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  1. I just came across this link on how an x coil is made for the minelab gpz. I found it very interesting. https://tolnix.com/gpz-7000-x-coil-magic/
  2. I bought an X-coils 20 Spiral early on for my gpz7000. Being one of the early coils the leads weren't fantastic, something they rectified later on. The problem was that the lead windings were too big and irregular in size. This caused a lot of problems when swapping over coils as it didn't slide inside the shaft well. I also found that on hot days the lead would stretch out of shape making things worse It's been a constant battle to fit inside the shaft and was getting worse to the point it was nearly impossible to use. A while back I attempted to fix the lead by winding it around the shaft shown in the picture and slightly heating it with a heat gun. That worked for a while but the spirals were still too big and it pulled out of shape quickly. Today I'm trying something different. I'm trying a screwdriver that has a smaller diameter shaft, hoping to create a smaller spiral. I tied the lead to the driver and then heated it as I wound it on tight, continuing until it was all wound on. Hopefully, I haven't ruined the lead by heating it too much. *After doing this the lead fit a lot better but is still catching a bit in the middle as the lead has a fat spot, where the lead cable is extra thick. If this doesn't work long-term I may have to pull the coil apart and fit a new lead.
  3. I know quite a few people have been wanting this, and many have been asking X-coils if they were going to do it, and it turns out they have been working away on it in the background experimenting with sizes and types of coils, and the first to be introduced is the 8" DOD coil compatible with the Axiom. 8" would be the coil I'd want the most for sure. A big bonus and something X-coils in particular wanted to take advantage of was the Axiom's discrimination abilities and by being a DOD design this makes that possible. It also detects along the entire length of the coil being a DOD. This coil is just plug and play, no adapters required (THANK YOU GARRETT). It's currently not for sale, I can't imagine it will be long until it is.
  4. X-Coils have been working away in the background and took me by surprise with this one, I've always wanted a Concentric coil for my GPX 5000 but not a giant sized one, and I think they've nailed it with the perfect size coil for my needs, a 15" Concentric for the legacy GPX. I have a spot that I like to detect that's quite close to home but the hot rocks drive me mad with the GPZ there, I've found a few bits of gold there, biggest is 1.2 grams and that was with the Equinox 800 and 11" coil, the reason I was using it was I got sick of digging hot rocks with the GPZ, I haven't even bothered to take the 6000 there as I already know it's worse on these particular hot rocks than the GPZ. I've had the GPX 4500 there once but had a fair bit of problems with EMI as it's near a busy road and every car going past sent my 4500 nuts, their alternator or something, you could hear them coming. It's quite a steep gully with a road going through the bottom of it. This nugget would have been no more than 20 feet from the road So, I'm very much looking forward to using this 15" Concentric coil on my 5000 and going back to this spot. In mono mode on the GPX it's a full-fledged spiral mono coil, flick it to DD mode and it's a Concentric coil which handles bad ground and my hot rocks very well, along with being very good for EMI. A real 2 in 1 coil. This coil will be on its way to me very soon, I can't wait to use it. My 5000 hardly weighs more than my 6000 now with its carbon fibre shaft and lithium battery setup.
  5. Not sure where to post this but Steve can move it if necessary: I've been wandering central Victoria for the last two weeks with this proto 22" Z X Coil concentric and results are impressive, to say the least. I've picked up deep bits missed by all the current detectors including GPX's, GPZ's (with standard coils) SDC's and QED's. I have personally walked over some of these bits: Some of the above were under 3KV power lines, which were worked two years ago for 1.5 ounces with QED's by Reg and myself. The Z concentric handled this well using full audio smoothing and picked up more pieces. This morning I tackled another well flogged patch and picked up an additional 5 grams: The day was hot and I ventured out once more and hit on this 11.8 grammer at depth. Took me half an hour to crowbar it out at only 14" The ground here is like concrete atm. In brief, this coil is a killer and has found gold (or missed deep targets) on all the well flogged areas I have worked so far. Settings: HY Normal, Max gain and no threshold (Bogenes) Same as what I always use on the 5000. "Difficult" is a small target killer on the Z. Many times I have changed to Difficult from Normal only to lose the target signal completely. I have detected below .1 of a gram at 4" using my settings. Not bad for a 22" coil. Audio smoothing only under power lines. Salt could be a problem so not looking forward to the heavy rain forecast here next week. On the other hand, digging will be much easier!
  6. Hey Steve, You and I have known each other for a long time, even had some great times metal detecting together. That being said, the X-coils at this point scare me off. I had an opportunity a month or so ago to test several different sizes from someone that is affiliated with the manufacture. I was a bit excited at first, then found out I would have to cut/modify an adapter/chip from another GPZ coil to use one of the X-coils. To me, the trade off to damage or destroy a $600 - $1500 coil to just get an adapter to work on an X-coil is not my cup of tea. I don't need a smaller coil that bad to do this. That being said, other guys like to modify/fix/tinkle or whatever might enjoy this. I find the GPZ 7000 stock coil plenty sensitive enough to find gold down to a grain in size. However, a smaller coil like an 11" or so would be nice for tighter areas or areas with more vegetation. We were kind of promised a smaller coil originally from Minelab and that never happened. I think one more smaller coil from Minelab would have eliminated most of this stuff about smaller coils. Keep in mind, at one point I sold more Coiltek searchcoils across the US than any other dealer. I could probably sell a ton of the X-coils, but not at the cost of sacrificing a detectors warranty. For the benefit of all GPZ owners, I hope someone like Coiltek, Nuggetfinder, Minelab, X-coils or whoever can find a better way to make a coil that will just plug right into the GPZ and work. Just my thoughts, Rob Allison X Coil 2021 News
  7. A couple of years ago X-coils discontinued older legacy model GPX coils, however demand has been large in their part of the world by relic hunters and big deep gold hunters for a large coil, so they come up with the goods with a 32" Spiral wound GPX 4500/5000 coil. It's an absolute monster of a coil, I can't imagine this being sold into the international market due to shipping a coil this size, hopefully the people in Europe can find some good deep relics and gold with this thing. It's good seeing some life brought into older models with all the excitement and talk these days of the newer models.
  8. Hey All - I can confirm we will definitely be making coils and release will be in first half of 2022. Coiltek Quality - Fully Minelab Approved and no need to break a coil to make a coil. We will be releasing more info on this in the coming months. Stay safe everyone. Trevor.
  9. Some time ago I had to make a decision about buying a new coil for my 7000, buying a 6000 or buying an Axiom. I decided to buy a 15" CC X-Coil and it arrived about a month ago. The family is off on a trip so yesterday was my first try with the new coil. The coil was sent by post with a tracking number all the way from Kazakhstan. Here is the coil as I unpackaged it. The coil I've had on for the last few years has been the 15x10 Spirial X-Coil so seemingly there is not that much difference but in actual use I think there is a great difference. I've found lots of nuggets with the Spiral, but I just had this feeling that it could be better based on what Simon has said. Simon was right. My testing ground is a place where I and many others have been for years. When we first started there we were able to find quite a bit of trash and WWII 50 cal and shells. Those are long gone and so are most of the little wires which gave us such good 'potential' among the nuggets and hot rocks. My testing method was to go out with the coil I had on first and then come back and put on the new 15" CC. I marked targets I found but did not dig them. I had three areas/targets marked by the time I made it back to the SUV. I switched the coils by unscrewing the adapter with the chip from the 7000 and screwing in the new coil and replacing that back on the 7000. I didn't change the settings and I tested the new 15" CC on my test gold chips laying on the ground. The sensitivity was at 12. Ground smoothing low, high yield, normal and I use the SP01. The first thing I noticed when going over the test chips was that you had to have the coil directly over the nugget or you couldn't hear it. And furthermore, as Simon had told me the receive coil is smaller than the outer coil so it acted as a smaller coil. I didn't mind because it is a light coil. It seems ligher than the Spiral but I'd have to check it. So off I went to find the 3 marked targets, but I had pretty much of a dead battery in my phone. I put the phone on a charger and took off in search of my 'marks!' Finding the marks proved to be a bit harder than I first imagined. All the pretty flowers and dried bushes looked the same. My first mark was about 15 minutes from the start. I spied it and before I could get there, I got a loud target. It was a little sharp and it could be bullet jackets or the wires. It wasn't very deep so it moved with the light scrapes, but I couldn't see it in the scoop. It got down to a little bit of black sand and then I saw it. A little, flakey nugget! This coil can hunt I said to myself. I had to go back and get my phone so I could take some pictures. I'll have to add I carried it around later and it didn't cause an EMI problem for the coil. When I came back these are the pictures I took. I was impressed by a coil that big finding a nugget that small. The 7000 allows you to mark 'find points' which I have always liked. It asks you the depth which I said was 2" and the weight which I said was .1g. I was on the board and no matter what happened the rest of the day I had a nugget. This was good for me because the last 3 trips I've made to this location I got skunked. I then went to the target I had marked about 10 feet and it was a piece of trash. I went on to check the other marks I had made and could see all of those targets except one. I had dug one target and left it in the hole with the Spiral. It was a wire and the 15"CC did not see it. Another thing the 15 did not see was the hot rocks. That was a good thing. I was learning how to use it as I got into a couple of hours. At first I was worried that I was going to miss things under the bushes because the outer coil would be 'dead' and I couldn't get the center of the coil under the bush. Larger bullet trash and a couple of cans showed me that I could hear targets before the coil got to it. I was digging under bushes. It was time to leave this spot and go to another pounded spot where I wanted to test the new coil for depth. I knew this was deeper and perhaps the main reason why I bought it for $1200. I covered a lot of areas with no joy but I was learning to use the coil. There was one area that held deeper nuggets and that is not something I am good at. I can hear shallow nuggets that scream but deep iffys get the best of me. With that in mind I was looking for a repeatable iffy at this location and I found one. I dug a couple of inches as the first nugget and it was still iffy. I dug more and it brightened a little but not enough to make me think it was a nugget. Now I'm down about 6-7" in some moist desert soil with a lot of iron hanging off the magnet on the pick. I run the coil over the dig out pile and it screams! It is right on top. I scooped it and said YES. I don't remember digging a deeper small nugget than this. The phone was a long way from me so I don't have a picture but once again, this coil can hunt. I'm ready for Rye Patch now. Franconia here I come. Watch out Quartzsite. Here are my results. Notice just to the right of the .06 nugget on the scale a little wire piece. The 15" found that also. The desert revived me and reinvigorated me. For the next few weeks I'll go as much as possible. This was my trash.
  10. Just fitted the test 26" CC X Coil. Let the fun begin!
  11. I made a quick overnight trip to Rye Patch to do some more testing with the GPZ and 17" Concentric Coil. My main goal is to familiarize myself with the Z combination for an upcoming trip to Australia. This testing was merely for my own edification, not to prove any point about this Machine/Coil vs that Machine/Coil. I dug the first 2 nuggets last night and it was getting dark so I didn't have time to do any cross checking. This morning I marked 3 undug targets with the GPZ and 17" XCoil Concentric. I then went over them with the GPZ XCoil 17x12 Spiral Wound. That combination picked up 2 of the 3 targets. I then went over all three with the GPX 6000, 14x9 Coiltek combination. The 6000 heard 1 of the 3, but while detecting back to the truck it picked up 2 more targets. I started over with the Z 17"CC and it picked up the 2 new targets no problem. I then ran the Z 17x12 over the new targets. It picked them up no problem, but on the way back to the truck the 17x12 picked up a faint noise in an old drywash hole. I dug down to bedrock and found bits of charcoal and just general noise so I gave up on it. The 17" CC relocated the 1 missed target and I dug down a few inches thinking to use the 6000 as a pinpointer. It still couldn't pick up the target. I finally dug it out, a tiny piece of steel down about 6 inches. I then dug up the 4 targets which included the 2 remaining targets the 17"CC found and the 2 the 6000 found. 2 were bits of steel and 2 were small round nuggets. Coincidently, the 2 gold targets were the ones found by the 6000, but verified by both coils on the Z. By then it was approaching 10:00 AM, and the NV desert still gets hot this time of year. But, before I left I went back to the 17" CC combination and went over the drywash hole. A clear tone somewhere in the bottom of that hole. The unfortunate thing about the Concentric coil is the receive winding is about 8" round dead center. You're waving 17" of coil with the equivalent of an 8" round receiver. Nearly impossible to pinpoint in a foot deep hole. I dug the hole out some more and tried the 6000 over it. Very noisy, but a faint low tone in the sidewall of the hole. I dug it out some more and finally got a booming target in the spoils. Heartbreak, 1.5 inch piece of rusted steel. My random thoughts on this little experiment are this: 1. The XCoil 17" Concentric will not miss much, "IF" you have fairly flat ground and can consistently overlap your swings to insure you get that 8" receive winding over the targets. 2. The XCoil 17x12 Spiral Wound coil is nearly as good and will ultimately cover more ground with a whole lot less effort. 3. The 6000 with 14x9 Coiltek is no slouch and could save the day if you're old and tired like me. I would be hard pressed to swing the 17"CC all day. The deepest nugget the 6000 found was down about 5 inches, very respectable for a sub/sub gram nugget. All this is very unscientific. I'm at mercy of time and weather in the NV desert this time of year. I did what I could with the equipment I had with me. Rye Patch is a tough hunt in the best of circumstances, so finding 4 nuggets in about 6 hours of detecting is beating the odds. I've had more than a few skunk days out there.
  12. General Summary: I set out with two goals in mind, but only accomplished one. I wanted to compare the 6000 response on small nuggets to the 12" X Coil, but this was completely pointless due to the 30mph winds making audio on my cell phone completely inaudible. Also, I wanted to try out the 15" CC X Coil I was sent last year but simply have not had a chance to try out due to a number of factors in life. X Coils sent this coil to me for free to try out right as my detecting season had ended last year. I worked over about a 20x50ft section of a patch completely with the 6000 until there were no audible targets left. I use Auto+ in normal. Then, as is my general technique, I set the GPZ such that I was running the maximum gain with the most stable threshold I could acquire. In this case, 18 gain, 12 threshold, low smoothing, normal. My feeling is that these settings average out to something fairly close to what the 6000 is doing in Auto+, if any equivalency can be drawn, ignoring GeoSense. Almost every target was 6+ inches deep with the CC. Whereas most of my 6000 targets were about 1-7" deep. Nothing too surprising here. Initially from this section I got about 40 nuggets with the 6000, and got another 7 more with the CC. The avg size of the 6000 nuggets was around 0.1 grams, and the average size of the deeper CC nuggets was around 0.25 grams. There is both salt and medium mineralization in this ground, and the CC suffered as would any larger coil in the salt. I'm quite sure I left some nuggets in the ground because I got tired of chasing salt signals. The 6000 w/11" pretty much only gave a signal on targets or the buried clay balls and so it was much easier to dig only just good targets. But it definitely missed stuff once it got deeper than 5-6" or so. Here you can see a pretty typical ~7" hole that the CC was finding gold in. This gold looks bigger but it only weighs 0.21 grams. I think the deepest one I dug was around 9". The gold here doesn't often get bigger than 3/4 gram, so physics limits the depth at which this stuff can be found, thus the lack of deeper results. My gold vs trash take. Almost everything was 6"+ deep, including trash. The 6000 got almost everything closer to surface aside from the one smallest pellet. I say almost everything 6" deep because the longer nugget was only like 2" deep and there is no way the 6000 missed that thing. Again, I swear the 6000 is occasionally "hiccuping" and missing some quite obvious targets. I don't know if it's due to electronics bogging down/glitching, or just needing to hit some nuggets exactly the right way and in the right direction. But that one was almost an overload signal on the Z. But maybe I just didn't overlap swings enough...no clue. The gold vs trash ratio is pretty similar to what I got closer to the surface with the 6000. A lot of this surface soil is deflationary, meaning gold is often found right in the grass roots up top, depending how heavy the wind is and how much ground cover there is. My Opinions: Having used the 17" CC earlier in Arizona, I already knew these coils were killer. Seriously, they are like having a GPZ 7500 before anyone else, and I'm not just saying that because I got the coil for free. They are that much deeper. Anyone who has an X Coil adapter already, and who hunts in ground where deeper nuggets have been proven to lurk - this coil will almost certainly find you more gold (as long as the gold is actually there). That said, like any larger coil, they suffer in salt. So this test wasn't quite an apples to apples comparison. And actually, I didn't even fully realize there was salt in the ground here when I was running just the 6000, otherwise I'd have chosen a different spot. But the salt signal was definitely there and obvious when swinging across soil interfaces. Also, I recall reading that these CC's are way better in mineralization than the spirals, which may be the case (I haven't tested), but the 6000 had far less overall response to the iron mineralization than the GPZ+CC, even though larger coils are better with ferrite type mineralization, generally speaking. This is more a function of the GPZ than the coil though, I believe, in this case since the 17" I ran in Arizona didn't suffer any more than the stock GPZ coil in medium mineralization. In summary, I'll end with something I've said before: these CC's (and the 8" in salt) are the only reason I'm still hanging on to my GPZ still. I'd have sold it long ago if these coils didn't exist. They are seriously like having a new GPZ that no one else has access too. That said, nothing - and I mean nothing - can compete with the ease of use of the 6000, and it's quickness and speed. It's built to be a prospecting machine, not a patch cleaner. Yes. It misses stuff. Absolutely, without doubt. And if a person is primarily spending time cleaning up the last remaining crumbs in long dead patches then the 6000 is not a great choice and nothing can compete with the depth and sensitivity of the 7000+ X Coils. But for general prospecting and exploration, nothing on the market can compete with the 6000 either. Two separate machines, two separate use cases. My arm was dead tired after swinging the GPZ again, I only made it 6 hours and normally I like to spend 10 hours if I'm making a trip to the field. And I just have to swing far, far slower with the GPZ both due to the increased ground response and the outright weight of the coil/machine. And in the end, I actually found more nuggets by number and weight with the 6000 just by accepting that I would lose some gold left behind and being ok with trading that for raw speed and ground coverage. I wasn't sure how much gold I left, but I knew I left some. It paid for my gas and back, so not insignificant. And if one of those deeper nuggets was a lunker, well then it might pay for an entire season of gas, never know. But my personal detecting philosophy is to sweep up 80% of the easy stuff quickly and move on to find more places. It just pays better over time. Then come back with the GPZ + X Coils to clean up patches when times are lean and exploration isn't paying off, or when my arm and elbow feel up to the task. This is the reason I'm using the 6000 so much now. And it's also the reason I'm still keeping the GPZ. But of course we all use detectors for different things, and this is just me showing how each works well in their own specific use cases which might not apply to anyone else.
  13. Has anyone else had there 7000 stop recognising coils from using an x coil.? Big question can they be fixed.??? Thank you in advance. Cheers Mick.
  14. I was pretty excited about this one so I couldn't resist posting the video of it, it's a 12x6" prototype test coil being used on the GPX 6000 to find gold, it found 3 bits on it's first run. This was one of my favourite coils on the older model GPX and if I end up with the new GPX it will be a size I'd have to have. It's long sensitive nose was great getting up between the rocks I regularly hunt in. This is purely for information for those interested in following the progress of the coils. These coils are not being sold by them yet, it's in a testing stage and they will require an adapter which involves removing a chip from the original coil. You'll see in the photo the adapter inline on the coil cable which has the chip in it that was removed from the standard mono coil. And the video The 3 bits of gold found while testing it. The one to the left was the one found in the video.
  15. Here is a video of the GPX 6000 running a 15x10" X-coil, a test over a little nugget.
  16. 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.
  17. I wanted to clarify this, in case people are thinking x coil is not welcome here, due to some x coil related members leaving the forum. I support anyone or anything that legitimately extends our metal detecting capabilities. I applaud x coils efforts. What I did not like was the fact that you have to take a perfectly good coil, and use it to create an adapter. The process is not simple, and if done incorrectly can fry a GPZ 7000. The repair will cost thousands of dollars, and that is not an exaggeration. Further, there appears to be nobody who will make these for people, and warranty that if the work blows up the detector, that they will insure those costs. In others words “do this at your own risk.” Seems simple to me. No drama, just “do this at your own risk.” The knowledge of that risk was suppressed, and people who expressed concern were attacked and ridiculed. ANY mention of the risk was met with swift damage control that attempted to shout down the offending party. THAT is what I objected to. I’m a pragmatic facts based guy. I could care less about the adapter. I do care that it is something that should be a disclaimer on any “oh these are the greatest thing since sliced bread” coming from parties who received many thousands of dollars in free product. And I mean seriously, who actually buys x coils? Because from this dumb Alaskans perspective, nearly everyone reporting on x coils is sporting free coils. Are there people out there that have to buy your x coils? I’d like to know who those people are, and hear what they have to say. Even then, I’m surprised how little you can trust even reports from purchasers. I was under the impression from several people that the QED was a pretty good product. Now, the ex-dealer is revealing that they are in fact a crap shoot, with very poor reliability, and poor physical construction. The truth now seems 100% the opposite of what I was being told by people, including people who berate others for concealing things. I gave QED quite a bit of positive coverage here that I now regret, because the so-called honest reporting of purchasing owners turns out to be quite suspect. When people buy junk, they prefer to quietly move it along with little fuss. In the meantime, the rest of us are not getting a clear picture of the truth. The same thing was going on with the Impulse AQ testing. Parties experiencing issues are protective of the developers, kind of a Stockholm Syndrome thing, where you protect your abuser. Because, you know, maybe the next thing they do will be good, and would not want to get shut out of that! So relevant facts about issues that might be perceived as problematic are suppressed or hidden. I bailed out of the project over that. Anyway, back to X Coil. I just want to let people know discussion of them is welcome. What is not welcome is berating people for being concerned over the adapter. That should simply be the default position for wise people. “Do this at your own risk.” Concerned care, not panic. Second, since free coils rained down like crazy, it would be nice if reporters clearly identify themselves as people getting free gear. I’m serious. I’m truly an outside observer to all this nonsense, and there appear to be almost no people who report on x coil, that do not have at least one free x coil. So that’s my question. Is there anyone out there that is just a person that bought these, and made or paid someone to make an adapter? A straight up no question purchasing end user? If so, I’d sure like to hear from you!! If you have free coils, love to hear from you also, but please let us know the whole picture. And to mention one last time. Never did, still do not have any issue with x coil discussion. It’s ok to great product, exploring new ideas, and I thank them for that. It was all the skullduggery and drama that bothered me. I’d welcome sane discussion of the product, and if they ever make a coil for a GPX 6000, I’d be interested. https://www.x-coils.com
  18. I have been itching to try the 10" X Coil out in Nevada salt for almost 2 years now, but life has always prevented me from making it to Nevada until now. And luckily, I also now have an 8" to try as well, plus a 15" and 17" concentric. Welcome to salt country! Sodium, even lithium salts here, all kinds. Salt everywhere, just ask Elon Musk! The 8" kills salt. I can't be more plain than that, it does great in places the stock coil is utterly unworkable. And it kills salt while retaining a good bit of sensitivity and depth too. The 10" definitely cuts salt down too, but the 8" takes it down another level again. Patches I had laboriously, slowly struggled to detect with the stock coil in bone dry dirt in July were almost silent with this 8", even though the soil was slightly damp past 2 or 3 inches in many places. That said, what I'm discovering is something Steve has mentioned in the past - the gold out here in a lot of cases is simply just not very deep. This is largely due to soil deflation, or what is sometimes called lag deposits. It just means that the light dirt blows away or otherwise erodes away, leaving behind the heavies fairly close to the surface. You know how when you drywash you can lightly blow the blonde sands out from behind the riffles and expose gold and other heavies? Similar thing, except over and over and over for eons. Anyways, my point is this: even though this 8" is an absolute pleasure to run in places that caused me a lot of frustration from salt response in the past, I managed to get most of the gold with the stock coil years back. I am finding a few dinks in each patch now, and it's because the gold just isn't there anymore. But this 8" is definitely the cheapest way to get 6000-like performance in salt for current GPZ owners, in my opinion. Actually, having run both machines, I believe this 8" may actually be more sensitive than the 11" mono on the 6000, but that just a guess since I didn't get a chance to compare them before the patch lead broke. The response on this coil is crisp and sharp. It goes from 0 to 60 on targets, often skipping all the steps in between, and it's a perfect compliment for running settings like I do with low threshold (around 13) and low smoothing. Here's 3 I got today at an old dink patch. The big flat one was 9" under a basketball size rock, which means the coil heard it from the edge. Which to me was impressive as hell at that depth. The tiny bit of iron was at 1" and a great target. It's literally verging on pen ball size, and that I'm slamming it with a GPZ is just kinda impressive to me. The 3 nuggets might weigh 0.3 grams combined. I had no illusion the concentrics would work any kind of magic in the salt, but this is simply the first time I've been able to get into the field to try them since they were sent to me, so I'm making the best of it. That said, I've run them enough now to say that I do feel they do slightly better in salt than the stock coil. I don't know if it has to do with the smaller TX or what. The improvement is slight though. What I can say is these concentrics are definitely a lot deeper than the stock coil. I pulled a 1 grammer up from what is easily my most gridded spot in NNV, and I know it had zero diggable or even questionable signals left in it. The nicest, most museum quality piece of gold I've ever found came from about 6 feet away so I had hopes, but this one turned out to be average. This crystalline gold is stealth gold, it's very hard to detect. It was a very obvious signal on the 15" concentric though. Unfortunately, the concentric doesn't only struggle in salt but it also struggles in bushy areas since the sensitive part of the coil is well inside the rim of the coil. So if you have areas that look like this: Then this is not the proper place for a concentric, even if you do a bit of weedwacking with the coil. So, I switched to the 8". However, what I wanted to mention is that the concentrics actually are sensitive enough on the edges to pinpoint with on the coil edge. It's not easy, and you really need to be close to the target, but it is doable, which surprised me. I wandered around the brush haphazardly and more or less randomly for a few more hours and got two more little crystalline pieces. Here they are all cleaned up, including the bigger piece I got with the concentric. A drastic difference between the flatter type gold, and you can see why it's harder to detect. Before cleaning: After cleaning: In summary: 8" is a great coil for NNV salt. And the concentric is definitely deep seeking, as AraratGold had posted in the past, I very much agree. But I'm unsure if the restricted sensitivity towards the outer edge which limits the coil's use in rocks and heavy bush cover will mean I end up going back to my 17" spiral, or if the depth gain makes these concentrics worth running outside of wide open fields. Since I'm getting a 6000 I probably won't be using the 8" as much, but the whole reason I'm keeping my 7000 is because I still see a use for these bigger X Coils and I believe these concentrics are going to do great next winter in AZ for me if I get them in the right terrain, and I definitely am not ready to lose the ability to run the 17" round spiral yet either, which I also didn't get to test against the 6000, but I definitely feel is outperforming the 17" elliptical on the 6000 at depth. But that's a 100% guess right now, and something I can test later. One thing to add on from my Arizona 8" post: this coil ran dead stable with zero knock sensitivity here in Nevada. There is something either with the ground or the vegetation causing this 8" to have knock sensitivity down there in Arizona, but not here in Nevada. It happened daily in AZ, it wasn't a mirage. It felt like the machine was trying hard to stay balanced, then when I'd knock it against a rock or just slightly rub against a branch it'd go crazy, then back to normal. I mean 80 or 90 times a day, not my imagination. I'd have to go out of my way detecting not to touch anything. But here in Nevada, not once did it happen with either my pre-repair or post-repair patch lead, and I could knock the coil against anything, no problem. So whatever is happening there in AZ has to be related to either the ground or vegetation. Most of the knock sensitivity was against vegetation, not rocks. It felt like the machine would go out of balance a bit when hitting the vegetation, but that doesn't make sense, and I'm really not sure what the deal was. Part II: the adapter failure next.
  19. Righto guys, Just did a quick, simple test of the 17 spiral and 17 concentric, mainly curious to see how the new concentric would run. Nothing scientific, just the 2 coils running over the same ground to show differences. Settings were not changed, other than between normal and difficult. Bear in mind I was on the edge of Kambalda, near Red Hill lookout which has several towers and electrical infrastructure on it, and we have just had 3 inches of rain, so ground is very damp. Sensitivity 16, threshold level 21 and tone 37, semi auto, high yield only, audio smoothing OFF. Concentric was much sharper on the small 0.3g ball of gold, really noticeable in difficult. Concentric will need much closer overlap of swings when cleaning up a patch, but I have no doubt it will punch deeper and have better sensitivity to small stuff than the 17 spiral ( which is pretty good anyway ) . IMHO, it will be no good for patch hunting, but great for cleaning up a patch. Neither coil suffered from EMI, considering how close I was to the aforementioned electrical equipment. Concentric balanced over the ferrite, although as stated numerous times before, I don't use the damn thing ! Overall impressions ? Top rate finish on the coil and new coil cable is spot on. No heavier than the standard GPZ14. No emi problems. Runs beautifully, no bump sensitivity and more sensitive to small gold than the 17 spiral, which is already very good. Elnur, you have outdone yourself comrade ! Full disclosure, I was gifted this coil to try out for being a loyal customer.
  20. Last year I posted a photo of a wash in Quartzsite showing a bit of horizon in the background along with some basic clues. I challenged anyone to find it. Partly to give out a place I found many years back that I knew had good gold since I had my time with it already. And partly also to prove it could be done from some very basic info. Someone found it last year, took them a couple weeks of searching. I was hoping they'd post here as they ended up with about 3/4 oz, and they are a forum member. The area is getting some significant use by ATV'ers now, I assume to go somewhere else since they don't appear to be prospecting there, but where I used to have to hike a half mile in you can drive right to now. 2 parties passed me by as I was detecting, and one had detectors with them. So I'm not going to show anymore photos of the area as I there is now too much use back there. Anyways, I revisted the wash. The challenge winner's friend showed up a few hours after I did, and probably was surprised to see someone else back there, they appear to be raking stuff down now. I hope they don't destroy everything back there, there are lots of other places to discover too, I meant that as a learning place meant to teach someone how to find similar places on their own, the type of topography, signs of old timers, and geology to look for, and not necessarily a place to mine out and stay at. I had previously run my 17x12 X Coil there (and the stock coil), pretty much the only X Coil that I haven't been all out impressed with, and so I really wanted to try one of my favorites - the 17" X Coil - there too at some point. I finally got a chance to get back down. I was not let down, paid for the trip and more, and still really love this 17". Got a 10 grammer that gave a low-high with some tone curl on it, kind of a weird broken signal, strange given how chunk and solid the nugget is. Thought it was going to be a lunker from that signal, but hit bedrock at about 14 or 15" and lost hope. Still, not a bad find. This was right in the wash so I guarantee that for whatever reason, none of the previous coils heard this nugget. Very mild ground, I always run full bore settings in here with any machine or coil. There were some large rocks I moved before I started digging, so the true depth from the coil might have been more like 18". Ended up with 2 half grammers also. This one was about 9" deep, and was just the faintest little signal, but still unmistakably repeatable. I only got a photo of one, but you get the idea. I traded both of them off at the store when I got into town for some supplies. I was going to put the 8" coil on and try to snag a handful of smaller bits, but I had another spot I wanted to hit (skunked) and I was hungry so I headed back to Q. Most of the trip was for exploration in other areas, checking some totally unknown places out, most without even mines or prospects. Just going off geology and aerials. I spent 2 days exploring and got the big skunk. So nothing to report there. Stopped in to Quartzsite to see if the 6000 might still be here but no luck. My primary use coils have pretty much settled into the 8", 12" spiral, and 17" spiral. (I bought the 12, the 8 and 17 were sent to me free of charge, as noted in the past) I think I have most bases covered with these 3. The 17" is sensitive enough that I literally have to have my phone and keys in the top part of my backpack. It picks the phone up itself, the metal inside, not the EMI. Both the 12" and 17" will pick up my Garrett AT pinpointer at shoulder height when it's off, so I have to put it on the top of my shoulder on my back, and even there I can still sometimes just barely hear it with the 17". And this brings up a new point, we have now reached levels of sensitivity where eventually we may not be able to carry anything on us at all if sensitivity increases further. I've seen posts lately questioning wether one really needs coils other than the stock, or saying the stock coil is great. Let me say unequivocally, that in almost all the places I've detected, that is simply not the case at all and that the GPZ absolutely benefits from a range of coils. Sometimes greatly. That is just fact in my mind at this point. And there are maybe only a small handful of people in the world right now who have more field time in than I do on a wide range of coils on the GPZ so I'm, speaking from experience here and this isn't guesswork. So wether one is looking at the NF options to come, or willing to make an adapter for the X Coils, if one is sticking with the GPZ and is serious about detecting, I absolutely recommend you look into whichever coil option works best for you. But don't stick with the stock coil, I am not impressed with it at all. I am struggling to find one place I might even take it with me to use and I cannot. Again though, I detect mild to medium ground mostly, not hot ground. The 6000 might make all that moot though, interesting times to come ahead! There's a horizon I can show you. We got another 3" of snow after this and so I decided to explore down south. Unfortunately one place I was going to visit got 12-18" of snow and so that trip got momentarily delayed. That's my land. It may not be me there anymore as it's under contract to a new owner right now. If it goes through then I'm off to do a ton of exploration and to find new opportunities. If it falls through, I have a lot of mining to do next season.
  21. I was sent this coil for free to use and keep by the manufacturer many months ago with no expectations of reviews or anything else, and I had intended many times to test it in Nevada for my own personal use, but work kept delaying me and I never made it. But I was able to finally get free from work and give it a solid 12 hours of run time over 2 days in Arizona since it's winter now. Soils are mild, few hotrocks (more on that in a moment). 40-50F degrees out. Mostly shallow, rocky washes or hilltops I've pounded with the stock and 17" X Coil (as well as a 4500). I consider these spots flogged and dead for my purposes, and so great places to see if new products can find missed gold. My observations were as follows: This coil (as expected with a smaller coil) was noticeably quieter than the 17" coil and the stock coil. I was able to bump my threshold up 8-10 points and still had about the same threshold chatter as I did with the 17" coil. I usually run 18 sensitivity here because I like a very stable threshold and EMI can be an issue, but I bumped up to 20 sensitivity with no problem. The coil ground balanced ok and I ran in auto which seemed to work fine. This coil loves hotrocks, as would be expected when you are running a smaller, more sensitive coil. I was finding hotrocks deep, shallow, and in places I considered more or less hotrock free in the past. Conversely, I hope it will do well in salt, which I hope to test this summer in Nevada. This coil is bump sensitive This coil is sensitive to a lot of vegetation, particularly sticks/twigs and grasses. I'm unsure if it's detecting them or bumping them. This coil screams on tiny nuggets just out of range of the stock coil. It gives decent signal on edge of detection, tiny nuggets that I missed with the 17" coil. The light weight made me very much more prone to lift up and detect side walls, benches, and pick up and poke/prod into just about any place I encountered, from beginning of day to end. The weight didn't fatigue my arm after a half day of swinging, 5 or 6 hours. Much of that time was without a bungee. This coil eminates a faint, very high pitched squeel or buzz if you get your ear close to it Overall, detecting with the GPZ feels a lot more pleasurable and less like fighting your equipment with a coil of this size and weight. I've mentioned it in prior posts, but take my word from experience now - it's not the weight of the GPZ that causes problems, it's the coil. And this 8" coil is almost the perfect weight to counterbalance the GPZ with the shaft fully extended - ie, this is the coil weight the GPZ should have been designed for. I'll take another pound on the control box no problem, but add 100 or 200 grams onto the coil end, that causes fatigue. Swinging the GPZ with this coil (or any coil of this weight) is a pleasure and not oppressive. The bump sensitivity I'm guessing is a relic of trying to cram so much wire into a tiny space that might not be meant for it, as I get the feeling that this coil is pressing the limits of how small a Super D can be built. But it does mean that I have to slow down and really concentrate on not hitting rocks or vegetation, which ends up being ok because this is a cleanup coil where I am going slow anyways. I expected to find a handful of faint, edge of detection signals I had missed with my other coils. But other than a couple nuggets, almost all the signals were bright, some even loud, and all pretty obvious. Even right out in the middle of the wash. This coil hits hard on tiny stuff. I haven't compared it to the GB2 or Gold Monster, but I found stuff down to 0.06-0.07 grams and they were all great signals. Pinpointing these tiny targets with the coil edge can be difficult as the center of the coil is more sensitive. And they are too tiny to register on my pinpointer, especially the porous and not flaky ones. And that is why I think I missed all the nuggets originally which I later found with the 8" - its a lot easier to get the center of the coil over more of the potential ground, especially with obstructions in the way. In the end, I didn't find a lot of missed nuggets in nooks and crannies, most of them were simply next to a rock or other obstruction like a bush which I was able to get the center of the 8" much closer to. Overall this seems like a good coil for working steep areas (Colorado comes to mind), surface patches, tight washes, and banks/vertical surfaces. The bump sensitivity is the only real major downside, so a slow and controlled swing is important with this coil I think. If NF doesn't end up releasing some critical sizes of coils and new detector releases make the GPZ cheaper (and less risky to make an adapter) then serious detectorists may want to give X Coils another thought. Because right now I can't help but feel like with these coils I am running a new detector that no one else has access to in a way, and I'm somewhat surprised more hard detectorists/enthusiasts haven't availed themselves of this opportunity. But, in the same respect I'm happy, because my time is slim and I haven't had a chance to put them over a lot of places I know others would have flogged to death already. My favorite coil by far is still the 17", but if this 8" (and the 10") perform well in NNV then I may change my mind on that. Here are the nuggets I found (weights are estimated) and my recollection of why I thought I missed them originally with all my other equipment but then found them with the 8" X Coil: Test Wash 1, less than 0.1 gram, too deep for other coils Test Wash 1, 0.08 grams, next to a rock and slightly into wash bank Test Wash 1, 0.12 grams, from a boot scrape and I had given up finding this with the 17" for some reason Test Wash 1, 1+ gram, next to a rock and oriented vertically in a bedrock crack, not sure why I didn't hear this on at least 6 or 7 previous passes since it's right in the wash, but it didn't produce a diggable signal with other coils/machines Test Wash 1, .2 grams, in a little ring of rocks, was only a few inches deep though Test Wash 1, .15 grams, too deep/edge of detection, or too close to rocks Test Wash 1, 0.12 grams, no idea, great signal and should have found before Test Wash 1, 0.15 grams, in side of bank, arm was probably always too tired to raise the coil up there Test Wash 2, 0.12 grams, no idea why it was missed before, right in middle of wash Test Wash 2, 0.3 grams, 2ft up wash side Bench patch, 0.3 grams, next to cactus, too deep/edge of detection? Bench patch, 0.08 grams, too deep/edge of detection Bench patch, 0.06 grams, edge of detection That was all of them. Smallest was 0.06 grams and very porous and almost on surface, largest was like 1.1 grams but I forget the exact weight. All total was a little over 4 grams out of severely beat up washes and a patch. Not much, but it did pay for my gas down here at least. I think once stuff gets below 0.15 grams, it's not really worth my time to chase on general principal. But when you need to grind out some finds for gas, food, whatever, and if you have a lot of patches that produced more than 5 or 6 stray nuggets, then this little guy can probably pop up a few more when you really need them.
  22. I did the Minelab cable cutting and soldering differently than specified by the manufacturer. Instead of cutting the cable near the Minelab connector I cut it below the Minelab curled cord and installed the 5 pin connector at that location. After the connector was installed and marine grade shrink tubing was applied a plastic tie wrap was attached with another piece of shrink tubing. This is used to pull the cable out of the lower end of the upper shaft since the Minelab curled cord retracts it out of reach. I then used a heat gun to soften and straighten approximately 8 inches of the lower X Coil curled cord. Cut it at that point and attached a new connector at 8” above the lower shaft. I have all three X Coils setup with three new lower shafts attached. This modification allows quick easy change of coils in couple of minutes. It is reasonable to be concerned about interference from the two connectors being located so close to the coil. This is not a problem since the detector only detects motion change relative to the coil. A simple experiment will demonstrate how the detector nulls out metal that is not changing position relative to the coil. Place a small test target on the ground with an aluminum soda or beer can about 2 feet from it. Swing the detector over the small test target. You will only hear the response from the large can. Now tape the can on top of the detector shaft 2 feet from the center of the coil. Now swing the coil over the test target and it will be detected. With the can attached the detector it will sound off as you lift and lower the detector to the ground since the coil is remaining flat while the shaft and can are changing position relative to the coil. In normal detecting when setting the detector down or lifting it I hear this sound-off with the 17” x 12” coil but not with the 10” or the 17” round coils. There is no effect during normal detecting since the coil is not tilting or changing position relative to the shaft. Have a good day, Chet
  23. Picked up my 10 inch x coil during the week, good to get out to my usual spot, picked up these in 2 hours detecting, really impressed with this coil.
  24. Finally got out again with the 15" x 10” X-Coil. It ran really quiet and smooth continually in High Yield, Normal, at Sensitivity at 20. Found 10 small nuggets for a total weight of 4.55 grams. They were between 5 to 8 inches deep in a California pine tree area. The X-Coils work great, but the 15 x 10” is now the go to coil. Have a good day, Chet
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