Smallest Coil For GPX 5000?

[GB_Amateur]

18 minutes ago, phrunt said:

...So $173 USD plus shipping to get it to the US.   Probably end up cheaper than the Sadie for a US person to buy it in NZ for a more sensitive coil.

Hold the phone!  Did I just read that a guy who has pulled half of his 40-something hair out (seems to have grown back nicely, though, unless that's a dating site photo ) dealing with trans-Pacific (USA-->AUS-->NZ) shipping is recommending someone pay for the reverse direction headaches?

[phrunt]

The shipping from here to USA seems fine, I showed the price of the Coiltek 10x5" for the Nox here when it wasn't available easily in the US and they were sitting in stock at that same dealer and a few US guys jumped on it and sent from NZ to the US fine, they arrived quite quickly, all 4 of them sold to US buyers within a few hours of my post.  The problem is at the US end getting product here, not at this end getting product to the US ?  USPS seems like they use horse and cart to get parcels around the country, the product takes at least 2 weeks to get from the US dealer to the airport where it even needs to go to fly out of the US.  Then they fly it from US to Sydney which oddly takes a couple of weeks, Sydney is only a 3 hour flight to NZ with many planes doing the route daily, instead it may go from Sydney Australia back to LAX before then flying to Singapore and then to NZ that's if it even arrives at all ?

Parcels from NZ to US jump on a plane and go direct from Auckland NZ to the US.

[mn90403]

On 2/3/2022 at 12:15 PM, phrunt said:

The Coiltek 9" Elite which is a spiral wound coil and more sensitive than the bundle wound Sadie is good value in NZ, $260 NZD, with no tax needing paid for international orders so $173 USD plus shipping to get it to the US.   Probably end up cheaper than the Sadie for a US person to buy it in NZ for a more sensitive coil.

Would a 5000/9" Elite be more sensitive than a 2300?

[phrunt]

3 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

Would a 5000/9" Elite be more sensitive than a 2300?

As I've never used an SDC I have no idea, I would imagine the SDC being in its element in terrible soil and hot rocks may have an edge in that situation and also finding the prickly type of gold the GPX doesn't do so well on.

When I was using my GPX all the time I did a lot of research into GPX vs SDC as I was trying to work out if I'd benefit at all by having an SDC.   I came to the conclusion in my soils I would get next to no benefit and I'd prefer to use my GPX. 

However, a decent thread was on Prospecting Australia about GPX vs SDC where Phasetech chimed in and said this

The three coils that will get you closest to SDC performance is the 6" detech, 8x6" sadie, and 14x9" Evo.
To match how the SDC sounds/performs, you want to use Enhance, Quiet Audio, Stabilizer 16 and then Rx Gain as high as conditions allow, and Slow Tracking. Fine-Gold on the gpx5000 gets you a bit closer to the SDC, particularly on the flaky/prickly nuggets.

In red hot clay, you will run into troubles with the GPX sooner than you will with an SDC, causing you to lower your settings, which puts the SDC a little further in front. But, on nice clean waterworn gold, even down to 0.2's you can still get better depth with the GPXs.

I'm sure he won't mind me pasting it here for ease of readability but the entire thread is worth a read so you can find it here

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=23395

Now that threads pretty old so it was likely before the 9" Elite came out and certainly before the X-coils came out, I've heard in bad soils the 9" Elite can be quite noisy which is a side effect of it's sensitivity I guess.  I never bothered with a 9" Elite as I was more than happy with my 10" Spiral X-coil and moved over to the GPZ anyway.   I've seen inside a 10" Spiral X-coil from a photo at the production facility and the windings blew me away, it's mental and there is absolutely no space left inside the coil.   it's my favourite GPX coil for small gold hunting out of my collection of little coils.

My closest comparison coil to the 9" Elite would be the 10" Spiral X-coil for the GPX, and I've also got the 14x9" EVO which Phasetech mentions as being quite comparable to the SDC,  the 10" Spiral X-coil is more sensitive than the 14x9" Evo and finds smaller gold so I can only assume the 9" Elite is a bit similar to the 10" X-coil.

[Aureous]

The smallest coil for the early GPX was the 6x4  PMC Magpie and no-one that has one will ever part with it. I think less than 10 were built before the company went belly up. But the NF Sadie is the best bet although the 6" Coiltek is also terrific. The Coiltek 9" Elite is the coil I use 90% of the time and has found me over 1000 pieces in the past 18 months.....but the coax cable they use is very prone to flex breakage at the coil insertion end. I've owned 2 of these now....the 1st I threw in the shed coz it was unusable and now the 2nd one is going the same way. Ive taped the bejeezus out of the cable on the lower stem to stop the noise and left only moderate flexibility for the last 2" of coax. 

[Calmark]

I have the Nugget Finder 12x8 Evolution.  I have used it more than my NF 17x13 on my GPX 4500 since I got it around 2 years ago. 

The 12in length I find "good enough" for decent coverage and the 8in width is very handy any place you'd use an 8in round coil like on the SDC2300.  I have found nuggets nearly as small as my SDC with the NF coil, though once nuggets get any larger, the GPX and 12x8 finds nuggets a bit deeper.  In my area, mineralization is high and most gold is the flat water-worn type, so I tend to use the GPX to find the deeper nuggets the SDC misses.  

I prefer to use this 12x8 coil over my 8x6 NF Sadie mono coil nearly 100% of the time.  I might put on my Sadie if working really tight places like bedrock or extremely rocky areas.

[matt]

I had the 6" round coiltek I used on my 4500 and 5000. I used it a few times, but the 14x9 or the platypus (not sure of the dimensions) just kicked butt over it because the tip was so hot and you get so much more coverage I quit using the 6" round. I had a Joey mono too. I can't say enough good things about those small elliptical coils regardless of the manufacturer.

[GB_Amateur]

On 2/3/2022 at 12:20 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

find a 5x10 Coiltek.

On 2/3/2022 at 12:59 PM, phrunt said:

I have the Coiltek 10x5" Joey, the advantage it's got is its fully waterproof.

On 2/14/2022 at 11:06 PM, matt said:

I had a Joey mono too. I can't say enough good things about those small elliptical coils regardless of the manufacturer.

When this thread was active I did an internet search and couldn't find a new Coiltek Joey mono for sale.  But I saw a used one on Ebay in the last couple days.  Normally I don't post Ebay auctions, just Buy-It-Now listings since I don't want to blow someone here's purchase price (if they've bid on it) by bringing in competition.  I'm making an exception -- see the Classifieds subforum.

[phrunt]

Coiltek has gone nuts discontinuing many of their coils, they don't carry many at all now.  It's a shame as they cancelled the 10x5" Joey Mono which was one of the best small waterproof coils.  They also cancelled the 11' Anti Interference coil which is an awesome coil for the GPX in high EMI areas that remains quite sensitive to small targets.

This is their current chart of coils.

They've culled so many coils off.  Here's an older chart showing a lot of the Gold coils that no longer exist.  They've taken a similar approach to Nugget Finder I guess, if its a gold coil and it's not spiral its discontinued, they only kept the little Sadie and all other bundle wound coils were discontinued.  I guess it shows which coil type was selling.