GPX 5000 Mods Video

[Northeast]

Thanks for the response JP, I do appreciate it  👍

I still need many hours on mine to find  that ‘sweet spot’ and learn the intricacies of the 5000.  

Cheers NE. 

[Gold Ryder]

3 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Thanks for all the tags and mentions. Triggered?🤔 maybe! I do get a little tired of the direction this forum is taking, all the little click baits and white anting. It’s a shame, but hey that’s the new social media world we live in right? All aimed at an instant reaction, no holds barred and no boundaries, made worse if you disagree or have ever got offside with a mod.

I’ve only seen a few modified detectors come through over the years, one guy swore by his modded machine saying it was outperforming a 7000 in Vic on test beds ect, he was convinced he was going to clean up in Clermont on all his old patches. A week later he came back in and bought a new 4500 as his modded one was unusable.

I had two good mates, who have since passed 😞, who both swore by the modded 5000’s they owned, but I never got to use them or try them, other than a brief look at another mates one in 2019 who has also since passed 😞 (yes lost 3 good mates in a very short space of times 😞), and his howled and screamed like a banshee (could have been operator error as he was not the best at reading instructions and I wasn’t prepared to sift through all the knob and switch positions trying to find the sweet spot).

Fundamentally there are a few key things here mods are attempting to improve on with the performance of a mass produced product, my thinking is why don’t these modder’s just make a better mousetrap? 🤨 At least Algo are having a go. 

Signal to noise ratio. There’s no point to ramping up gains and tweaking clock frequencies if it can’t actually be used in the field on ground with no known targets. Test beds will always show skewed results because you KNOW the target is there, therefore you can subtly modify your swing speed, range of motion and accuracy of the coil sweet spot dead centre over the target.

I see this constantly, brilliant results on a test bed but zero results in the actual field. All real testing I do is on known patches over many hundreds of hours of field work going over varying ground types to give a BIGGER picture idea of where the advantages lie. Test beds are for rudimentary checks only and represent less than 1% of my time spent. I have hundreds of known patches that I use all around the country dependant on where I am. Locally here I am extremely intimate with these areas with more than 25 years of frequent visitation. This methodology is extremely time consuming and requires massive commitment. But it’s the only way to truly get a bigger picture idea behind any advances. Results on many unknown missed targets in a variety of ground types tell the real story. 

4500 and 5000 Stabilizer control. None of the mods make any sense if the Stabilizer can’t be pushed past default of 10, this control alone limits true target-signal depth due to the raising of the noise floor masking edge of detection. A GPZ can be run on Audio Smoothing OFF, High = 10, Low = 15 and Off = 20 and provides a very BIG advantage in and of itself, the main difference being the 7000 is a lot less prone to EMI whereas the digital GPX series from the 5000 back are VERY prone to EMI. Variation in the threshold at lowest noise floor levels kill depth, more often than not you’re completely unaware of it. If a mod addressed that then it would be worth looking at.

Just my 2cents 💰 

I won't argue with you there. Especially on You're stabilizer thinking.  One of my goals is to tweak this thing to be able to ramp up the stabilizer while still putting power into the ground with the TX gain.  I think if I can pull that off Ill have a pretty good machine on my hands.  One of the things I was told on the mod was that it handles power line ect.. interference better than the stock 5000 I haven't seen that yet.  But once again that may just be user error in my tuning. I also have some pretty good "cleaned" out patches that I will rework with the mod to see if gold was missed by the other machines.  I feel like that is a pretty fair testing ground.  Ive spent alot of time talking to those who swear by these things, mainly Aussies since there are only 3 or 4 of Mick's mods in the states.  And although their programing don't fit the mold of the original 5000 settings ie. lower RX gain and lower stabilizer they feel that being able to drive Micks TX gain deeper in the ground more than makes up for the lower stabilizer.  We will see.  In a couple months now that our ground is thawing out I will have a better handle on it. Ill keep posting results as I go. 

[phrunt]

I can't help but think where the mods are said to handle EMI better is because Mick said he's scraping the paint off the housing on many of the detectors that come in for mods to fix the front/rear plate shielding issues.  If as many as he describes come in needing that done then those particular ones are going to be worse for EMI than a detector properly done by the factory until fixed.  I know Woody has also brought this up and done a video on the paint problem with many GPX's so he will also be fixing that on all of his mods.

So, if yours already had the proper shield connection then there would be no difference, to those he scrapes the paint off they'd get a noticeable difference, I say this from firsthand experience with a noisy 4500 I fixed with this simple correction.

 

[Aureous]

Ive used EVERY modder's products, from Barrie Johnson, Ken Roberts, Ismael Jones, Woody and Mick. Only one I didn't try was Mick Quinns from QLD coz he decided to stop doing it as he reckoned his deep mods were finding him too much gold and didnt wanna share with anyone...

Every detector I tried, provided benefit without any hesitation. They were all worth the $$. I had one issue with Ismaels VDC converter (replaced with a working one under warranty) and the issue with most big mono coils not working effectively on Micks L3 mods with my 4500. But, they all had better depth and sensitivity than the stock detectors. Numerous tests over decades proved it to me without question. 

The biggest issue people have with the current 2 modders gain systems is learning how best to use it in conjunction with the stock gain control and selecting frequency and coil. Its simply a question of trial and error. Once I had a coil that worked how I wanted it to, I simply memorized that setting and just barely tweaked the gain/s using tiny or big test targets (depending on which frequency and coil I had on). You quickly learn what NOT to do once you crank the modded machines up in gain and start getting ground noise....back it off a touch and you're good to go. 

Its like driving a new car....sooner or later, you and the car become 'One'

 

[Tony]

5 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

I do get a little tired of the direction this forum is taking, all the little click baits and white anting

I'm not seeing that at all.....but....... I agree emphatically with the rest of your post.

[Tony]

1 hour ago, Gold Ryder said:

while still putting power into the ground with the TX gain.

Might be a typo but the GAIN is on the RX side (how well a detector listens). The TX is how loud the detector can "shout into the ground". But yes, the magic is on the RX side. I don't see GAIN as having any power function as such.....to me, its like the SQUELCH control on my UHF radio.

[Gold Ryder]

6 minutes ago, Tony said:

Might be a typo but the GAIN is on the RX side (how well a detector listens). The TX is how loud the detector can "shout into the ground". But yes, the magic is on the RX side. I don't see GAIN as having any power function as such.....to me, its like the SQUELCH control on my UHF radio.

Meh RX doesnt hold alot of magic, stabilizer yes though, stabilizer is a gateway especially on deep gold.  Its my main concern with the mods.  Micks TX gain is the magic in a mod. Think of it as an echo chamber the louder you shout the better the echo returns to you're ears. RX is the echo.  TX gain is the shout.  

[Aureous]

25 minutes ago, Gold Ryder said:

Meh RX doesnt hold alot of magic, stabilizer yes though, stabilizer is a gateway especially on deep gold.  Its my main concern with the mods.  Micks TX gain is the magic in a mod. Think of it as an echo chamber the louder you shout the better the echo returns to you're ears. RX is the echo.  TX gain is the shout.  

Ive always understood that the 'new' gain is the Transmit also (Tx) but recently, many have said that the mod gain is a different receive gain (Rx) alongside the stock one.  Ive asked Mick twice over the past several years and he's said 2 different things....sooo....dunno. Yes the stock gain control is like widening your ears to hear more....a filter allowing more ground signal (and corresponding target signal) to get through. The transmit gain (if applicable)  is pumping more power through the coil to punch deeper.  Your shouting and echo'ing analogy is 'on the money'.

Whenever I found the need for the GPX stabilizer to be used, it did nothing....ever. Most of the time I just put up with any noise (throwback from my VLF days in the 80's I suppose).

[Tony]

1 hour ago, Gold Ryder said:

Think of it as an echo chamber the louder you shout the better the echo returns to you're ears. RX is the echo.  TX gain is the shout.  

As per my post.