Gone Bush

Garrett Australia have ordered stock 👍

Hi Mate, Thanks for the suggestion but I’m sick of every detector having crap hanging off it so when there is a factory made quality solution available I’m going to go that way .

Peter, Garrett Australia are going to order some WR-1’s for local sales. $165.00 plus postage. I have ordered two and put you down for one. Email and tell them you are ‘Peter from Far North Queensland’ and to put your name on the list so you don’t miss out 👍

Yep. Spent three months on the Palmerville early last year. Detecting in a sauna…..

Just tried to order on their website. They don’t ship to Australia…………clowns, clowns everywhere

Thanks for the suggestion. Nenad has had these for a while. 60 milliseconds is borderline and it’s just another thing to hang off your detector and an additional thing to charge when there is a Garrett solution available. Wouldn't mind buying the whole kit (could use it on my older detectors I am too retarded to part with as well as Axiom) but the clowns at Garrett Australia don’t even have that!!! Corperate idiocy at its best

As you all know, I unfortunately got a dud Axiom. Contact from Garrett Australia, zero. Very poor. Contact from Garrett USA, zero. Also poor but that’s why you have distributors in each country. Problem resolved by dealer in record time. Now have a normally functioning Axiom and like it so much I sold both my 6000’s. However, the simplest of things has me wondering about the level of intelligence available to those who make the decisions at Garrett. Allow me to elaborate. Here in Western Australia, (what I would assume to be a major market), it’s hot. Tomorrow is 42 degrees Celsius or 108 Fahrenheit. Has anyone at Garrett, Australia or USA, ever detected in this environment or considered the requirements to do so? Headphones are impossible to use unless you want to jacuzzi your ears. Also impossible with a decent wide brim hat and fly net. Inbuilt speakers are only just ok but absolutely cost you gold especially if even a minor breeze gets going. Simple answer, (and a must have to be successful in the heat), ear buds. Problem solved. But how to have them wireless? Again, simple. Just order a WR-1 and get into it, right? Not quite that simple though. Contact my local and previously mentioned awesome Garrett dealer to order a couple of WR-1’s. But Garrett Australia says no longer available? How can that be? Retailers in USA have them listed and available ex stock? Ok, so just order from USA. Couple weeks and in business before the heat really gets here. But no, dealers in USA are not permitted to ship Garrett products internationally and refuse to supply. WTF? Ok, aftermarket alternatives like I had with 6000. Ooops, Z-Link is proprietary and nothing will work. Alternatives? Stuff around with cables, transmitters, receivers, amplifiers and other crap strapped to Axiom and me for hundreds of dollars (and adding weight so reducing one of Axiom’s advantages over 6000), to try and make it work when the perfect product is small, light, inexpensive and actually manufactured but not available??? Is Garrett Australia run, like so many companies now, by an accountant with a laptop, night school marketing degree and has never held a detector let alone made a living from using one? Why have a system like Z-Link but not have the components available? Why wouldn’t Garrett USA recognise that and make it a requirement for all their international distributors to stock WR-1 for use with Axiom? Or even include it in the Axiom package? An extra $100 at this price point would be irrelevant. So, choices are, hard boil my ears in headphones and not wear a decent wide brim hat or spend at least 5 times the price of WR-1 on aftermarket crap to make something work. Garrett drops the ball again

Agree. One of the ‘veterans’ in the gang, we’ll call him Pops, has been detecting for as long as detectors have been available and has the best skill set I have ever seen on everything up to a 5000. He regularly finds gold in similar quantities and sizes to everyone else with newer machines. I believe that he, with his 4500 and coil selection, would hit every bit of gold any other detector and operator would hit on. However, to achieve this, he sometimes changes coils three or four times at the same location, and goes over the same ground each time. This is one of the things the 7000 has tried to eliminate, the need to change coils for different sizes and depths of targets. But the sheer weight and size of 7000 physically prevents him from using it. Same with me now. He’s approaching 80 years old and even the 4500 and associated required paraphernalia is getting to much for him so middle of last year (2022) he bought a 6000. But he has never really learnt to completely trust it and constantly states that he feels like he is walking over gold. Unlikely, but I can understand how the dumbed down design of 6000 would make him feel that way. Also, he refuses to use headphones and we all know how great the speaker is on a 6000. Not a reflection of his abilities, just the reality of 6000 having a very limited range of adjustment compared to what he has been used to for many years. It’s now difficult to get him out in the field. So one of the things I am most looking forward to is letting him play with Axiom, hoping the adjustability will get him motivated again. Your stated progression is, I think, correct and, based on watching Pops for all these years, and what Bo’s response to Axiom was I would add to it as follows: Only ever used any GPX up to 5000, 7000 to heavy, Axiom. Only ever used 7000 and need a lighter alternative, Axiom. Used GPX up to 5000 then moved to 7000 but need lighter alternative, Axiom. Used GPX up to 5000, young and fit, good disposable income, 7000 and NF coil. Only ever used SDC but want better results with similar usability, 6000. Perhaps later add a NF coil or two. First detector and looking to make or supplement income with ease of use a priority, 6000 with NF 16 x 10 and 12 x 7. First detector and looking to make or supplement income, prepared to learn more than turn on and go, 7000 too heavy, Axiom. First detector and looking for rugged all purpose machine to just have fun with, SDC. First detector, young and fit, good disposable income, looking for just one detector, 7000 and NF coil. The list goes on. What I would say, to those prospectors with good experience, PLEASE don’t just recommend a newbie buy the exact same machine you have because it has been good for you. The last 10 years I have seen many people come and go from prospecting because they had a detector that was completely unsuitable for their style of detecting, location, learning ability or some other reason. This is particularly relevant with GPX up to 5000. One particular retailer here is well known for taking peoples money, giving them a 5000 and booting them out the door with zero training. Customer then drives 500 miles into the bush and realises they really have no idea what they are doing and spends half their time watching YouTube videos trying to make the machine work how the unscrupulous sales person told them it would, eventually giving up in disgust. A sure recipe for disaster and another potential advocate for prospecting lost. Prospecting, at least here in Australia, is under constant attack from government and corporate interests, (one and the same now), so every new prospector is another voice against the whackos that would ban it all together. If you meet someone that is a newbie, please take the time to make sure they are not just another transient victim of the black magic that is electronic prospecting. You really don’t have to do anything more than perhaps show them a patch that might still give them a nugget or two and maybe even spend an hour or two making sure they have a good understanding of their machine. Overall a very minor expense to you but an effort that will repay you many times over. Just a couple of hours spent will pale into insignificance when that person comes to you beaming with pride for having found their first nugget, no matter it’s size. Remember your first nugget? It matters. And, I would add, I have had, on many occasions, cold calls from previously unknown tenement holders to ask if ‘I wouldn’t mind taking some newbie they met in the pub or caravan park that’s just arrived in town and has no clue out onto their tenement, and helping them get started’ thus giving me another precious place to detect. The largest nugget I have found with 6000 came to me in exactly this way. Reality is, that local tenement holder, once identified by the roaming newbie, are likely doing this just to get the newbie off their back and the interruption passed onto someone else. I’m good with that. If they are prepared to allow me and the newbie access to their ground simply because I get the newbie out of their hair, bring it on. So, please always remember, we where all newbies once and in my case if Pops had not taken me under his wing way back when, I don’t think I would have continued with prospecting. He, and the gang, are also now lifelong friends. Different topic, a while back I said I would revisit old patches with 6000 and NF 16 x10. Obviously, now 6000 is gone, (literally picked up an hour ago 😥), this will not be the case. However, I may soon have a non Garrett 15 x 9 test coil for Axiom. Please don’t ask. So that, and getting access to a historically rich group of over 25 local tenements as part of the 6000 sale, means I am now going to stay in Kalgoorlie for at least the next few months until it starts to cool off up north.

That’s about the state of it. Like Steve H said, and I completely agree, if you have a 6000, stick with it and get the NF coils. Awesome package. Otherwise, I would say get Axiom. Once coils for Axiom are readily available, I think it will then be absolutely the detector to have. Must admit to being very surprised that Bo is going Axiom. Spoke to him tonight about that. Think I know why now. Could be wrong but I get the feeling that having not used any detector apart from his 4500 then having both the 6 and Axiom to try may have unintentionally corrupted his choice. I didn’t consider that someone who has had a 4500 for years and the subsequent control that machine allows the user would likely gravitate to a machine like Axiom with more available control rather than less available control like 6000. When I first got the 6000, (May 2021), and went out the first time I do remember thinking that if they can make a detector this simple and this good, why would you ever want to mess about with settings like you do on the older GPX or the 7000. Didn’t help when after 2 weeks I had recovered the cost of 6000 and then some. Sold the 7000 I was dragging around and never looked back. However, one thing I didn’t consider in all this was location. Around home base, roughly 1000 klms north west of Kalgoorlie, there are only two locations I know, out of maybe 2-300 we go to, that I can’t run 6000 maxed out and clean up. That is changing, and rapidly. This year, 2023, I have already noticed that available ground to prospect on has drastically reduced around home. A huge number of tenements that where pending and available are now live and out of bounds. Permissions are drying up as more and more prospectors also fall victim and tenement holders, especially larger mining companies, are saying no to prospectors on their tenements. This will mean having to step outside my comfort zone. Normally, I would research, using Trilobite, geological conditions and pick a tenement with ground that I like. Not like just because of likely gold deposits, but also like because it would be easy to detect. This year may be a steep learning curve and being picky is already looking like being unviable. May no longer be able to afford being a prima dona about where I go. So, whether I like it or not, I will have to go onto areas that I would not normally consider. Here, around Kalgoorlie, not only is there maybe 80% less ground available to prospect on than there is at home, it’s more variable, more mineralised and generally more difficult. To make matters worse (better?), this being the first time in two years that I have spent any solid time in this area, I hardly used the 6 here these last few weeks before getting Axiom and going out with it to play. For that, I am eternally grateful. It has taught me that I should not be as lazy as the 6000 has made me because any future success will likely be in areas and on ground that I would normally shy away from knowing it is hard work with the 6, particularly how I use it. All the time I have spent messing about and assessing Axiom and all the things that are the same, better or worse than a 6 and I think that what will prove to be it’s most important feature, at least for my application, is it’s ability to better handle mineralisation and variations in the ground. Since having the replacement unit, not once have I had to ‘work around a hot spot’ or ‘dial it back’ to enable it to run comfortably on any location I have chosen. It has just worked, and worked well, usually on 6 sensitivity or higher and on fine. Perhaps that is the new benchmark, not just being able to detect small gold but doing it in difficult areas that would normally fight you to give up its gold. I don’t know, just rambling out loud really. Whatever the future holds, it will be without my 6000. Tonight, just before starting this post, I accepted an offer and sold it. Surprisingly difficult to let go of but the love affair was over. We still have the ‘community’ (for want of a better word) almost new 6000 back at home base but I am now sure my future will be with Axiom. July wedding, on the beach with reception at lifeguards club rooms. All gifts minimum of 5 grams please. I’m such a dickhead 🤪

I also got slightly longer cables but when building my truck/camper we purposely made a compartment in the rear to hold detector bags. Right next to the inverter so only needed a little more length on both the USB-C for the detector and Micro USB for the headphones. Its still just sitting on pieces of foam at the moment while I wait for the custom padded bag I have ordered. For those of you who don't know the State of Western Australia (WA) actually means "Wait Awhile". Also, being quite tall at 6 feet 5 inches, (we stack shit high in Australia), I need the shaft at pretty much full extension but when you pull it out far enough to let the pin locks click in, it feels a little flexible at the joints so I have drilled additional holes in the shafts about 20 mm back from the standard ones. That means when I pull the shaft out, the pin locks click into my holes at the perfect length for me and feels much more solid. As you can see in the pictures below, the compartment is long enough to leave the smaller shaft fully extended and I have used all the Velcro straps that came with the replacement 6000 coils to mount the cable on the top of the lower shaft. Don't really know if this helps in any way but did read somewhere that its beneficial to keep the cable away from the coil as much as possible. Anyway, going out to a new spot tomorrow so if anything good happens I will make a video. Good luck everyone

Peter, Sorry for delay, been busy. First thing I should say that I don't think I have mentioned earlier, the replacement Axiom's headphones and audio is much better than the original unit. No constant clicking noise. Does still drop out every now and then when you get in the wrong position but otherwise audio is on par with 6000. Bo's comments: I like it. Its not that it is hugely better than a 6000 on finding gold but the menu and setting options you have available, especially adjustable tone just make it a better overall detector to use. Tried pretty much every setting and sensitivity 4-6, fine, medium swing, tone 62 worked for me pretty much anywhere I tried it. Some places sensitivity 7-8 was useable but I don't like my detector noisy like you do so I found 6 to be my go to. Same as the 6000, you said run it flat out with threshold on but I didn't like it up there. Depending on the ground, I used sensitivity 6 up to 9, sometimes 10 on the 6000. Particularly like the weight and balance of the Axiom. A huge step from my 4500. The 6000 is not that different to the Axiom in that regard but the Axiom still feels better to hold and use. Lighter by not much but noticeable. Think that weight difference could mainly be battery really? Also feels a better quality unit. Better built. One dislike is that you have to have the detector close to a power source for charging or buy a really long USB-C cable. I keep my 4500 behind the seat in my ute because I can take the battery to the power point. With the Axiom I will either need to arrange power behind the seat or take it inside every time I get home to charge it or run a power lead to the ute. Also worry that if battery fails, what will it cost to replace? That's probably a minor complaint but having had battery's fail on my 4500 it did concern me. You didn't give me the standard coil for the 6000 so I could only compare it to the 12 x 7 (I think) [correct] that was on it. With that coil I think they are pretty even in just ability to find gold, depth etc. Don't know that the Axiom being a couple of years younger detector contributes that much to just detection ability but the available settings do make it a better option for me. If Tay [Bo's wife] ever wanted to have a go I think I would probably give her a 6000 because it is much more a turn on and go thing but I like having the options that 6000 doesn't have. Another thing, you said that 6000 with the larger NF coil will be awesome. While I trust you on that, I don't want a detector with a vastly reduced range of available coils like the 6000. As you know I have 9 coils for the 4500 and I think the ability to buy coils from many different manufacturers is a huge thing for me. Anyway, I will be ordering the Axiom. Its cheaper to, not by much, but that could be two coils!!! I have sent you a pic of what we got over the 5 days. See you next month in Widgie.

No worries, you must be bored!!!

Hi Peter, Will do.

Hi Mate, Really hate auto ground tracking so never thought to give it a run with the replacement machine. Just a trust issue. However, I admit that 6000’s auto tracking in Auto 2 (maxed out or 12) with threshold back on did not seem to be very intrusive and, as far as I know, did not impact my weight at all. Possibly even helped. As you said, I would also assume it’s preset at slow or very slow because it still allowed the feedback while pinging tiny targets. As noisy and variable as Axiom sounds on the ground variations in that creek, that’s exactly how I want it to be. The more even a threshold is, the less I trust what I’m hearing. Even on very mild ground I will crank a detector up until I can hear even the slightest variations in mineralisation. While I fully understand what you mean and you now have me curious, it would be, for me, like going from a mono coil to DD. 🤮 Been thinking the reason I took to Axiom so quickly is that it allows me to have that undulating and very communicative threshold while still giving me confidence that any target will be easily audible above that threshold. Thats where the tone adjustment is so awesome and such an underrated feature, especially for me. The tone of the 6000 is not bad per se but now, having the ability to make the detectors tone suit me rather than vice versa, has shown me just how important tone adjustment is. Axiom may not actually be any better than 6000 at target separation and it’s just the adjustable and more personalised tone that makes it seem that way. Likely a bit of both. Another thing worth mentioning, regarding tone, after a day using Axiom I don’t feel like I’ve had enough the way I do with the 6000. I don’t take the Axioms headphones of and think ‘thank god for that’ like I do with 6000. Doesn’t seem as mentally draining as 6000. Gave Axiom to Bo tonight so he can have a play this week while I’m busy with other things. Wasn't going back to hell creek again but it’s only about 3 klms off the Coolgardie road so once I get Axiom back I will call in on the way past for a quick swing and mess about with auto tracking and make a video. I’ll go right down the south end where we got the shits with all the rubbish. At least that might show target response on that ground with auto tracking on and off.

All coils I have seen are solid as well