GPX series confusion on timings/settings

[nuggethunting]

Hey Guys,

I have to agree with all your comments. I have used all the PI's since the first SD2000 with much success here in the Southwest. The biggest jumps in my opinion were the follow for these reasons -

VLF to SD2000 - Huge improvement on mineral immunity being the first PI and superior depth. Sensitivity to small gold with even a small gold was in the 6-7 grain range. Not the best for small gold, but superior on mineralization and depth and very quite. I found pounds and pounds of gold with this unit.

SD2000 to SD2100 - Huge improvement on small gold and smaller gold at depth. I was able to now find nuggets down to like .8 grains with a smaller searchcoil and even found deeper gold due to better overall sensitivity.

SD series to GP Extreme - This was huge!!! I found the most gold, size and numbers with the GP Extreme. This unit allow the user to get about 20% more depth over the SD series and about 55% more depth on small gold. I kicked ass and took names on all my old patches that I covered many times with the SD's.

GP to GPX (mostly 4500 & 5000) More user control, much smoother unit overall. More immunity to EMI and much more sensitivity. Overall depth is still a question that is un-answered.

I couldn't imagine if I had to go back .... I'm spoiled with the Minelab PI's.

Take care,

Rob Allison

[Ken18au]

On 11/8/2010 at 5:12 AM, nuggethunting said:

Hello All,

A forum member on antoher thread asked me about this:

For starters, I think Minelab detectors can be confusing when it comes to their labeling. The whole "Deep, General and Custom" is more confusing than anything.

These three settings are just factory pre-set settings for guys that know nothing about the unit. You can flip the switch into one of these three settings and take off and hunt. That being said, you can also customize these three settings to what you like and then save them. This is done by flipping the switch into one of the modes, let’s say "Deep" for starters."

Now let’s back up here for a second, when you're in the "Deep" mode and looking at your LCD screen, you will see there are settings already set up, but when you switch that toggle switch to "General" or "Custom" the settings will change. Like I said, these are three factory presets you have to work with.

How you can save your own 3 settings: When you're in "Deep," you can customize your own settings, volume, gain, audio, ground balance, iron reject and such .... to however you like it. Once you shut the GPX5000 off, those settings you just customized will now save over the factory Minelab presets in that "Deep" mode. You might label in your own mind that setting now as "Patch 1" or Shallow Ground" ect .... If you do this same thing with the "General" and "Custom" modes, you will have three of your own, completely customized settings you like. You can label them whatever you want in your mind, so the "Deep, General and Custom" don't mean anything anymore besides still being labeled on that toggle.

If you ever decide to change the unit back to stock or factory presets, you can do this by holding down the ON/OFF toggle switch until you get the screen that shows "Change all settings back to default." At this point you can either reset one of the modes you are currently in, reset all three of them back or exit the screen and leave them the way they are.

You mentioned running settings together. You can run any combo of settings together, but keep in mind the only thing you have to understand is timings. With the GPX5000 you get a total of 8 timings on this unit. Two of the timings, Normal and Enhance are their own timings and don't combine with the Special timings on the LCD that you can change.

Normal is its own timing, Enhance is its own timing and if you have Normal with Sensitive/Extra or Fine Gold for example, you really only have "Normal" timing. (Please reply to this post if you don't understand this)

If you want to use the other 6 timings, you must be in "Special timing" on the front control panel and then choose what timing you want from the LCD screen, which would be like "Salt Coarse, Fine Gold, Sensitive/Extra, Coil/Relic" and such.

There still seems to be a bunch of confusion on this, so lets just start here for beginners. If you have questions, comments or concerns about this, please post them here.

Talk with you soon,

Rob Allison