Woody Apparently Confirms That The 6000 Has No Active Shield

[Aureous]

In his long-winded video, he finds that there is nothing connecting the PCB to the shield, the confirmation that 2 components are replaced to fix the speaker EMI issue, the graphite paint is very patchy (and has no screen wire embedded to average it) and after doing '5 or 6', he confirms that they are all the same. I agree with him, it seems extremely odd to have only a passive shield and hope that the detector can combat EMI. Something's not right methinks....

 

[Reg Wilson]

Okay, so the 6000 has a few things which could be improved, but it is still a bloody good detector. I for one have proved that it is not just a 'flypoop' machine. It will do me just fine until a better detector comes along. (maybe I just fluked a good one. I am pretty lucky with that sort of thing)

[Gold Ryder]

6 hours ago, Aureous said:

In his long-winded video, he finds that there is nothing connecting the PCB to the shield, the confirmation that 2 components are replaced to fix the speaker EMI issue, the graphite paint is very patchy (and has no screen wire embedded to average it) and after doing '5 or 6', he confirms that they are all the same. I agree with him, it seems extremely odd to have only a passive shield and hope that the detector can combat EMI. Something's not right methinks....

GPX6000 tear-down for shielding inspection

Meh I was hunting a hundred yards from a huge region supplying powerline on Saturday. Pulled two good nuggets and a load of other targets with the 6000 and the 12x7 NF.  I will admit the stock 11" probably would of got its lunch ate.  But the 12x7 handles EMI just fine in the 6000. And yeah Ive found plenty of bigger gold deep with the 6000.  

[Sourdough Scott]

Yesterday was the 2nd time out after having the speaker EMI issue fixed. It runs quiet as a church mouse now. I've been running with the sensitivity at its lowest setting.  

[phrunt]

I guess as the old saying goes, "you don't know, what you don't know."

So, people may be happy with its EMI capability now, had Minelab done a better job of shielding they may well be even happier with it.  It's just a puzzle to me how they make such great detectors yet the simple things often go unnoticed.

I thought perhaps they'd fix up the EMI shielding when doing the inductor repairs for people on the sly, I've never heard of anyone unhappy with the EMI fix, even headphone only users are pointing out improvements with it and many that were resistant to getting it done finally had the repair done and were happy with the results, so while it is associated with the speaker it appears as though it may be caused by the speaker configuration but affects the detector overall.   The EMI fix is certainly a great success, and I'm very happy they did that repair, it's made a huge difference to mine.

I guess this shielding problem will keep the modders like Woody and Mick busy, they'll sell their EMI fix mods for the 6000 to people and cash in on Minelab's design sloppiness.   I'd jump in and get it done if it were a warranty repair Minelab were offering, but I certainly wouldn't pay to get it done at one of the modders as I don't think the problem is enough to warrant that, I'm reasonably happy with my 6000 in higher EMI, sure it could be better, the E1500 is far better than the 6000 in EMI, I didn't even notice any EMI paint or housing shielding inside it in Woodys strip down, I'll have to take another look, either way, it survives without it and does a better job than any other PI I've ever used in high EMI, so much so I can run it in my lounge room with the sensitivity cranked up and a mono coil.  Granted the E1500 has timings you switch between whereas the 6000 appears to have them all rolled into one allowing more EMI in, such as the large gold timing for me is more affected by EMI than the Ultra Fine Gold timing.

Give it a few months and Woody etc will be selling their EMI shielding fix services.

[Norvic]

7 hours ago, Reg Wilson said:

Okay, so the 6000 has a few things which could be improved, but it is still a bloody good detector. I for one have proved that it is not just a 'flypoop' machine. It will do me just fine until a better detector comes along. (maybe I just fluked a good one. I am pretty lucky with that sort of thing)

Yeah I too have 'fluked' a good one, lucky as were the test pilots, the 6K is singing out for a 12" or maybe 14" round X coil spiral to show just how much depth it has got and not just on 'flypoop'. 

[Nedkelly]

36 minutes ago, Norvic said:

Yeah I too have 'fluked' a good one, lucky as were the test pilots, the 6K is singing out for a 12" or maybe 14" round X coil spiral to show just how much depth it has got and not just on 'flypoop'. 

I think I got a good one as well. Never had any issues. 

I agree, a 14" round spiral would be great on the 6k. Dropped a few hints to coiltek but must have fallen on deaf ears.

[Norvic]

7 minutes ago, Nedkelly said:

I think I got a good one as well. Never had any issues. 

I agree, a 14" round spiral would be great on the 6k. Dropped a few hints to coiltek but must have fallen on deaf ears.

I have a feeling the aftermarket fellows who have the 6K build license from ML are not allowed to build anything for the 6K that allows it to compete with the Z, much the same as they were a wee upset they couldn`t stop X coil producing coils that competed with their upcoming 6K on small stuff. Not knocking them protecting their products but am hoping the E1500 will demonstrate to them the power of non chipped aftermarket coils to us the user. Imagine the Z and 6K upgrade models if they aren`t limited/handicapped with chipped coils.

[Nedkelly]

11 minutes ago, Norvic said:

Imagine the Z and 6K upgrade models if they aren`t limited/handicapped with chipped coils.

That would be nice, just like the good old days. 🙂

[jasong]

I don't think there are any coils that could get the 6000 close to the Z in depth performance. Two different technologies.

It's more likely they aren't building larger coils for the 6000 because there is little to be gained from using them. If there were serious gains to be had in terms of depth, I'm guessing X Coils would be doing it with an adapter already.

The 17x13 is underwhelming, and evidence of this lack of performance with larger coils. 

What Woody found is exactly what I was saying too for some time - it's not just the unshielded components, the control box itself lacks shielding and is a source of a lot of noise. I tried wrapping it with carbon fiber but it didn't help a lot, I didn't exactly cover everything though. I'm curious what Woody can achieve. We knew early on the fix was replacing unshielded inductors - these allowed the speaker to couple with the control board and self induce noise. But those components and maybe others as well were also susceptible to high EMI environments as well, so it wasn't just a purely speaker-related thing (this was the easiest to observe though). Both the speaker as well as high EMI environments would force the 6000 into instability.