GPZ7000: Info, Tips, Finds

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Budgewoiguy said:
Hi guys I am Graeme live at Budgewoi I will buy all gold nuggets, scrap and silver I am just starting refining metals but cant source enough quantity to make it worth while so if you guys want to sell any of your stuff please respond to me and I will pay you a fair Price and quick settlement o.k. look forward to hearing from you

If you want to advertise on your first post, perhaps you should look at becoming a sponsor.
 
Found my first coin with the Z on Sunday and found gold about 20 metres up on a ridge just above where i found the coin..
1471943744_img_1873.jpg

The coin was found where the Z is and there is a reef on that ridge and that's where i found the gold.
1471941841_img_1868.jpg

Its soaking in alibrite and will post it again when cleaned.Sorry for the blurry pic.
1471942192_img_1871_1.jpg

the coin :)
1471942331_fullsizerender_8.jpg

and going back to ground balance, the ground here is super damp and high in vegetation especially in the lower part of the gully.
Every time i put the detector down and then start to swing again i get the warbles for about 30,40 seconds but then the auto tracking clears it up.
I only get this in these damp and high vegetation areas, its a bit frustrating but i just let the auto ground balance do its thing.
 
Hi all,

Great read re; the ground balance. I'll go over it more thoroughly.

First day on the Zed today (out swinging with Reeks). Started off in a rough old state as the ground around the commons is super saturated. Tried a few things with both GB methods, but tough to stop that ground from groaning through each swing in some areas where the wet mineralisation was just swamping it out. I pretty much stuck to High Yeild, Difficult, Sens: 12, Volume: 6 (with headphones), Auto GB.

Initially dug a two holes for ground noise and two for small lead shot so I was getting onto the right track despite the nasty combo of ground saturation and high EMI.
Bagged the first shallow nug (0.13gm) quite early on which broke the ice nicely. It was only at 2 inches depth and quite a loud response (similar to the SDC). Went on the bullet train for a few hours after, while trying several combos of settings to combat the prevailing chatter. Dug about 15 small lead bird shot at good depth mostly between 4-10 inches and a rusty "fugget" at 18 inches depth which turned out to be a piece of iron about an inch long by a quarter inch thick. Then late this afternoon picked up a real sweet signal (in an area we raked and worked thoroughly with the SDC) that turned out to be a nice 0.27gm nugget at 5 inches depth.

Not a bad first day though still a mighty lot of learning to do :)

Cheers again for all the generous info!
EDIT: I'll get a few pics up when home again. 3G is spotty at best.
Shauno.
 
Nice work. If you are dealing with groans from wet ground, turn your sensitivity down and go to Smoothing off.
If there's any Salt in the ground, even small amounts, running in Manual Ground Balance can sometimes work better.
 
Had a mongrel of a day with the GPZ today.

Spent the day local near Eaglehawk,went through the ground balance procedure and noise cancel.
Noticed that everytime i swept over a blade of grass it would false as well as just moan and groan ect with sharp spikes like EMI (Detector was cleaned night before including skid plate) .

So redid everything again no change .......put up with it for a few hours sensitivity set at 8 still getting buckshot ect though so tried to just work with it.

Eventually i cracked the shits and reset the machine to factory and started from scratch.......no change.

Ended up having to noise cancel about 5 times before i got a steady threshold.
And after 8 hours in the bush came home with a pocket full of buckshot and rifle shells.....and a little .09 nugget so i at least got something.

Felt like i learnt something about the GPZ today so it wasnt a complete waste of a day.

Anyone had a day fighting the Z like that?
And what did you do to get past it?
 
Nah, up here in sunny NQ the grounds as dry as, think moisture might be the Zs Achilles heel, like the Xs it goes off on those moist tree roots only more big time. Plus I suspect with all that huuuuuman activity around you folks, EMI is a problem. You`d reckon they`d show some consideration and turn it off for us!!!!!!!!!!!

But I do get cranky with myself when I pack it in early, cos I`m thirsty or any number of other lame excuses.
 
LC76 said:
Had a mongrel of a day with the GPZ today.

Spent the day local near Eaglehawk,went through the ground balance procedure and noise cancel.
Noticed that everytime i swept over a blade of grass it would false as well as just moan and groan ect with sharp spikes like EMI (Detector was cleaned night before including skid plate) .

So redid everything again no change .......put up with it for a few hours sensitivity set at 8 still getting buckshot ect though so tried to just work with it.

Eventually i cracked the shits and reset the machine to factory and started from scratch.......no change.

Ended up having to noise cancel about 5 times before i got a steady threshold.
And after 8 hours in the bush came home with a pocket full of buckshot and rifle shells.....and a little .09 nugget so i at least got something.

Felt like i learnt something about the GPZ today so it wasnt a complete waste of a day.

Anyone had a day fighting the Z like that?
And what did you do to get past it?

Yes I have had this happen.
My machine was doing it all the time so minelab replaced the coil.

The GPZ would normally start out working fine but after an hour or 2 would start giving false signals and the only way that I could seem to stop it was to turn it off for a half hour or so and then it would work ok for a while.

The new coil did not fix it and I sent minelab these links https://youtu.be/kgNbHr_tvwc and https://youtu.be/HQLTt22kwOw and after they viewed them they asked me to send them in the machine. Now the whole machine was been sent back to minelab a week and a half ago.

Not a cheap exercise either after express postage with tracking and insurance it cost me $134.00. The maximum insurance they would give me was only 5k too. But is did get here ok and I'm yet to hear the outcome.
 
Thanks for those videos wooly.
Pretty much same as what mine was doing.

Sounds like it might be worth contacting Minelab about mine then.
Yesterday I was ready to smash mine against a tree after hours of double checking false targets and digging empty holes.
 
Did an Air test with a 5 cent coin in my back yard,will need to do it again out bush with less EMI.
Apparently the GPZ should sound off on the coin at about between 15-19 inches.

Im only hearing the coin at 8 inches....at home in the back yard.

So going to pop out to the bush in the next hour and do it again and see what happens.
 
LC76 said:
Did an Air test with a 5 cent coin in my back yard,will need to do it again out bush with less EMI.
Apparently the GPZ should sound off on the coin at about between 15-19 inches.

Im only hearing the coin at 8 inches....at home in the back yard.

So going to pop out to the bush in the next hour and do it again and see what happens.
You drop your machine since we compared them ?
 
I'm lmao LC76 and i don't reckon my Z would sound off on a 5 cent coin at 15,18 inches. I'm going out for a couple of hrs tomorrow and will give it a go.
 
SC75 said:
I'm lmao LC76 and i don't reckon my Z would sound off on a 5 cent coin at 15,18 inches. I'm going out for a couple of hrs tomorrow and will give it a go.

Rush said:
bob hillier.[/quote said:
minelab replaced the gpz7000 being a faulty unit,thank you minelab,us old blokes do know something,after fourty years we do get the drift,anyhow thanks for the info. will consider any information that will help,thank you and regards bob hillier.ps off today to check replacment gpz7000, three of us with a total of 130 years of detecting...bh.

I see in another thread you said Minelab gave you these two tests to do to check if your other GPZ was faulty:

" five cent piece in air test should be picked up at 15 to 18 inches "

" .03 of a grm.gold should pick up at 6 inches "

Therefore did you perform these two air tests to check your replacement GPZ 7000 before you headed off today?

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=162200#p162200

So why the laughter?
 
Evening forum users. Newbie here. Been reading bits and pieces for a while and thought it was time to jump in on this one.
Have had a ZED for about 5 months now. Also an SDC. Would easily have 100 hrs up on the Z. Absolutely love it. Also a newish detectorist so has been a big learning curve. Started slow but now running it pretty hot.

Have found 42 bits of gold, 62,000 bits of lead shot (at least it feels like it), crap loads of iron/steel/tin and have dug deepest target at 1.2 meters (lump of steel). Not a single piece of gold over half a gram and to be honest I am guessing they are mostly .2 of a gram or thereabouts - and I would hate to think what the weight of the smallest is - it is tiny!!!! Need some fine scales. And this is all with the Z. I have compared the Z and the SDC on quite a few targets that ended up being gold or lead shot and the Z gave a far clearer indication every time that there was a target there. But the SDC was bought more for the waterways in the warmer months so not concerned.

The teeny tiny gold and the lead shot tell me though that the Z is working well, that I am using it well and that it is incredably sensitive.
Running it hot is also finding me a few hot rocks but not too many where I detect mostly. Have had to dampen things down a bit during the 2 times I've had a quick run in the Bendigo area.

Having watched HEAPS of GPZ vids to learn what to do and what not to do I noticed a few things that may/may not help the gents on here with the Z's firing off some weird pings and pangs. I watched LC76's YouTube links up the page and a lot of the noises sound like some of the EMI noises I have heard on other vids when there has been lightning around. Obviously not lightning stuffing up your machine but certainly sounded EMI-ish. And I think someone else said they had to noise cancel 4 or 5 times until it found a quiet channel. This was something"Prospector Pete" told us at the training day. The Z has a very good noise cancel and it will find a quiet channel but it may take more than one try to find the right channel. He also said start the machine off the ground - I.e. Holding it straight out from you. Noise cancel every time you turn it on. Spin very slowly in a circle to pick up where the most EMI can be heard and then leave the Z really still and pointing in that direction until it has finished its noise cancel.

Also noticed in the shorter video that the coil was moving along the ground and at a fair rate.

Pete also said that the Z has to be swung quite slow. He described it as the "slowest detector". GPX was a bit quicker and then the SDC quicker again.
Also that the Z had to be hovered as close to the ground as possible without scrubbing it on the ground.
Have found with mine that when it is knocked on different things whilst swinging it will give the odd weird noise.
Have found tree roots giving off a 'ground noise' type signal. Have also found some gold in amongst tree roots.
Wet ground hasn't been such an issue even though it has been saturated over the last 2 months.

I doubt that the above probably helps you as I'm sure you have tried everything to get it to work. All I can suggest is to persevere because when they do work they are pretty awesome - in my eyes anyway :)

And I hope you don't feel that I'm telling 'grandma how to suck eggs' here as most of you have probably been using different machines for years - just trying to help ;)

Hope you get things sorted.
 
Any advice is appreciated Northeast.

Those videos belong to Wooly.
I dont scrub my coil if i can help it sometimes it gets bumped against a rock by accident.

But im going to give it a few more days and see if it keeps happening just make sure its not me doing something wrong.
Then i'll consider visiting Miners den Bendigo for a chat.
 

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