing to be too worried about just yet in taking control of the market, but the competitors are taking a lot of sales Minelab missed by high pricing. These sales won't show on Minelab's figures spreadsheets as they were never going to be Minelab customers anyway, but they've missed a lot of PI sales that have gone to Algoforce especially and Garrett in the US by people who were not willing to pay the big money but happy to pay less for a detector. Nokta is going to come out at some point and take even more of this market. My expectation is a new GPZ is not coming soon, they'll more than likely release a detector to fit into the Allgoforce, Axiom and Nokta PI range, and be competing in that area of a well-priced PI. You could say the 5000's already there, but a new detector gets a lot of sales, not an old one. They won't want to lose that market share of the lower cost PI to competitors as that's just the start of things to come, like VLF's all over again. Minelab have completely lost any dominance over the VLF market, and their share is shrinking by the day, hence the deep discounting of the Manticore. They will want to get into this lower priced PI arena before it's too late.

Looks like a Garrett AT in the middle, and a Fisher to the right, but they're saying the best finds are made with good company, meaning that a Garrett person can get along with a Fisher person, they don't have to hate each other for using different brands! A good message behind that. I don't know if it was intentional, but people don't need to look down on people for choosing a different brand or model detector than they use.

yea, if you're in ground the EVO's on the GPX 4500 were noisy I think you would find the same with the spirals and it's the reason X-coil make standard bundle DOD coils too like the Z-search coils, the sensitivity would be the main benefit other than being able to pick the size coil you really want to use rather than the Z-search which is almost the same size as the stock coil, if you don't need that it's a pointless exercise. As Lesgold was pointing out he was able to find gold deeper with the 12" than the 14x13", that makes sense as at the right size gold there is always a cross over a smaller coil will do better than a bigger one on some gold, even if it's only slightly smaller, pretty hard to find that sweet spot in the wild but I guess they were able to do that with various target checking between the two. As we all know different ground changes results. I cruise around in HY/Normal with a sensitivity of 19, I can easily run 20 with any of the X-coils so I'm one that benefits a lot from the extra sensitivity as it doesn't change my stability at all and we are a place that tiny gold is the gold you're going to find 99% of the time, but I find 19 sensitivity has a more stable threshold which I like and going that extra notch to 20 doesn't seem to provide anything much more than a little bit more unstable threshold. In saying that, the 7000's a dream even at 20 to run for its stability over the 6000. I was just using the 7 with 8" yesterday after not using it for a few months as I wanted to get my money's worth out of the 6000 as if it plays up out of warranty, I'm just getting rid of it, I may even offload it before the warranty runs out as I don't have a lot of faith in it being a long lasting detector, what a smooth nice running detector the GPZ is by comparison, I'd forgotten how smooth it runs compared to the 6000, in fact it was just purring along perfectly.

Admittedly I had lost all interest in First Texas and their detectors for some time, I haven't been detecting all that many years but I jumped through the First Texas ranks with a GBP, GB2 and two models of the Teknetics T2 along with their F-Pulse, now I even have an F19 on its way. It appeared with their lack of new products and very dated models they were just another generic detecting company, not something to really pay much attention to. My most recent of their purchases was the F-Pulse not all that long after it came out, while a decent pinpointer it is hardly something to be excited about a company's prospects over. Other than a coil that nobody seems to know much about and I haven't been able to find anyone that actually bought one they haven't really released anything for a very long time, and when they did it was just a rehashed older model, or as we like to call them paint jobs. Recently they started an Ebay firesale letting buyers dictate the prices they are willing to pay for their detectors, and people have been getting fantastic deals, but if you sit down and think about it for a bit are the deals really fantastic or are they about the price the detector should be in today's market, with the various competitors leaving these models well behind, it seems more like they're working out the prices people would be willing to pay and running with it, they've probably sold more of their higher end detectors in the past month or so with this firesale than they have in a year or two. Suddenly First Texas is being talked about again by people that had little interest in their detectors when they were full price. Many of us predicted this would happen one day where their high-end machines are basically entry level in the modern marketplace. I was thinking this is it, they're just going to clear out the stock and wind up the hobby detector part of their business, then I took at look at their Facebook group, I hadn't bothered to look at it forever as they were just a stagnant business. To my surprise it was very active, mainly with their marketing of course but active none the less. Every few days they're doing posts marketing their products, this really took me by surprise, and they had no indication at all they're doing an Ebay fire sale, another surprise, if there was a good place to announce it you would think it would be their Facebook group with 24000 followers, that's a broad reach of people that would see their sale that may not know about it. I think they're just settling into the new normal, working out the ideal pricing for models where they can get sales and will then return to their status quo of selling the same old models for the next decade. They appear to have a larger focus on metal detecting products outside of the hobby market on their Facebook group too, which probably demonstrates where a much of their detecting income is derived from. Their last marketing post was only 2 hours ago. Here are some of their recent marketing posts. So, they do have a pretty active marketing person on Facebook, and someone making up fancy marketing pictures. I hope they survive as a hobby detecting company, and I really hope they've got at least one more "New" detector up their sleeve, a Gold Bug 3 would be something many of us would appreciate, but I'm sure a F75 SMF would be more of a crowd pleaser for a bulk of Fisher fans.

I know quite a few people have been wanting this, and many have been asking X-coils if they were going to do it, and it turns out they have been working away on it in the background experimenting with sizes and types of coils, and the first to be introduced is the 8" DOD coil compatible with the Axiom. 8" would be the coil I'd want the most for sure. A big bonus and something X-coils in particular wanted to take advantage of was the Axiom's discrimination abilities and by being a DOD design this makes that possible. It also detects along the entire length of the coil being a DOD. This coil is just plug and play, no adapters required (THANK YOU GARRETT). It's currently not for sale, I can't imagine it will be long until it is.