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Keep in mind though - I said the same statement after using the X Coils (and I got flack for it too). I said to me the X Coils obsolete the need for the NF coil. And I still stand by that statement today. But the NF is good coil - great to those unwilling to cut a cable. But to me, that coil was obsolete before it was even released. Similarly, my 4500 hasn't left my closet since I got X Coils and especially since I got my 6000. The 4500 and 5000 are to me very obsolete platforms - I have zero interest ever running them again. And I believe as a platform, the 7000 itself in terms of electronics design and ergonomics is already close to obsolete if it had any serious competitor. It's an old, stodgy, dinosaur platform to me that feels like how the 3500 felt to me when I first started detecting for gold. If not for the X Coils, I doubt I'd use it much anymore quite honestly, but I also don't do a lot of ultra accurate patch cleaning anymore these days either, clearly there is no equal to it yet there.

The reason I am stating my opinion is based on what I am reading in the old and newer modified ZVT patents Bruce Candy outlines that technically speaking, ZVT should be superior to any type of PI due to the relative lack of X contamination during sampling without the pulse decay, as well as the lack of a decay time interfering with target sampling. That isn't what we are seeing today with current models though. At least not exactly. Given that the SDC (IMO anyways) has better or at least equal X ground performance generally than the 7000, and that the 6000 can almost keep up with the GPZ in terms of small bit sensitivity - it stands to reason that the 7000 implementation of ZVT was not optimal early on and has room for measurable improvement. From that, it would stand to reason that almost 10 years of development time should have resulted in a more optimal ZVT implementation by now. Especially in terms of dealing with X component in soils, as well as further refining target sampling improvements. If I've made an error in reasoning there, I'd be curious what it is. Because lacking insider information, that seems like the logical conclusion to make based on the data the public have at hand. I understand the whole withhold technology at a drip pace thing Minelab does, for sure. That's another issue, it's hard to predict what the business department does though, and I suspect it changes with the wind sometimes, so I refrain from speculating there. But if they release an 8000 with better X handling than the SDC, improved target response for both short and long time constants, and more ergonomic to match the 6000 then I stand by my statement - to me that would obsolete the SDC, 6000, and 7000 entirely - as in - I doubt I'd use any of those 3 again if I had such a machine. Improve the EMI filtering and my opinion would likely be strengthened.

jasong, please don't take it personally. Everyone is so sensitive these days. All Steve said was that what you want is unrealistic. I don't have any inside information on anything 😄 but even without it, Minelab has demonstrated that their strategy is to give you just enough to peak your interest in their newest machine. I learned that lesson quite well when I prematurely bit on the 6000, figuring it was going to be a better 5000. Maybe there will not be a 8000 that is better than the 7000, but different like the 5000 to the 6000. One thing seems evident to me and that is the detecting industry has only one way to go and that is to trickle what's left of new technology to us. Otherwise they will cease to exist. Right now they are tweaking of what's left to tweak. What else are they to do - give us a machine that can REALLY tell gold from iron from aluminum? It will never happen. That would be their death.

Not sure if it's a bean counter thing or an engineering thing. There is nothing to do but speculate since Minelab remains so opaque about literally everything they do. Based on their patents though, I suspect it's the former and not the latter, since the verbiage used in the 2023 patents seems to indicate exactly this - PI's should have no business being as sensitive or as good on X ground as ZVT machines. Yet, they seem to be competitive compared to the 7000, in the SDC's case it's handles X ground better I think while still being quite sensitive. So the logical conclusion to me would be a new ZVT machine improving measurably, at least in terms of ground handling.

Theoretically, the big thing with ZVT was it's immunity to X soil components due to the lack of contamination from having to sample during long decay periods like with a PI. While simultaneously having much greater sensitivity for the same reasons - no pulse decay to muddy the waters, sampling at zero voltage instead, thus it can hear ultra fast transient targets (tiny gold). This should mean that technically the GPZ should vastly outperform the SDC in bad ground. And the 6000 should have no business being close to as sensitive as a good ZVT machine, which means the 7000 was at least semi subpar for a ZVT machine if a PI can match it. I expect improvements. The 8000 seems like it should improve greatly on both sensitivity as well as bad ground handling (well, X anyways, maybe not C/salt). I think many people are expecting far too little from whatever this next machine should be, because all this stuff shoulda been doable by 2017. Now we have a decade of EMI mitigation hardware/algo advancements, better coils, better ergonomics. My expectations are high for this machine. If it ever shows up. I expect a machine that obsoletes the SDC, 6000 and 7000 entirely.

Very prescient, as it seems to be happening now. After having had both the GPZ and the 6000, it would be really hard to go back to any kind of heavier machine. The 7000 is cumbersome and unpleasant anywhere but in open spaces and the harness is a pain. What are chances that a replacement isn’t heavier than the 6000? Even if not, the price is assured to be astronomical and dissuasive for us novices. Sure would love to have a MF Gold Monster or to see what an updated SDC with a faster processor could do.

Agree totally with that. A 3000 was listed on our online auction site for NZ$800 & got passed in but it did sell so a deal must have been struck. I was very tempted myself. If your spot is virgin ground you are very lucky & a 7000 would be a killer. Even with the standard 14x13 coil. Whack on a 15" cc X coil & you just might be blown away from what I have heard about them. D4G

If all you are wanting to do is go over known patches while chaining to see anything missed at depth (and cant afford a 7000), then the 3000 with a large coil is a fairly decent option. The 3000 combo with the 24x12 UFO mono found buckets of deep gold years ago, theres no reason why it wont do the same now. Use whatever you can afford as a second machine. The 6000 will detect big bits at very good depths....I know of a 1kg bit detected at just over a metre. It all depends on what you think may be down at depth. I have no idea which machine (3000 with big coil v 6000) will detect a 3g deeper as I havent ever tried a test on that. But all things considered, generally bigger coil equals bigger detection depth but drops a bit of sensitivity on smaller bits. If I were in your situation (and I have been), I would use the 19" on the 7000 over everything else 🙂 But as you mention old machines, then the 3000 with a big coil may be an option as it "should" detected big bits at depth.....My 3000 doesnt really get much of a run these days as the 6000 is my general "go to" detector and I use the 7000 with the 19" as the depth detector on known patches to see if anything missed at depth.

Ceril, you are welcome to borrow my 7000 and/or the 5000 to see for yourself if they are any advantage to you on your patches. The 7000 has both the stock and 19” coils and the 5000 has many coils. The largest Evolution is 12”

I would have to wonder with using an older model ML PI or GPZ 7000 that the bigger deeper gold you are looking for has not already been found with them back in there day. Hence the GPX 6000 mopping up the crumbs these days. A very high chance that any ground you go over has already seen many a coil over it. The gold doesn't tend to grow back. D4G

Yesterdays largest nugget was a bit of a strange find. I watched and partially helped Joe dig two really deep holes for junk. He was exhausted and frustrated that neither target ended up being the right colour. It was just one of those days where his junk to gold ratio was higher than mine. My turn will come next trip. I moved a bit further upstream and started detecting the bottom of a long pool of water. Everything about it seemed right. It was much lower than the rest of the gully and it had washed out to a light grey decomposed shale bottom. It was potentially a good gold trap. Over the past couple of months we had popped a detector in that pool every time that we had walked past it but had never made the effort to work it properly. We were not setup to detect in water as we never carried waterproof clothing to enable this to happen. We had also dismissed the pools potential as we had met two groups of people on previous trips that had waders and wet suits with them. They were focussing on that type of area so we naturally assumed that this pool would have been given a thorough workout. I started detecting the bottom as well as I could with the z search coil by pushing it down onto the bottom of the pool and progressively moving out until I would run out of reach. There was no way the boots were going to get wet. This coil is hopeless in water. It is so buoyant that it takes considerable force to keep it on the bottom. Detecting efficiency is lost as you need to use both hands to keep the coil down. After a couple of minutes of detecting, I ended up getting a screamer of a signal. Joe was called up on the radio and he quickly arrived to help out. After listening to the signal, he had his boots off and was in the water before I could draw breath. After pinpointing the target, the scoop was used to bring up the clay/gravel mix from the bottom. On about the third or fourth scoop a shiny piece of gold came up sitting on top of the clay. It was a beautiful piece sitting there just smiling at us. We momentarily stopped and looked at it with our mouths open. Our plan was to find bigger gold at depth with the zed but this piece could have been found with an ice cream container lid bolted to a broom handle. As Joe had his boots off and pants rolled up, he detected the rest of the pool for no other signals. It just goes to show you that you must never assume anything in this game. We moved back closer to an area where I had picked up the earlier piece. I detected the right side of the gully when I found the first bigger nugget and decided to concentrate on the other side on the return trip. We had to leave early to get home so time was running out. About 20m down stream a very faint sound was heard which pulled me up. Again rocks were moved to get the coil a bit flatter to the creek bed. The subtle sound didn’t go away so hot rocks were ruled out. If it was going to be a target, it would be deep. Some material was removed and finally a signal started to develop. Stone and gravel was dug out using the pick and I continued until I hit a yellow decomposing bedrock material. By this stage the detector was really singing and I knew I was in with a chance. Joe came up and took one look at the hole and knew straight away that this was going to be a nice piece. He gave one big scrape with the pick, looked down and turned to me and said - “Did you drop that?” He pointed at the shiny, polished piece of gold sitting on the clay. We couldn’t believe what we were looking at. It had obviously moved with the last flood and had the appearance of a piece that had been sitting in acid. We picked it up and admired it before placing it back into position for the photo. We had to walk to where we left some gear and as per usual, Joe picked up another nugget on the way back. He has this uncanny knack of doing this on a regular basis. What started as a reasonable day ended up exceptionally well. The gold was cleaned up a bit last night. Here is a couple of shots showing what we ended up with. Its a good feeling when a plan comes together and you get results. It was interesting to note the difference in how the 6 and 7 ran in this particular area. The threshold on the 7000 was perfect. Very occasionally it would pick up a faint signal on a hot rock. These rocks appeared to be basalt. I reckon I hit less than ten of them for the day. The 6000 on the other hand was more erratic and reacted to the iron rich hot rocks which were generally red in colour. We would be constantly kicking those out of the way as they often gave off a signal similar to a deeper target. Darker soils and wet clay were also an issue for the GPX . With that being said, the 6 was still quite usable and had excelled in this gully. We both believe that the depth capabilities and the perfect threshold of the zed combined with the sensitivity of the Z Search coil helped us immensely in the past couple of trips.

Both detectors 6 vs 7, have their strengths and weaknesses. When the GPX-6000 was 1st introduced into the Goldfields in the United States, it was easily the King of recovering missed gold of the GPZ-7000. As time has progressed and the options of smaller lighter coil options for the GPZ, it's showing more small gold capabilities (at an expense). Sure wish the coil manufacturers would be a little easier on the wallet, but at today's gold prices, they can get away with it. Sometimes just the change of Settings will help gather a few more nuggets and that's why so many hard core hunters realize, a site is never 100% hunted out. Heck, just a simple thing as soil moisture content or EMI, can easily effect a detectors capability and miss a nugget that otherwise would have been heard. Very interesting read and just goes to prove that not 1 detector is best for all situations.

I think the last part is definitely true, maybe the first part too. I did some experiments a while back and found that both large iron targets as well as high EMI levels caused the 6000 to adjust itself in manual, not just in auto. Further, by memory, I believe it stayed dumbed down even after the iron and EMI were removed to some degree, requiring a reset to really trust it was back to normal. I noticed this happening in the field at first but was unsure, but when I posted here a while back about this effect, other people didn't seem to see it, so I tested in my shop and found enough to change my trust in the 6000 personally. I've posted about this a few times in the past here. 6000 is a prospecting machine only to me. I toss it into auto+, and use it for what it is. What happens under the hood is too opaque for me to ever trust it over the 7000 for cleaning applications because there is no way to verify if I am running sub-optimally or not. This is why they need to at least provide some bar graph readouts to show an operator what the detector has adjusted, if controls aren't provided. Not knowing is not acceptable for pro-sumer grade machines IMO. I do like having the auto option though, and I believe it will improve in future releases.

This apparatus goes under several names detecting pal..detecting pro. Serious detecting has them as well as Amazon...I use one when beach detecting with various machines....allows you to let go of the detector when retrieving the target as well as relieving the pressure on your arm and shoulder. I have fused vertebrae in my neck and it does not aggravate it what so ever...Have not used it however with the 7000. use the minelab harness for that or go buck naked.. strick

It weighs next to nothing on the GPZ, I can't remember the weight, something like 800 grams, it's on their website, but I'm probably not the best person to ask as my soils are mild, but for me the 8" is as good if not better than the 6000. I did some air test videos showing its differences to the GPX 6000 on Youtube, and in those it's performance was very clear but I can run the GPZ in normal. We have hot rocks here but no doubt they're different to yours, I find the 6000 worse for them than the GPZ with the 8". In saying all of that, do you need one? with a 6000 and 10x5" probably not. The ideal candidate for a smaller GPZ coil like the 8" or 10" is someone that doesn't want to have to buy a 6000 to get the small gold performance of a 6000, significantly cheaper to buy a coil and get an adapter made than buy a 6000. I just wish Minelab would give in, disable the chip and let the aftermarket coil manufacturers go for gold on the 7000. If you wanted more depth, with near GPX 6000 sensitivity/depth to very small gold the 15" Concentric coil is probably a better choice, it gives near 6000 performance on small gold with superior GPZ style depth on bigger stuff. I don't like recommending coils for people though, as my soil conditions being mild maybe very different to someone elses, I just know what works best for me, best thing to do is ask around, far more 15" CC users than 8" users though, most don't care enough about finding the tiny bits to justify an 8" when the 15" is close but deeper on all else.

Cleaned up the gold that the 6000 recovered. What you see is actually the result of a lot of careful work so in reality the 7000 actually did quite a good job. When we arrived at the patch, I had my 12 year old grandson run over the ground before any gravel was disturbed. He found 5 targets that were obvious which was pretty good as he had never been detecting before. We dug those pieces (which were very small) and then systematically turned over the ground and dug a little deeper and wider to recover the remaining pieces. As soon as we hit hard packed, dirty gravel the gold disappeared which indicated that it was a drop zone during floods that occurred late last year. I’m sure that the Zed would have squawked on some of those larger pieces if we had followed the same detailed search procedure a few days ago. What Phrunt has been saying was really reinforced and made obvious as I watched my grandson and daughter searching this area. I spent most of the day watching and filming as they enjoyed the excitement of the hunt. Often a scrape of an inch would reveal a screaming signal that was not audible a minute earlier. Gold signals lost in tailings piles or a scoop that had too much material in it were a common occurrence. To his credit, my grandson soon leant the tricks required to achieve success. The gold in the photo weighs just over a gram. The pieces that were panned were dried and weighed and came in at just over .2 grams which was surprising. There may have to be a rethink about leaving the remaining specs for someone else.

Whether the tech is maxed out or not is a matter of perception. Some think another inch will change everything. Others would say another inch is less than 10% more depth over what we have now, so evidence we are maxing out. Whatever. A color screen will not find me more of anything. GPZ 7000 type power with good ferrous/non-ferrous type discrimination is all I need. Right now you have to choose between maximum depth, or good discrimination at shallower depths. Surely somebody will crack that nut someday, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

A forum friend and I went out to an area that John B said had meteorites and I found a couple. One is 83.4 grams and the other is 4.6 grams. I've found meteorites for years on John B's property, but these were not on it. Thank you, John. As this meteor was coming in it gained a fushion crust from the heat. It broke up into many pieces and you can see cracks in this one. It was down in the redish soil about 4 inches. I was told other larger meteorites were found in the same area. I've washed this one off and you can see the partial fusion crust illuminated by the flashlight. When this one was cleaned I observed some tiny flecks of gold color which I don't remember on other meteorites. I started that thread first but I'm not able to get a fleck on camera. This was found with my 7000/15CC X-Coil. Other magnetic rocks were found in the area but this is a classic meteorite for the area.

That 8" would be the Russian made X coil which needs the adapter to run on the 7000. D4G

That was my point. The 7000 is king for depth. The 6000 is deadly on the small shallowish stuff but loses its punch for depth quickly. Going from a banger of a signal to dropping off very quickly. You have to have a very keen ear & be on your game to catch those very faint whispers that are deeper down with the 6000, but they are there. Same old scenario though, one detector doesn't do it all so the 6000 & 7000 complement each other. You are on to it. On another note gold has broken through the NZ$3,700 mark. Actually NZ$3,738 an ounce. Happy days. No wonder Pioneer Pauly has been coming over here making a pig of himself on our gold. He loves the place. D4G

Well, I had to really work to find them 4 lil bits. And they could have possibly been left by Klunker because he is tired of digging small bits. I really enjoy running the 6000 in hilly areas. It's just plain lighter and you can place the coil in more areas over the course of a day because of that. I'm running the 6000 with a 12x7 NF on the difficult with the lowest possible sensitivity. But in all fairness, I've found super tiny bits with the 7000.

Sourdough Scott and I played hooky and snuck out detecting between storms. I took him to a place and showed him where I found a few bits once before which was about a 30' x30' knob of bedrock. I went over it one more time with the 7000 and found nothing so I figured I would send Scott there with his 6000, knowing that I had left absolutely nothing. Dang it! The son of a gun found 4 bits that the 7000 missed. I got skunked that day but I'll eventually get over it. So I can't say which detector is the best for final cleanup.

The 8" coil is my favourite of the smaller coils, being the smallest, more of a specialty coil as you're not going to cover ground with it, but it's ideal in this situation you're in there and I would not be at all surprised if it picked out gold you're currently missing with both combinations. A compromise is the 10" as it gets a more normal ground coverage with just a little less sensitivity which of course means a little less depth on the smallest bits but a bit more depth on bigger bits but even coils like the 15" Concentric are very competitive with the 8" on small gold, only falling slightly behind more similar to the 10" while providing plenty of other benefits and would be my overall pick of coils. If only Minelab made more coils for the 7000, or at least sanctioned other brands to do so to make them more mainstream I think these 6000/7000 comparisons where people favour the 6000 by a large degree on smaller gold would largely disappear.

6000 vs 7000 people are really missing the point here on the settings they are using. If you run a 6000 in difficult, wiggly lines, however you want to call it. You can miss gold at a certain size and depth. That same nugget two inches deeper and the 6000 will get it. The 7000 in difficult has less of a problem with this phenomenon, although it is still present. I have good evidence to back this up. Look at the last minute or so from this video and it will prove it. this video is testing the algoforce but just by chance I witnessed this exact situation when running the 6000 over the test nuggets.

This is largely an illusion caused by the lack of coil options. Yes, there is likely some pieces a 7000 will miss the 6000 won't and also vice versa but the number isn't near what it appears to be, I think. The 7000 has a well-known depth advantage as the gold gets bigger though. Sounds like a spot to hit with a VLF if it can handle the soil, as a VLF truly does pick up smaller bits the 6000 and 7000 can't see at all. There is no one detector that excels at it all, largely due to design choices by the manufacturer to sell more detectors. And Dig4gold has a point there, now more than ever I'm flipping rocks to get results, it pays off.