It's been 12 months

[Jonathan Porter]

Hello forum members, as most of you are probably aware I no longer post on the AZO forum, however I still have strong ties with many American friends who I have met over the years as I worked long and hard helping to build up the AZO forum. I've noticed a large amount of regulars from my old haunts hang out here so thought I might as well post a few thoughts from time to time on my favourite subject. Firstly I should point out that due to recent events I am no longer dictated to on what where and when I can post especially on the subject of coils, although I still stand by every word I have ever uttered on the subject I am no longer duty bound to stand by and defend things if the going gets rough, that is now their problem . In some ways this is a very liberating feeling as it lets me concentrate on what I truly love talking about which is the art form itself .

I have just read a very interesting post made by Bob "Montana" Dansie on a relatively new Australian forum where he talks about dumbing down his machine to get it functioning properly in the US, especially in areas of high interference Click HERE for Aussie forum. This has got me thinking about the different ways people use their GPX's to become successful.

So my question is this, How are you finding the GPX 4000 over the past year? Are you using similar techniques to Bob Dansie to achieve results? or are you doing something completely different? I ask these questions not to find out your secret settings but out of curiosity on the different approaches people are using to achieve the same results world wide.

JP

[gotgold]

Hello forum members, as most of you are probably aware I no longer post on the AZO forum, however I still have strong ties with many American friends who I have met over the years as I worked long and hard helping to build up the AZO forum.

"Hello Forum Members" .....give me a break JP!

Jonathan, WHY do you bring this issue up again HERE to "spite" AZO?....you have picked your "own" bone with AZO. Take a deep braeth!

I look at the situation as backsliding on "your part"...... because 'Now' Robs Forum is fair game to this venum.......Hell, "If you got a beef with Chris and company" I for one don't need to hear about any complaints or the "Who struck John" side of what is going on here.

From all appearances, your association with AZO was well taken care of via the advertising revenue and articles written in specific "Prospecting Publications" over many years and I'm sure you played an intrical part in all of it.

Bitch, Piss and Complain someplace else!

Gary

[Jonathan Porter]

"Hello Forum Members" .....give me a break JP!

Jonathan, WHY do you bring this issue up again HERE to "spite" AZO?....you have picked your "own" bone with AZO. Take a deep braeth!

I look at the situation as backsliding on "your part"...... because 'Now' Robs Forum is fair game to this venum.......Hell, "If you got a beef with Chris and company" I for one don't need to hear about any complaints or the "Who struck John" side of what is going on here.

From all appearances, your association with AZO was well taken care of via the advertising revenue and articles written in specific "Prospecting Publications" over many years and I'm sure you played an intrical part in all of it.

Bitch, Piss and Complain someplace else!

Gary

Gary this is not a shot at AZO, just stating facts. But by your comments above you have well and truly made sure this post is going to be contentious . I have often made postings on Robs forum over the years as well as having met him personally and since the AZO issue have been encourage by Rob to post here on a more regular basis.

From all appearances, your association with AZO was well taken care of via the advertising revenue and articles written in specific "Prospecting Publications" over many years and I'm sure you played an intrical part in all of it.

You have absolutely no idea what sort of business arrangements I had with AZO so how can you comment unless you have heard the

"Who struck John" side of what is going on here.

from someone else, because I have not spoken of it to anyone.

It's pretty obvious I am no longer posting at AZO, I have explained the situation in my post above without malice, if you want to read more into it that's your perogative.

The original intent of the questions are genuine and still stand, if you don't want to participate thats your call. The facts are, I no longer work with AZO and as such also no longer promote or encourage NuggetFinder coils in the same capacity as I once did, the subject of coils has always been a tender subject on forums world wide with many an argument in the past which is why I made the remarks on the subject in the first place.

It seems to me I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't, so I encourgae all readers of this post to refrain from getting into an argument, just stick to the subject at hand and avoid the personal background dramas that always go with emotional sudden endings of close friendships. I will say it again, my remarks above are just stating the truth and are not meant to start any flame wars. The truth is I was pivotal in helping build up the AZO forum, I am no longer associated with AZO and as such am no longer involved in promoting the NuggetFinder brand of coils in the US but still have a good relationship with Nugget Finder Australia. I also still stand by every word I said on the subject of gold on that forum. I am also not just going to dry up and blow away in the wind like some would have me do, and as such will still be actively involved in discussions on the subject, of which this forum has been one of the mediums I have been involved with in the past.

Jonathan Porter

[kcoulson]

I don't know nor do I care what happened over on AZO

Johnathan Porter asked a simple question about how you use the GPX 4000-

How about if we keep this thread to that subject. I am considering buying a GPX 4000 and I think this information would be useful. Let us not have this disintegrate.

Ken

[Guest Bunk]

JP, I have only had my 4000 since Sept. and have done pretty good with it but I am still learning. It is my understanding that a smooth threshold is every thing and I have turned the gain down to get this a few times but really don't really understand " running dumb " Could you please explane? Thanks.

Bunk

[Miner Matt]

Glad to have you posting JP any info you give to use will be used. Thanks for taking your time to help us understand the detectors better.

Don't have a 4000 yet but it is on it's way!

Looking forward to the posts that will be genarated here

Take care,Matt

[Guest Mike C...]

JP you are a welcome wealth of knowledge and I for one am glad your still postin-why don't you start postin on nuggetshooter as well-I detune mine somewhat but not to the extreme that Bob does -to each his own -Got Gold-- -Mike C...

[grubstake]

Hello JP, I love my 4000, I run mostly in Fixed, gain at 9 or 10, most times, smooth-sens. mono coils in DD mode volume up where its comfortable, deep, sens. . I find this to be a great setting. Sheps kicking but up here with his, running mostly the same settings, I run coiltek coils he runs nuggetfinder, I'm currently running my mini ufo, and Platypus mono. Grubstake

[FlakMagnet]

Good Morning JP,

Your posts through the years about nugget detecting

are among the outstanding contributions to the field by anyone.

In a hobby that takes commitment and constant education

your writing stands out sharply for it's depth and it's passion.

Very few people can rise to the level you achieve when you

talk about these subjects.

This is common knowledge.

The fact that you are willing to post here in the US on the forum

of your choosing - talking about the topics of your choosing,

is of huge benefit to all of us.

Anyone who cannot see this has been blinded by matters that

are not public and are none of our business.

If there is anyone who has not learned from your efforts in this field

it is because they have not been reading your posts

or watching your DVD's.

Thanks for posting

and welcome.

On your real topic:

I run fixed, sensitive, deep and switch back and forth between DD and Mono,

on the front cap.

I run sensitive-smooth, a gain that is usually in the 9- 11 range, slow swing speed.

I run a fairly low threshold, it's constant and audible just not as loud as I hear on your DVD's

because over the course of a long day I lose concentration faster with a loud constant tone.

I run a DetAcc Amp with Montana's dual speaker system,

and change the volume as necessary.

I retune constantly, work slowly most of the time, especially in highly mineralized

ground. which I seem to find myself over most of the time.

My most-used coils are a Joey mono, a NF 14 elip mono and a Platypus mono,

with my overall favorite the NF 14.

Flak

[shep]

JP, good to see you're posting somewhere! I appreciate your inputs as I do Bob's (and everyone elses, for that matter!), on different ways of running the 4000. I've hunted in Nevada, AZ, but mainly locally around Mariposa CA. I went from the 3000, which I thought was awfully noisy in our area, to the 4000.

We have radio and microwave towers all around, planes flying over from the local airport, where we've had the best of luck, the ground is heavy red mineralized soil, hot rocks everywhere, "iron nuggets" in about every patch. The deepest target I've dug (not counting scrap metal) was probably one of those pesky "iron nuggets" at 12"-14". Sounds sweet when first digging. Most gold has been from the surface to maybe 8"-9".

I've tried extra sensitive, slow and deep and dropping the gain down to 5 or 6. I run a 14E or 17E mono in DD (we're in usually pretty bushy areas and the E's work better). I still get those hotrocks (and some are deep). I run a heavy 3/4 threshold.

I've had the best luck, running in smooth, slow, deep, gain is adjusted 10-14. I'm constantly adjusting my gain to that edge. It's not an absolute smooth, but I can catch any break in the threshold from a small target. Smallest gold so far (I believe??) has been .2 dwt. Anything smaller takes too long to find in my scoop, even with my glasses on

I'm probably missing some gold running in smooth, but my recovery time sucks. I can pinpoint pretty good and pull the target from the hole, no problem; but I have to drop to my knees (if I'm not there already), to split and divide; if I can eliminate the hotrocks and still find the little ones, I think I can detect and find more of those good targets.

My .02 worth-

Shep

[FlakMagnet]

GotGold,

I find it pretty weird, after reading a post of yours on AZO where you

ask someone not to post an attack on a public forum, but instead to do it as a PM,

that you would then make series of statements like your post above.

http://arizonaoutback.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6232

(post # twelve in the list)

Flak

[seeker]

Thanx for posting up here JP and I too would like to see you post on Bill's forum, but that aside Bob is absolutely correct up here there is virtually no interference in places I have been able to hunt, radically different then the settings I used for the few days I got to hunt near Rich Hill, like to ponder everyones thoughts as this unit is very versatile and I am getting gold I know I may have missed before.......Good Hunting Geo

[Goldman]

Well, with all things aside, I am not sure how you help build up AZO's forum, but OZ is different from here and settings talk to me doesn't do alot of good. I have always frankly wondered JP, with your fame in OZ, why the need to post here with all the forums there??? Have a good day. Don

[Jonathan Porter]

No offence Goldman, but how can you tell me in one breath that "OZ is different to here and settings talk to me doesn't do alot of good" yet you seem to use an Australian made detector? I won't bother with the rest of your comments because answering will only make matters worse.

Here's my take on what detectorists have to deal with in the US, in most cases you guys do not suffer from the extreme mineralisation on offer here in OZ (before we start to hear howls of protest please bear with me on this as I try to expand on my thoughts), however you do have one of the worst case scenarios to deal with which is a huge variation in ground signal compared to the mineralisation present from the decomposition of your mineralised areas which are a stark contrast to weathered materials of the surrounding country rock.

Let me expand on this, some of the worst hot rocks I have ever seen were in Arizona (Bruce Candy even has one in his personal collection), they were really bad because they stand out from everything else, thats because the Minelab machines are very good at averaging out the ground signal which is what makes them so powerful in high mineralisation. Because they average out so well the detector is tuned to a pretty benign sort of ground signal because the vast majority of the material in your ground types is less mineralised compared to our soils here in OZ (I do realise there are exceptions in the US BTW ).

Because of the averaging your GB is constantly set for maximum sensitivity (quiet soils) so any sort of signal is going to stand out like "Dogs *#lls", due to this sensitivity you are going to be bombarded by noises generated by any hot pockets of ground noise and interference (even if they are only mild by OZ standards its all relative to where the detector mainly operates), much more so than your Australian counterparts, so in effect you are worse off because of the extra spurious information your detector is generating.

Some of the worst ground I have ever operated in has been dead quite with only small bands of mineralisation and hot rocks, the detector is always primed to generate a signal on just about anything including bumping of the coil, atmospherics, coil lead problems even low batteries. Smooth mode is a classic example of this, I find it very difficult working in grassy areas due to small spurious signals generated when grass is passed over, this is because the detector is running so quiet that noises such as bumping grass stands out from the threshold when it would normally have been hidden by the ground signal.

This is why I am intrigued by Bob Dansies comments about dumbing down his machine, yet he's confident he is getting reasonable depth (down to 14"), I am constantly amazed by the small gold Bob finds on a regular basis, which bears out my theory about the Minelabs being primed for just about anything in your ground type. If I ran similar settings here on my property I would not find very much at all because the dumbing down would not assist me in the mineralisation. Bob does not dumb down his machine to cut back on ground noise, but to suppress interference due to a hyper sensitive machine because of two factors, one is an averaging of the GB to suit a basically quiet ground matrix and the second is the effect of an excessive amount of EM which is magnified due to the latter problem.

Hope this makes sense to you all, I do not for a second want to seem like I am telling you how to suck eggs because you know your local areas better than anyone, but going by my experiences here in OZ and also Arizona I strongly feel this is the case.

Food for thought if nothing else.

JP

[Reno Chris]

Good to see you posting Jonathan - your posts are always interesting.

Working on any videos lately?

Chris

[Jonathan Porter]

Good to see you posting Jonathan - your posts are always interesting.

Working on any videos lately?

Chris

Hello Chris, yes to the videos, I am as we speak sorting out footage from last season and this for a new production I am working on about prospecting in general. Would have been nice to grab your good self for an interview when I was last in the States but work commitments did not allow for it unfortunately (lectures, filming etc).

JP

[Goldman]

No offence Goldman, but how can you tell me in one breath that "OZ is different to here and settings talk to me doesn't do alot of good" yet you seem to use an Australian made detector? I won't bother with the rest of your comments because answering will only make matters worse.

Here's my take on what detectorists have to deal with in the US, in most cases you guys do not suffer from the extreme mineralisation on offer here in OZ (before we start to hear howls of protest please bear with me on this as I try to expand on my thoughts), however you do have one of the worst case scenarios to deal with which is a huge variation in ground signal compared to the mineralisation present from the decomposition of your mineralised areas which are a stark contrast to weathered materials of the surrounding country rock.

Let me expand on this, some of the worst hot rocks I have ever seen were in Arizona (Bruce Candy even has one in his personal collection), they were really bad because they stand out from everything else, thats because the Minelab machines are very good at averaging out the ground signal which is what makes them so powerful in high mineralisation. Because they average out so well the detector is tuned to a pretty benign sort of ground signal because the vast majority of the material in your ground types is less mineralised compared to our soils here in OZ (I do realise there are exceptions in the US BTW ).

Because of the averaging your GB is constantly set for maximum sensitivity (quiet soils) so any sort of signal is going to stand out like "Dogs *#lls", due to this sensitivity you are going to be bombarded by noises generated by any hot pockets of ground noise and interference (even if they are only mild by OZ standards its all relative to where the detector mainly operates), much more so than your Australian counterparts, so in effect you are worse off because of the extra spurious information your detector is generating.

Some of the worst ground I have ever operated in has been dead quite with only small bands of mineralisation and hot rocks, the detector is always primed to generate a signal on just about anything including bumping of the coil, atmospherics, coil lead problems even low batteries. Smooth mode is a classic example of this, I find it very difficult working in grassy areas due to small spurious signals generated when grass is passed over, this is because the detector is running so quiet that noises such as bumping grass stands out from the threshold when it would normally have been hidden by the ground signal.

This is why I am intrigued by Bob Dansies comments about dumbing down his machine, yet he's confident he is getting reasonable depth (down to 14"), I am constantly amazed by the small gold Bob finds on a regular basis, which bears out my theory about the Minelabs being primed for just about anything in your ground type. If I ran similar settings here on my property I would not find very much at all because the dumbing down would not assist me in the mineralisation. Bob does not dumb down his machine to cut back on ground noise, but to suppress interference due to a hyper sensitive machine because of two factors, one is an averaging of the GB to suit a basically quiet ground matrix and the second is the effect of an excessive amount of EM which is magnified due to the latter problem.

Hope this makes sense to you all, I do not for a second want to seem like I am telling you how to suck eggs because you know your local areas better than anyone, but going by my experiences here in OZ and also Arizona I strongly feel this is the case.

Food for thought if nothing else.

JP

Thanks JP, but I am puzzled what the make of the detector has to do with the fact that the ground conditions are very different in both countries, by the way, my main detector is English made(Eric Foster). Don

[way2cool]

Hi JP,

Thanks for posting here in the states. You are a weath of knowledge when it comes to detecting

and I hope you continue to post here.

Geez GotGold who pissed in your wheaties?

[matt]

JP,

Thanks for posting this thread. It does not matter where you are because all the people that have responded so far have been on this side of the world. It would be nice to see more discussion on this matter and not so much complaining. I think that hearing the different settings no matter where a person is can help everybody. I see that Shep is using a mono in DD mode. I used to do that with my 3000, but have yet to try it with the GPX. Now I will. I have spent numerous hours behind both machines. I like using mono coils with the GPX and have yet to even put a DD coil on the machine. I found that the normal setting vs. sensitive setting I can get much more depth in the ground I hunt which is very mild. I can usually hunt with the gain set between 12 and 15 depending on the coil size I am using. I went to a new spot today with a friend. I was having trouble running the GPX for the first time. The ground was really hot. He got 5 nuggets using a GP3000 and I got nothing. I am glad to get home to this discussion so I can try some of the settings that other people are using and try them out. Your posts have always been informative and I hope you will post more often. Take care.

Cheers,

Matt

[shep]

To those who want to get in a piss'n match, go bite a big one! and leave the forums. The man asked a question. I'm here for the comraderie and to learn from those who know better than I.

Don't have anything good to say, then please don't say it.

Shep

[nuggethunting]

Hello All,

I would first like to add, I will not tolerate any attacks or negative comments about AZO on this forum. Chris is not only my cousin, but a long time nugget hunting partner of mine.

All I ask is to keep it clean and talk about anything related to prospecting for gold.

With that said, I've had great success here in Arizona with my Minelab GPX-4000. With this metal detector I can fine tune to just about any ground condition with a monoloop searchcoil.

I've found a couple hundred nuggets with mine so far, which is more than some and a lot less than others.

Wishing you all the best,

Rob Allison

[Carson Steve]

I noticed that a fair amount of you operate your mono coils in the DD mode. What is the reasoning behind this with the GPX 4000? I operate with about the same settings as what has been described except for this difference.

[Reno Chris]

yes to the videos, I am as we speak sorting out footage from last season and this for a new production I am working on about prospecting in general. Would have been nice to grab your good self for an interview when I was last in the States but work commitments did not allow for it unfortunately (lectures, filming etc).

Well, it sounds like another interesting video is underway.

Jonathan, if you are ever in the states again for whatever reasons, plese feel free to look me up. I'd be happy sit down with you and talk about prospecting.

I have another thing I want to mention to you, and I'll send you a PM about that possibility.

Chris Ralph

[montana]

Carson Steve. Most people think that by running a mono in DD on the control box, a little better sensitvity is achieved. The difference if any isn't earthshaking , but why not do it if the common feeling is in that direction?

My feelings about the GPX 4000 after a year is that I've never had a detector that I had so much confidence in. It was intimidating at first, but I now find it extremely simple to use. The quality of the power cord is greatly improved, the lithium battery is incredible, and I've seem almost no comments about failure of any of the components. Fantastic!!!!---Bob

[Jonathan Porter]

JP, I have only had my 4000 since Sept. and have done pretty good with it but I am still learning. It is my understanding that a smooth threshold is every thing and I have turned the gain down to get this a few times but really don't really understand " running dumb " Could you please explane? Thanks.

Bunk

Hello Bunk, just to answer your question. Bob Dansie has commented a number of times on the net about his particular settings to suit the areas he hunts in, I once referred to them as "Dumbing down" the detector to cut out on an exorbitant amount of mostly man made EM (electromagnetic interference). The idea is to smooth out the threshold as much as possible using settings like Gain, Motion and other modes such as Quiet mode (usually using a Monoloop coil BTW) but at the same time maintaining reasonable sensitivity to small nuggets (you can easily do this yourself by placing a small nugget on the ground as a reference and then adjusting the various settings to cut out instability in the threshold whilst at the same time keeping the signal from the nugget identifiable).

Bob makes no bones about his absolute hatered for any sort of instability in his machine and as such touts the GPX 4000 as being the best Minelab machine ever, I for one admire his passion and determination in what is obviously a very difficult situation.

Hope this helps to explain things.

JP