Search the Community

Sent my 5000 to Mick at Detectronics to have it modified, just a heads up, the cost to ship by UPS from Utah with $500 insurance, is $450. 93. Mike

So, for the first time in over eight years I'm going to get a vacation later on this year (a whole 1 week off!!!). My wife and kids got a week off last year to head north to Queensland for a break during our unusually cold Australian winter, while I got a casual reliever in to help me run the shop. This year it's my turn and I'm going to take the week off during winter/spring and head to our property in Rheola for a week, to detect in the neighboring districts goldfields. The best I had managed up until covid four years ago was one day at a time three or four times per year. The rest of my free time has been spent on renovating the place. I want to have some fun for that week, and seeing as I'll be detecting every day (weather permitting), I'm going to forgo my usual fruitless search for big deep stuff with a big heavy coil, and instead concentrate on a seemingly untouched area where I pinged a 1.5/ 2 grammer a few years back. I'm going to buy myself a small coil and see if I can do better than with the 25"DDX and find some smaller stuff to give to my kids and make them smile. I've been reading some of the threads in this forum about the older Sadie 8"x6" Evolution coil vs the newer Sadie MK2 8"x6" Advantage. What I Still don't understand though is this- is the older Evo Sadie just not so good on a modded 5000 and some other newer detector/s? My understanding was that the MK2 Sadie Advantage was upgraded to run smoother on a Modded 4500/5000. In which case does that mean it's not the best choice for an unmodded 5000 when comparing the two? Also a couple of people have mentioned that the MK2 version being black gets hotter in the sun. If this is true would it's performance vary when it gets hot? Finally, what about say a 9" Coiltek Elite or a Detech 8" Mono or perhaps the Detech 6" Little Brother? I realize of course that just as with detectors, some people are one-eyed about coils too. My only success thus far has been with a Nugget Finder 25"DDX (which I believe is half spiral wound and half bundle??). Either way I had no success with any of the Minelab coils ( 12"Mono, 12"DD, and 18"DD Commander), the 20" Nugget Finder Advantage (other than a quite deep Lead Musket Ball), or a Detech 21" x 17" SEF. Having said that, all of those coils were before I had more understanding of my GPX5000 or even the most basic understanding of Goldfield Geology, so it was probably more the archer rather than the arrows that let the team down. I try to be above brand loyalty with most things, but I feel torn between the two Nugget finder Sadie versions. Any thoughts from users who are experienced with either (or both) of these coils on an Unmodded GPX5000? Thanks in Advance, -Gary

Hello all, I'm using a Gpx 4500 usually with the stock DD (i know crazy but it works for me) 9 out of 10 spots I go it runs perfectly smooth. One spot during the winter especially I get a lot of chatter, false signals, random pulses I have messed with setting doing all the right start up processes ect. Still the detector will not calm down. I believe the culprit is electric fences in the area. They are on both sides of the property roughly 100 yards away. So..could the coiltek anti-interference coil help in this situation? Thanks

I asked ChatGPT to create a flow chart to help me decide whether to dig a target or not. I have been using a Minelab GPX 4500 for 2 years or so and feel that I have not learned much. I need a way to organize my thinking and experiences so I don’t forget them. I want something that I can revise and extend as my experience grows. We all know that we won’t agree, but this is a good way to start thinking about it. Please make comments and suggestions whether you agree or not. The more, the better. It is pretty simple, but here it is: Decision-Making Flowchart for Metal Detecting Using a PI Machine Part 1: Searching for Shallow Gold 1. Signal Detected - Proceed to analyze the signal. 2. Signal Type - High-Pitch to Low-Pitch (Falling Tone): Likely non-ferrous target; proceed to the next step. - Low-Pitch to High-Pitch (Rising Tone): Often ferrous or trash; proceed cautiously (exceptions exist). 3. Signal Sharpness - Sharp and Clear Signal: Indicates a solid, shallow target; likely worth digging. - Broad or Fuzzy Signal: Likely trash or an irregular object; consider skipping unless in a high-potential area. 4. Signal Consistency - Stable Across Swings: Strong indicator of a desirable target; dig. - Inconsistent or Changes with Angle: Likely trash or irregular material; consider skipping. 5. Final Decision - If the signal is high-pitch to low-pitch, sharp, and stable: Dig the target. - Otherwise: Ignore or move on. --- Part 2: Searching for Large, Deep Gold 1. Signal Detected - Proceed to analyze the signal. 2. Signal Type - High-Pitch to Low-Pitch (Falling Tone): Often non-ferrous target; proceed to the next step. - Low-Pitch to High-Pitch (Rising Tone): Can indicate large, deep ferrous targets or irregular trash; proceed cautiously. 3. Signal Strength - Weak Signal: Likely deep or small target; worth further investigation in areas with high gold potential. - Strong Signal: Likely shallow trash or a large target near the surface; evaluate carefully. 4. Signal Sharpness - Broad Signal: Common for deep, large objects; worth digging in high-potential areas. - Sharp Signal: Rare for deep targets but possible for compact, high-conductivity objects. 5. Ground Balance Check - Ensure proper ground balancing to rule out mineralization noise. 6. Signal Consistency - Stable Across Swings: Likely a desirable target; dig. - Inconsistent or Changes with Angle: Possibly trash or mineralization; consider skipping. 7. Final Decision - If the signal is weak, broad, stable, and persists after ground balancing: Dig the target. - Otherwise: Ignore or move on. --- Additional Notes: - Iron Falsing: Rusty iron may produce good signals; use "wiggle" techniques to confirm. - Digging Questionable Signals: In areas with known gold deposits, err on the side of digging. - Practice: Regularly practice identifying targets by sound and digging to refine skills and improve judgment. This decision-making framework can guide your efforts and improve efficiency while detecting for gold in various conditions.

I see the Minelab GPX 4500 is being discontinued. If the price goes down is it worth it to pick one up or has what replaced it that much better? Perhaps a premium will now be asked for the remaining new GPX 4500's? Is now the time to buy??

Seems like I am pretty well outfitted these days. There is just not much I need when it comes to metal detecting. But I did just decide to go ahead and spring for a 25" Nugget Finder round mono coil for my GPX 5000. One of my main coils for the last few years has been an 18" Nugget Finder mono that Jonathan Porter gave me when Chris Ralph and I were in Australia. It was a coil I borrowed early on and then used nearly the whole month I was in Australia. I liked the overall combination of ground coverage and large nugget depth, yet it surprised me with how small a nugget it could still detect. JP saw how much I liked the coil and was kind enough to let me take it back to the States with me. I actually owned an earlier four spoked white version of the 25" coil that I used at Moore Creek a few times. I ultimately decided the coil was more than I wanted to swing and it was too big to pack into a suitcase for air travel. I sold it and have not missed it much. I spend so much time in brushy terrain and steep terrain that I rarely am someplace such a coil would be practical. What you need is flat, open, deep ground with a possibility of large gold. It turns out there are some places like that I will be visiting this summer. I decided a larger coil would be a good idea but was still worried about going too big. I considered the 20" mono, but it just did not seem like a large enough difference compared to the 18" to be worth the money I would be spending. So I decided to go all the way and go for the 25" Nugget Finder Advantage. I did prove to my satisfaction at Moore Creek that this huge coil can pull up large gold others miss. We had a flattened tailing pile next to the cabin that produced so many nuggets it was called the "Honey Hole". After one week of it getting pounded by the visitors I went up and flagged several deep, weak targets and then I cheated. I went and got the backhoe and dug them up! A 25" coil should actually come with a backhoe. Three out of five targets were nice nuggets a weeks worth of people carefully hunting had missed. At over two pounds I will not use this coil a lot, but I will give it a good go in relatively flat, open ground that has been hunted already to the point of being dead of targets. One decent nugget will pay for the coil so that will be the goal this summer - to at least find a nugget that pays for the coil. But maybe, just maybe, it will find something really noteworthy. I will report back when and if that happens. The new Nugget Finder 25" Advantage is a three spoked gray coil. These silly things are going for $629 these days. A good chunk of that goes to get the coil from Australia to the US and then to the dealer. The shipping cost on these coils is horrendous; they do not weigh much (37 ounces) but they bulk out something fierce when put in a box. I have not actually purchased the coil yet so if somebody has a used one they want to part with let me know. Looks like I need to take a good picture of one of these to post later. Nearly every photo on the internet is actually a smaller coil billed as a 25" and the few that look like they are 25" coils are watermarked. Photo of my new coil added 4/20/14

My 6000 won’t power up. Yes the battery has been charged and checked with the 12v volt charger and the 110V charger. I have checked the voltage of the battery and it is 8 volts, but I am not sure what it really should be. I am in Quartzsite, Az. If anyone is here and would be willing to help, by let me try your battery in my 6000 it sure would help me out. Miner Depot is not open yet and won’t be for another week. If it is something other than the battery I would like to ship it off to Minelab repair as soon as I can, or get another battery headed this way.

Woody's done a decent video on the chip in the 6000's coils. It's there for absolutely no reason other than being an authenticator to prevent unsanctioned aftermarket coils. You can read about the security chip here at the manufacturer's website. Video is of the newer model. This video shows how they program the chips, all very interesting stuff. There were rumours flying around Nugget Finder did this wrong when the Xceed coil was delayed, no idea if that was true, probably not. It's really not all that hard to do a dongle using the chip, the only thing different to the GPZ is you have to cut open the coil to make it a donor coil rather than just chopping the cord like the GPZ, the coil can work on the dongle without a chip in it so can still be used but I think many aftermarket coils are more likely to appear once GPX's are out of warranty and the stock coils are prone to failure so once people have a heap of dead genuine coils what other use do they have other than dongle coils 🙂 It's a shame Minelab are so against aftermarket non-sanctioned coils, they're holding back their detectors doing this, I suppose it makes life easier to bring out future models by doing so with self-imposed performance restrictions though. The funny thing is another common use of that chip is printer cartridge authentication to prevent people using aftermarket printer cartridges. We all know the agony of buying printer ink. There is big money in printer ink, Minelab gold detectors feel like they're worth their weight in gold, printer ink actually is worth more than its own weight in gold :)

Just thought I would share my wireless setup for anyone thinking of trying this. I have used Avantree Saturn Pro (Low Latency) bluetooth Transmitter/receiver and some Camcorder batteries. I have also got a couple of Lipo batteries from my RC which run the 5000 really well as they keep their voltage for longer. The leads I made myself with genuine power plugs and a deans RC battery plug and a 1/8 audio jack so as to go straight into bluetooth wireless module. These little module are very good and are lasting well over the 8 hour mark on a charge, and their size and weight make them very versatile. The 7200mah pack and wireless module come in at 325 grams with leads included this lasts about 5-6hours I have made up a couple of 3400mah packs with 18650 cells and these weight 180 grams with module and leads and lasts about 3 hours. I have a 5000mah Lipo hardcase which weight 200 grams with both wires and module, this goes for 7 hours before the low voltage alarm comes. Lipo batteries aren't for everyone as they can be a little volatile, but I am yet to have one explode and treat them with care when charging with a good lipo charger.

Hi Folks, Have you ever been out prospecting, noticed a quartz vein and run your detector over it with fingers crossed? I think we have all done it and generally move on as most of these veins or stringers are barren. Yesterday was a new adventure for Joe and I as we were getting into a new area that we had never detected. It was a small creek that had a history of containing gold with the surrounding hills being mined about 130 years ago. As we walked up the creek we found numerous rock bars and bedrock which contained beautiful and potential gold traps but they were all empty. Narrow veins of quartz crossed the creek at regular intervals and sections of the bank were quite mineralised giving us hope. There was evidence of human activity with the usual rusty steel and lead shot but the yellow stuff was not showing up. The plan was to move quickly upstream leap frogging each other until we found something that would pull us up. We wanted to reach an area close to a couple of hard rock mines that were situated on the hills above the gully. Each quartz vein we walked past was a magnet for the coil and a quick swipe with the detector confirmed what we always expected. After about an hour we hit a spot where a rock bar crossed the creek and there was the usual evidence of quartz stringing it’s way into each bank. I ran the 10x5 across one of these veins and was surprised to get a sweet signal. It was in a few inches of water and was surrounded by some really hard host rock. If it was to be gold, it would be a major effort to break up the quartz to release the target. As it was an exploration adventure, we decided to keep going and have a closer look on the way back. Here is a picture that I took which shows the narrow vein attached to the host rock. Unfortunately the light created an awful reflection that doesn’t clearly show what we were looking at. The vein is about 25mm wide and was visible for about 1m before disappearing into gravels. We continued upstream until we stopped for lunch. At this stage the rattle jars did not rattle and we were beginning to think that we may end up being skunked. After a break we continued on but at about 2:30 we decided to start heading back as it would take us an hour or so to get back to the ute. Joe finally got a signal that required a large rock to be moved as the target was under it. Being in water, it took a bit of work to retrieve but finally a nice little piece of gold popped out. The Coiltek 10x5 did a great job to pick up this target at good depth. Joe and I continued to work our way back until I finally had a hit and started digging out a small piece of gold. Joe at this point was about 20m further upstream and decided to stop so that his machine would not start sending my detector into a screaming fit. He detected up on the bank and also picked up a piece of gold. We decided that this area would need further investigation but not today. We had to keep moving. We finally made it back to the quartz vein and decided that we had to try to chip out the target. Joe started hacking away at the reef like a man possessed and after about 5 minutes we noticed that the target had moved. The small pieces of quartz that were chipped out started moving down stream over the host rock. It was acting a bit like a sluice with the light material washing away quickly. As the water cleared, a small piece of gold appeared. It should have been photographed at that point but when when gold is spotted, logic goes out the window. The gold was placed on the coil and photographed close to where it was removed. You can see the vein above the coil and some of the broken quartz on the right hand side. If you zoom in you may also see another piece of gold sitting on the bedrock. I didn’t know it was there at the time but the coil told the story a few minutes later. A small amount of gravel was then moved and Joe ran the 6000 over about 1m of the vein. Another two signals were detected indicating that more gold was present. And here’s the hard bit. We had to walk away as it was getting late and light was fading. Looks like another trip back to the creek is in order. We will take cold chisels, a hammer and crevice tools with us to make life a bit easier. Any thoughts or ideas as to how we approach this task would be appreciated as it’s going to be a difficult job recovering the gold. What do we do if there’s more gold deeper in the vein? This will obviously do our heads in but in a good way. Here is a pic of the gold we found yesterday. Not a lot but enough to create another interesting memory. I might try to video the next step as it’s a bit different to what we normally do. cheers Les

Please help me out with some GPX experiences. Living in the eastern US I don`t have the opportunity to use the 5000 much. I try to do two or three trips a year in gold country, so my actual time on the machine is limited compared to those who can get out more often, so any advice or helpful hints are much appreciated to shorten the learning curve.

I have been looking at pi detectors lately never used pi before have used gold monster and regular coin machines alot want a pi for gold nugget hunting. I have heard alot of good and bad about the 5000 great detector but very complicated as well. Most gold in and around redding california are little bits from what ive heard obviously big chunks come out rarely. Is a 5000 worth it for a novice who doesnt get out as much as he would like or find something simpler like a sdc 2300. Thanks in advance. Will check back at replys later at work now

Hi all, I work for Avantree, and I stumbled upon this forum and noticed that many of you in the prospecting community are enjoying our Torus for use with your detectors! We would love to continue supplying quality audio devices for the prospecting community. We're currently developing a new product called the Sky Infinity. It is a bundle including our Infinity earbuds (https://www.avantalk.com/products/infinity-multifunctional-wireless-earbuds) and the Relay Bluetooth transmitter (https://avantree.com/relay-airplane-bluetooth-adapter-for-headphones). We will also include a 6.3mm to 3.5mm adapter so you can plug the Relay into your detector. The Infinity earbuds have the aptX Adaptive and LE audio codecs. aptX Adaptive's latency levels are slightly higher than aptX Low Latency (which the Torus has) at 60ms delay v.s 40ms, but provides far superior sound quality. LE audio is a new technology as phrunt mentioned earlier, which trumps both aptX Adaptive and aptX Low Latency. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a transmitter that supports LE audio, but if there's enough interest in this, we can definitely develop one! If you're interested in trying the Sky Infinity bundle for use with your detector, let me know via message. We can send you one to try! If you have any other ideas for a product that would work well with your detector, please share and we can develop something great for you.

I have a gpx4500. Ihave done fairly well with it but am not getting many targets in my spots. I know there is more there but it's either too small or out of reach with my current setup. I have a GM100 which is cleaning up the little stuff. My current couls are 10x5 joey, 10x14 nugget finder advantage and a stock 11" dd. The 10x14 nugget finder is getting really beat up and falsing etc. Looking for a new coil to get those deeper 2-4 gram nuggets. Terrain is creek bottom with some hot rocks. Hoping there is a chart or such about what I can reasonably expect from a certain coil. IE 14"evo will normally hit a 2g nugget at 12". Or something like that. Thanks

Rumours have been swirling around for weeks on social media about Nugget Finder discontinuing their current line of GPX coils and thinking of remaking some of them in a new design to better suit modern detectors like the Algoforce, and the rumours are larger sizes are all discontinued permanently. I'm hearing the Sadie is completely discontinued with a new small coil coming in the way of the 12x7" by using the GPX 6000 Xceed coil housing which I've seen a Youtube video of someone testing that particular coil on the GPX 5000, that way at least it can be a spiral or semi spiral and more sensitive than the Sadie, as the spirals leave it in the dust. I was quite disappointed by the Sadies performance on my Algoforce and it's by no means the detectors fault, it works brilliantly with better coils, I bought it specifically for that detector, a brand new coil at the time I bought the detector so pretty disappointed to hear it's now a discontinued model due to problems, the feedback is it didn't work well with the modern GPX compatible detectors like the Algoforce, the other detectors that had problems with the current Nugget Finder GPX coils were the modified GPX's from the likes of Detectormods. Sure the coils were intended for the GPX in it's original form and worked well with it but I guess the volume of sales now are more from Algoforce users and perhaps the modded detector crowd as the mods now seem to have matured to be a very good performance enhancing product. Further rumours are Detectormods have been working with NF on this matter. I thought it was just rumours swirling yet it became too real to be rumours when I saw it on the Nugget Finder website. A dealer from the Prospectors Patch released a Facebook video confirming this is taking place, so that's why I'm now posting it as I hate supporting rumours, this gives it some credibility seeing NF aren't very good with communication, although their website has been updated to say the coils are discontinued except for the 12x8" EVO and 12" round but others have said that's just until it runs out., although I'd highly recommend not buying one for the Algoforce, lots of reports of the 12x8" in particular not working well. Not sure about the 12" but people did say older serial numbers worked well but not newer ones (this was part of the rumours) I know many don't use Facebook so here's the Prospectors Patch video on Youtube. Looks like it's the end of an era for the NF GPX coils, hopefully they can get a few models up to scratch like the 12x7" new shell design and the 12" round working well for the Algoforce and re-release them sometime in the future. I've been using my 14x9" EVO on the Algoforce and had no problems, always loved that coil, works as expected but it's an older serial number one that I've had a few years from my GPX, it seems the problems were newer serial numbers, again rumour I can't verify the validity of that, it could be all of them. Have any NF dealers or anyone on here heard more about this to enlighten us? On a side note, all mention of any other Xceed coils for the 6000 have been removed from their website too, so it looks like the other two sizes are possibly never coming out, bit disappointed in that, I wanted the little one.

As I understand it the 11 inch DD Minelab coil is the recommended coil for initial use in a new area. Mine is dead. Should I buy an identical coil as a replacement or does current technology offer a better option? Also any comment on the Chinese $60 clone?

Hi Folks, A couple of weeks ago Joe and I spent a day detecting some old elevated workings with the zeds. It was obvious that they had been hit hard over the years and we could see that they had been raked within the past 12 months. It didn’t worry us though as it was a new area and we approached it as an adventure. After working the area for about five hours, we decided to head home early as we had only scored five or six small pieces for our effort. On the way home, we decided to stop and inspect a gully that was located about .5 km to the north of where we had been working. We left the detectors in the car and just walked a couple of hundred metres upstream to look at the potential of the area. What we saw impressed us so we thought that we would do a bit of research and come back another day and run our detectors through some of this country. As the majority of this creek was running through private property, we thought that there may be a chance that this gully had received a little less attention than some of the more famous gold bearing streams in the area. A quick chat with the owners of the land gave us a creek name but nothing else. To their knowledge, there was no stories related to alluvial gold mining in that particular spot. A bit of research showed no reference to the creek at all. The land title maps showed that 70% of the creek was on private property with the upper reaches running through state forest. It was interesting to see that this was an old title where the creek was actually part of the property itself. In other words, there was no public access to the stream without trespassing. That was great for us as we had permission to explore the area. Further research showed that a series of hard rock mines situated on the ridge above the gully had produced payable gold 120 years ago. That was enough information to get us excited. We developed a plan of attack and decided to come back the following week to explore the area. Joe and I decided to use the 6000 with the Coiltek 10x5 attached. We thought that there should be plenty of potential gold traps in the creek and this setup would allow us to get into tight areas and squeeze out any little bits of yellow hidden in cracks or crevices. If we found gold, we could then come back with zeds and look for deeper, larger pieces. The bottom section of the creek was deep ground with very few features so we just quickly ran our machines over this country, concentrating on the wings of the creek. The alluvial soil quickly changed to a mineralised red soil as we moved upstream. There was plenty of hot rocks and quartz in the gravels which gave us hope for better things higher up. After a few hundred metres the country changed. The sides of the valley became quite steep and a rocky bottom started to appear. The country was outstandingly beautiful. Pools of water, small waterfalls, rock bars and huge rocks were staring back at us. It was breathtaking. Joe and I just looked at each other and all we could say was “Wow”. We had found a different type of gold and we just had to stop and take it all in. This type of beautiful country continued all the way upstream. As we were in the mountains, the elevation changed rapidly. We had to climb quite a few rock faces and wade through slippery pools of water in our search for gold. Quartz stringers were running through many of the rock bars and we were hopeful of finding something but targets were scarce. In one area we found a lot of barbed wire fragments which in hindsight may have been part of an old boundary fence. The rock bars that we encountered held beautiful gold traps but they were barren. There was very little evidence of any work being done on the banks by the old time prospectors so we had a good idea that this stream may not hold much gold. We continued upstream until we made it to an area that was directly below some old mines. Joe continued upstream while I walked up the steep bank to try to find the location of the first mine. The undergrowth was quite thick and it was a hard slog to push through the scrub. I walked to and then around the area where the mine was supposed to be located but I never found it. The problem with many of the old mine locations is that accuracy is often not as good as it could be. I met up with Joe again and we detected the immediate area before heading down stream again. The whole area still looked promising but nothing upset the detector threshold. We both agreed that the total lack of lead shot, miners nails, bits of rusty steel etc probably confirmed our suspicions in relation to the creek. To prospect by definition often means no returns in relation to what is being chased but in this case the rewards were amazing. Joe and I worked our way back to the ute with empty rattle jars and smiles on our faces. It had been a great day out. While we were packing up I suggested to Joe that we could spend an hour or so at the old diggings that we had worked with the zeds the previous week. With the small coils on the 6k’s we could possibly scratch out a couple of pieces. A five minute drive put us at the diggings and after about an hour and a half we called it quits with a few scraps in the rattle jar. That was just a bit of icing on the cake to finish off a great day out.

I currently have a GP3000, that I recently purchased, to go over patches that I have cleaned out with the GPX6k with the sole purpose of finding larger, deeper gold using a medium to large coil. Would the GPX4000 have any significant advantages over the GP3000 for larger/deeper gold? It appears that the few extra timings it has are targeted to small/shallowish gold and I have the 6K for that.

Does anyone here (dealer's included) redo the batteries for the GPX 5000? One of mine does not charge past 5 or 6 volts. Some cells must be dead in it. I'm not the kind of guy that wants to tear it apart and put new batteries in it. So looking to ship it out to get all new cells in it, if possible.

I was watching this video from Woody that he did about 3 months ago, oddly my GPX 4500 had the exact same problem whereby they'd painted the housing causing the alloy front and rear plates not to contact the housing, thereby making the alloy grounding not perform as it was intended so I had to file the paint off and it worked very well. Then with the 6000 it appears they've done the same thing, EMI shielding painted the housing, yet not connected it to the ground of the detector. It's just bizarre how these things take place. I do wonder if this is something that was a problem on early 6000's and they've resolved as they've worked it out, and later ones have the grounding done properly. I've no idea if mines been done or not, and the way he does it is a bit crude although working, I'd not do it that way with the squished washer, the tap washer seems a bit better and something a bit better than one of the fibrous cardboard types might be alright, still I prefer if this is the case and there is a grounding problem on them they fix it as a warranty repair, perhaps as part of the EMI fix with the inductors this was part of their procedures fixing this problem too, as I did notice not only was my detector no longer going crazy randomly it also appeared to be more stable with general EMI.

I have run into something that I don't remember reading about on the forum. The original audio fix was done to my 6000 early on, I was following the jasong thread and sent mine in to be done immediately. I have always used the supplied OEM headset and the machine has always done what it is supposed to do. Fast forward to now, I can no longer use over the ear head phones. Yes I have a Torus but have never liked it so I tried using speaker only. The speaker did not have the volume I believe it should and I would still get the erratic threshold at times. All this was not a problem when using the OEM phones. Contacted Minelab S&R in Illinois and was told to send it in. Original fix was done in Pa. The following is a cut and paste of their it's done message to me. " Wendell, I've completed the repair on your GPX 6000. I have entirely replaced the internals of this detector. I tested it out after installing the new boards and the unit seems to have perked up in terms of audio, and I did not notice the erratic threshold any longer. I will be sending this unit back to you via USPS later today. " I have used it briefly and it is very stable and the speaker volume is far better. I am pleased and going to guess that the initial fix was a patch and this would be the fix.

Hi everyone I’m looking at getting my first gold detector which will be the GPX 5000 2nd hand. I came across some information regarding different versions of the 5000 (which I cannot find again) and I am trying to find out what to look for to make sure I’m getting the later model/version. I am in Australia Thankyou

Just bought a used gpx 4000 with woodys mods on it. Trying to get it quiet. I cannot get it quiet no matter what I switch or turn or adjust or ground balance or auto tune. It is driving me crazy. Can’t even tell the difference between a piece of gold and the constant up and down noise of this machine. Nothing changes the constant sporadic noise.

I’m new to digging for gold. Although I’m a pretty seasoned relic hunter. I’ve been hunting for civil war artifacts , colonial relics and coins for years here in Virginia. I currently run a GPX 4000 with a 15x12 DD, 11DD, and a 10x5 DD. All minelab coils. I also have an older big box whites TDI with a 12 inch mono as well as an Equinox 800 with all the minelab coils. I live in the gold pyrite belt here in Virginia. There are many abandoned mine sites within a few square miles of me. Several fault lines. But not many people hunt gold around here other than one club that has a claim on a steam about 5 miles away. All that said, would it be worth me getting a mono coil for the GPX? Or can I do just as well with what I have turning them onto mono mode? I was thinking of an 11 inch mono commander or an elliptical mono coil of similar size. The soil varies around here. It fairly hot on the high ground and better ground down in the river bottoms.

Yesterday, JW and I went for a bit of a hike to a remote spot in the mountains, I hadn't been here at all since my GPX 4500 a few years ago, and JW had been a small few times since trying out his GPX 6000 and found a few bits. The hike in is what puts it on the backburner all the time ? It's a close drive from JW's house, but a big steep uphill hike, and from my house it's about an hour's drive so by the time I get home I'm stuck to the car seat, man it's hard to stand up after a massive hike and an hour's drive home after a day's detecting with the hike back to the car, at least the hike back is downhill all the way. I ran the car's seat heater the whole drive home to help the muscles recover! JW has a few years of age over me, but he is certainly fitter. It's a really cool place to go though, with great views of the surrounding mountains, unfortunately I can't put up scenery photos for fear of revealing the location to prying eyes, as you can work out the basic location by using the bigger mountains to get an idea of where I was. There has been a bit of mining in the area, and reworked in the depression years, but the earlier mining was done with a lot of work and water monitors (canons) blasting water at the hillsides to recover the gold. The Chinese hit it pretty hard too, staying longer than the other miners going over it again. It's interesting how they get somewhere, then just stop. The soils an interesting colour, almost white. Quite the drop off here down to the ground below, but oddly at least I think you'd be crazy not not to detect these high areas, as gold often pops up in the most unusual of places. My first bit of gold for the day was a bit of a surprise to me, it was a fairly faint signal, yet it was very shallow, I thought it is more likely a pellet although this area barely has any pellets at all, in fact it barely has any targets, if you get a target the chances are high its gold, aside from the occasional old bit of miner's junk like cans and a few nails most targets are gold so it's certainly a dig it all location. I took a little video of the target, so weak of a signal for the size of the gold I thought, although I'm more used to using the 10x5" Coiltek which is more sensitive but still, I was pretty disappointed. This is the little scrape of a hole it came from. The piece of gold. And its weight, quite a reasonable size piece for me, anything over .1 is pretty decent size for me ? I was so taken back by how weak the signal on it was I tested it this morning with the Algoforce to see how well it would do, even though it has the larger 10" round coil on it, I thought the Algoforce gave a better signal response on this particular piece. It's a bit of rough looking piece. The other interesting thing is it was right next to someone's previous dig hole, probably JW or I, we were likely using older technology at the time, as I'd only been here with my 4500 which no doubt would miss this piece of gold. It's very unlikely this person didn't go over the nugget and they missed it. The joys of newer technology. Next piece was in the path you walk on to hike to this area, there are tracks all over the place, mostly from old miners I guess however now they're hiking trails and go all through the area, you can even walk from one of my favourite ski fields to this area on tracks. This is it's dig hole, another very shallow target, an OK signal. This is the little guy Smaller than the last bit, but a much better signal. Just ignore the shaft twist in this photo, it's a feature of the 6000 ? After that I was walking along detecting the path, but no other gold to be found in that particular area, I did find old boot tacks though which is pretty cool, one spot had a bunch of them in one hole so I gave up recovering them, that miners boots must have fallen apart at that spot ? The gold spot is the dig hole just above the pick in this photo. Here is a little video of it, I haven't watched the videos back yet but it likely shows this one had a better target signal than the previous bigger bit I found. It was pretty easy to film gold finds here as there is so little junk about, so filming bits of digs is worthwhile knowing they're likely gold. Next piece was on top of a little ridge It was my biggest bit of the day, had trouble carrying it for the hike back to the car. Deepest of the holes too. A smooth bit. This is its spot. And a little video of it, the second target next to it was one of 2 pellets I found all day. That was my last bit for the day, the day felt like it went really quick though, we finished up detecting about 7pm, but both of us didn't realize the time and thought it was about 5pm I guess. A benefit or a negative depending on how you look at it coming from the GPZ and GPX 5000 is the 6000 can have the pick so close to the coil it's not funny, it always surprises me how close the pick can go, even when you lay it down recovering targets so while using it I have a belt attached pick holder and in this location I am glad I did, as sometimes its half an hour between targets so nice to holster your pick. The super strong magnet I've got in my pick handle makes life easy too, if I'm using it more regularly, I can just attach it to my pick holder using the magnet to save the effort. It stays there when walking around as long as the pick doesn't bottom out on the ground. So other notable things from the day, this piece of quartz was so weird, it doesn't show up as well in the photo but its flat smoothed off and much like a tile or bench top, and really glossy, so weird. You can see the shine on that one side, but the entire flat surface of it is like that, and its smooth and flat although the photo doesn't show that well. It's like someone's cut it smooth and painted it with polyurethane. And my junk for the day, there was also a nail which I left behind and you can see why I say it's a dig it all location. I'm used to digging hundreds of pellets on the farm land locations, this spot, 2 ? Both big pellets too. And last but not least, some old miners' tins I found, I left them where they were, a bit of history. I think this tin can was never opened. This one looked like a giant sardine tin. I think I'll get a bit fitter so the hike and day of swinging a detector around going up and over hills and mounds of soils doesn't wear me down so much and go back to this spot more often, I do really like going there, it just takes it out of me. It's very difficult to E-Bike there too as much of the path is on a cliff side with a big drop and very skinny path no more than 40cm wide in many spots, I've done it before but ended up walking the bike much of the way as I wasn't crazy enough to ride it through the steep drop off areas. Today I'm completely jelly legs and walking is a challenge ? JW doubled my gold count, he came away with 6 pieces, pretty small ones too, he was using the GPX 6000 and 10x5" Coiltek coil, a better choice of coil for the day, I think. I only had the NF coil on as it was left on there from a previous time. It was good to take the 6000 out though, leave it much longer and the old motor may seize from lack of use.