Condor

Fat Bastard Prospecting, all his videos are entertaining unless you're offended by common Aussie prospector language. He does a quick run with the new 6000, not a great deal of new information but entertaining none the less.

JP, I've followed every one of your reviews and tips way back to the first GPX and I well remember the heat you have taken on each new Minelab release. The old Finders Forum was a hoot because for me it's a hobby and the unbridled opinions and malice expressed by its members defied logic. My post was rhetorical, just bringing some of the various internet comments and questions to one place for a little pre-release exposure here in the US. Me and most of the DP members are anxiously waiting for your unrestrained views and experiences with the new 6000. Your expertise is always appreciated.

I'm trying not to fall into the NursePaul philosophy of buy high/sell low and what don't get stolen you can give away. If I had 20% of the value Paul's stuff that's been stolen, I'd buy 2 6000s.

You know me, I've got to have all the right tools for the right jobs. Unfortunately, I've got a champagne taste on a Pabst Blue Ribbon budget. I've got to keep that Doodle Dog in tennis balls, she destroys 2 a day and I'm buying them by the gross.

I've got some Girl Scout Cookies about to mature. We'll do some horsetrading.

Hey Chuck, I only need to sell a kidney if I can't possibly get by with one or the other of these high dollar Minelab tools. I've already held on to a Deus, a Tarsacci and an Equinox. Maybe I need to cut back on my detector addiction.

Are JP et al trading in their Z7000s in favor of the 6000? Is this the "Go To" machine for everyday prospectors? From initial reports it would appear the 6000 excels at sub half gram nuggets in OZ soils, but isn't expected to compete with the 7000 on bigger/deeper gold. Here in the US, will I have to sell a kidney for the luxury of having both detectors? It may be some time before us CONUS prospectors even see the availability of such a machine, do I sell the 7000 before the market is flooded? Does anybody know what the recovery time is for a kidney donor?

Summers here really suck and last summer we spent all our time on the road prospecting anyway. There's no way I could be cooped up in the heat. I only moved back to Yuma to provide logistics and support for my son to finish his college degree at the NAU extension. He's finished, got a great job and his own place, so my work here is done. I'll come back in the winter, my girlfriend and I both have family and friends here. When I get up there I'm going to put one of those trackers on Lundy and plot his movements by satellite to find all those secret patches.

Not at all through with Baja, but the Covid restrictions kept us out. You could fly down to the tourist areas, but you couldn't drive down Baja. The border areas were open for shopping and medical, but further travel inland was restricted. Next year hopefully we'll get back down there.

I should have tried the pinpointer, but generally their sensitivity to small matchhead nuggets is wanting, you have to get right on them. I had this big pile of softball sized overburden rocks and big chunks of rotted granite to contend with so I opted to stick with the 7000 coil and plastic scoop. I just got my new Coiltek coil for the NOX yesterday, that would have been a great test.

We caught a break in the 90+ temps in Yuma for one last trip. Ostensibly, it was to be a quick trip to the spot we found the bigger gold in Feb and to test the X-Coil 15" Concentric coil over the ground we had covered extensively with the X-Coil 17x12 and stock coil. It's about a 1/2 mile walk to the spot but I pulled up short to detect a wash we were about to cross. My friend with the Concentric coil went on to the target area. I am using the 7000 with stock coil while waiting for some re-work on my patch lead for the X-Coils. I had worked the lower sections of this particular wash back in Feb and found 6 little bits in one small area, the rest of the wash seemed barren. My goal was work the wash towards our target area just to get the machine warmed up and my listening skills tuned in. I was working pretty quick really looking for a sitting duck rather than slow and methodical because this wash hadn't produced too well. About 100 yds on, I hit a pretty good tone right up against the wash sidewall. I pulled out the bigger of non-specie gold in the picture. From there over about 20 yds I pulled 3 more small pieces then hit the smaller specie gold on an inside bend of the wash. I continued up the wash and found the bigger specie dead center of the wash down in the bedrock. I found 1 more tiny bit up on the bank, but then starting hitting a lot of trash targets so I turned around and reworked the wash for 0 nuggets. Because of the specie pieces I then started a circle on the hillsides all around the area for nothing. I put down my gear and walked to the target area to check on my friend with the Concentric coil. He had found 2 pieces in an area well detected on our previous trips and attributed it to the overall sensitivity of the Concentric on small targets. Because of the heat and short trip we had no opportunity to make any comparisons on undug targets. I worked my way back down the wash to the RZR, over areas I had covered in Feb. On the last bend I was picking my way down a slick rock slide area and waved my coil over some overburen covering a layer of bedrock above me. I got a faint tone and started pulling down the overburden and reached some decomposing granite bedrock. The target sound got better so I ended up busting out the bedrock trying to pick up the target down in a deep crack. As I got further down, the target got weaker and I thought I was pushing it deeper in the crack, so I busted out some more bedrock. I finally picked up a half a matchhead size nugget and thought that just couldn't be right. As good as the 7000 is on small gold, that just didn't seem right. I then waved over my spoils pile with all this overburden and busted up granite. Targets everywhere. The sun beating down on me and I'm on my knees sorting through the spoils trying to pinpoint tiny targets with a 14" coil. After about 1/2 hr, I got most of them, 6 matchhead size nuggets. If I had my handy NOX, I could have made short work of this mess, but maybe I'll go back for the crumbs next year. I'm moving to Reno in a couple weeks, I'll be a snowbird in Yuma next year.

Over the years we've touched on the difference between High Impedance vs. Low Impedance headphones. Historically, the headphones designed for detecting have been High Impedance, and all were equipped with 1/4 inch headphone plug. Everyone developed a preference for their brand because of the way they fit and sound. These days more detectors are set up for the 1/8 inch headphone plugs and a few detecting headphones have offered that choice. The technology is clearly moving away from all wired headphones in favor of wireless. The market is really directed at music and communication devices, not detecting. I'm just curious how the impedance issue affects the newer technology. The latency of wireless is a completely separate discussion, but may be necessary to understand the importance of Impedance. I have always used in ear monitors rather than over the ear headphones. It's just more practical in the desert environment of sunny Yuma. The majority of "ear buds" for lack of a better term are low impedance designed for listening to music on low powered handheld players. The high impedance ear monitors are available but quite expensive. The GPZ tends to overpower el cheapo ear buds and produces a really unpleasant sound. My question is twofold: what was our understanding of the importance of Impedance in the old days with wired headphones and how/if that has changed with wireless.

With one of those keepers I might well have to buy another pinpointer. I hate to highjack the thread, but what are we considering the best pinpointer for nugget hunting these days.

I like the bright orange because I'm careless and seem to lose a half dozen every year. I've already lost 2 of the green ones in the past month. I've quit buying Pinpointers for the same reason. I think I got these from Rob's Detectors.

This is the same area you and I looked for a couple months ago. My mistake on that trip was "you can't get there from here" on those old roads we used. They were all washed out from that approach and the old USGS description probably mistaken as to location.

He said he might come through here, we'll leave a light on for him.

Another forum member and I decided to explore some new ground about 80 miles from home in Sunny Yuma. We were working off some of the old USGS pubs for ideas on new areas or at least new areas to us. We set off yesterday exploring offroad in the RZR for these extinct placer works. The first 2 locations really did not look like gold producing areas and we couldn't find any evidence of old workings. Abandoning that area we just started driving some of the old tracks looking for evidence of placer works. By early afternoon we had about decided to give up when I spotted a new, bright yellow claim sign down the end of a wash. We drove down there to see what was the ground looked like. A quick hike revealed the claim owners were drywashing a small gully to bedrock fairly recently. We decided to take an adjacent wash and see if we could find similar looking ground. We drove to the end of the wash and although it was getting late in the day we set off to explore the zone about 1/2 mile from the other claim. There was no sign of placer works in a series of desert washes with shallow bedrock. About 30 minutes in, I get a decent target sound and started digging. My friend ended up in the same gully and came up as I was digging. We got to bedrock and using a pinpointer found a small nugget. He went on while I finished up. I swept the hole one last time and got another tone. To make a long story tolerable, I found 4 nuggets in the same hole. I got another couple tiny nuggets on the way back to the RZR, he got 1. We hit it again today trying to expand on our search. I found a decent nugget right off, then nothing for the next hour. We met up to compare notes, he had found 1 as well. We split up again and not 50 yds away I got a good tone right next to a bedrock dropoff. I dug for close to 45 minutes pulling 8 small nuggets out of the same hole. I found nothing else the rest of the day. He found a spot that produced 3 nuggets in the same hole and a spot that produced 2 nuggets in the same hole. It's not unheard of that certain conditions concentrate the nuggets in a favorable spot. But, the rest of the wash was apparently barren. I supposed if we dug through the overburden there might be more small nuggets on bedrock, but that's like working. We were in essence "blue sky" detecting, not having any specific knowledge about the area. Here in Yuma you can't find a desert wash that hasn't been drywashed, so you have a clue that gold has been found before. Out there, there were no clues to previous gold finds or what might be gold producing areas. So we were lucky, or as Louis Pasteur said "Luck favors the prepared mind". Hard work and persistence paid off this time. It's the possibilities that keep us going, not the probabilities. I'm not computer literate enough to fix these angles, Steve H will step in at some point and make them more viewable. 2.38grams is yesterdays single hole. 2.78 is yesterdays total. 2.52 is todays from a single hole. 1.10 is the lonesome nugget I found this morning. The scoop in the hole shows the glory hole of 8 nuggets. The other photos are both our nuggets from today on the tailgate of my truck. I don't have a weight on his nuggets.

The one I got was a company called Burton. The model was called Gig, there were different sizes, I got the 158cm size that accommodates 2 snowboards. I think it was $119.00

As far as a carry case, Beatup came up with a great idea for the 7000. It's a double snowboard bag, 158cm fits the collapsed 7000 perfect. Not a hard case mind you, but it's padded with waterproof luggage type exterior and heavy duty zippers. It offers some protection bouncing around in my RZR, I bungee it to my overhead rack so there is still room for all the other gear in the rear compartment. I'll try and find the website if anyone is interested.

Maybe they can offer another cash jackpot for someone who can find gold with a Long Range Locator or whatever they're calling those things these days.

His money will be safe. The James Randi Education Foundation used to offer one million dollars to anyone who could demonstrate powers that defy the laws of nature, plenty of dousers tried and failed. The Amazing Randi died last year and will be missed. Everybody knows someone who can douse water, electrical etc., they just can't seem to do it under scientific scrutiny. Too much negative energy from those skeptics I guess. A woman who worked in the prospecting shop in Temecula was said to have the gift of dousing gold. I wondered aloud why she was working there and not living in a big mansion on the hill. My comments were not well received by the true believers eying those 21st century dousing rods. I'll be quiet now, lest I stir up a hornets nest of believers.

Yeah, it was right next to those Toyota keys you lost.

I'm out there swinging that coil nearly everyday and finding nothing but crumbs. I got out late this morning in an area that was shown to me about 16 yrs ago by Rob Allison and Bill Southern. I detect that area all the time because it's nearly in my backyard here in Sunny Yuma. This morning I noticed a short gully that was kind of hidden by the rolling hills that I had overlooked all these years. Lots of drywash tailings stacked on a low bench above the gully. I didn't see any obvious dig holes and started working the bench. Not 5 minutes in, I get a decent target signal smack dab in the middle of that bench. After digging through the old tailings, I started hitting virgin hardpack caliche about a foot down. At a sensitivity of 1 on the 7000 with the 15x10 X-Coil, I could just barely pinpoint the nugget without blowing my ears off. I got out the dental pick and started breaking up the caliche so as to not damage the nugget. A good 30 minutes of work and out popped this sweet specie nugget. I'm running High Yield, Normal, Sens 12, Threshold 27. I criss-crossed that bench 4 more times without a target. As a last resort I jacked up the Sensitivity to 20 and turned down the threshold to 21. The threshold at 21 sounds like distant Morse Code blips. In these conditions I listen for the distant blips to blend with a slight hum. I chase a lot of hot rocks and seams of clay, but every now and then it pays off. So I found the small nugget about 20 ft from the bigger one and a solid 12 inches deep. Slowly working my way towards that new GPX6000.

I'm 1/4 of the way to that new GPX 6000. I'd better keep humping those hills before the Yuma summer arrives.

The later photos of my nuggets are after cleaning in CLR and sonic jewelry cleaner.