Search the Community

Well, I tried a new way to get out to this new gold area I found. The gold seemed fairly small, but I had to hike in at least 3 miles to get there. So I tried to drive in another way in hopes of only having to hike in a mile. Of course Google Earth made things seem better than they were (almost like I could drive right there), but in the end I only cut about a mile off the hike (one way). So now I had a decision to make … take my GPZ 14" coil, the GM1000, or what I call my Midget Coil (10" Xcoil). GPZ 14" about killed me getting out there last time so that was out. I love the GM1000 on bedrock, but some of the bedrock here was very hot. Usually in those cases, I will go to my GPZ 10" Xcoil, which I venture to say is at least on par with the SDC 2300 (with the exception of being a little bigger). And the Xcoil is still a pleasure to hike with. So off I went. I started out hitting the areas I had been to before and got some good signals. First piece was only about .1g. Then I started finding slightly bigger .2g pieces. Most of these seemed to be what I call runners. Those are the ones in washes that I find on the sides of the wash, trying to run away when they see me coming. The larger coils tend to lose a bit of depth when checking the sides and depressions. The 10" Xcoil, however, does very well getting in there. Overall, 5 pieces were found (total .75g). Not a lot, but at least half of these finds were detected very carefully with the 14" coil and were missed. The Xcoil was very clear on all but a 1 grainer piece that was about 2" deep on it's side. All in all, it was just a fun day crumb chasing.

I had my first outing with my GPZ about a week ago with JW, my back was still terribly sore at the time from an injury so I wasn't really doing well and had trouble digging targets, and we were in terribly heavy rain so I was off my game. I went back to the same spot today, the weather was much better, in fact it was far too hot for me. My back has improved a lot, I lasted about 3 hours which I thought's pretty good, my longest detect since I did my back in. This particular place I've always called my Nemesis as I could just never do well there. I've been there probably 25 times and only found gold three from memory. The first time with my Gold Bug Pro which was 1 bit, then the QED with 12x6" X-coil which got 1 bit, then the GPX with 10" X-coil which got 1 bit. I've never got a bit with the Nox or Gold Monster here even though I've used the Nox the most I'd imagine and I'm the most comfortable on it feeling I can use it pretty well. I had a lot more faith in myself today as JW has done very well here with his GPZ and 10" X-Coil so now we were both driving the same machine surely I could come away with a piece. I threw my little ferrite super magic ring on the ground and waved over it, no response unless I rubbed the coil on it so maybe I don't need to do that anymore after doing my Quick start procedure the other day so I just got stuck into it. I've had a few skilled operators suggest I use Manual instead of Auto or Semi Auto, that made sense to me with our mild soils here so I was in manual, I raised and lowered the coil and had no response from the ground so I assumed that I didn't need to do anything so I just got stuck into detecting. I first tried all the mountain goat one gust of wind and you're dead terrain, I get a bit wobbly detecting this stuff as I'm not so good with heights. My first target was a shotgun pellet.... not unexpected, there are many of them around here.... That's good though, it means the detectors working well 🙂 I'm not used to the target noise of the GPZ on these small targets yet, bigger targets sound similar to the GPX but these small things behave differently, it's sort of a wobbly noise, different to the GPX. I kept going, detecting closer to the cliff..... Scary! I did get a target in this area, it wasn't on the surface as it remained after my first scrape and moved on the second, unfortunately, a tiny little bit of some sort of junk I was super impressed with the sensitivity of the 12" X-coil getting these tiny little targets, Gold Monster size bits of junk. I really thought I had a nugget in this photo above, this was just before my dig..... turned out to be another shotgun pellet stuck in the schist bedrock 😞 Now the sun came out, it was terribly hot and I was frustrated looking at the nice cool water below me while I'm up here sweating badly wanting to jump in it to cool off, I really struggle in heat so I moved away from the cliffs and jumped in my car to go back into the terrain JW found his bits last weekend, it's very close by and I could have walked if it wasn't so hot and my drink had run out already 🙂 This next area has lots of good bedrock and didn't seem as junky with the pellets, the issue here is the power lines, I dropped my gain down to 14 from the 20 it was on previously so the machine ran nicer as I couldn't put up with the power line noise as the spot with the bedrock I wanted to detect was basically under the power lines. As I detected further away from them I cranked my gain up again and as I got closer lowered it down, quite easy to do on the GPZ as you just leave it on that option and adjust as necessary. Why do they always put these right where the best bedrock is... I'm sure they did it on purpose. Nice bedrock though... I could see a number of fresh looking dig holes around, I suspect JW's handy work, he was good though, all necessary ones were back filled. 😉 The funny plants are getting annoying, there is a plant that looks like that if you grab onto it and try rip it out it spikes you to death so I wasn't game to touch them, just worked around them. I noticed an area with a lot of dig holes but it was virtually right under the lines, I figured there is no point doing that area but the dig holes seemed to go off in a direction so I instead went down rather than follow the digs and it was only 15 steps from a dig hole and I had a target, quite faint but very obvious. At this point my gain was on 12 to calm down the power lines and I had the detectors volume on 4 as the Steelphase SP01 was attached to the Wm12 and gave me all the volume I could ever want. I did notice if I got between the WM12 and the detector sometimes the audio dropped out for a few seconds and picked up again if I moved, it seems it doesn't like passing the audio through my body, is this normal or is my WM12 a lemon? I would think it's pretty normal passing wireless though your body. I tried changing frequencies but made no difference. I might just use my Quest Wirefree mate as it doesn't seem to do that, similar thing to the WM12 anyway. I dug the target thinking it's probably going to be another shotgun pellet, it was doing the same wobbly type noise, hard to describe the noise.... I did a scrape with the pick and it was still in place, getting hopeful but the bedrock was quite shallow so I just started taking scoops out with my plastic scoop and waving them over the coil, narrowed down a target and it was a bit of gold! Awesome, my first GPZ gold, a tiny little thing.... I rechecked the area and the exact same noise was still there, it sounded like I never even dug the target. So I kept scraping it out and waving the scoop over my coil, a few more scoops with and I had the target. Boom! Another bit of gold. Two from one hole! this doesn't happen to me often. The spot I got them! You can see the detector sitting in the spot still where I got them and if you look up the damn power lines! The two little guys! 🙂 I was done for the day now, it was too hot and my back was pretty sore. I had a goal of finding a bit of gold then I was going to leave, it's lucky it happened when it did as to clean the little bits I had to use the last drop of moisture in my body, my spit came out like pasty thick molasses to clean them. I stumbled back to my car and was lucky. I found a few fruit trees on the walk that were covered in fruit. I got my fluids up eating a bunch of apricots and a few plums. I picked a few for the road too Washed down my KFC with them. Time to head home, my wife had sent me a text message while I was detecting saying I've had a parcel arrive, it was the two coils I've ordered to start exploring for some new ground, I wanted some ground coverage so I can explore and find some ground JW hasn't already done so I think this is partially why I called it quits so early in the day, I wanted to rush home and see the new coils 🙂 15x10 and 17x12" I've tested both of them out already in my backyard, both detect my bits of gold I found today, that means they'll be my perfect exploring coils. I hoped they'd both still have the sensitivity to small gold which they do. I shouldn't say my bits of gold either, my wife confiscated them off me, valentines day gift she said as its valentines day here today 😄 It's the first nuggets I've given her so that's OK. Time for the weigh in. Not too bad! Happy with that. I really like the 12" coil, it's going to to be my everyday use coil.

So took the gpz out for couple days were I hunt managed to find out that my extra waterproofing didn't work after 20 mins of first day with xcoil so was back to std 14 on day to all and all we had good trip pulled 5 grams for 2 days and 3 nice bits including this one It was all creek hunting and was defanitly impressed the the zeds depth Just hoping with few days sun in a bag rice the xcoil will work normaly again.. Guess I will have to wait for nf coils to be realesed for water ones as the std 14 took on water to even tho they ment to be submersible to 1 mtr

After logging 200 hours behind the Zed pod and unearthing over an ounce of nuggety yellow goodness, I'd like to share my settings with my fellow forum members who would like to take them out for a spin. Since settings like the Gold Mode, Ground Type and Sensitivity are dependent on the local conditions where one is detecting, my focus here is mainly the audio settings. As some of you may know, my audio settings for the GPX range of detectors were very unconventional, and it is no different with the GPZ 7000; at first glance these settings may seem counter-intuitive, but give them a try because you may just be pleasantly surprised. Before getting into the settings proper, I want to mention that they are intended for use with the supplied WM-12 Wireless Module, utilizing its external speaker. I haven't tried it with headphones yet, so feel free to experiment if you use them. I noticed right away that the Zed's pre-set audio out of the box is extremely weak, especially on faint target signals. Using an aftermarket signal enhancer like JP's B&Z booster would work wonders for it, but I surmised that a $10,000 piece of technology would have some kickin' audio amplification and modulation, and the Zed certainly does have! It is VERY IMPORTANT to make the adjustments to the audio functions in the order that they are presented below: A key component to this audio setup is enhancing the signal via the Volume function, which controls the level of amplification of a target's audio response, relative to its signal strength, so we'll start there: adjust the Volume to 15. This will really amplify any faint signal from very small or deep targets. The next audio function is the Threshold Level, which we will adjust to 35. If the threshold level is set too high or too low, faint targets will be missed. A setting of 35 is optimum for this particular combination of audio settings. The Threshold Pitch setting is a matter of personal preference, so adjust it to a tone that is comfortable to your own hearing. I personally prefer a setting of 25, as it supplies a nice full tonal range from a booming bassy bottom through to a crisp, clean high tone when a target signal is encountered. The next function we will adjust is the Audio Smoothing: set it to High. This may seem counter-productive, but it is essential to getting the most distinct target response possible, nice and crisp. I learned this technique long ago from my mentor Larry Salee, a great detectorist whom some of you may remember from his famed "Zip-Zip" series of publications. This leads us on to the next function, Volume Limit, which sets the maximum loudness that a target can make; set too high, it can over-modulate or distort the external speaker and potentially damage your hearing, especially when using headphones. Turn it down to 1, and while swinging the coil over a large metal object such as your pick, gradually increase the setting until the sound is uncomfortably loud; then back it off until the sound is comfortable to listen to. For my hearing, a Volume Limit setting of 3 is perfect. In summary, here are my audio settings back to back: Volume: 15 Threshold Level: 35 Threshold Pitch: 25 Audio Smoothing: High Volume Limit: 3 This audio set-up works with any combination of Gold Mode and Ground Type settings, and is very stable in conjuction with a Sensitivity setting of anywhere from 8 to 15, depending on local conditions, and provides a pleasant, silky-smooth threshold while at the same time delivering a crisp, distinct target response. Please feel free to let me know what you think of these audio settings after giving them a go in your favorite goldfield or nugget patch, especially if you have the oportunity to compare them to your own settings on undisturbed, un-dug targets - preferably gold nuggets! Now for those of you interested, I'd also like to share my complete Zed settings for the greater Rye Patch region of northern Nevada; they handle the area's noisy, variable ground found in most nugget patches extremely well. In addition to the above audio settings, they are: Gold Mode: High Yield Ground Type: Difficult Sensitivity: 15 Ground Balance Mode: Auto Thanks for reading, and happy prospecting!

So my gpz turned up on Friday and I'm super loving it and my 10"x-coil should be here Wednesday, as soon as I got it out the box I grabbed my we test gold ranging from 0.025 to 1.71 gram and shot out to my we test area that happens to be gravel pit in known gold area.. I found for my area in NZ I was geting the best depth and response on general and high yield with audio smoothing off.. I had a play with the ferrite ring with ground balancing then factory reset and ground balance with no ferrite ring.. So my question is does the ferrite ring gb affect depth and sensitivity at all in low to medium ground. What I noticed was our soil and were I hunt in creek beds you hit pockets of high black sand then less etc. I didn't realy notice any difference in performance but I do think that the ferrite gb did run quieter in the ground over all. Does anyone have any tests or input on ferrite balancing vs no ferrite? I plan to get out this weekend for my first hunt with the 10 xcoil all going to plan. So will be sure to put up a link for the YouTube video when made and my finds if any lol I'm checking out new spot

For the last few times out, I haven't been able to balance the 7000 using the ferrite. The detector continues to sound off as I wave the coil over it (with the q.t. button held in).I haven't had that problem before. The detector seemed to be just as sensitive but I am wondering if there is a solution to it not balancing. (I did read through back posts and the only thing I found was a suggestion by JP that after turning the unit on and tuning satisfactorily, turn the unit off. Then turn it on again, tune and continue on to balancing with the ferrite. - I haven't tried that yet)

Hi guys So I have my eye on a gpz 7000 here in nz for sale it's a good price 6500 nzd with 3 battery's and few other extras looks in good condition coil still has original skid plate.. My question is does anyone know the expected life of gpz is buying a 5 year old Machine worth it? Or do I spend extra 3k to get brand new.. Has anyone had any issues on there early model ones through age etc.. Thought I'd just see people opinions before handing over any money etc

Had a friend raise an interesting theory; why didn't ML come up with x-type coils for the 7000 and instead is letting NuggetFinder come up with them? They thought it pretty much confirmed that it means ML is readying a new version/upgraded GPZ-type machine, lighter weight, better ergonomics, up-to-date electronics etc. There certainly is no reason to think this weightlifters detector will remain the way it is when, as Steve and others have been saying, there are lighter, more compact, real world usable detectors out there now (QED for one). Thoughts?

I am after some advice, I purchased a GPZ 7000 late yesterday and of course I am keen to take it out today for a test drive. I am pretty clueless with this machine, although I've watched JW use it many times I've not paid any attention to how he runs it or what he does with it as I never thought I'd be buying one. I think his settings may not be ideal for me yet anyway as he runs it crazy hot, being a beginner I'd probably need more tame stable settings 🙂 JW is unable to be contacted this weekend, Queenstown's big music festival of the year which JW always attends going on for the weekend so he's off at that so I can't get any advice off him for my mission today. I was hoping GPZ users here would be able to give me some advice on what to do. I don't have time to properly read the manual today as I've got a big drive to get to a gold spot, I was thinking I'd just do a quick start and get going but if there is something obvious I should be doing to use it in mild soils please let me know. If the default settings are more suitable for tough soils I'd be wasting my time. I'll have to start reading the manual tonight after I've used it today 🙂 I've ordered a 10" and 12" X-coil for it which I believe to be the best two coils for use in NZ with JW's results. I'm also going to use the Chet method of a longer style adapter patch cable for it, I like the idea of his method and it also makes changing coils easier which I like the idea of. Here's my new toy. Any help greatly appreciated.

Hi guys I'm back after laying low after my nugget find starting to get back into some detecting again.. Still been using my 24k vlf and no way I'd get rid of it its so good.. But I am in need to replace my gpx I sold.. And I can't decide whether to get a gpz and run the small xcoil soon as it's available to buy.. Or run with a gpx 5000 and get my trustie Sadie coil again.. Aparently my gpx I sold ended up with moisture damage on points but was fixed easy but with living on the wet west coast I'm thinking the gpz with its wetherproof housing might be better but the big coil isn't practical for alot what I do creeks bedrock etc but is for old tailings piles.. I was wondering maybe Steve or kiwijw might he able to awnser this how small will the gpz detect will it go as small as say sdc in low to mild ground And 2 is the depth over gpx noticeable on smaller gold Thanks Craig

'ello, 'ello, 'ello, what's all this then? https://www.nuggetfinder.com.au Wonder how the dongle is done?

It would be nice if there was a 7000 coil so you didn’t need to buy a 2300 as well

Now that Coils are being made for the GPZ with more and more coils becoming available it's time the discussion came up as to what size coils for the GPZ people would really like to own. What sizes of coil would you like to be swinging?

Hello! I am somewhat new to metal detecting. I live around the Waco Texas area and Have a creek that runs behind my house that is a deep run off with caliche, quarts veins and lots of iron and pyrite. Have not found any gold yet. Any suggestions. I have a new gpz 7000 that still gives a lot of ground noise which may be due to all the iron????? That may be part of problems. Any suggestions would be helpful : )

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

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 🙂

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.