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On Sunday JW and I went back to one of our old detecting spots, it's the place I've been to the most and have detected it with various detectors all the way back to my GPX 4500 and Gold Monster and JW goes much further back than that with his detectors. It seems no matter how hard I try there is always more gold to be found in this spot, especially when new detectors or coils are involved. The place is heavily covered in shotgun pellets and unless you've got extreme patience you're going to miss some tiny gold by ignoring the small surface pellets which means you'll likely ignore the smaller surface bits of gold also. I used to dig and recover everything that beeped but I've lost patience for that in this spot, remarkably JW did just that on this day, he had a good handful of pellets where as by rejecting everything that moved in the first couple of pick scrapes I only ended up with about 10 pellets all day, I certainly detected a hundred or more though. It's good going detecting with JW, you can't buy experience and he has a lot of it so I always end up learning quite a bit on days detecting with him, he's a wealth of knowledge on the local areas. As I was seeing the GPX 6000 for the first time I took along my little test sticks that Geotech sent me for testing my QED on shotgun pellets to compare the result to other coils and detectors. I only bothered with the #9 and #6 lead shot as they especially the #9 are the most difficult for detectors to pick up. So JW turned on his GPX with the 11" Mono coil and we went to see how it responds on those pellets, it wasn't meant as a scientific test I just wanted to get an idea of how the GPX compares to the 12" CC and obviously other coils I'm using. Unfortunately the GPX was a bit unstable when first turned on, JW has been normally using headphones with it and not the speaker but we needed to use the speaker so we could both hear the response. A few retunes and me turning my phone off helped a bit but it wasn't overly stable, we pressed on and tested anyway in manual and auto+ and the results were somewhat of a surprise to me and not what I was expecting. Unfortunately the little #9 pellet fell off the stick into grass somewhere in the area as I was walking around so not as much testing was done as I would have liked to have done. I guess I'd hyped the GPX 6000 up in my head to be much better than it ended up being by comparison to what I've got and I guess I did this due to all the talk of Gold Monster type sensitivity with it, there is no chance its as sensitive on tiny gold as a GM, it is however like a supercharged GM once the gold is a bit bigger. I'm pretty confident with my current setup and coils along with the fact I can run in HY/Normal with a high gain and not be troubled by EMI so I'm really not missing much, if anything at all so I'm quite glad I didn't let my excitement of a new product make me jump onboard with a GPX prior to at least seeing one in action. I really don't think I need one now so that saves me some money, the light weight was fantastic though, it felt like a VLF in weight, although it seemed to me build strength has suffered a bit because of the weight, it's lost that solid feel of the GPZ. It's not that I don't like the GPX, I thought it was fantastic, I just don't see the cost / benefit ratio adding up at all. In saying all of that the difference for someone in hotter soils could be very different, the GPZ performance in difficult on small gold as is not near the performance it has in normal so the 6000 may well shine then, the difference in mild soils is less telling especially with the coils I have to use on my 7000. I'll wait and see what future coils add to the 6000 and revisit the idea of getting one then if necessary, I am sure JW will want to get his hands on the 10x6" X-coil once it's released. We decided enough messing around and started detecting, I just turned on the detector right where we dumped our backpacks and started detecting there, I figured I may even find the missing #9 pellet, and it was not even a couple of minutes and I had a target, it survived a couple of pick scrapes so I was confident it was less likely to be pellet and started to get a bit excited, surely not, gold already? It did turn out to be a little nugget. My photography skills let me down, it's sitting o nthe coil above the O in X-coils 🙂 I went over and saw JW and showed him the nugget, he was about 50 meters away I guess, we were both surprised I got one already, especially with how often we have detected this spot. He was in the middle of recovering a shotgun pellet at the time with the 11" Coil still on. I went back to the spot and detecting around it hoping there might be another one, and there was! This time I was more prepared as once I was confident it wasn't a surface pellet I turned on the video on my phone to capture it. I'm no Hollywood producer, so you'll have to put up with my rudimentary video skills, I didn't do any editing just stitched a couple of parts together to make it a single video. I'm pretty sure this is the photo to match the video 🙂 and the nugget. I kept detecting around the little area and had a 3rd target, this is getting weird, I just don't understand how we both have missed these in the past, that's gold prospecting for you. As I was again confident I had a nugget I also filmed this one. This was the one I think, hopefully the photos match up to the video, it's hard to tell as all the gold bits look similar size 🙂 This is the area my first 3 pieces came from, the hole in the front of the photo is the second piece I found, the pick is where the 3rd piece was and the second bit was behind that rose bush between where the pick is and the big rock. They're all sort of running down hill from each other. At the end of this video I looked up and showed the dirty great big high voltage transmission lines above us, these seemed to act up a bit on the GPX where as I was completely immune to them with the GPZ, JW had all three GPX coils with him to try them out at this spot, he'd never even used the 17" or 14" DD before and the 17" felt a bit heavy without a harness which he didn't have with him and also acted up more with the EMI. After the morning part of the day and him sifting through a handful of shotgun pellets and finding 3 little bits of gold he decided he'd give the 14" DD a go after lunch. He was very dedicated, digging so many pellets to get his bits of gold where as I was ignoring all these little surface to a couple of inch type targets aiming instead for deeper targets, I wasn't hunting the bedrock instead going for the grassy deeper soil areas. We were discussing the depth advantage these Concentric coils give us so I wanted to stay off bedrock and hunt the deeper ground hoping to find something. We were now on 3 nuggets each and decided we'd have some lunch. Once the DD was on his GPX is really quietened down, it ran really nice, the performance on small gold seemed good too, and we were able to detect near each other without the GPX being bothered by it, the GPZ is no issue, especially with the Concentic coils. I'd just found my next piece of gold and walked over to JW who was now able to detect quite close to me and he was digging a target, his first deeper bit of the day and it was with the DD, a similar size to my pieces, it was good to watch the recovery. You'll see someones quite substantial dig hole just below my smaller dig hole where my coil is sitting, this was my next nugget. My smallest bit of the day, a reasonable depth too, and the target really stood out, unmistakable. Whoever dug the hole below it missed this one. Hard to see the dig hole in the photo. Here is a photo of the power lines, it's a shame they look a lot further away in the photo than they really are. It's only a short walk up to them, I once found a piece of gold right under them with my Gold Monster, I've not taken any of the Concentric coils up under them but I should, it handles other power lines fine and I may find gold others have missed with detectors that struggle more under them. Things were starting to dry up for both of us now, we had 4 nuggets each at this stage so we stopped for a drink and snack and decided we would walk over a little gully into an area I haven't detected as much, I'd been over there with my Equinox some time ago, I don't recall finding anything except a zillion pellets. As I was largely ignoring shallow targets I was likely missing some small gold but I wasn't worried about that, it was too hot to recover so many targets when almost all of them would be pellets, I admired JW's determination doing that, his pellet collection was getting huge. I then had a quite shallow target, but it was not a pellet, I thought it might be a boot tack as it was a loud booming signal. I figured I'd recover it as you never know, at least it's not going to be a pellet. The hole was quite shallow, and it turned out to be a bit of gold, glad I dug that one. It really screamed too. Around a similar time JW had found his 5th nugget too, we were neck and neck all day, once one was ahead the other caught up, the challenge of keeping up with JW on gold finds works as a good motivator to me, the little competition is pretty fun but I rarely could keep up with him, this time I managed to. Anyway, here are the weights of mine This is the second last nugget I found, the smallest one of the day which is no surprise as I was avoiding shallow targets on purpose, it was the one that had someone elses dig hole just below it. This is quite funny, two the exact same weight, vastly different looking nuggets though. and my total, almost a gram! And here are JW's nuggets, mostly smaller than mine with him targeting those surface targets but it's hard to tell in the photo, we checked his smallest one on my coil and I was able to get it. We just put all his nuggets on the DD coil, 3 of them were found with the 11" Mono. The biggest one was with the DD. So all in all a fun day out, and we both managed to get some nuggets in a place that we didn't expect to really get anything much if at all so can't complain about that. These last two photos are just some shots of the area we were detecting, the grass is quite an annoyance but smaller coils handle it fine, I just use the GPZ to squish it down as I run over it, JW has a bit of trouble with the shaft twisting on the GPX doing that sort of thing.

I have been holding off posting this, as I worry it could get people who do it into trouble, or cause people running the way I do to blame my settings on the GPZ itself. Reality is what it is however and my journey with the GPZ 7000 has taken me to interesting extremes. I decided it is time to just tell you what I have been using for settings and let the cards fall where they may. My early posts on the Zed all advised taking it easy with the settings early on, especially for beginners. I took my own advice and slowly ramped things up over time. The entire time however I have been going in just the opposite direction from where I headed with the Minelab PI detectors. The goal with the GPX 5000 and its predecessors was to seek the smoothest, quietest threshold possible. Every advance the units made moved in that direction, until with the GPX we reached the pinnacle of smooth, well behaved performance. The GPZ 7000 experience for me has been more like a return to my roots running hot VLF detectors. Most common and very sensible advice including that I have offered myself always has been about trying to get the machines to obtain a smooth steady threshold if possible. And good advice it is. The funny thing is, I usually never run my machines like that myself. I crank them up and run them hot and noisy. A novice listening to me run a Gold Bug 2 in bad ground would be baffled by all the sounds the machine is making. To me however after decades of detecting it is all just feedback about what is going on under the coil, with the key thing being that the magic sound of a real target just jumps out at me out of all the ground and hot rock sounds. The first thing I did with my GPZ 7000 was pay close attention to every tidbit Jonathan Porter would reveal. Two things got my attention. First was his mention of how the Zed has a livelier response to the ground when in operation. The second was his obvious dislike for audio smoothing. The first thing I did was turn audio smoothing off and I have basically never used it. The second step was in determining that in most ground I worked the Normal ground setting was far more powerful than the default Difficult setting. I used Difficult a bit initially, and fell back to it a few times, but going to Normal was something that happened very early on, and if you look at my earliest posts on the GPZ 7000 I advised people to always at least give Normal a try before going back to Difficult if need be. High Yield is the default GPZ gold mode and I have always stayed with it. Minelabs unfortunate naming of the gold modes make people think the other modes are deeper but they only are so in a relative sense, relative to the ground you are in and the gold you are hunting. More details on this thread at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1236-gpz-high-yield-general-or-extra-deep/ High Yield is the high frequency mode on the GPZ with the transmitted field switching pole directions three times faster than in General or Extra Deep. You could say there really are only two modes because General and Extra Deep are just two versions of the same mode. Yes, yes, yes, before people chime in, I am very aware there are times and places for General and even Extra Deep. In fact, I will always downshift to General before I will come off the Normal ground setting. For me default mode is Normal/High Yield and if things get difficult then go to Normal/General. The next shift down would be to Difficult/High Yield and then finally Difficult/General. I doubt I will ever use Extra Deep until a larger coil is on my GPZ. And even then not much. The last step was the Gain. I ran 12 a long time, then 14. Then two months ago I just jumped to 20. The GPZ the way I run is almost always making some kind of noise, all of which lumped together is what I use as a threshold sound. I control things mostly through three audio settings. To preserve my sanity I keep settings low. I never use headphones these days unless the wind is really bad, other wise I keep the wireless module on my upper left chest closer to my better ear. One oddity on the GPZ 7000 is that there really is not a basic volume control so you have to fiddle with several settings to get comfortable sound levels. What they call Volume on the GPZ 7000 should have been called Audio Boost. From the owners manual" "Volume controls the amplification of a target’s audio response, relative to the target signal strength. This audio setting is most similar to volume adjustments in other devices (e.g. radio or television volume controls). The Volume control has a range from 1 to 20 with a default setting of 8. With a setting of 1, weak target signals will sound quiet, medium target signals will sound mid-range and strong target signals will sound loud. There will be greater differentiation between target signal strengths; however, weak signals will be harder to hear. With a setting of 20, all target signals will be amplified to a loud audio response. At this setting there may be less differentiation between medium and strong signals, but weak target signals will be easier to hear." That last note might make you think more volume is better - you do not want to miss those weak signals! I tend the other way as I want my targets to exhibit as much audio variation as possible. This is one setting I still need to possibly tweak but for now I seem to have settled into 4 as the one that works best for my ear. Volume Limit is much more like a regular volume control. I would have put Volume Limit on the main settings page, then relabled Volume as Audio Boost and put it on the secondary page. Future update hint Minelab? Again, from the manual: "The Volume Limit sets the maximum volume for target signals. When detecting, the sound produced by a target can be very loud. Adjust the Volume Limit to ensure that loud targets do not hurt your ears. The Volume Limit has a range of 1-20, with a preset of 12." More like a blast limiter than a volume control but this control is the one you really need to use to control how loud the GPZ is. I find 12 to be way too high for me, and by coincidence 4 turned out to also work for me there. The final piece of the puzzle is the actual threshold setting. I find 22 works well for me when I am in very quiet locations, and I bump to 25 if there is noise from wind or whatever around me. There are other audio settings but I try to mess with as little as possible to keep changes simple if I do a master reset. On full reset I: Main Settings (Detect) Page 1. Switch from default Difficult ground setting to Normal 2. Sensitivity from default 9 to 20 3. Volume (Audio Boost) from default 8 to 4 Next Page - Detect Plus 4. Threshold from default 27 to 22-25 depending 5. Volume Limit from default 12 to 4 6. Audio Smoothing Off Next page - Settings 7. GPS from default off to Enhanced 8. Wireless from default Off to On 9. Connect to WM12 wireless module 10. Finally, go to Map Menu under View and turn View Geotrail from Default off to On Only after all this is done do I go through the Quick Start frequency scan and ground balance (with ferrite). These settings all will be retained with power off so done once and I am pretty well set. All I do from then on is fire up in morning and do the Quick Start routine, which I will repeat at lunch time or if I move to a new area. The only thing I have to really remind myself to do is when starting each hunt to go to the Create Geodata page to initiate saving my path to memory. If you are reading Minelab, why can't I assign this to the user button? And, if I forget and walk 1/4 mile before before doing it, it sure would be nice to be offered the option to pick up and save that last 1/4 mile, which is clearly there on screen and in memory, instead of losing it. But I digress....... Again, once all this gets set up it is retained on power off and repower, so for me I fire the GPZ 7000 up, do the Quick Start, go to Create Geodata, and start my hunt. The only setting I mess with may be the threshold, which I use as a sort of final audio sensitivity control. The secret to all this pretty much boils down to a hundred hours or more of using the GPZ to get used to the audio and the way the machine responds to the ground. In doing so it all becomes about coil control and sweep speed. When I run into ground noise, hot rocks, or other issues like salt ground, the only thing that normally changes is how fast I hunt. Everything quiet I go faster, more sounds I slow down. In salt ground I am moving at a crawl, letting the audio feedback dictate the sweep speed. I set up an artificial threshold of rising high tones and descending low tones by using a carefully controlled slow sweep. Even small nuggets still pop for me in salt ground. In other ground no matter what else is going on with these settings a nugget just goes "BANG"!! Chris Ralph and I hunt together a lot. He tried not even the full bore version of this, and immediately went back to his quieter settings. WARNING! I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THESE SETTINGS! All I am doing is telling you what I am doing. I am not saying they are the “best” settings or any such nonsense. They clearly will not work for many people and in many locations etc. etc. whatever. Running too hot can be counter productive. The happiest thing about the GPZ 7000 is in most cases it gets the gold if you get the coil over it using almost any settings. Chris certainly does as well as I using the settings he uses and he is happier for it. There are various “quiet” settings being used by others out there and they are finding lots of gold doing what they do. You do have to put the coil over the nugget first and foremost, and I am not going to be a settings snob and claim I know best for anyone besides myself. I have no doubt someday I will run into ground where I do something completely different. Always remember, there is never one magic setting for all times and places, otherwise all we would need is an on/off knob. Use what works for your ground and your own personal comfort level. But now at least nobody can say I did not tell you what settings I am using. Last warning though – getting a new GPZ 7000 and doing this would be like buying a new race car having never driven one, then getting in and just flooring it. You are going to crash and burn. If you are new to the GPZ, do please take it easy and give it time. It is one of those machines that really grows on you with time. Anyone giving up on it with under 50-100 hours really has not even tried. Or maybe GPX style hunting is just better for them. Just my opinion. Again, whatever works.

Hi Steve. New To this site and pretty new to gold detecting. I read your article on gpz 7000 hot settings. I am trying to run them. But……The last couple of days out I have been under and around high voltage power lines. I am finding gold but it sure is noisy, Emi. Is that just the nature of the beast, just deal with it. Or without losing power/sensitivity is there anything to try? Thanks.

Just an observation, been several GPZ 7000 for sale and sold for under US$5000 recently. I think we can all guess why. Some good buys though for those wanting max performance on large gold.

Hey Guys, Well its that time of year where most of the US Prospectors are searching for gold, in the Southwest at least. I managed to get out this weekend with some friends, just roaming around some old stomping grounds in hopes to turn up a few bits missed years prior. I was toggling between my GPZ 7000 with the NF 12" coil and my GPX 6000 with the 11" coil. My other two friends were using the GPZ 7000's with the stock 14x13" coils. Later in the day I can across some old piles left from prior mining and got a softer sounding signal and decided to investigate. My friends both had a few dinks now, so I was behind on the gold count. There's a lot of left behind rubbish in this area due to prior mining, hardrock and placering. I figured it was just another deep nail or something, but as I got down deeper, the target was actually on bedrock below the pile. I ended up scratching everything away from the bedrock and pinpointed the target in a crevice or depression (seen in picture below). Low and behold, it was a nice gold nugget, 4.6 Dwt's, just shy of 1/4 Troy Ounce. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least, didn't expect it. I thought this would be good time to see if my Minelab GPX 6000 would hear this target with the stock 11" coil on it. I walked back to my truck, got the GPX 6000 and hiked back to the target location. I figured this would be a crude, but interesting test as there is so much debate on depth and how now many believe the GPX 6000 is better. I fired the GPX 6000, balanced and make sure the EMI was good, then scanned over the target area with the nugget back in it's original location. I couldn't hear a peep of a signal, which honestly is what I figured. I didn't expect to find it, or hear it with the GPX 6000. I played around with a few settings and even had my buddies come over to check it out. They both scanned their stock coils (GPZ 7000 with 14x13") over it, both heard the target, but it was still faint (not a super obvious signal). This is one reason it's hard for me to put down the GPZ 7000, I have found many nuggets at depth, but deal with the heavy, bulky unit. I thought about going back and trying the 14" DD to see what it would have done, but for the most part, I never use the 14" DD, so it wouldn't have really proved anything to me, as I don't use it. It would have been interesting to see what the 17" coil would have done, but I didn't have it with me. I would think the 17" would have heard it. I'm swinging the GPZ 7000 with the NF 12" Round coil 90% of the time, the GPX 6000 about 10% of the time. There are some bedrock gullies I have revisited in years, so I'm looking forward to spending more time there with the 6000 and 11" Mono coil. I think I also might be able to pack the GPX 6000 into a few canyons as I wasn't easily able to do that with the GPZ 7000. Here are a few pictures below. I didn't have a tape measure, but Doc's pick is 22" handle length. I'm thinking between 18-20 inches was the true detection depth, but faint signal for sure.

Is there or has there been any comparison testing done in the field on depth with the 6000 vs the 7000 using the NF 12" Z-search coil. Thanks . . .

Is there or has there been any comparison testing done in the field on depth with the 6000 vs the 7000 using the NF 12" Z-search coil. Thanks . . .

So, just one more issue during my Outing... I have been in the habit of tossing my ferrite on the ground...foolish me. They break into many pieces...so no more tossing... I wonder if the ring can be super glued back to one piece and function correctly? Or is it more like a metal ring that no longer gives the same signal once the circle is broke? Or do I need a new one? so many questions.... fred

I haven't done a story on a gold find for a while, partly because once you find a patch with a bunch of nuggets everything else seems pretty insignificant, a couple of months ago I did just that, it's only my second patch but had quite a number of nuggets, I'd guess at least 40 (Correction: at least 80 nuggets) and over 30 grams in total. I lost count of both the nuggets and the grams we got out of it in the end. I did take a couple of videos on the first and second day of it, after that I stopped filming and just worried about detecting as filming videos is very time consuming and wastes valuable detecting time 🙂 That patch has been the highlight of my detecting time and hopefully I can find another in the future, I'll put links to the videos for anyone that wants to watch them and hasn't seen them already. https://youtu.be/qs-e8HO7xdU https://youtu.be/tppU5XZe77o Now to the more recent adventure, one of the most common gold spots I've been to is being developed, very soon it will no longer exist, already a large area of it has disappeared over the past few months with more to go yet, seeing it's probably the closest gold spot to home and one I've found a reasonable amount of gold before so it will be missed greatly. It's obviously getting extremely hard to find gold there as it's not a huge area really and it's been done a lot over the years by a number of people being an obvious spot to look. My focus on this day was to take advantage of how well the GPZ and Concentric coil handles EMI to hunt almost exclusive in and around the power lines where people including myself with previous setups were unable to really detect very well, especially with my GPX 4500, it was terrible near the power lines, and what inspired me to try out a QED which ended up working quite well under the power lines but just didn't have the power of the GPZ. I didn't take all that many photos as my aim was to get some video, I always struggle to get gold finds on video as I just use my phone to film and I have to put it down to do the recovery 🙂 I have a GoPro but just haven't bothered to use it yet. I went to some bedrock and worked my way up digging every signal and recording and deleting all the recordings as they were turning out to be shotgun pellets, this is entirely normal in this area as it has a big rabbit plague and shooters love spreading their pellets around all over the place for me to dig back up again. Here is a video of the first gold find, a .109 of a gram nugget, I was pretty happy with that to start the day as often at this location I go home empty handed. I didn't get the entire thing on video and I had my detector in difficult from when I was messing around the other day doing some testing and didn't check my settings, I'd never normally use difficult in my soil as Normal works just fine. Fortunately it didn't prevent me finding the gold, or the numerous pellets before it Once I'd finished that bedrock area I walked up under the power lines to detect hoping I'd find something others couldn't get, I took a little video there of how the detector was working under the lines, I really love how well the GPZ handles power lines seeing they're in many of my gold areas. You'll also notice at the end of the video the millions of bits of rabbit poo on the ground, this is the reason for the shotgun pellets everywhere. You'll notice in the video I discover I'm in difficult and seem a bit surprised, this is when I worked out I may have wasted the past hour detecting in difficult and it went through my head now I'll have to go check that bedrock again 😛 I was quite happy at that point I took the video or I may not have noticed for the rest of the day. I started detecting along under the power lines and ended up in a little area I don't think I've been into before, I'm terrible with directions and locations so it's quite possible I have been there before and don't remember it but it didn't look familiar, I was still recording every target dig to try get a gold find on video and managed to do it, I think this might be my first time ever getting one from start to finish on video, quite happy with that. And a couple of photos of it. And my lucky last nugget of the day if you could call it that was a 0.038 of a gram nugget, very shallow on some bedrock, it took me about 20 minutes to recover this one, but I only got a portion of it on video, I kept moving it around but couldn't pick it up, I had no idea where it was in the cleared area, I was wishing I had a VLF with me with tiny coil to narrow it down. I'd imagine there are quite a lot of these little guys around it's just the amount of pellets you'd have to dig to find them would be crazy. I do it more for the challenge but the novelty wears off after digging a massive amount of pellets and not finding any nuggets and if you ignore the pellets you'll miss these little bits of gold. So here are the 3 little bits for the day and the weights All a bit of good fun, I really enjoy chasing these little bits especially after the first one pops up to get you into gear looking for more. I can't compete with the photos lately out of Alaska for gold though, I'm just glad I can do the hobby near home and find a few bits to keep me happy. Here is a little tour video of where I was detecting. Keep in mind to run these coils you need to have an adapter and that involves cutting the end off your existing GPZ coil and making an adapter out of it, it should only ever be taken on by someone very skilled at electronics or really the best thing to do is get a professional to make the adapter for you to avoid any problems.

I change coils more than most, in fact I've changed coils 10 times in a day when testing out various coils on bits of gold, by doing this I'd caused myself some lower shaft wobble, it turns out I'd cracked part of a clip on the shaft, the clip with the little rubber pad had a crack in it, so the shaft wasn't holding on tight. I suspect the people that had upper shaft issues where it wobbles a bit have either got the same crack on the pressure pad or they've just worn the little bit of rubber out. Fortunately it's a very easy and cheap fix. Here are the part numbers for the clip mechanism X2 8008-0056 Pressure blocks X1 8008-0072 Camlock lever X1 4308-0033 Pin The part I'd broken was the pressure blocks. They come in a twin pack for replacement and are very easy to replace. You dismantle the clip by removing the pin, I used a small screw driver to push it out of the clip. You then just use a small flat head screw driver to lever them off, pushing each side of the pressure block away from the camlock lever as pictured below. This is the shaft with the clip removed. You can see the grooves cut out of it where the pressure pads need to slide into so when reassembling made sure they're straight so they fit into the groove. You can see the little circular lump on the left hand side pressure pad, it's what goes into that dug out groove. This is how the rubber pads look, I guess they can wear out over time and if they do your shaft would be wobbly. Minelab sell all the parts individually, so you can just order what you need for the repair. They were very helpful with me, and had me solved by the next day using express shipping. I bought a heap of the little parts so I have spares seeing I change coils so often. In my case I just needed the pressure blocks, the pin and camlock lever were obviously fine. So if anyone's putting up with some shaft wobble, it's cheap and simple to fix.

I've read a few posts from those who have both and their input is pretty much what I expected. Having fun (especially with others) is the majority of why I enjoy detecting. Only a select few actually do it for a living and do well. The rest of us (me included), enjoy the hunt, adventures, comradery with like minded friends, and getting some gold on occasion. It's looking like the GPX-6000 is getting the majority of gold better than the GPZ-7000. So, is the extra weight worth the rare occasional big nugget? Lets go a step farther. Say the ZED hits a 4 ounce nugget at 34". Will the 6000 hit that same nugget at 30", 32" 33" or 34". Say it's 2" less and only gets the chunk at 32". It's still near 3' deep which is deeper than most folks enjoy digging and or most other detectors out there. So the reality for most folks, the GPX-6000 at a cost savings of $2000 and over 2 pounds lighter, better ergonomics, no more tethered into a harness, more user friendly, real wireless Bluetooth phones, is the best option for most. Like I said in another post. There should be a convoy of GPZ users heading down the highway to get the new GPX-6000 and having more fun, more gold more often. I can help make that smile happen. Anyone have a point I am missing or totally off, please chime in. Pic of the nugget will probably only be a few inches in depth difference between the 6 and 7. But the majority of us would probably hear if with both machines at 30 or more.

Hey Guys, I figured we can stir the pot just a little while we wait out the release of the Minelab GPX 6000, right? That being said, Minelab still claims the GPZ 7000 can get "up to 40% more depth" over previous GPX detectors. We can all question, does the GPX 6000 still fit in this category, as Minelab stated GPX detectors. The upcoming Minelab GPX 6000 is still a GPX series detector, but primarily using GeoSense Technology. I don't see where GeoSense really talks about any more depth ability over the previous GPX 5000, but it does mention about better ground response/clarity, maybe allowing you to hear something in higher mineralized ground over previous GPX series. I don't claim to be an expert electronic prospector, but my specialty is in detecting for gold nuggets with the best detectors available. We call all talk about how much gold we found, years of experience, regions we hunted and such ..... The bottom line is I still feel the Minelab GPZ 7000 is the KING of detectors when it comes to depth. Many Australian, African and US prospecting friends still feel the same. I personally have found many large gold nuggets and specimens at max depth where I doubt any detector with a similar sized searchcoil would have found. I also know that probably 1% or less of those large gold nuggets/specimens are out there still and the ones at max depth range of the current detector technology. Does this justify the purchase of a Minelab GPZ 7000 over the upcoming GPX 6000, or should GPZ 7000 owners dump their units now? These are questions I personally can't advise anyone on, but it's something to consider when you make a purchase of a metal detector in the thousands of dollar range. What I can leave you with is my personal experience over the last 25 years chasing gold nuggets .... If you are in areas where there has been historically large gold nuggets, overburden to bedrock/paylayer/caliche/false bedrock that can be several feet and deeper in depth, you might seriously consider either holding your current GPZ 7000 or consider a purchase of one at some point. I personally will not be parting with my trusty GPZ 7000, we have a 5+ year personal relationship. We have been through tough times, bad weather, I even yelled at her and dropped her a few times! Like Steve mentioned before, you could actually fall in love with your detector. Wishing you all much success with whatever detector(s) you swing. P.S. Below is a recent GPZ 7000 find, max depth, just a break in the threshold (yes the GPZ 7000 has one). Nearly a pound in weight (uncleaned in picture) Rob

I’ve been following the battle between the old dog (GPZ-7000) and young dog (GPX-6000) with keen interest.. From what I can make of it, the young dog’s winning its battles in the USA and the old dog in Australia.. So far it seems the old dog can handle a scruff on heavily mineralized and ‘hot rock’ infested grounds better than the young dog, who prefers milder grounds.. But it’s too early in the day to scorn the young dog, it’s only just finding its feet in the world.. The old dog might’ve fought it out with other GPXs and always come out on top, but this young dog seems to have more sense of geology than its cousins.. Maybe a few more dust-ups in the old dog’s yard might do the young dog some good.. Or maybe the old dog won’t let the young dog anywhere near its yard no more? Maybe they should flog it out on neutral grounds somewhere, another 'Rumble in the Jungle'? Only time will tell who emerges Top Dog of the World , as with most other dog fights.. Hackles come up and fur starts to fly..

Has anyone had any issues with their coil chip failing? l bought a second hand 19” coil for my GPZ and it worked fine for several months and then out of the blue, it failed. Minelab suggested that I buy a new coil. After a bit of research I decided to have a dongle made up from my 14” coil and now 12 or so months later the chip in the dongle has failed. Am I doing something wrong? Is there a problem with the detector or am I just very unlucky?

Hello gentlemen, finally someone from the Australian guys made an honest comparison

If this has been posted here already I missed it, sorry. But, wow...

I am starting this thread to ask the folks who have used both to give their thoughts, opinions, comparisons and experiences with both. I have only seen JP and Rob post on the Nugget Finder coil and have only seen it in action on the Outback Gold Fever Channel. We all know that the 6000 blows away any competition with weight and ergonomics, but would still like to know if it gets any closer to this with Z and the 12”. Performance wise is really what I am after and these two sizes are only an inch apart, but 2 different techs. I am on the fence, do I buy a new coil for my Z or sell/save for a 6000? I am truly in the middle on this based on my terrain, age and gold I am after. My terrain: is the woods and broad gulches. There is always overburden and vegetation so I need the power to bust through that to get to the start of the bedrock erosional surface and hopefully close bedrock. However, wearing a harness does not work and is cumbersome for detecting in this environment, its never flat so you never feel the help from a bungy, its pointless for this area. My age: is 45 and I can go about 5-6 hours max before being whipped, thats not just from detecting but digging and hiking in and out too, so I know as age goes on the hours will be less but new tech could come out too. My gold: is sub grammers, that is the majority. We have hit larger pieces but the bread and butter is sub grammers and the Z is getting them through all that overburden but I am not sure if the GPX6000 would. So my “dream” detector would be ZVT tech in a compactable SDC form with interchangable coils, light and ergonomic. Is that to hard to ask? 😂😂😂😂 So, in the interim, it’s either a lighter coil for the GPZ that supposedly is more sensitive and can get a little deeper and reduce the weight for non bungy users OR a new detector that is lighter, that is also more sensitive at least on surface gold, that we have seen so far, but has the possibility as more reviews come out to see if you can actually hit small gold at depth like a GPZ. Can’t have both, the coil I could afford, The GPX would require selling off the Z. I also don’t have the ability to drive to the closest dealer that would have both in AZ. Thats a two day drive one way. So please, if you may, would love feedback on this vs the two. In the end it sure helps me out and probably many others too. Thanks!

It’s exciting when a new detector emerges, none more so than a new top notch gold getting machine from Minelab and the new GPX 6000 is as exciting as it gets. Just a little reminder about the virtues of the GPZ/14” an older brother he may be a little thick in the middle but this heavyweight can still sniff out a few crumbs in the pounded terrain in the desert of Gold Basin Arizona, from a few recent hunts.

Well I'm laying over in northern Nevada for some detecting before heading back to Idaho and my summer job, and decided to go revisit an old dink patch with the GPZ 7000 this afternoon. Since I've hit this place pretty hard, I figured I better use a higher sensitivity setting to see if it would light up some bits that were missed last time using a lower sensitivity that helped keep the alkali rich ground feedback under control. Needless to say, I had to move the coil painfully slow over the really noisy areas, but the extra sensitivity started working its magic right away, as I got a faint but repeatable little wobble. Digging down about 3 inches or so revealed the first little bit of yellow. 🙂 Soon there was another signal a few yards upslope; another shiny golden bit, this time a little deeper. I couldn't help but wonder at this point how much deeper the new GPX 6000 will be able to snag dinks like these, and how many the Zed is leaving behind. 🤔 Guess I'll find out when I finally get mine. Just then I was awakened from my wonderings by a sharp response from the Zed; sounding pretty shallow, the tiny target was out from under a bush with just a boot scrape. And I mean tiny! One more golden goodie sitting on bedrock ended a splendid, sunny afternoon in the goldfields. Total weight of todays finds, zero point six of a gram. Good luck out there!

what going on with nugget finder and the new coil for the GPZ

Well I have now gone through a second GPZ stock coil cover. Has anyone tried out the Nugget Finder coil cover for the 14x13 and if so how have you liked it? I am either looking at one of these or somehow modifying my stock cover to extend the life. If the stock covers were only $10 I could justify the reoccurring cost but at almost $50 ..not really. Thanks

Just the other day, I reached my goal of digging 100 Arizona gold nuggets with the GPZ 7000 this winter. Nothing of much size - the largest weighing in at only 5 grams - but even the tiniest bits are a thrill to find. As usual, I was targeting well known and flogged placer areas, working in and around the old dry-blow diggings. All up, 1.78 ounces troy. It will be interesting to see how much the GPX 6000 increases the number of nuggets found in this size range next season...only time will tell. Good luck out there!

As far as a carry case, Beatup came up with a great idea for the 7000. It's a double snowboard bag, 158cm fits the collapsed 7000 perfect. Not a hard case mind you, but it's padded with waterproof luggage type exterior and heavy duty zippers. It offers some protection bouncing around in my RZR, I bungee it to my overhead rack so there is still room for all the other gear in the rear compartment. I'll try and find the website if anyone is interested.

https://youtu.be/W1Eq9pSOHT8