Minelab GPX6000 release, general information and questions

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I went out this morning, freezing my butt off, with a little more idea of what the various buttons and indicators on the GPX6000 mean. Yes I think it is easy to use but like anything when you get into your later years it takes a while to learn new things and to remember what you read 5 minutes before.

I started out with the 14" DD running in Auto. I had the earphones on and I picked a big smooth patch, it was the same red dirt covered with a coat of small ironstone pebbles and a bit of quartz scattered throughout. I travelled about 30m before pinging a nice little 0.43g piece with a bit of iron stone attached. While I had it in my hand I ran it around the circumference of the coil. It confirmed what I experienced yesterday by screaming on the front and left side of the coil and being barely audible on the right side and rear of the coil.

1623242221_today.jpg


After moving on another couple of metres I realised the noise was coming from the speaker and not the earphones. I spent a few minutes turning the earphones on and off, the 6000 on and off, the Bluetooth on and off and then gave up. I walked back to the quad, swapped to the 11" Mono, and tried to connect the Bluetooth again before tossing them in the back and moving off on speaker. I only went a few metres and it beeped and went quiet. I checked the control panel and saw that it had connected the headphones and was showing the Bluetooth symbol with the +. I returned to the quad fitted the headphones over my frozen ears and tried again.

1623242189_sunbaker.jpg


Twenty meters on and I pinged a little sunbaker. When I went to pull it out it had put on weight and ended up 1.5g so that was a nice surprise. I walked on for another half hour before going home to the heater but I was happy that I understood a bit more about the GPX6000, most likely because it had spent a couple of hours chatting to me when I was hoping to just hear from it when it found something worth chatting about.
 
Went out for a couple of hours this morning. Wanted to stay longer but had stuff to do.
Forgot my scoop so took me a while finding targets.
Got to say, I really like this machine. Perfect for a lazy arse like me. No AU but quite a few leadshot. A couple of those the 4500 with the 12" Evo would have found. The rest, no way. Punches pretty deep.
One of the larger pieces was about 10 inches down.
Got all day tomorrow, weather pending so see how that goes.

Plug and Pray
Plug and Pray.

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Yesterday I had trouble connecting the earphones until I recharged them over lunch and then they connected immediately as they had done before. This morning I went out intermittently between showers. I may have been out there for a couple of hours before the earphones cut out. I tried unsuccessfully to reconnect. The blue LED was flashing as was the Bluetooth symbol but it refused to connect. I've just recharged them but it didn't take long so I doubt the battery was flat. I'll see what happens when the rain stops but my guess is they will only connect on a very well charged battery and it doesn't last long before dropout.
 
Moneybox said:
Yesterday I had trouble connecting the earphones until I recharged them over lunch and then they connected immediately as they had done before. This morning I went out intermittently between showers. I may have been out there for a couple of hours before the earphones cut out. I tried unsuccessfully to reconnect. The blue LED was flashing as was the Bluetooth symbol but it refused to connect. I've just recharged them but it didn't take long so I doubt the battery was flat. I'll see what happens when the rain stops but my guess is they will only connect on a very well charged battery and it doesn't last long before dropout.

FWIW, Jonathan Porter recommends wearing the bluetooth headphones with the volume control on the same side of your body as the detector. The rest of his very detailed comment below is also well worth reading, IMHO:

1623406304_jp_gpx6000_advice.jpg
 
grubstake said:
Moneybox said:
Yesterday I had trouble connecting the earphones until I recharged them over lunch and then they connected immediately as they had done before. This morning I went out intermittently between showers. I may have been out there for a couple of hours before the earphones cut out. I tried unsuccessfully to reconnect. The blue LED was flashing as was the Bluetooth symbol but it refused to connect. I've just recharged them but it didn't take long so I doubt the battery was flat. I'll see what happens when the rain stops but my guess is they will only connect on a very well charged battery and it doesn't last long before dropout.

FWIW, Jonathan Porter recommends wearing the bluetooth headphones with the volume control on the same side of your body as the detector. The rest of his very detailed comment below is also well worth reading, IMHO:

Thanks grubstake. It's confirmation that I'm not the only one with this problem. After reading the manual at lunchtime I tried holding the Bluetooth connect button for the 7.5s. I'm not sure if this worked buy eventually they connected and stayed that way for the next hour. The rain stopped us at that point and we came back a bit wet. I wasn't too bad but Mrs M is on a sport quad with near useless mudflaps so she had her fair share of mud as well as the rain :)
 
Reg Wilson said:
I have a feeling that I am going to love this detector. Finally a machine that ticks all the boxes. Light, great target response, and real depth. Look out you big slugs. I know where you are hiding.

Got something more you'd like to share Reg? :lol:
 
Moneybox said:
Yesterday I had trouble connecting the earphones until I recharged them over lunch and then they connected immediately as they had done before. This morning I went out intermittently between showers. I may have been out there for a couple of hours before the earphones cut out. I tried unsuccessfully to reconnect. The blue LED was flashing as was the Bluetooth symbol but it refused to connect. I've just recharged them but it didn't take long so I doubt the battery was flat. I'll see what happens when the rain stops but my guess is they will only connect on a very well charged battery and it doesn't last long before dropout.

Be mindful of how long you hold certain buttons down and the sequence in which you power them up ;)
 
Reg Wilson said:
I have a feeling that I am going to love this detector. Finally a machine that ticks all the boxes. Light, great target response, and real depth. Look out you big slugs. I know where you are hiding.

Reg you will find the 6000 is dynamite on nuggets less than a gram and way more sensitive than the current version of the QED on similar size sub-gram nuggets and the majority of 6000 nugget finds are small but at good depth, although on larger nuggets the 5000 pulls away with similar size coil.
 
mbasko said:
although on larger nuggets the 5000 pulls away with similar size coil
Based on actual use or what somebody thinks?
5000 with larger coil yes.
GPX11 v 11" mono on 5000 - doubtful from what I've seen.

Based on actual use with my 5000 to my friends 6000 as the 5000 allows additional setting adjustments, however in Factory settings the 6000 has the edge until nuggets up in the 2 and 3 figure gram range when the additional setting adjustments outside of FP on the 5000 come in to play.
 
How did you test them?
-In situ gold
-Test patch
-Air tests
What settings?
-Usable over the surrounding goldfields ground
-Sensitivity & volume of 6000 (which can be detrimental if set too high)
-Was the 6000 adjusted through various manual + auto sensitivities to test them or Difficult/Normal ground setting
-Was the 5000 adjusted to suit the target/s not the general ground/conditions i.e. 5000 adjusted outside of how you'd normally or can operate it to optimise picking up known test pieces
-Coil used on 5000 is 10-12"

From what I've seen on in situ targets to date the 6000's superior depth/sensitivity to small targets isn't lost once they get bigger. Not saying it's better than the 5000 but I wouldn't say it's worse either (if set right for the conditions). It certainly is picking up gold <3 grams that previous GPX's etc. haven't.
Head to head on known test pieces/test beds I'm not sure how the 6000 stacks up (not concerned either). It's easy to optimise a detector in a test situation but using it in real conditions is another thing.

Some background on how you arrived at the above conclusion would be helpful.
 

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