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  1. Here’s a simple fix for the 6000 twisting shaft issue- just put a 1/8th inch thick dry O-Ring inside each of the locking rings. When you twist the locking rings, the o-rings compresses and tightens up between the shaft locking ring and collet keeping the shaft sections from spinning as easily. I used these two sized o-rings (in inches): 13/16 x 1-1/16 x 1/8 3/4 x 1 x 1/8 Fully unscrew each plastic locking ring and separate each rod, leaving the plastic locking rings in place on them and put the o-rings on. Be sure the o-rings fit snuggly but not too tight around each rod as shown below. Then insert the rods back in place and reconnect the threaded locking rings with the o-rings between the two parts. The o-rings will slip between the plastic collets and the ring wall as you screw on the locking ring. When the locking ring gets hand-tight, the o-rings will provide more locking force between the rod sections so they can’t spin as easily.
  2. Hello gentlemen, finally someone from the Australian guys made an honest comparison
  3. Times are tough out on the range, those lunkers elusive as can be, but gold fever still going after 30 years and I can't shake it off nor do I want to. These days finding 1 piece regardless of the weight is a big WIN for me. For me just being out in the foothills of the Sierras brings me peace and relaxation, at times I find a piece of that rare yellow metal we call gold. Yesterday was that day, I was armed with my 4500 and 11 inch mono commander coil hiked up to the small creek and started to work the side bench with the intentions of using my hearing skills and digging the slightest rise and fall of the threshold. It was about an hour or so until I finally sensed a change in the threshold and did the usual boot drag, put the coil over the bare ground and the threshold just a bit more noticeable. Digging down an inch at a time until I got down to about 3 inches I saw this golden ray of light like the rays of the sun blinding ones eyes when driving directly 😳 into the sun's direction, blinding me. I reached down with my hand and grabbed it with a smile 😃 so wide and a feeling of ✌ VICTORY. My years of experience and ears tuned to the slightest change in threshold led me to another piece of gold! Regardless of the detector coil combo you use in the right hands these old coils have the ability to still sniff out gold. This is my little 🏆 of the day..a small piece but a little victory these days. Hope today I find the big brother.
  4. Here is a decent video from Tassie Boys Prospecting, he's actually one of the new Minelab detect-spurts. Tasmania detecting is much like NZ detecting, the bushland looks VERY similar, so it might go some way into explaining why I like certain detectors and coils more than others 🙂 One of my favourite creeks is so hard to get into now it's getting near impossible and like these guys it's full of hot rocks that send detectors wild, the problem is there is gold to be found if I'm patient enough and willing to crawl through the bush to get to it.
  5. So I've recently started using my GPX 5000 as a coin and jewellery detector, I've been using the Coiltek 11" Anti Interference coil on it, this coil is fantastic for the job, the most stable threshold you'll ever hear on a GPX, although sadly the coil is now discontinued, Detech make a similar coil though but I know nothing about their version and if it works as well. At the moment I'm considering an Axiom as I'm sure quite a few others are too, the main focus so far on the detector has been prospecting so it's time to find out how it goes as a coin and jewellery detector, and of course relics for those lucky enough to live in a place that has relics. With my coin and jewellery spots there is always a lot of EMI around as obviously where you hunt these things are places with heavy human occupation. The other places I'd use it are at beaches which around here especially popular beaches where the finds could be made generally have houses all around them so many sources of EMI. An example of how good the Coiltek AI is on my GPX under some high voltage power lines And another video showing the Coiltek AI coil being used inside my house, a crazy high EMI environment showing just how well it handles EMI This is the question, how well is the Axiom going to compete with this? Is it naturally good with EMI with a DD coil? Being a detector with no protective chips to prevent aftermarket coils perhaps manufacturers would be able to make AI coils for it too? I would think Detech would be one of the first to take on coils for the Axiom and seeing they make AI coils already it might end up possible. These videos were filmed using my old Aussie made ratty GPX 4500, my GPX 5000 is much more stable although I can't really complain how well the 4500 works with the AI coil, the 5000 is even better. I didn't own the 5000 when I took the video. I guess for the answers to my questions it's going to take time for people to have the Axiom in their hands but with a few on order already from people giving up their GPX 6000 due to it's EMI problems as they hunt in high EMI environments I'm sure it won't be long and a few friendly helpful users will give me the advice I'm chasing 🙂
  6. Just some pictures of my two favorite configurations, Garrett Axiom with 7" x 11" mono (4lbs 3.8oz) and Minelab GPX 6000 with 11" round mono (4lbs 8.6oz). Weighed on my postal scales as configured, both perfectly balanced, a real joy to swing and use. Mainly wanted to give people a look at the "look," and general proportions of both detectors. Click or double click photos to see or download full size versions. The Axiom coil looks "longer" than the 6000 coil in the photo, but that's an optical illusion. I just measured both coils, GPX is 11" round, and Axiom is a true 7" x 11" modified elliptical. Both excellent examples of what we should be getting in way of easy swinging, ergonomic PI detectors. Finally! Garrett Axiom Quick Facts, Owner's Manual, Etc. Minelab GPX 6000 & Garrett Axiom Minelab GPX 6000 & Garrett Axiom Minelab GPX 6000 & Garrett Axiom Minelab GPX 6000 & Garrett Axiom Minelab GPX 6000 11" round mono & Garrett Axiom 7" x 11" elliptical mono
  7. Warm greetings to all members Can you help me what is the cause of the buzzing sound or the buzzing OR wheezing? The continuous overtime is similar to the smuggling of electricity in Minelab Detector This resulted in distortion Or the lack of clarity of the signal threshold Target signals are not strong Tried another battery and the headphone connections are fine and the noise is still going on I would like to thank everyone in this wonderful forum, which has become a source of valuable information and we do not dispense with your advice and experiences
  8. Gold prospecting hobbyists find moving further afield in the Kimberley still pays handsomely https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-07/prospecting-for-kimberley-gold-outback-rise-metal/101209176
  9. Well, I'm only a year late..... I finally got my own GPX6000 and gave it a 1st run this afternoon. I went to a spot only 5 minutes from home where I'd gotten over a hundred pieces over the past 18 years. My modded 4500 got over an ounce and a half there back in 2021 and I gridded the main area (25x10m) until I was sure there was nuthin left....or so I thought! I spent just 4 hours there this afternoon and got 9 bits of gold for 1.7 grams. Plus 40 bits of lead shot, a .22 short bullet, 3 bits of flake iron and a percussion cap. 7 bits of gold, plus 75% of the junk came from the gridded patch! The 6000 has the edge, thats for sure. 2 of the gold 'nuggets' were over 7" deep and were just whispers. Overall, the 6000 ran well....coupla scans to eliminate EMI, but fairly quiet. I used difficult mode coz its got lotsa ironstone and had zero hotrocks. On the plus side: Light weight, amazing BT headphones (actual, real 'low latency') stem locked tight, no wobble, ease of use, ground balance kept very stable. On the minus side, the threshold needs a control to reduce it....way too much, I'd prefer a whisper of threshold. I was at the lowest volume setting. The 6000 hates the coil being angled, makes it hard to work mounds, mullock etc. My headphones don't fully charge as the red/blue flashing goes on forever.... This detector owes me 40 grams so its still got 38.3 to go.... I'll keep yas all posted as to how long it takes.
  10. Here it the Nugget Finder GPX 6000 coil prices for New Zealand, a bit of an indication of what to expect. We’ve received the pricing for the GPX6000 Nuggetfinder coils this morning with some more information. Unfortunately they can’t give us an exact release date due to some uncertainty around the supply of some parts. They have also advised that the 8x6” won’t be available until August/September. (8”x6”) NZ$689.00 / $449 USD (12”x7”) NZ$729.00 / $475 USD (16”x10”) NZ$779.00 / $508 USD I wouldn't mind the little 8x6" but the 10x5" Coiltek is increasingly looking more attractive with a far better price and also a shorter time until it's release. Of course every country will have different pricing with their shipping costs being different and taxes and so on just it will just give you a basic idea.
  11. Member 1.7k Location: Colorado Interests: Prospecting, Mineralogy, Metal Detecting, Railroads, Coaching HS Golf, Professional Musician Gear Used: Minelab GPX 6000, GPX 5000, Equinox 800, N/M Legend, XP Deus 1, Deus 2 Lite someday, Garrett Pro Pointer AT, Tek-Point, XP MI-6, Gold Hog River Sluices Flow Pan Royal High Banker Joined December 2017 Posted January 24 #8 1 grain lead shot air tested on my 14" DD coil at 1" in Cancel/Normal. #9 .75 grain lead shot was touching the left edge of the 14" DD in Cancel/Normal. #8 1 grain lead shot air tested on my 11" mono coil at 1.5" in Normal. #9 .75 grain lead shot air tested on my 11" mono coil at .5" in Normal. Sensitivity was on 5 due to EMI. Results might be better on 10 or in Auto Plus (12) I don't have any #8 or #9 steel shot to test. Green, I also don't want to keep hijacking this VLF thread with PI GPX 6000 test results. Start a new thread if you want. Have been doing some testing with #9 lead shot, noticed some difference in signal amplitude with different shot. Compared signal amplitude with 19 lead shot taken from the same shot gun shell. The highest amplitude was 4 times higher than the lowest. I had sent some test targets to someone with a GPX6000 that included craft sticks with 1 or 4 pieces of #9 or #8 lead shot glued to the sticks. He didn't detect any of the #8 or #9 targets. He did say EMI was high, lightning in the distance. Jeff listed some results with his 6000 above. After seeing how much different #9 lead shot can test, I wondered if there might be a better target to use. Tried some AWG 24 and 26 copper magnet wire. Pieces test lot closer to the same amplitude. Wondering if someone with a 6000 or any detector could try detecting either or both the wire targets.
  12. Although this has a bitter sweet ending there is some good stuff in this from Bill. Always is in his videos. He tells it & shows it how it is out in the field. For those of you that struggle with the ratty threshold with the 11" mono he covers this & I thought he had his detector running pretty damn nice. D4G
  13. I think this is a timely reminder of just how much DP forum means to us collectively, and the amount of unseen work that Steve does in the background. I personally could care less about Google rankings (Steve probably does if the forum makes him money I suppose) but do care when my favourite site is on the blink. Here’s to sending good luck vibes and lots of gold finds moments to Steve wherever he is. 😊 OH and BTW Steve was 100% correct about the GPX6000 with the GPX17 coil, I’ve managed to injure my arm recently (really bad tennis elbow from swinging big heavy coils for way too many years) so as it mends I have only been able to swing the 6000 with the 17 inch coil. That combination is right up there for THE best rigs I have ever used for prospecting/patch hunting. 😃 JP 2 weeks of very casual detecting/prospecting in new ground, around 3 ounces.
  14. Yesterday JW suggested we take our GPX 6000's out and compare them to ensure mine is now working properly as I've had no confidence in it after my woes. Unfortunately we were unable to compare our 11" coils like for like as his coil is still away for warranty replacement, it must be 3 weeks now and no sign of a replacement, they just have no stock to swap it for which is pretty poor, but with the number of faulty ones I've seen on Facebook I'm not at all surprised they have no stock as it's not a coil they'd make a lot of as extras seeing everyone gets one with the detector. JW suggested we go to an area he's used his 6000 a lot with the 11" before it died so he would know how mine should behave to see if anything is out of the ordinary. I just wanted to use his detector for a bit to see if EMI was as troubling with it as it was with mine, so I took it for a spin with the Minelab 17" coil on it, I found it was no different with it's EMI behaviour to mine, in fact I thought it was worse but I guess that's to be expected, a bigger coil. We were quite close to a standard normal power line, not the high voltage transmission ones like at the other area that I wanted to wrap the GPX around a tree and say goodbye to it for good. JW had a fair while on mine checking it out and doing factory resets and just experimenting with it, he thought it ran similar to his with it's EMI behaviour so I guess it is how it is, he had my threshold running reasonable, much better than it was at the other location that's for sure. The other spot with the transmission lines is my favourite area but it just suits the GPZ better as it doesn't care at all about the transmission lines, even right near them its as if they barely exist and you can run it with the normal coil you'd use and your normal settings. The GPX requires the DD and adjusted settings so it makes no sense to use the GPX there, the same reason I didn't like using my 4500 there. Once JW had approved my GPX I felt a little more confident in it, knowing that more ratty threshold is normal, I'm just not good on ratty detectors and feel I'll always miss the faint targets with them by comparison to more stable detectors where as JW doesn't mind a more ratty detector, experience level differences I would guess. I had another confidence booster, the Avantree Torus speakers, I've never been much of a headphone person and the ML-100's that come with the GPX have a high pitched hiss all the time once connected to the 6000 which would give me a headache listening to that all day but the Torus speakers are perfect sound, no hiss and very clear audio and easy to hear even in a noisy environment, where we were has a rushing river nearby with quite noisy water sound in the background but the Torus was fine, perfect in fact. Quick and easy to pair with good sound quality and volume level, I was able to turn the GPX volume right down to minimum to stabilize the machine even more and run the Torus on the volume level that suited me. One thing I will point out is with the Torus on you'll like finding 22 shells, sure the noise is booming but the Torus gives you a shoulder massage every time you sweep over one so you'll find yourself swinging over them multiple times enjoying the vibrating massage 🙂 I like the Torus so much I'm going to use my Bluetooth transmitter on the GPZ and use them on it too, so I can finally retire my harness that was only there as a way to hold my SP01 and speakers. The neck gap on them is huge, designed for someone with a neck like Shrek I think and my Pelican neck is a bit skinny for them but they held on perfectly fine and I had no concerns of them coming off. I'd highly recommend anyone considering these things to give them a try, I doubt you'll be disappointed. They even talk to you 🙂 It started to rain a bit while using them and they're not water resistant but I just put my jumper over top of them and the sound came through it perfectly fine (not sure what Americans call it) and Kiwi's never even know what I mean when I say jumper as it's a Queensland/Australia term as far as I can tell. Once we'd done tinkering comparing detectors we started detecting, I wandered off 20 or so meters away from JW so I didn't interfere with his detector and started detecting some bedrock. I was running my GPX in Auto as if I tried manual 10 or Auto+ it became a bit too unstable for my liking I guess due to the nearby power lines. It wasn't long and I had a good target noise, super faint but very repeatable and after scraping away all the soil off the bedrock I was pretty sure it wasn't a pellet, I started breaking away the schist to try get down to it, I was attacking for for about 20 minutes and I guess JW noticed as he came over, I told him what's going on and showed him my target response at that time, it had improved to a point it was very obvious after smashing some bedrock away. He said lets check my 17" coil over it and see how it responds, so he waived the coil over it, nothing at all, he pushed the edges right into the cracks in the bedrock and nothing, he spent a bit of time trying to get a response from the target and he couldn't get one. We fired up my GPX again and waived it over it and straight away a reasonably good response. After seeing that I'm glad I didn't buy the 17" coil seeing we mostly hunt smaller gold it's not near got the sensitivity of the 11" on this stuff. to be completely blind to this piece when the 11" was getting it pretty easily. JW had also lost a couple of targets he was recovering with the 17" coil so we went over to them with the 11" and tried to find them, the 11" found one of the two lost targets straight away. JW then hung around to help recover the target, he's a lot better at getting gold out of bedrock than I am, I'm not aggressive and hack away at it slowly as I'm so scared I'll lose the nugget, it's happened before 🙂 He just smashes the hell out of it and gets it out quickly. It didn't take him too long and he had it out, as per usual with the GPX once the target is near the coil it ROARS on it, a few inches away and it's a quiet response so once out we had it in no time. The dug out bit of bedrock is below the coil in the photo above. The nugget circled. That's where it was, I was so surprised the 17" coil had no response on this nugget when in there, it was probably on its side in a layer of the schist but still, the 11" performed so much better. This is the nugget. I'm confident the GPZ with my favourite little 8" would have hit this far easier than the GPX did, it wasn't what I'd call deep but it was faint on the GPX and missed entirely by the 17" even with some of the bedrock broken away. Next up I kept detecting around this same bedrock and it falls off a bit of a cliff down to the river below, it's pretty wild on the way down but I went off the edge a bit as I could see an area I could start to get down and detected one of the many ledges on the way down, I found a few pellets down there but also a nugget. It was very shallow and a louder signal than a pellet. It was really only a couple of pick scrapes to remove the grass and I had it, it's lucky I wasn't being lazy ignoring the first pick scrapes assuming they're pellets. The reason I didn't ignore it and I ignore many pellets is the pellets the GPX finds harder to detect, sure it booms on them when you first go over them as they're close to the coil, you do a couple of pick scrapes and move the pellet into a pile of soil and the target signal drops off dramatically to a point they can entirely disappear or be very hard to locate compared to the screaming signal when they're near the coil so you find yourself flattening out the pile. It's a bit of a giveaway with lead pellets I think as gold tends to remain a decent signal as it's not as difficult of a target as a small sphere like a lead pellet. Here is a video of the spot the nugget was, not usual for me to go off edges like this I usually leave the mountain goat stuff for JW 🙂 My threshold was pretty savage in this video, I did a factory reset not long after this as it was starting to go wild. Good ol' Geosense. It's amazing doing a factory reset fixes it up when no amount of noise cancels will. I hope its a bug they can fix and a firmware update comes out some day. I decided I'd go back up to where I found the first one and give it another go, a couple of meters along the same run of bedrock I found another faint target signal that lived beyond clearing the dirt off the schist bedrock. Because I'd just only done the same thing I knew this was going to be gold so I did some filming. I didn't film the entire process as I'm very slow getting gold out of bedrock 🙂 This is the better video of the two to watch as it gives a better idea of the recovery I switch to manual 10 in the video from Auto and you'll see the target response improve, I just preferred hunting in Auto while I'm still getting used to the more ratty threshold of the GPX over the GPZ even though I know I'm taking a performance hit doing so. And the happy snaps. This one was a bit deeper than the last one, took me a long time to smash it out. A bit more of a ball nugget, again the GPZ would have hit it easily. It was now starting to rain a little bit and likely snowing on the mountains above us so our day we nearing the end, we only started around Lunch time so I was pretty happy with my results. JW at this stage had given up on the 17", I guess seeing it entirely miss the first target I got wasn't really encouraging. He'd put on the 14" DD now, I'm sure he wished his 11" wasn't away on warranty at this stage as he'd not found anything yet. I went back towards where we stored our bags and started detecting around there and found my last nugget of the day, another very simple target, it was in someone elses dig hole spoils, they'd dug up the nugget and rejected it, I guess they thought because it was in soil and not on or in the bedrock it wasn't gold, so I recovered it and it was my biggest of the day 🙂 It was right near where the cliff drops off to the river below. I checked with JW, it wasn't his dig hole so someone else had been there, he did point out when we arrived it looked like someone else had been there recently as there was dig holes that were not his so someone donated me a nugget. So overall my GPX was working much better at this spot, it still had its Geosense quirks and is nowhere near as stable as the GPZ, and the GPZ I know is just as sensitive if not more so than the GPX when its using small coils on the GPZ, it'll be interesting to see the improvements with the smaller coils on the GPX. Where the GPX appears to be more sensitive is small pellets near the coil with the way it really roars on them, but any depth on those little pellets and reality sets in, it's just hyper sensitive to targets close to the coil, it'd be good for bedrock hunting with that behaviour. My total for the afternoon. We bailed out because it started raining and only started at lunch time so a good result for me. JW found one little guy at .19 of a gram and that was once he changed over to the 14" DD, he was certainly digging away all day though, I could hear a lot of smashing on the bedrock! Damn pellets! My junk level was really low, I was rejecting known pellets by the strong pellet signal dropping off to next to nothing in the dig out pile quirk the GPX has. Those 22 shells give a nice massage with the Torus 🙂
  15. I wish the X Coils guys posted some update on the forum, I'm pretty curious what they think about whether or not the 6000 is suitable for flat windings, concentrics, etc and wether they can make some coils that have actual performance gains and not just size selections. Righto trust it`s OK to start this thread off with your post Jasong. I respect and understand our OZ aftermarkets coil manufacturers working with ML, that is their bread and butter. For my bread and butter, a small as, light as, CC coil firstly say around 8/9/10 inch if this is possible with the CC depth capabilities coil size relative to what I`ve experienced with the X CC coil on the Z , and down the track a larger one. As I`ve said before I`m prepared to sacrifice my 14DD 6K coil for a dongle to allow the use of a couple of coils, this I believe will make the magic ML 6K even more magic.
  16. Hi Guys, New forum member here. My 40th birthday is coming up, and my wife's onboard with a new machine. I'm thinking the GPX 6000 or GPZ 7000. I can only afford one, plus an extra coil or two. I could use see help deciding. This is not a case of what detector is better; this is a case of which detector is better for me. Overall, I have done a lot reading on the forum (and watching youtube videos) trying to get up to speed. Many thanks to all who post here sharing their experience. Thank you Steve, JP, and everyone else who has contributed. Seriously, thank you guys for the wealth of knowledge. For fun, I've also set up a poll. But I would very much appreciate written responses and dialog. I realize this got long. But I wanted to explain my use case. I've tried to summarize, skim over as you see fit. *************** Background info: I'm a long time hand panner, I also run a Gold Monster 1000. I'm primarily work in the Rocky Mountains in BC Canada; on the site of a major gold rush (Wild Horse River). Terrain wise, it's very similar the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I'm currently working a mix of friends and acquaintances claims, or other claims in the area. Sometimes (rarely) I make trips to other regions. Since the 1860's gold rush, the river and source creek have been heavily worked over the years. Typically I stick to areas less worked. Lots of hillsides, newly washed out areas, old tailings, water cannon bowls (aka; hydraulic mining), old possible gravel channels, difficult to access old ledges, etc... Outside of the river, typically there is 12-15ft of material to bedrock. Either covered with layers glacial till, or old river gravels from as it moved, or both, plus overburden. The bedrock does surface in places. The area's where it peaks out have been previously worked, but I'm hoping they could be reworked with a better detector. I would like to find areas where the bed rock gets near the surface (say within a few feet), but doesn't break through, and thus are still virgin ground. These represent great potential if I can find them. As a side, not many people seem to use detectors up here. Those that do usually have a Gold Monster. I've been told most people who have shown up with them (non locals) usually give up. Partially because of the limited access to claims (it takes time to make friends), and the lack of understanding of the area, and how it's been worked. As I've shared, it's been heavily worked. Almost all the easy gold is gone. Part of why I want a detector to try and speed up the discovery of new areas. Another thing I would like to try is, to dig holes in areas which are known to be gold bearing, and try to find pockets with the detector. Extend its reach so to speak. Which I can then work with a high banker if water is available. Or with a detector where access is remote/difficult and/or water is no longer available. So there is really a mix of scenario's and use cases. I would like to use the detector both as a primary and secondary tool. *************** Gold wise: This varies depending where you are, and the claim. Beyond fine gold which is continually moved and redeposited in the river, small pickers are the most common. Many in the 0.3 - 0.5g range. Large ones are in the 1-2 gram range. Really nice larger ones are up to the 5 gram range. Anything over that would be considered exceptional in this area (based on what's being found currently, that people are willing to talk about anyways 😉 ). This type of variety would represent a regular season for those who work a good claim. However, larger nuggets do come out. The largest I can personally vouch for is just over 2oz (seen below). The record was 36oz during the original gold rush. I've shared photos below for reference. *************** Ground wise: There are lots of hot rocks here, of multiple types. Lots of iron, so heaps of magnetite and some pyrites, galena, etc). I can't say it's as bad is Australia, but it's not great. Even the gold monster jumps back and forth. I dig all targets. Not to mention all the old timer trash, and even more modern trash.... I do wonder if the DD coil will outperform the mono's here. The 19" Super D looks very attractive. *************** Now, 6000 or 7000? Here's a quick summary of my understanding, starting with the high points: 6000: Great all around machine. Excels at small (sub gram) gold. Super light, easy, and fun to use. Very zippy. Ergonomics are great, which is not to be underestimated. Over all good value for money. Almost like a Gold Monster, SDC2300 and GPX5000 in one upgraded machine, which is better than all of them, while being lighter. 7000: Takes more skill. One must work slower and more methodically. Keeping good coil control, paying attention... but once learned it's a fantastic all around detector. What it gives up in small gold (where the 6000 excels) it gains with big deep stuff. It's still king, but very heavy and much more expensive. Weak points: 7000: I see three weakness. Its first weakness is with small gold, which can be mostly mitigated with a NF12 coil. Its heavy weight will always be there, so wear a harness and deal with it. Finally, it costs a lot more in Canada. Compared with a 6000 kit + 17", the 7000 kit + 19" costs 54% more. I have no idea why the price jump is so big here. Plus more money for the NF12 on top of this. 6000: Weak points are depth and heavy mineralization. I can deal with the mineralization, in that I dig all targets (although less digging is better). But its depth capabilities is what I'm most wondering about. How much can this be helped with the 17" mono coil? And what is the likelihood a better coil for larger deeper gold will come out? Something like the 19" Super D would be ideal (Minelab, please make a larger D coil which can punch deep! Or let someone else. 🙂 ). These are probably my two biggest questions. As trying to find shallow bedrock is something I see good potential with. Otherwise the 6000 seems like the machine for me. **** Help me Decide: Kit wise, I'm thinking either: 6000 kit. Plus the 17" mono. And I pray a bigger coil (for larger deeper gold) comes out eventually. 7000 kit. Plus the 19" and probably a NF12. I think this covers all bases. Both machines make trade offs. Both are good. I'm just trying to decide which is right for me. I go back and forth here. The 6000 fantastic for sub gram stuff. I much prefer its price and weight. I'm just not sure how much benefit the 17" mono will bring to depth. If I knew a larger coil would come out later, to help me hunt deeper, I would probably take the 6000. As I want to find areas of shallow bedrock close to the surface, and speed up the discovery of new patches which can be worked. 7000: The 7000 does do everything. At the expensive of price and weight. The NF12 closes the gap on the small stuff. The 19" is great for the deep stuff. Overall a great combo. Price wise (while expensive) I can probably swing it (pun intended 😉 ). Buy once, cry once. But the weight never goes away... I would love to get everyones input. I think depth is potentially my biggest concern (based on how close it gets), with weight, then price being close behind. How much depth does the 6000/17 give up to the 7000/19? Secondly, what are the odds a depth focused coil will come out for the 6000? If one does come out, how close to the 7000/19 do people think it will get? Depth could potentially get better with a new coil (if Minelab allows it). However, weight and price of the 7000 never will. I can see pro's and con's to both for my situation. Ideally I would have both, but I need to choose one. Thus I defer to the greater community who has vastly more experience, many of whom have run both machines at length. Please help me decide. I'm flip flopping. Many Thanks, Nick
  17. So, I have been MIA to detecting for the past 2 weeks, as I had my second date with Covid. 🙄 She visits me every 2 years and this time was no fun as well. 😄. A buddy of mine wanted to do an E Trac hunt, so I met him at a church built in the 1940’s but on a very old piece of land. I also brought the Equinox 800 and the GPX 5000. I started the hunt with the E Trac and a 13” Ultimate coil (that I just purchased here recently). It took me a bit to remember how to use it in this kind of EMI setting, but it worked very well finding me an 1852 Large cent at around 9”. I ran it for about 2 hours and found some memorials and a couple of wheats. I decided to switch and try the Equinox. Now the selling point of the Equinox is its multi-frequency technology, so I wasn’t interested in hunting with the 20 or 40 Khz frequencies, as I was looking for deep silver. The Equinox didn’t fare well with the EMI, so off to the car trunk it went. I then pulled out the GPX with a Detech 11” DD coil. It was noisy, but bearable as I ran it with very mild settings. The last 2 hours of the hunt were the most fun as I could almost run with the GPX and just bang out coin after coin, all around the 6” mark. This section I was doing had almost no trash or iron, just coins. There wasn’t a pull tab to be found, and besides some modern clad, every cent there was a wheat cent. So, the GPX found both silvers and a lot of wheats including a decent 1921. It was a ton of fun and I was just glad to get out and hunt after sitting home for all those days.
  18. My first 6000 was faulty out of the box which they replaced with a new one. I've had the new one for 21 days and probably used it 8 days before it went bad. When i was boxing it up to ship back i heard something rattling inside of it, not good. In researching i found that they've known them to have major issues since March or April, yet they have refused to address the issue with a production stop or at least look at the different production runs and recall those units. I think when it's all said and done there will be a substantial number of them that are faulty worldwide. As it stands now, Detector Center states that there is a" temporary" 10- 14 day time frame for repairing them. My bet is that it's not going to be temporary. If this failure rate continues there may be grounds for a worldwide class action lawsuit, who knows. Oh, and i owned a business for 40 years. Not a very smart way to run a business. JMO.
  19. This is an excellent comparison from one of my favorite Youtubers. I don't necessarily agree with the initial intend of the video (which one is the better detector?), but the comparison is well made for surface detection in difficult ground with hot rocks. Overall, the 7000 (run with her settings) is much less susceptible to hot rocks, but looses some sensitivity for small gold (not much however). I can very much relate to this video, for instance when detecting in iron rich volcanic ground that is littered with hot rocks (i.e. many places in the Mojave desert). The 7000 is much more benign there but still catches much of the smaller gold as well (NF-Zsearch and X-coils). I like her conclusion at the end, both detectors being absolutely superb. I totally agree, but having the 6k will not make me sell my 7k as I view both detectors as being complimentary, at least in some aspectes. PS: Man, those flies..... GC
  20. Yesterday JW and I went for another gold hunt to the same place we'd been going on all the previous missions I've posted about in the past couple of weeks, I've always liked this spot, it's been my favourite. You do deal with a lot of junk here though, mostly shutgun pellets but I guess it's good practice for me sorting the junk from the gold. I felt like I was up to a bigger walk this time, JW invited me up to the spot he did last time we were at this place, If you recall I stayed right at the start and spent the day in a very small area last time while JW went for a stroll far further into the area and he managed to find 8 nuggets. This a photo of the 8 nuggets JW found in the area on the previous day when I stayed at the entrance to the area. It seemed a worthwhile spot for me to take on a big walk to get to, my broken foot seems to never feel better, it's been a long time now and it feels no better than it did at the start, although it has its good days and bad days and it felt like it was going to be a good day. We walked up to this area and JW showed me around and told me where he'd found some nuggets in the past, I hadn't been here for a couple of years back when I was using my GPX 4500 and I found nothing with it in this spot from memory. So we fired up our weapons and off we went. I headed up higher and JW went off to the right and down from where we stored our packs, the higher ground looked alright to me although my detector was nutting off constantly on pellets straight away, big pellets like someone had been hunting elephants in the area, only NZ doesn't have elephants, but the really large size rusty magnetic pellets, I don't normally encounter these sort often, usually it's the tiny little lead ones. They were absolutely everywhere and driving me mad. I kept going in the area anyway and then I encountered a target noise that was not like the others, a softer quieter sweeter sound, a few scrapes to remove the chances of it being a small lead near surface pellet and the signal improved, I kept digging and digging and the signal was better and better, this was getting exciting although I'd dug so much junk since getting here I had it in my head it's 90% chance some sort of junk, maybe a boot tack or something so I wasn't overly concerned about doing any video. Once I was fairly deep I decided it might be time to flick on the phones camera just in case and I'm glad I did, now I have some memories of my second biggest ever nugget find! Over a gram nuggets or even gram size nuggets are an extreme rarity here, so it's a happy day when you score a gram size nugget, this one however was a lot bigger than a gram. This is it's hole, and if you'll see the video you'll see it wasn't a fisherman's story about the size of his fish catch, exaggerating the depth on the hole, this is precisely the depth of the nugget. A beauty, and very odd for a NZ nugget based off what I've found before, mine are generally always pretty smooth, this one was a chunky rough looking nugget, more like the nuggets found in Australia. And here is the video, I'm so annoyed I didn't film the entire thing from the start as I like having videos for my future watching of my nugget finds, especially when it's a nugget out of the ordinary for me. Oh well, at least I got some of it on video. Pretty happy with this one, my second biggest nugget so far and only just behind my biggest by .1 of a gram. I ran down to show JW, we were both pretty shocked a nugget this size was found here. I now had a dilemma, the likelihood of me finding a nugget now was low, usually if I find a nugget right at the start of the day I find no more 😛 Hours passed and exactly that, plenty of junk and no more nuggets, I had some lunch and figured I'd move out of the bigger nugget area and see if I can find something down lower on the hillside. I didn't really want to walk too much on steep ground with my foot but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. At this point JW had found one nugget also from memory so I didn't think my hopes would be too high down lower on the slope where he was but that's gold for you, you never know. It wasn't even 20 minute and there it was, my second nugget. A nice easy signal, the 8" loves small gold, even a bit of gold weighing 0.03 of a gram is a booming signal compared to a very small lead pellet. This piece wasn't exactly small though, well for me 🙂 within a few steps of that nugget I found another one almost straight away, another easy target signal. Here is what the ground looks like we were hunting, from a cut out the old timers had done. Things dried up again for a while now and JW appeared crossing over a ridge into sight, he was heading back to his bag for lunch so I decided I'd go sit with him and have a break, we had a look at the nugget again after the initial shock had passed and at this point he had 3 little nuggets with his GPX 6000, so we were sitting on 3 each at this point. his were similar size to my smaller two. Back at it, this time we both just hung around near our bags for a bit where I'd just found the two nuggets, and after an hour or so of nothing we gradually moved on, I decided I'd go back a fair bit in the direction of the car so I took our bags to save us having to go back for them as JW was slowly heading in that direction too. I went for a walk to some thyme bushes on the downward slope hoping the little 8" would give me an advantage over anyone else who had detected there as the spaces between the bushes are so small it takes a small coil to get between them and the 8" had done extremely well doing this in the past, it slides between the bushes no problems. I don't know why I didn't take a photo of them. I was only in the bushes for 20 minutes and digging plenty of pellets and junk and then I had a signal that seemed different to the others, I scraped away the grass and could clearly see I was on some bedrock. The signal was pretty good, unmistakable, although tiny it was a nice little bit of gold. It was my smallest bit of the day so I wanted to see how it responded on JW's GPX 6000 to compare it in my head to how it responded with my GPZ and 8" X-coil. I was very satisfied with how good the target response was on my GPZ so it would have been good to compare, I walked over to where JW was to find him fiddling with his GPX unplugging the coil and removing the battery and so on, he said it was doing its usual EMI thing where he just turns it off and does a factory reset and it seems to clear up the EMI, however this time when he switched it off and on again it came up with an error so he was unplugging everything and making sure it was all secure in an attempt to revive it. After many attempts it was clear the thing had died. Either the coil or the detector. We took a video of it which you can see here. This put a bit of a downer on what was otherwise an excellent day. Minelab have really outdone themselves with the build quality of the GPX 6000, for the price things are not too great I think, it's pretty disappointing. I told JW we should just leave now, I didn't want to continue with him having to sit around and wait for me to finish, it was sad enough his detector died without having to sit around watching me have all the fun so we left to go get some Chinese food on the way home, we got there right as the place opened for dinner so the buffet had all the good stuff! We got ourselves an excellent meal. Once we got back to JW's house we tried another coil on the detector and it worked, so it was the 11" coil that failed. My theory is the security chip in the coil has failed, my reason for this is the detector was working fine until it was turned off, so a fault with the windings or cable connection or anything like that is HIGHLY unlikely to be the problem, the EMI he was getting that prompted him to turn it off and on was nothing out of the ordinary, he does this many times during a detecting session to fix the EMI when a noise cancel doesn't seem to do it. When the detector was turned off and on it uses that chip to verify the coil, if the chips dead the detector will error exactly like what's happened. A bit of a downer on what was a good day. JW ended up with his 3 little nuggets, I can't remember his weights but his total was about .3 of a gram from memory, I'll put up his total photo if he sends it through on email, he normally sends me his photo of gold weights. We also weighed my gold at JW's house, I wanted to know if my big one was my biggest ever, it was close. The little one I wanted to check and compare with the 6000 came up as 0.03 on JW's scales, when I arrived home checked the weights on my scales as they're more accurate and it came up slightly heavier than on his. It's not my smallest GPZ nugget which is 0.023 of a gram on my scales but it's getting down there. It's heavier than it looked. Here is my junk for the day lots of tiny little metal shards, they were so annoying as they're a great signal. I think I lost a fair few pellets out of my pocket, it happens pulling my scoop in and out all day. And my days total My best day in about a year I'd guess, pretty sad about JW's GPX though, now he's got the hassles of dealing with the warranty.
  21. Good morning DP forum. Now that the GPX6 has been out for awhile and I'm sure people have had time to play with various boosters, I'm wondering what the consensus is. The easy question, do you think they are worth it? Do they make enough of a difference to bother with the extra attachments and cables - even if they are kept to a minimum? 5% improvement? 20% improvement? Have you done any specific testing over un-dug targets with and without booster? Interested to hear your thoughts and, if you continued to use a booster, what are you using and how have you set it up? Are you using speakers or wired headphones to the booster? The reason I ask is that I am considering purchasing a booster, but my gut feel is that it is not going to make enough of a difference to be worth it. My current set-up of AS70 BT LL receiver attached to my shirt and then plugged into either some ear buds or a speaker provides good clarity audio. Perhaps a booster allows lower detector volume and a smoother threshold for the same sensitivity setting? Or improved signal response? Really interested to hear the responses. And JP, Doc and Phase Tech - please don't sit on the side lines just because you manufacture/sell them - would love to hear your views too 👍 Cheers, N.E.
  22. Well, lucky I was planning to take my GPZ as a backup for this weekends gold hunt, I charged my GPX 6000 I picked up yesterday overnight so it'd be ready for today. The headphones didn't fully charge even though they had about 10 hours they're still flashing red/blue this morning so they're likely duds but the worst part is the GPX doesn't even turn on. I can't be more disappointed, I knew the GPX was rubbish quality, but I didn't quite think the extend of the problem was this bad that both JW's and mine would both be faulty. I almost expected it to develop a fault at some point, I didn't think the first time using it. Good work Minelab! Here is JW's faulty one
  23. After some initial testing with the GPX 5000 vs the GPX 6000 last week on some buried relics. I decided to take the GPX 6000 out for a few hours yesterday to one of my permissions that dates to the late 1850's. Based on what I learned from the previous weeks testing I set the 6000 in difficult, threshold off, sensitivity at 4 and used the 11" mono coil. I started out by digging every signal just to confirm my findings from the initial testing and to see where the targets fell in the tone range, high vs low. Most of the wire and nails (whether high or low tones) were identified by the double beep they give, but were dug anyway just to confirm. If you refer back to Steve's original post found here: He discusses where targets fall based on the timing used with the mono coils (this will most likely differ when using the 14" DD). What I dug in the photo below, top of the picture low tone, bottom of the picture high tone. Cutoff off for targets on one end whether high or low appears to be right at the .22 brass range. Shorts are a high tone, longs are a low tone. So this puts small round balls, pewter buttons, all gold coins (except maybe the $20), cuff buttons, coat buttons and bullets in the low tone bucket. On the other end, flat tin, most nails, .22 lead, percussion caps, and other really small brass/lead items as a high tone, this would also include silver coins (except maybe half dimes and trimes) and I would assume belt plates unfortunately. So based on what I found (for my soil conditions) I could setup the GPX 6000 and dig only low tones virtually avoiding most junk targets. One could go one step further and evaluate all the high tones as well and only dig the ones that had the right sound, size and shape and pick up the occasional deep coin, you would also be digging flat tin. So if a person ran over a site with a VLF and picked out all the high conductors (which usually happens anyway) grabbing the silver coins and possible plates. You could then hit it with the 6000 digging only low tones and pretty much clean the rest out avoiding most unwanted items.
  24. Anyone figured out a good way to make the headphones more insulated to wind noises? I just used them for the first time (I've been toughing it out with the speaker until now, I hate headphones), winds 30-40mph, and it almost wasn't much better than just using the speaker, I could still barely hear the detector through the headphones. It's like they need some earmuffs to go over them to dampen the wind or something.
  25. It should be getting obvious the GPX 6000 is a great nugget detector. I think it also has great possibilities for beach detecting for jewelry. If somebody was to ask me about relic detecting, I’d tell them the same thing I say about the GPZ 7000 - way too sensitive to tiny ferrous. There is such a thing as too sensitive, and the fact that the GPX 5000 can be set up to miss the tiniest ferrous is actually an advantage. The 6000 will bang hard on the tiniest slivers of ferrous stuff, like almost invisible bits of hair thin wire. However, it might be something those who already have the machine might want to play with, and I have already been learning a few discrimination tricks while beach detecting. Anyone familiar with the Minelab PI detectors knows you get two main tone responses, either a high tone, or a low tone. The simple way to think of what these tones mean is high tone = small or weaker / low conductive targets, and low tone = large or stronger / high conductive targets. The dividing line between the two is not fixed, but varies with the ground balance setting. This means people in lower mineral ground will not get the same results as those in high mineral ground. It’s a complex subject, one I go into great detail at here. The GPX 6000 has one bit of magic for this task. The Normal/Difficult ground setting button. It allows a change in the tone response by simply pressing a button. I do not know the details of Normal vs Difficult, but it changes the timings enough to flip the tone response on many targets. I found I could use it to get four different target classes. Hi tone normal, high tone difficult = Aluminum foil, misc aluminum, wire, most bottle caps, misc small ferrous - low VDI targets. Small gold. Hi tone normal, low tone difficult = Nickel range targets, larger aluminum. Larger gold. Low tone normal, low tone difficult = Zinc penny range targets. Even larger gold. Low tone normal, high tone difficult = Quarters, dimes, copper penny, high VDI targets, nails (larger ferrous). Silver rings. The results closely mimic my coin detecting results with other ground balancing PI detectors, but with a big difference. With all the other machines I had two classes of targets. High tone small stuff, low conductors, and low tone large stuff, high conductors. This new method delivers four target classes, potentially a big step up in discrimination capability with a PI. Ferrous can show up in any of the ranges, just depends on size and type. By digging the fourth category, it’s basically just high conductive coins, and nails. No zinc pennies or aluminum screw caps. Not good if you have lots of nails, but I will be doing this in a park soon, as many parks are not loaded with nails. Others might be, so it’s site specific. The other big caveat I already mentioned. This assumes bad ground, with a ground balance setting to match. The GPX 6000 is automatic and sets its own ground balance. You have no way to set and lock it, unlike a TDI. So I have no idea where the tone shifts will occur in other ground. The good news is that you really don’t need a PI as much in low mineral ground. This might allow people to get more depth on silver coins in really bad ground. The DD coil also skews results, depending on which mode it is in, salt or cancel. In other words folks, I’m looking for people who are willing to experiment, and document. I will be doing more of this and adding new information here as I go. Any adventurous souls, please do the same. There is a definite crude discrimination system included with the GPX 6000, by way of an easy button push. Let’s figure it out, and it may open up some new detecting possibilities. I blew it on my first go at this, as I dropped finds into different pockets of my pouch, to separate them by category for a photo, along with the trash. Then I got home and by habit just dumped it all in my sieve to sort the sand and trash out - oops. So will do better at that next time. Bottom line is I got real good at calling out the coins before digging. There are some real possibilities here for the adventurous types - PI naysayers need not apply! There are also caveats of course, see the following threads for more details. More information in related threads: Minelab GPX 6000 for Coin & Relic Hunting Relic Hunting with the Minelab GPX 6000?
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