Why Keep 6k Stock Standard?

[Lesgold]

Went through a period of time where we thought auto + was the go but now max manual sensitivity seems to give very good results. The Avantree Taurus works quite well and is far better than the inbuilt speaker. My detecting mate raised an interesting point about a two weeks ago. He said that he was concerned about wearing the Avantree in thick scrub as it may get pulled off his neck and he wouldn’t notice. I dismissed his comment at the time with just a grin but you wouldn’t read about it, it happened to me when I was pushing through some bush last week. The threshold on the detector was working nicely and then started to fade. Didn’t feel a thing. Stopped and turned around and saw the unit lying on the ground behind me. If the detector was turned off, I would have lost it. Something to think about……

[strick]

Use manual difficult most of the time.

strick

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

16 hours ago, Norvic said:

Do you folks run your 6K in auto, manual, difficult, normal?

If you get used to running only one setting and you have variable ground conditions there’s a strong chance you’re missing out on gold. I try to run it to what the ground conditions allow while trying to maintain a stable threshold and I frequently switch the timings to investigate certain sounds. Normal timing is preferred if I am able to handle the ground conditions as it will help with hearing faint gold signals otherwise missed, but also at the cost of hearing hot rocks and some rubbish better.  I lost out on a big nugget using difficult that my son picked up with normal timing, so basically the difficult timing has a dead zone on some larger  nuggets. 
 

 

[Sourdough Scott]

I have 2 6000's. I had the speaker fix done to both of them. I notice a all around improvement since the fix. More stable and less erratic even with the headphones which I use 90%of the time. Before the speaker fix, the 12x7 nf was my 2nd favorite coil and the 10x5 coiltek was #1 because it ran more quiet. Since the fix, I'm loving the 12x7 and they both run quiet and stable now. As far as settings go, I'm using difficult/ manual and running the sensitivity at the lowest possible setting.  It seems to run the most quiet for me there. And am very confident I'm not missing much.

[phrunt]

5 hours ago, RONS DETECTORS MINELAB said:

If you get used to running only one setting and you have variable ground conditions there’s a strong chance you’re missing out on gold.

That video was a real eye opener, the guy was a bit baffled as he was obviously going over the nuggets for the first time, not some staged video, he'd not seen the results before doing it and difficult really shocked him missing that nugget, when such an easy target for normal.  I guess as Steve always points out, the more filtering, the more stuff you're balancing out there is a chance that gold could be in that balanced out spot.   Difficult handles bad ground and hot rocks better at the expense of missing some gold that would otherwise be an easy target.

As for the EMI fix, still never heard of one person who has had it done and noticed no difference, even headphone only people.

[dig4gold]

53 minutes ago, phrunt said:

As for the EM Ifix, still never heard of one person who has had it done and noticed no difference, even headphone only people.

One thing is for sure is that those who haven't had it done will never know what they have missed. So is that a bad thing? In their minds it was never there in the first place. I am one of those & I use headphones. My settings are Normal & Manual full max sensitivity. All due to our mild ground. My skunk days are far far less than my "successful" days. But you don't have to find  a retirement nugget to say you found a piece of gold. Can just be a fly poo but I wouldn't mind a piece the size of that snake poo that Phrunt posted up.

So while I haven't had the "fix" done am I operating on ignorance is bliss & I am actually missing gold? Guess I should check up on my warranty.

D4G 

[phrunt]

I think due to the nature of the problem, Minelab would be kind enough to resolve this one even outside of warranty, while not officially a recall it is very similar.  They're very good with their warranty, and this is one I think they'd accept outside of that.

[Norvic]

 

15 hours ago, Lesgold said:

Stopped and turned around and saw the unit lying on the ground behind me. If the detector was turned off, I would have lost it. Something to think about……

Yeah did same with clipped on Z speaker but unfortunately didn`t have Z on and walked in about another 6ks before I realised, spent day helping son dig up some weight, fortunately GPS was on and backtracked on way back to camp in arvo, was on ground underneath a low tree branch we had to snick under. 

[Norvic]

1 hour ago, dig4gold said:

So while I haven't had the "fix" done am I operating on ignorance is bliss & I am actually missing gold? Guess I should check up on my warranty.

Aye one thing you can sure of your missing gold, Irish Pat says, "never leave a patch til ya dug another piece"

[Gerry in Idaho]

I prefer Manual SENS around 7 or 8, Soil Timing NORMAL, almost always run a Threshold. Prefer no headphones, but when really windy or nearby running water, will go headphones to block out Ambiant noise.  I do see improvements to small gold with the CoilTek 10" Ellip but usually run stock 11" MONO.

I have many gold specimens and some all gold pieces that do not respond to GPX-6000 in DIFFICULT Timing.  I also have gold that NROMAL goes deeper than DIFFICULT.  At the same time, some sites have so many Hot Rocks than NORMAL is almost impossible and DIFFICULT is best.

No magic Setting gets them all.