The GM2000 From A Mild Soil Users Perspective

[phrunt]

Grab a coffee, you may need it.  For hot soil readers, this isn't going to be for you and you won't agree with me on much of it, so other than seeing how detectors perform in other conditions to your own plenty of what I say is not going to be valid information.

I've been fairly slow with my usage of the GM2000, usually a new toy has me jumping up excited to use it but this time I've been battling an injury that's prevented me using it much at all, things are coming right and I've been out using it today after my previous efforts being rather short stints mostly just testing and comparing to other detectors.

Unfortunately, I've still found no gold with it, quite unusual to go this long using a detector with no results, although my injury also means my effort levels are less than par which may have something to do with it.

The detector itself I like, I was never one that hated the old GM design, yes it falls over all the time, my solution has been never to try stand it up, that works well, it will never fall over again if you don't try stand it up 🙂  The handle is handy for hooking around bushes or rocks on the hillsides I detect so I've found it beneficial more than a problem.  The detector is very light, so those that like that in a detector would be very happy with that side of it, the downside is the recycled ice cream container's they used to make GPX 6000 coils and skid plates have also been used making the GM2000 skid plates, people are going to wear through these things in no time, might be why they've included two in the package, that's an unusual thing for them to do.  Hopefully Nugget Finder comes out with the goods and makes their heavy-duty skid plates for it like they did the Equinox 11" which coincidently also fits the Manticore 11".

I'm not bothered by the lack of wireless, never one to complain about extra features being included of course so I wish it had it, but the speaker is sufficient and all I'd ever use anyway.

The lack of waterproofing is more of a problem for me, the thing would make an excellent creek gold detector around here if it was waterproof because its' coil isn't bump sensitive like the Equinox, GM1000 and Manticore. I drowned my GM1000 doing that, don't intend to take the risk with the 2000, to its credit the 1000 kept working fine after drying out.

The lack of bump sensitivity is the thing I like the most about the GM2000, they appear to have finally solved this problem, the Nox had it, the GM1000 had it, the Manticore has it yet for me at least no bump sensitivity at all with the GM2000 yet.  The place I went today I was truly hoping it wouldn't have it as the Manticore is quite bad there, something in the soil the Manticore just doesn't like so it needs recovery speed adjusted faster and lower sensitivity 15 or less to tame the bump sensitivity.  The GM2000 could run maxed out with absoltuely no problem.

This brings me to a recent patent ML have done.

Notice on the coil, patents apply, when have you seen that on a Minelab coil before.

For those that want to read about it the Google patent info is here, and the PDF with full details is here.

The patent is a method of coil construction to hold the windings to prevent movement and in turn that would resolve bump sensitivity, it certainly worked, it's my first high frequency VLF gold machine made by Minelab with no bump sensitivity, other brands have mastered this some time ago like the 30+ year old Gold Bug 2 as a good example, bulletproof coil when it comes to bumps,  it took Minelab quite a while, and it's not just the SMF's, the GM1000 was also quite bad for it for me.

The Target ID's seem pretty good, every pellet I've been digging is between no ID at all and 2, sometimes 3.  The #9 lead pellets were good on the tones and probability meter flicking to the right but rarely gave an ID at all, unfortunately it doesn't have near the depth of the detectors like the Gold Bug 2 on these in mild soils and needs to be pretty close to them to pick them up even in my mild soil settings so if chasing very tiny gold It wouldn't be my number one choice.

The 22 shells were always showing as a 12/13 unless deep then had a sweet gold sound and no target ID.  

The gold probably meter is far more accurate than the GM1000 which was notoriously terrible.  It's actually pretty good, not fool proof and I wouldn't reply on it especially when hunting small gold but a big improvement and good for larger targets, it was never wrong on a larger junk target, carries over from the other Minelab SMF's I guess which are also very good for me in that regard.

It doesn't have the depth of the Manticore in mild soils especially as the gold starts to creep up in size above 0.05 of a gram, ,I've not compared it to the Equinox with 6" coil yet, but the M8 on the Manticore is deeper in general and as the targets get bigger it starts to pull away further, remember this is in mild soils so results may vary in hotter soils, plenty of hot soil people are finding it excellent and that's where I think Minelab have put in all the effort, making it handle bad soils, not extremely bad like black sands, it doesn't handle them, but typical bad soils commonly seen in Australia it does better than other VLF options according to all reports so far I've read.  I'm not sure the 10x6" when it comes out will be any better for depth over the 8x6" of the Manticore and then, with the Manticore you can easily gain more depth with the 11" or the other larger offerings for tailings piles and other depth demanding situations.  It's amazing how sensitive that 11" on the Manticore is to small gold, much like the 11" on the Equinox, always surprised me how well Minelab did with sensitivity on the Equinox and Manticore on tiny gold with the 11" coils, a shame they won't release one for the GM2000.  Where it has the depth benefit is it runs so quiet even in max sensitivity it would be nicer to use than the noisey bump sensitive Manticore, even though the Manticore may get more depth it's not as pleasant to use and the extra noise may cause target fatigue missing targets the GM would hit.

Here is a couple of videos of me ground balancing it in two different locations in different modes, showing it balances fine in benign and achieves a 10 sensitivity in auto 2 and a 9 in auto 1, and seems to run in benign fine other than the regular hot rock issues which did surprise me as the first location the Manticore becomes quite bump sensitive, it also has the hot rock issues.  It's a bit noisier in benign mode, getting a bit more like the Manticore but without the bump sensitivity, normal clears that right up.

And in another spot.

Due to the hot rocks in the location of the first video I ended up spending the time there in normal auto 2 and it ran 10 almost all the time, the reason for this was largely the hot rocks were driving me mad, as they're not only on the soil they're all through it, the other reason was at one point in one area the sensitivity dropped to 8 and the manual indicates if it falls below maximum then it's best to move down to normal.  Don't get me wrong, it doesn't handle them in normal either, it just felt a bit better as the buried ones weren't as much of a problem, I tried difficult too but it doesn't handle them much better other than even less depth on the buried ones, so I didn't want to drop down the performance that far for little gain.    To be fair, no VLF really handles them, the Garrett 24k is the best performer on them, but other detectors like the GPX 6000 can't balance them out either, only the Algoforce can, they're nasty hot rocks in this area.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it, the no bump sensitivity is what is the winner for me, it won't be my primary VLF for prospecting as it's not as deep as some others in these mild goldfield soils, and I will get some video showing that at some point soon.  In places where the other SMF machines like the Nox and Manticore exhibit the bump sensitivity problem out comes the GM2000.  The GB2 is still certainly the most sensitive to tiny gold and has an awesome little coil that's not at all bump sensitive but I just haven't taken to that detector, too fiddly and don't like the 9V battery setup.  

Well done Minelab, I can see the people in difficult soils really loving this detector, and for me it's pretty good too, and up there in the top few and I'll keep using it over the coming months to get more experience with it and try work out further strong points.   A good tool for the toolkit and will make an excellent companion to the GPX and GPZ for pinpointing and discrimination.

[stupot]

Thanks for taking time to write this and put your knowledge to this great site. Even though I don't hunt gold, the information & knowledge shared is still very important for those looking deeper into detectors.

Your comments on coils for the GM are noted & future developments in cleaning up the return signal and stability in any way are paramount in my eyes.

The old story of GEB detectors is still with us now as it was in the 70's. Handling ground I think is the number one factor in performance gains for the foreseeable future. We have reached a plateau of physics development at present & the GM2 increases over the previous model are small but nonetheless important.

Appreciated input, thanks.

[mn90403]

Simon,

Good to see you on the mend.  Have you detailed that experience on another thread?

We just went back out to the first place I used the GM2000 in the desert and didn't find any nuggets again there.  Like your areas there are some really magnetic hot rocks around that stick hard on a magnet.  The GM2000 handles the rest of the ground quite smoothly.  This is an area that I cleaned out with the X CC15" and they aren't coming back unless I do more digging!  I have heard and dug some deep trash so the GM2000 can have some depth but I'm taking it to flogged places right now which may not be the best plan.

[phrunt]

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

Good to see you on the mend.  Have you detailed that experience on another thread?

Nah, I'm coming right now though so all is good.

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

We just went back out to the first place I used the GM2000 in the desert and didn't find any nuggets again there.  Like your areas there are some really magnetic hot rocks around that stick hard on a magnet.  The GM2000 handles the rest of the ground quite smoothly.  This is an area that I cleaned out with the X CC15" and they aren't coming back unless I do more digging!  I have heard and dug some deep trash so it can have some depth but I'm taking it to flogged places right now which may not be the best plan.

The 2000 is sure a smooth-running VLF, beginners are going to love that about it, I used to really struggle with noisy detectors when I was new to it, in fact I thought they were all faulty 🙂  Over time my mindset changed as if a detector was too quiet I felt like I was missing out as they'd wound back performance enough to make it run smooth.  I'm never happy with a detector when I can run it maxed out and it be running smooth, it means they left something in tank, the GM2000 falls into this category a bit, purrs like a kitten even maximum sensitivity.  I like how the Manticore has its redline sensitivity, rarely can it be used, but when it can it's great.  The beaches around the lake at Queenstown are one such place I can redline it, when outside of the main town area.  It's a real shame they didn't resolve this bump sensitivity jittery stuff with the Manticore and it took until he GM2000 for them to sort it out.

I've been talking it to old spots too that have been done well with other detectors such as the 7000, 6000 and various VLFs, my reasoning is some have reported its finding all this missed gold in flogged ground, and of course I wanted to test this out, I've had a theory there though and that's the previous detectors they "flogged" this ground with were not providing optimal performance in their local soil conditions thus leaving gold behind, some of the bits they've been finding and depth they were getting claiming detectors like the 6000 missed seemed truly bizarre.   In mild soil you see the best of a detector's performance, the soil that's normally the limiting factor doesn't play a role in how well the detector works so very little is left behind within the range of gold the detector is capable of hitting.  In mild soil new detectors or coils often bring new gold up if they offer something not done before, like the 6000 being a PI very sensitive to small gold or the Concentric coils on the GPZ adding sensitivity to small gold and extra depth.  For me VLF's are only good for going to old places or focused spots like a nice patch of shallow bedrock, I'd never want to look for new ground with a 5" coil, that's the job of the GPZ or the 6000.

As the GM has good discrimination I did do something I normally don't, detect the road area passing through this spot, the roads littered with trash and has never really been a focus because of that, shooters using the road for rabbit hunting is a big contributor to that and bits of digger bucket from scraping out the road are also a pain.  It has some nice shallow schist bedrock passing through it in various spots too but no luck yet, something I will further investigate with the GM though as I like its discrimination.

[Aureous]

@phrunt your soils MUST be incredibly low mineral for you to try 'Benign' mode....never in a million years could I ever even attempt that here. Even mine dumps here barely cope with Normal mode....and even then, I gotta lower the gain to seven. 99% of the time, its 'Difficult' for me and thats fine, coz it finds gold every time I go out. 

[phrunt]

20 minutes ago, Aureous said:

@phrunt your soils MUST be incredibly low mineral for you to try 'Benign' mode....never in a million years could I ever even attempt that here. Even mine dumps here barely cope with Normal mode....and even then, I gotta lower the gain to seven. 99% of the time, its 'Difficult' for me and thats fine, coz it finds gold every time I go out. 

Yup, you're the person the GM2000 was designed for, soil conditions in your area hindered other VLF's to the point you missed a lot of gold.  SMF started to resolve that and now they've tweaked it further to give you performance that can now recover gold often missed by other detectors as they just couldn't handle the ground as well while maintaining sensitivity. 

Let's hope in the future the GPZ 8000 can also improve your soil handling to give you performance similar to the GPZ's Normal setting performance in mild ground while using difficult in your tough ground, similar to what the GM2000 has done to some degree.  That seems the area they are focused on now, enhancing tough ground performance to get it more like milder soil performance, I guess that's the holy grail of gold detectors now, making it so the difficult soil doesn't affect performance.

I think that's why I'm far less excited about it, other detectors worked perfectly fine prior to it's arrival aside from Minelab and their bump sensitivity.  All detectors ran maxed out no problems and had great performance as the ground was never a contributing factor to their performance.  Someone with a GM1000 here really has little need to upgrade to the 2000, unless they are too annoyed by the bump sensitivity and that's the main reason why I'd say a 2000's worth buying for gold over a Nox 800, GM1000 or Manticore in my area at least.

[Norvic]

On 12/18/2025 at 3:21 AM, phrunt said:

I've been talking it to old spots too that have been done well with other detectors such as the 7000, 6000 and various VLFs, my reasoning is some have reported its finding all this missed gold in flogged ground, and of course I wanted to test this out, I've had a theory there though and that's the previous detectors they "flogged" this ground with were not providing optimal performance in their local soil conditions thus leaving gold behind, some of the bits they've been finding and depth they were getting claiming detectors like the 6000 missed seemed truly bizarre.

There ya go you`ve got the secret why some of us get gold consistently. 😉 

[phrunt]

1 hour ago, Norvic said:

There ya go you`ve got the secret why some of us get gold consistently. 😉 

I think that also has something to do with the location people detect and the amount of gold there in the first place to find.  It's pretty amazing the gold found by new to detecting people that happen to live in the right area.  It can't be found if its not there in the first place.

[Norvic]

Aye location, location, location, started gold detecting with a fever in this same area in 1979, right at the beginning of the electronic gold rush. Still got the fever, that has given consistent results throughout that period. Except it took me 3 years to get my first piece, later I found I was just walking over it.

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

I think that also has something to do with the location people detect and the amount of gold there in the first place to find.  It's pretty amazing the gold found by new to detecting people that happen to live in the right area.  It can't be found if its not there in the first place.

I count myself as being very privileged to live in this era and in this area where calls to JC are local, JP too.😉