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. 

33 minutes ago, Jonathan Porter said:

The 6000 is all about light weight and amazing sensitivity on the sub gram stuff with good outright 5000 depth performance of which we are already very familiar. This has all been bundled into a modern electronics platform with the inclusion of GeoSense PI so the 5000 outright depth aspect of the 6000 will have a positive effect on its overall use. 

The 6000 does an amazing job at what it was designed for, namely pulling gold out of thrashed areas, everyone talks about not wanting to lower themselves to chasing ‘fly chit’ gold but at the end of the day its fun to go home with a few bits and pieces in the jar.

For me the situation has not changed except in one aspect, I no longer carry around an SDC as a mop up beeper for when the tiny pieces are plentiful and instead use the GPX 6000. For those times when I do not want to ‘rig up’ a 7000 the 6000 is just plain fun and if I do get my 6000 coil over a nice piece then at least I am now in with a chance. 

At the moment I’m seeing so many people making little comments about ‘why get a 6000 when I can still get tiny pieces with my GPX 5000 or GPZ 7000?’, it grows so tiresome seeing this type of remark!! The 6000 has not magically stopped the other techs from finding smaller pieces. The 6000 is going to be very popular with the hobbiest who just want to find a little nugget without all the weight and complication of other machines, they just want to switch on and start detecting and have half a chance of finding some gold no matter how small.

In the mean time my main stay detector is the GPZ 7000, it is still king of the mountain in spite of that mountain being huge and cumbersome. 😂 

JP

PS do you have any idea of how repetitive this sounds? 😡  For the past 20 odd years I’ve been saying the exact same damn thing every time a new detector comes out!!! Probably the worst machine in all those years was the GPX 4000 and it was still revolutionary thanks to the Sens Smooth type timings!!! 

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.  

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.  

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.  

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.