dig4gold

Come on now. You don't think we will believe that do you? 😂 D4G

Got yours coming Phrunt? D4G

Gezz Reg. That was a bit heavy handed. You get out of bed on the wrong side, or had a bit much home brew top shelf? You obviously really miss Finders. D4G

Thanks, but I do enjoy your journal. D4G

Thank you Gerry & Phrunt. While the 6000 has been a shambles & a frustration for many, I somehow have not had issues with mine. Touch wood. We do know who the tester were Gerry. Maybe they were just not aware of the issues at that time or ML did ignore them. JP did promote it as being highly strung & on the edge due to the nature of the beast & its heightened sensitivity & jittery nature therefore etc etc. I am not a Minelab basher as such as I have loved all my ML machines. I just don't like their business model antics in controlling their market share/domination & take my hat off to the likes of X coils who developed a work around for the chip on the 7000 & have obviously made a heap of very good coils that has called ML out on their say so that a 10" coil wasn't physically possible to make with the amount of wire winding required in the small space of a 10" coil. Despite them saying they would make a 10" coil. X coils pumped out not only a 10" but also an 8" coil & many more. The CC's being from what I have seen a huge hit. Left egg on ML's face & has basically called them out as liars. @Phrunt. I find it interesting that the bit of gold you did find while detecting with Mitchel was found with the 6000 & an aftermarket coil despite your favoritism being with the 7000 & 8" X coil that found you nothing. While you showed that video of your patch clean up at the area you took Mitchel too with the 7000 & 8" X coil. Who is to say that the 6000 wouldn't have found those with the 10x5 Goldhawk coil in among those thyme bushes? I have to admit that the 15" CC seems very impressive. D4G

Count me out. Sounds like the old Finders forum in Aussie. D4G

See..... You could put up photos of your travels while traveling. Nice. Shame you got no gold detecting but nice of JW to give you a sample to take away with you. Shame he couldn't tag along with you. He would have been a mind/mine of info. Don't suppose you got a photo of his gold, did you ask if you could? The Mitchell Gully Mine isn't too far away from where I am. D4G

Sad you got a dud & also lost 12 months of critical detecting time. Especially as your friend got one quite early as we both got one about the same time as we were communicating a bit at that time. He got 12 months on you & most likely on the ground you have been doing as well. That is my point with the "early bird gets the worm" comment in my earlier post. Also that ML honour their warranties so any issues they will sort out. From memory you were so frustrated with your dud out of the box that you bashed it & it came to life. Whether that was good or bad & that maybe you should have sent it back under warranty, you will never know. I guess by going public that you bashed it would void your warranty anyway. Not everybody in detecting world is evil or has evil intent. That is most likely not the right way to word it but I am referring to X coils (the non evil party) & again those that went down that path, & obviously as it turned out against Minelabs wishes & many others, the early bird again got the worm. I am one that didn't go down that path but most definitely see its benefits. Despite all the fallout from that saga if it wasn't for X coils pushing minelabs hand we wouldn't have the NF Z search coils that so many go on about being better than the ML coils for the 7000. Any innervation, no matter who or where it comes from, has to benefit us detector/coil users. I think we are now all up to speed on Minelabs business model of mining the miners & ham stringing their detector/coil combinations in regards to aftermarket coils that don't get their approval.... for obvious financial reasons to them & their detector sales. Competition is good & are other manufacturers now going to get a good slice of the pie or is it too late with gold getting harder to find by the day. Despite its high price at the moment, the glory days are over & we are just struggling along on the vapour of an oily rag. D4G

MMMMmmmm.... You wait a further 12 months & there will be less gold for you to find. Early bird gets the worm. One thing for sure is that ML honour their warranties & your mates who get the new detector straight off the bat will get the gold you would have most likely shared in with them. Food for thought. D4G

Fair enough. Thanks. Just goes to show, again, that no one detector or coil combos do it all. I take it too that you are talking about totally detecting previously hammered ground & not out general prospecting for new virgin stuff? That is a different ball game all together. In the perfect world we would all love a stable, smooth, rock solid threshold. When pushing detectors to their limits, especially on hammered ground trying to squeak out that bit more depth/sensitivity, the threshold is going to suffer. It then becomes a matter of dealing with that but still knowing what the detector/ground is telling you. Bit like Steve's insane high end settings. Not for everybody & obviously not for you but can be the difference in hearing signals among that "noise". The reality of that "noise" is that it just becomes part of the threshold to your ear & your brain/hearing adapts to it almost subconsciously given a bit of time & any target signals stand out. D4G

Don't you have a "say" with minelab anymore with their detectors &/or testing them? D4g

@Phrunt. I thought after the EMI fix on your 6000 that you loved it. What's changed? D4G

Lets just hope it doesn't have the issues the 6000 had. D4G

That's the truth right there. I am with you on that score. I was at a spot the other day that I had not been to for ages as my first time there I got nothing. I have learnt a lot more since then. The other day there were signs of old dig holes & scrapes not backfilled but had grassses growing in them. I saw no recent activity so the thought crossed my mind that maybe there just isn't any gold left. Obviously at one point there was & I had to believe that there still was. The area was high above a gold rich river that was littered with old worked ground. Water races & tailing races cutting through the schist bedrock, layers of stacked rock of both river/glacial & also broken up bed rock. Lots of exposed schist bedrock but mother nature was doing its best to repair the scars that mankind had inflicted & was quite quickly now covering the bedrock. I saw some scaley rotted flakey schist bedrock on the edge of a steep drop off down into the river. Waved my coil very slowly over it & got a faint signal. Scraped away at it & it was a small bit of gold. Then another. Then nothing. That run of bedrock then started to have a layer of deeper material over it & for no other reason than the bedrock had coughed up some bits of gold for me I just scraped away some of that material to get the coil closer to the bedrock. Bingo.... more gold. This bedrock ran along to a quite big crevice that had a small dead tree in it but with the branches sticking out everywhere I couldn't get my coil in there. I went back to my iron horse & grabbed a pair of loppers I had in there & trimmed off all the branches & managed to break out the trunk. Long story short, I got three nice little bits of gold for just shy of 2 grams. Moral of this yarn is that no gold is easy gold & you need to do a bit of rock & material removal to get your coil into those spots that the gold likes to hide in & that nobody else has bothered to do or just didn't think about doing it. You will be surprised at the gold left behind. D4G

Don't Minelab "talk" to you dealers? D4G

Excellent Lanny. Always tib bits of priceless info & advice in your writings. Thanks for sharing. I can't wait for your book. D4G

Yes it certainly does Lanny. Good on you. D4G

But.... what if it was faulty? You will never know now. I also wonder that the people that go on about the Z Search, have they tried any X coils? If not, then they will never know either. So, does it become an us & them thing? D4G

Time... aren't you on holiday? Connections.... most places you stay at will have free wifi. Even MacDonald's has free wifi. D4G

How about a nugget or two? I am sure he would like that more than a flake or two. If detecting fails you could take him panning down the Arrow or by the Oxenbridge Tunnel on the Shotover & almost be guaranteed a flake or two from my experience. D4G

From my understanding he got one 2nd hand, considered it a lemon & chopped the chip end off it to make an adapter for his X coils. There was a long standing debate from JP that it may have been a faulty coil from production but Phrunt just roasted it & gave it no 2nd chances. D4G

Well... it did find you gold so you shouldn't be too hard on it. D4G

I agree, the stock 11" is a great coil on the 6000 outside of its issues. I have been lucky with it so far in regards to those issues. The 10x5 is great for in the water creek detecting on the 6000. It has kind of taken over from the Gold Monster for me in that department because of its extra depth & edge sensitivity while still deadly on the tiny stuff. The 10x5 has proved itself to me finding gold in creeks the GM missed. Being just that bit deeper. On absolute bed rock scrubbing I would still give the GM the nod but throw in a bit of gravel & more depth then the 10x5 holds its own. Throw in some crevices & the ability of dragging the 10x5 on its edge down those crevices & its edge sensitivity comes into play as well. Like any detector & coil combo it comes down to the terrain, & the size & depth of gold expected. No one set up is going to do it all. D4G

I am sure you & JW can make that happen. D4G

Yes, he has been very slack in photos. None in fact. What he tells, & that is very minimal, kind of means nothing without photos. A photo tells a thousand words & would make his sharing of his journey a lot more meaningful. D4G