Search the Community

I often wondered why X-coils came out of Russia, I know Russia has a big interest in metal detectors and has a large user base of metal detectors but I always assumed it was relics and coins that were big there like in a lot of Europe. I never knew Russia was a country with a lot of gold. Then I looked it up and to my surprise Russia is the 3rd largest gold producer in the world. A caption from a website about Russian Gold. Russia recently established itself as the 3th largest gold producing nation in the world, behind China and Australia. With over 11% of the earth’s total land mass, Russia is also estimated to have the 3rd largest gold reserves in the world, with much of that gold yet to be recovered. An archaic regulatory process has limited development of many lode resources throughout the country by various mining companies. Despite these setbacks, Russia is considered to have some of the best potential for future development for gold mining in the coming decades. You'll see in 2018 Russia was only just behind Australia in gold production with China in first place. Sadly New Zealand doesn't even make the list 😞 Russia is also known for very large nuggets, some of the known big nuggets are: A 14-pound gold nugget called the “Devil’s Ear Nugget” was discovered in 2014. A 22-pound gold nugget was found as recently as 2017. Russia’s largest gold nugget – a 79-pounder was found in the southern Ural Mountains. You can read about it on this website Now that I know these facts it's no surprise at all X-coils came from Russia, It's also no surprise that the manufacturer of the X-coils is himself a prospector, and a very successful one too. Here is a couple of videos of him finding some large nuggets using the 12" Spiral wound X-coil on his GPZ. And some of the Gold he found recently. Now it all makes sense why the X-coils came from Russia. It makes my little sub gram nugget finds look very tiny 🙂

Hey guys, I hate being the guy asking for help on the forum. But, I'm really struggling and hope some of you with more experience on the GPZ might be able to share some insight. So, here's the scenario. I have what I think is an old equipment pad I've been working. I've nicknamed it my "trash patch" since it is just hammered with trash, probably why it doesn't appear to have be detected much even though close by areas have been beat to death. I found my first nugget in there with my GPZ at about 8", The problem, so much trash I couldn't even keep a single target under the 14" coil. I went back this week and spent 2 1/2 days (sun up to sun down) with my GB2 cleaning about a 2500sf area of trash. I can't begin to know how many targets were removed, but I can tell you my legs are so sore from that many squats I can barely walk today. Once I got the area clean, I was super excited to get back over it with the GPZ and see what I could find. And, here's where we get to the help part. This entire pad has basically been built with about 3" of crushed hotrock. I thought getting the trash out was the biggest issue, but it wasn't. I can't figure out setting on the GPZ to get through the top layer. Either it just wobbles and whines all over the place, or you choke the settings down so hard it won't pick up anything. I can't find a working medium. Short of racking and shoveling 3" of rock off this area, which moves way outside the bounderies of enjoyable hobbie for me, I'm not sure what to do. Anyone have some detector settings I might try, or other ideas would be greatly appreciated. Attached are 8 little micro nuggets I pulled off the surface cleaning trash with the GB2. Everything I have got more than 2"s below the rock layer has been larger. Thx, Beau

Has anyone else had this happen? I was using the same settings I use in this area I go to. My tuning process was the same, but the last time I tuned, the ferrite wouldn't balance out. The detector still worked great but I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't balance the ferrite out. Should I have done a factory reset or something and just put in all the settings again? Suggestions? Thanks.

Hi all, It’s been awhile since my last post, but I’ll be sharing some knowledge and anecdotes more often, now that my summer job is a thing of the past and I’m free to once again roam the desert southwest, wielding the power of the mighty Zed to unearth nature’s golden treasures. I was carefully gridding (or - in deference to Gerry in Idaho - crawling) an old nugget patch during a recent trip to the far flung reaches of Nevada’s golden triangle, when the hypnotic drone of the threshold was suddenly broken by a sharp, double “wee-ooh, wee-ooh”. This type of response typically heralds a small and shallow target, usually within six inches of the surface. “Most likely a boot tack or bird shot”, I thought to myself as I crouched down and scraped an inch or two of the dry and dusty desert soil away from the target zone with my pick. Another swing of the detector coil indicated that I had moved the target, and a quick sifting of the material with the hand scoop revealed a small yellow nugget...the first catch of the day! A few more of these shallow pickers were dug during the the next couple of hours, and then I heard a faint, single “wee-ooh”. Knowing that this meant a bit larger target at depth, I went to work hacking into the densely packed soil with my pick until...well, I’ll let this short video tell the rest of the story: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zzmm1pgdrpaswe7/Nugget dig.mov?dl=0 The actual weight of the nugget turned out to be 5.6 grams, bringing the total for the day to over a quarter of an ounce of the good stuff!

This poll is designed to see who is currently using either the Minelab SDC or GPZ detectors with a component of identifying anyone who actively uses both. (I hypothesize there may be a selection bias in this forum in favor of more detectorists who use the GPZ even though sales of the SDC are much higher.)

I'm just curious if anyone has created an extension cable for the GPZ 7000 coil. I am working in some narrow spots inside my gold mine and I would love to have the control unit in a backpack on my back and just use the coil without the bulk of the detector. Mlgdave

A package I've been very much looking forward to arrived in the mail today, I call them the twins. It made sense to package them both in one package for postage reasons and fortunately JW was working doing some renovations at his house around the corner from mine today so he had his a few minutes after the courier arrived at my place with the package as I shot straight over to give it to him. I tore the box open to find them extremely well packaged And now the twins 15x10 spiral wound X-coils, one for the GPZ, one for the GPX. The GPZ's coils curly cord seems good to me. They came with a spare coil cover. This is obviously the GPZ coil. And the GPX one. Hopefully I can find some gold soon with it, I've on a dry spell at the moment, although the football field of coins has kept me busy. It's been about a month since I've attempted to find gold as my weekends are filled with skiing as my daughter is addicted to it and my week days have been busy doing the local coin hunting, now this coil has arrived I best get out there soon. It snowed yesterday and today there is a freezing wind blowing off the snow, if it wasn't for that I'd be shooting off now to test it out. Only about 2 weeks left of ski season. JW's been doing pretty well lately with his 10x9" X-coil and he rarely takes it off he loves it so much so it will be interesting to see how he goes with this new one being spiral (flat wound) when his 10x9" is bundle wound.

Clearly, with the huge amount of interest that is being shown in the after market coils for 7000, it`s obvious that there is a market out there for coils other than 14'' and 19". I don`t take the 19" out much because I have had very little success with it and with my bad wrists it`s just too damn heavy, but Minelab did tell us in the early days of marketing the 7000 that they would be releasing a 11" coil down the track, and now there is another company that nobody has ever heard of making a huge range of coils that are lighter and have so far been very well received by the public. What`s going on Minelab?

I often see others using a high sensitivity setting of 16 - 20 on the 7000. Is there really much of an advantage doing this? I used to think maxing out my 4500 gave me some kind of advantage over the poor suckers who ran factory presets or slightly higher, now im not so convinced. Today i tested out my new 10" and 20" X-coils and tried many different combinations of settings to see what would suite me best. I did most of my testing with the 20" coil on a 2 gram bit of gold. I dug a skinny trench 200mm (nearly 8 inches) in some reasonably hot ground and placed my 2 gram bit in the bottom. High yield/Difficult were the better settings. (Ferrite and ground balanced, Semi auto ground balance, Ground/audio smoothing off, volume 8 (using a booster), threshold 27, threshold pitch 63, volume limit 7) First i tried a high sensitivity and the target signal popped out nice and loud. Then I started detecting the surrounding area and felt there was so much other ground noises going on that the quieter signals may be masked. Eventually I found my sweet spot where the detector was quiet as a mouse and i had no problems hearing a slight change in the threshold no matter how small it was. This was at a sensitivity of only 3. I then went back over the 2 gram bit and it still gave a great response using sensitivity of 3 (although slightly less than when the sensitivity was a lot higher). When i started detecting and raising the sensitivity up around 6 -8 a lot more ground noise came in. Now im used to ground noise as i used to use my gpx in Normal timings most of the time. But after reading how the zed is a different beast and not to drive it to hard i decided to try less aggressive settings to see if less is infact more. Obviously im new to the zed and have much to learn so will continue trying different things until i get my head around things.

Jonathan, any truth in the rumour that Minelab are considering introducing a lightweight version of the 7000? A proper prospecting detector rather than a modified military monstrousity that the Z currently is? You being close to Minelab, I'm hoping you may be in a position to enlighten us. I for one would consider an aquisition should this come to pass.

I just couldn't figure it out. The old Jeep mysteriously started running much smoother and quieter and became much more stable. I would also say that it's performance somehow increased by 30% or perhaps even 40%. In fact i was so impressed i decided I would invest some time into cleaning it up a bit. As I was mucking out the interior ( forgotten rock samples, sticks and leaves, old sandwich wrappers with sandwiches, dropped nuggets and such) I found Sourdough Scott's missing ferrite ring. I took it out and put it where Scott could pick it up and now the Jeep is back to it's usual squeaky, whinny, worbally self. Mystery solved.

I always wondered if there was even gold around where the X-coil manufacturer lives, I didn't know much about Russian gold or if Russia even had much gold. Here is a video broken into parts of the Russian manufacturer showing the different capabilities of the 17x12" X-Coil between the Standard GPZ14” Minelab coil being used near high voltage power lines in Russia. It's good to see he is a prospector. Sorry about the quality of some of the parts. It's a deep hole he has to dig to get it, nice soft soil though... that'd make life easier than using a jackhammer 🙂

We've all had our 7000s for a few years now. Much of the time we keep the same settings. I'm going back to areas where I've used my 7000 and other detectors and not finding the small gold or the deep gold that I see some of my friends finding. I haven't asked them recently about all of their settings. I'll ask the general question now. There is no RIGHT answer. Maybe we all can learn something that will let us find a few more nuggets in our worked out patches. During my most recent gold trip I set up my 7000 like this: HY, Normal, Sen 8-14, Volume 8, TH 26, TH Pitch 53, Volume Limit 13, Audio Smoothing varied, GB Manual, Ground Smoothing Off or Find Patch, BZ Booster Using these settings I've found 15-50g meteorites at 8 inches but no gold (maybe I didn't get over it). Hot rocks were manageable and few.

Hello fellow prospectors, I recently acquired a Minelab GPZ 7000 and I am looking for a fellow prospector wanting to search for gold with me in Southern California. As a former FBI agent, I have learned it is better to have two people when exploring unknown places... I have been using a Minelab CTX 3030 and I am ready for something new i.e. gold prospecting. I live in Long Beach but I also have a home in the Lake Arrowhead area (San Bernardino County). I believe some areas are worth prospecting in San Bernardino County. Having said that, I am willing to travel. Reach out if you are interested. ads4350@gmail.com

I was going to post this in one of the X Coil threads, but it might be of interest to everyone. I bought a replacement ferrite ring since I left my ML ferrite in Arizona. It's one of the Doc's ferrites with the white backside (off Ebay), I did not realize they were not ML ferrites when I bought it. The OEM Minelab ferrites have a black backside. It would not balance on the X Coils at all and actually sounded like a screaming target (I didn't try the Z14) so I reported that to the coil manufacturer. He responded that the white backed aftermarket rings are not the same as the ML rings. So, as I normally do, I checked for myself, bought an authentic ML ring, and he was right. They are the same size, but the Doc's ring is 10 grams heavier (something I noticed immediately but did not have a ML ring to compare to until recently). It is also more magnetic. The Doc's ring is also conductive whereas the ML ring is non-conductive - the Doc's ring was reading about 38 ohms from side to side whereas the ML ring read infinity. And after I sanded the backs to get a fresh surface to check resistances on I noticed the ML ring looks dull and black as a ferrite should, but the Doc's ring looks shiny and metallic, like iron. So, clearly there are differences between the two rings. Thought people might like to know even if you are just using the stock coil, as I'm not sure how this affects the ground balance, but someone could be running suboptimally using this ring.

I go about Ferrite balancing a bit differently to what is shown or advised, this is my own preference and is to do with Saturation noise and Salt signals, especially with the X coils because they can Saturate quite badly. Instead of the Octopus wobble I briskly (not too brisk) wave the coil over the ferrite from left to right under the blue sticker at the front of the GPZ 14 coil, this is with the Quick Trak button depressed of course. DO NOT scrub the coil on the Ferrite this is because there is always a bit of residual signal especially in Saturable ground, once the ferrite noise dissipates I release QT and pump the coil to one side (make sure you are in Semi-Auto GB mode), this then gives the GB accuracy as a DOD coil will always sound quiet from side to side even if the GB is out, once there is no noise up and down then come over the Ferrite again to check if there is signal and repeate the process using QT if there is. Pump the coil to one side again and check the Ferrite again. This whole process should take 20 seconds, eventually you will get no ground signal up and down (Ground Noise) and minimal signal over the Ferrite. If the ground has BAD Saturation signal the Saturation signal will be magnified up through the centre of the Ferrite thereby preventing you from getting the coil close enough to actually balance the Ferrite out fully, in other words the detector will be trying to balance out the Saturation signal and not the X signal off the Ferrite. I also recommend users adopt the GB configured to their USER button approach and to go into Manual mode when checking deep targets or committing to dig, leaving the GPZ in Semi-Auto will allow the GB to drift either through exposure to the pick whilst digging or just general drift through the coil not moving, either way the GB will be out which is not obvious unless you pump the coil. JP

Here is a recent video of a couple of dudes testing out their massive range of Nugget Finder coils against the GPZ 7000 on targets they've dug into the ground in Western Australia's red dirt. I found it quite an interesting video and shows how close a lot of coils are in performance. I notice he doesn't appear to scrub the GPZ on the ground as much as the others, not sure the reason for that, maybe he doesn't want to damage such an expensive coil ? By the time he's got to the GPZ all the ground scrubbing has probably made it a shallower target.

Hello All, Out here in Arizona, USA, it's been very hot and now humid as the Monsoons are right around the corner. That being said, I have been poking around an old placer location loaded with iron rubbish in search for overlooked gold nuggets. I have made it a point to start very early, right at day break and hunt until the heat runs me out (typically 4-5 hours). I was using the Minelab GPZ 7000 and placering a wash bottom down to bedrock like the old-timers would. I'm lucky every so often to get a nugget here and there wedged in the bedrock cracks/crevices that the old-timers missed or overlooked. It's always a mystery to wonder what the old-timers really discovered in some of these really rich coarse gold placer areas. I'm not sure of the rules about Youtube videos, but I have attached two of them for your viewing. Hope some of you that are not able to get out right now can enjoy the adventure with me.

I would like to start a thread of peoples opinions on what they found between these two machines with various coils. I love my SDC and have found my biggest and smallest gold with it (8”). My GPZ has definitely gone deeper for gold (14”). I am about even on the total count for each, weight a being different story. I understand that if you only have one detector then you want coil options, but if you got both I wonder what would be a better bang for your buck? A 10” Xcoil at $1000 or a 11”Coiltek at $310. Thats if they compare at depth and sensitivity. Norvic I would love for you to state your opinions here, you seem to have the most on thses just based on other posts.

More speculation. http://golddetecting.forumotion.net/t26580-new-gpz7000-aussie-made-coil-rumour

Alright, I know nobody really knows the answer to when there will be a GPZ successor. Because of that, I'm just pinging for some opinions. We are currently a VLF only family that's interested in a detector that reduces some of the hot rock music we listen to here in Arizona. If you were in the market and didn't have a PI detector would you: A) get a used GPZ for $4500-5000 or B) wait and see what comes out over the next one to several years (depending on what rumors you believe)? And, a here's bonus follow up question. Does anybody have a guess what happens to used GPZ prices after the next model appears?

A couple of months ago I put out a call for the parts list for the WM12 because my original WM12 was taking forever to charge. At the same time I bought the replacement battery, I also bought some heavier charging cables because I have about half a dozen devices that all use the same cable. I bought cables that were listed as suitable for external hard drives and they were about 6 bucks each. Because I kept changing cables on different devices I don`t even know now what cables came with the WM12. Anyway, with the heavier charging cables my original WM12 now charges QUICKER than the newer WM12, so I don`t need to fit the battery. Maybe, if your WM12 is getting sluggish charging, it may not be the battery, it may be the cable breaking down. Just a thought. Dave

The battery is ok but, it maybe the speaker or some other connection. It has static at times and cuts in and out, even when it is clipped to the arm strap on the detector, I have narrowed it down to the WM12 as even when it has headphones plugged in it still does the same as when they are unplugged and with a booster and external speakers it does the same whether they are plugged in or not. Is there a way to check if it is just the WM12 speaker or something else inside it. It looks like the actual speaker is a replacement part? and would hopefully be cheaper than a whole new WM12 Any ideas? So for now I am just plugging the booster and dual speakers into the back of the 7000 near the battery, but after getting used to being unteathered by cables it is just a bit annoying when you put the machine down and go to retrieve the target. cheers dave

This has happened for awhile so I thought I would throw it out to the experts. The Wireless Module on my 7000 does two things I don't understand and are probably related. 1. It takes an insanely long time to charge and after a couple of days, it takes another insanely long time to charge. 2. When out detecting it runs out of charge before a day of detecting is over. Any thoughts? Thanks...

Hi Bill, Salt is always going to be a problem, especially if you want to also achieve depth. Deeper targets are slow responses, salt signal kills slow signal responses. My advice on salty areas is to try your most sensitive modes first and go down from there, in this instance it would be High Yield, then General then Xtra Deep Normal before I changed any of my other settings. Your Threshold is too low, stick to 27 especially if Audio Smoothing is in the Off position, I would also recommend using Semi Auto mode because Salt signal messes with the Ferrite Balance in Auto mode. There is a huge difference in Salt signal if you go from Normal to Difficult, this also might have been a good option for you dependant on the ground in your area. A lot of people shy away from Difficult especially in quieter soils because there is a perceived depth reduction, however on Half ounce nuggets Difficult actually gives a better signal response than Normal does in any of the Normal modes (HY, Gen or XtraDeep). Minelab introduced the Ground Smoothing mode in the last update, this mode was specifically designed for Salty ground conditions, essentially they are Motion filters so there is a depth reduction when you select either Patch or Salty mode so I tend to avoid them but it does smooth the machine out a lot. Finally, having a controlled swing speed helps immensely with Salt signals, try not to suddenly vertically lift the coil as this exacerbates the salt signal immensely. To confirm it is salt signal just lift the coil from detect height to abover your head, as the coil transitions from your waist height to shoulder height you should hear a moaning sound, the level of salt signal is determined by how loud this response is. The other way is to place the coil in the air out in front of you with the coil parallel to the ground then rotate the coil from left to right and listen to the audio response, the greater the noise the greater the salt levels. This will help you to decided how aggressive you need to be in reducing sensitivity via the Gold/Ground type Modes or the use of the Ground Smoothing filters. Hope this helps JP