Nugget Finder Z search GPZ coils

[Jennifer]

Wow, that didn't take long...

https://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/fra...oil-12-for-minelab-gpz-7000-as-new/1266114401

Jen

 

[Gem in I]

No but just the fact it was on there?
being a prospective buyer myself i was a little turned off but the reason for sale was an acceptable reason.
Just an idependant evaluation but i am leaning towards the other one with no freebies still maybe a stubbie cooler would be nice though?

 

[Jennifer]

Sigh..... you wait 6 years for Nugget Finder to release a coil for the Zed, and the day it arrives, you get a massive snow dump... the Arizona desert is a cruel companion. How many of you can say snow's delayed your hunting. LOL

 

[Bush]

Well Gem in i did say a stubbie cooler would be nice.
Doubt you will have any competition detecting there for a while.
Sweltering our ***** off here in the present Au.

 

[Lesgold]

Hi Folks

Went out today for a play with Nugget Finder attached to the zed. Drove to an area thats been absolutely flogged over the years. Was hoping for a good, deep slug of gold but was quite happy to come back with what Happy Jack calls pensioner gold. They are thin pieces but have a reasonable surface area. The coil picked them up comfortably. They were all quite shallow (up to a couple of inches deep) The poor old SDC doesnt get much of a run these days as this coil picks up the scraps really well.

Cheers

Les

 

[Lesgold]

Hi Folks,

I think you will agree that the Zed Search is pretty good on the small targets. What I also want to test is how the coil performs at depth on larger pieces of gold. I was lucky enough to find a better piece today at a depth that was starting to test the limits of the coil. (on the settings that I was using - high yield/ difficult/ sensitivity 12)
Picked up the faintest of signals on inside of an old dig hole. Had to scrape away about a quarter of an inch of soil and remove a couple of small plants to confirm that it was an actual signal and not ground noise. A quiet but repeatable signal was then heard. The piece popped out after one final small scrape at the bottom of the hole which indicated that the hole depth was close to genuine.

I was able to pinpoint the location of the nugget with the coil just before scraping it out. The pick was then placed in the hole on that spot to indicate the nugget location.

Sorry about the shadows on the photo but I think there is enough info there to show that it wasnt bad depth at all. This coil has easily paid for itself in the time that Ive had it attached to the zed. I reckon that people would say that the standard coil would have found most of those pieces anyway so Im not really in front. My back and shoulder tell a different story however.

Cheers

Les

 

[A-team]

Took mine out for a spin yesterday - first time with the Z-Search, no color unfortunately. The EMI kicked in around lunch and was near unusable (same with the wife who had the original 14 inch coil). Add to that constant planes and jets overhead and we were in prospectors hell..... 8.(

On a positive; I found the coil MUCH more sensitive in every respect with clearer target sounds, easier pinpointing, so much lighter that I am now out of balance with my heavy pick! Hope to be coming across some nicer targets than the 100 or so lead shot I found and lead slag from casting run off.

You do notice the loss of coverage, but in the GT it seems to be a fine trade off as you can get among the scrub easier. Personally I would not be interested in anything smaller, maybe in the future I'd consider a light weight NF 19 inch for open areas.

Will let you know how I go on the whole depth thing, but will say that's a nice find!

 

[Lesgold]

Hi Folks,
Just uploaded a clip to YouTube on the Z Search in action. Let a few good filming opportunities slip when I was out with a mate yesterday which was unfortunate. That sort of stuff happens when you are out in the bush. Sorry about the poor audio in one section of clip. My phone was interfering with the coil and spoilt that part of the filming. As you would know, when filming stuff as it actually happens, it doesnt always work out according to the plan. Will try to put up a few more clips in the near future.

Cheers

Les
[video=480,360]https://youtu.be/9nRkAaJRDBY[/video]

 

[A-team]

Excellent video! I am finding though that the Z-search has a plateau depth around 100mm/4inches on "most" targets. In that range it blows away the 14 inch original. X-coil users, what are you seeing in your usage????

 

[Davent]

Jeez I dunno. Im getting some very small bits at good depth with the standard coil. Only advantage Im seeing is size and weight reduction really, which is good in itself, but for $1300 I want more lol!

 

[Lesgold]

Interesting observation A-team. I have found that it is a bit deeper than that. (Up to about 6 on the smaller gold) In saying that, I have only been using the coil for a couple of months and more time will give a clearer picture. The deeper of the two pieces I found yesterday was a good example of what this coil can do. Before backfilling, the piece of gold was placed on a rock about 1 above the bottom of the hole. My mate ran his coil over the target and could not pick up anything at ground level. We than ran the Nugget Finder over the gold in the same manner and picked up a small signal. We determined that there was about an inch and a half difference in the two coils on that scrap of gold. Im not a big fan of air tests but it was an interesting little experiment that we carried out. From another perspective, the spot where the gold was dug was carefully detected on a few occasions last year using standard coils. The extra sensitivity of this coil has one drawback. It appears to be more susceptible to certain hot rocks. I had about a dozen rocks sound off with a sweet signal when we we working in a creek yesterday. My mate did not have anywhere near as many issues as I did. The sensitivity was a couple of notches higher on my machine at that point. That may have contributed to the problem but I did not perform any tests to confirm this.

 

[Davent]

Finding tiny little bits is actually very good, it gives hope, and makes you concentrate harder in the spot youre at, which leads to more gold.
Les, are your settings much different to what you use with the standard coil?

 

[Lesgold]

Hi davent.

I reckon you are right there. A mate said to me the other day that he is only interested in the large bits of gold. Replied that I wasnt greedy.... Id take the small bits AND the large bits.
Running about the same settings but as it is pretty stable, I can run it a bit hotter than the standard coil. Some people run the zed flat out and put up with the extra noise but Im happy to run it reasonably quiet.

 

[A-team]

Another outing today, put the 14 inch ML coil back on and started finding targets at various levels again. Also picked up a little .23g in a well worked area, was only shallow though. I had already taken the z-search off and advertised it for sale until my wife came up with a good idea.

She is going to try the Z-search as she is quite petite and close to half my weight. She has been struggling with a shoulder injury so will be taking the z coil out for a spin because of it's lighter weight. She also came from a SDC2300 to the 7000 so putting the z-search coil will be like having an SDC without the noise.

With the 7000's, we set up a test with the two different coils, factory settings, out in the bush, no EMI, air test only. Played around with a half gram lead bullet....the z-search was at best 10-15cm (remember, factory settings only tried), the 14 inch ML coil got 20-25cm.

The z-search was definitely sharper within it's range as compared to the ML coil - though I have been swayed back to using the original ML 14inch coil again, I've only ever found gold with it. Maybe my hearing tunes better to this coil though I was never short of a target with the Z-search, it picked up EVERYTHING an 10cm deep, nothing was left behind!

I will be keeping an eye out for any new NF coils in the future but for now, am happy with the stock coil. In some regards, I guess it answers why ML hasn't released any more coils for the 7000 - the 14 does pretty good once you tune into it....I might look at the 19 in the future also, don't mind a bit of deep target hunting now and then

 

[phrunt]

Well, I too have the Z-search, it arrived about a week ago so I haven't had much time on it yet and obviously like everyone else I'm finding the lighter weight a nice feature of it. I haven't had enough time on it yet to have a real opinion of it performance wise other than just some testing I've done with shotgun pellets and small gold. I'm yet to find any gold with it, which is annoying, certainly not the coils fault as you never know when you'll find some and I know the coil works

It seems well made like my previous NF coils, and obviously has no problems with my milder soils over here and runs nice and quiet similar to the standard ML coil in that regard really. It balances out the ferrite very quickly. I feel a bit sorry for the people that have to run in difficult as the GPZ is such a different detector in normal but then again you've got the bigger gold to make up for that so I'd likely trade places

I do detect quite a lot around power lines around here as a majority of our easy access gold areas are either right near suburbia or have high voltage transmission lines go straight through the areas and when it comes to EMI handling I'm seeing no difference at all to the ML 14x13 coil. In theory I guess there would be a slight difference due to the slightly smaller size but it's not a noticeable difference for me. In saying that I do run my GPZ in normal which does appear to be significantly worse for EMI than difficult so someone in difficult might notice more of a difference? I would not personally choose this coil for detecting in high EMI areas when I have better options for that which run quieter in normal near the EMI.

I think it's slightly better on small targets than the Minelab coil and time will tell but it's a bit difficult for me to compare to the Minelab coil as I rarely use it now, as for the quieter operation some have reported I'm not seeing that either but this is expected, this is likely due to my milder soils so the coils aren't noisy in the first place but I can see that being a beneficial feature for people and one I'd want too so based on others reports it must be quieter than the standard coil in noisy ground.

So far I would say for someone that only has the ML Coil a Z-search I think would be worth getting for the lighter weight alone and slightly better sensitivity, the problem people may face is deciding if it is worth buying when it's similar to the stock coil in every way except the lighter weight. I think NF have been very good as they've always been upfront about the difference with this coil over the standard coil and you've got to give them credit for that even advising people wait for other coils if they're expecting more depth/sensitivity and so on so it's probably worth just holding out to see what else they come out with if it's just going to be later this year.

If I only had the ML 14x13" coil I'd be very happy to have the Z-search and I'd probably never put the stock coil back on again so for someone in that situation it's most certainly worth getting I think, it seems a good coil to me, hopefully I can find some gold with it this week, so far I've been using it without the bungee and been fine with it's weight.

 

[Jonathan Porter]

Well, I too have the Z-search, it arrived about a week ago so I haven't had much time on it yet and obviously like everyone else I'm finding the lighter weight a nice feature of it. I haven't had enough time on it yet to have a real opinion of it performance wise other than just some testing I've done with shotgun pellets and small gold. I'm yet to find any gold with it, which is annoying, certainly not the coils fault as you never know when you'll find some and I know the coil works

It seems well made like my previous NF coils, and obviously has no problems with my milder soils over here and runs nice and quiet similar to the standard ML coil in that regard really. It balances out the ferrite very quickly. I feel a bit sorry for the people that have to run in difficult as the GPZ is such a different detector in normal but then again you've got the bigger gold to make up for that so I'd likely trade places

I do detect quite a lot around power lines around here as a majority of our easy access gold areas are either right near suburbia or have high voltage transmission lines go straight through the areas and when it comes to EMI handling I'm seeing no difference at all to the ML 14x13 coil. In theory I guess there would be a slight difference due to the slightly smaller size but it's not a noticeable difference for me. In saying that I do run my GPZ in normal which does appear to be significantly worse for EMI than difficult so someone in difficult might notice more of a difference? I would not personally choose this coil for detecting in high EMI areas when I have better options for that which run quieter in normal near the EMI.

I think it's slightly better on small targets than the Minelab coil and time will tell but it's a bit difficult for me to compare to the Minelab coil as I rarely use it now, as for the quieter operation some have reported I'm not seeing that either but this is expected, this is likely due to my milder soils so the coils aren't noisy in the first place but I can see that being a beneficial feature for people and one I'd want too so based on others reports it must be quieter than the standard coil in noisy ground.

So far I would say for someone that only has the ML Coil a Z-search I think would be worth getting for the lighter weight alone and slightly better sensitivity, the problem people may face is deciding if it is worth buying when it's similar to the stock coil in every way except the lighter weight. I think NF have been very good as they've always been upfront about the difference with this coil over the standard coil and you've got to give them credit for that even advising people wait for other coils if they're expecting more depth/sensitivity and so on so it's probably worth just holding out to see what else they come out with if it's just going to be later this year.

If I only had the ML 14x13" coil I'd be very happy to have the Z-search and I'd probably never put the stock coil back on again so for someone in that situation it's most certainly worth getting I think, it seems a good coil to me, hopefully I can find some gold with it this week, so far I've been using it without the bungee and been fine with it's weight.

Phrunt your experiences are completely at odds with many of our customers here in QLD and also my own. There is a very obvious improvement in sensitivity over standard both in Difficult and also Normal. In hot ground there is an obvious improvement over standard on Saturation signals and also Conductive/Salt signals. EMI is also a lot less in both Normal and Difficult modes.

In my experience in Difficult there is a depth improvement on targets up to and around the 8 to 10 gram range over standard, my testing has mainly been done in Difficult mode and compared on in-situ targets in well known and well worked old patches, Normal has not been tested as much due to a lack of locations where Normal can be used.

The depth advantage on the larger deeper targets would be down to the coil running quieter, less EMI, less Saturation signal, less Salt signal means the detector runs quieter overall, as such Im easily able to run sensitivity at 12 and above in most ground in my local area.

The key to the Zsearch 12 is good coil control, because its lighter there is a tendency for operators to swing quicker, the GPZ will punish faster sweep speeds as that kills depth on edge of detection target signals. You cannot swing the Zsearch like the flat wound X coils for this very reason, however there is a very obvious improvement in overall quieter operating behaviour relative to target signal so once the swing speed/coil control sweet spot is realised the targets just started to pop out of the ground.

 

[phrunt]

Thanks JP, I do tend to swing too fast in general so that could possibly be part of the equation.

As for EMI I'm talking about detecting right near and around the power lines and residential areas, not at some distance from them and the coil is affected for me in this scenario similar to the standard Minelab coil where other options like the little 8" and Concentric coil aren't quite as bad, I suspect the improvements you're talking about are a very different situation to that, and as time goes on I'll be using it in other scenarios where I may see some beneficial EMI improvements. I guess I should have pointed that out a bit clearer that my opinions based on a worst case scenario really, in saying that compared to a GPX it's outstanding I did find this morning using it I had it running very nicely about 200 meters from some high voltage lines in normal with a gain of 20, unfortunately I didn't have another coil with me to plug it to see the difference if any. I'm certainly not disagreeing with anything you've said.

These views are very early on using it, and are subject to change without notice

Where I was talking about sensitivity this was based on if it could see small targets at all or not, using maximum sensitivity settings in normal and seeing the smallest size target it will hit even touching the coil. These are not real world tests yet but more going down in pellet sizes to see where it stops being able to detect them in comparison to other coils and in this case I was talking about primarily the standard 14x13" coil in the same settings as a bit of a baseline which both stopped on the same pellet size #6, and #7.5 was invisible, still these are fantastic results in my mind especially for such big coils. Again nothing fancy, just giving myself a general idea of what I'm working with and not too dissimilar to some other coils.

As I said so far I'm quite happy with the coil so we are in agreement with basically everything, I can't fault it and I think it's certainly better than the standard coil, loving that light weight and if I only had the standard coil and the NF, I'd never remove the NF.

Out of interest, why are there in-situ targets in well known and well worked old patches, why hasn't anyone dug them to see what they are? Are they ones left there for testing?

 

[phrunt]

By the way, if anyone has been unable to source one of the Z-search and desperately wants one there is one sitting in stock at the NZ dealer (DredgeNZ) that he doesn't seem to be able to sell. It's generally about $30 to ship a coil between Au/NZ using standard shipping, about $50 or so with express. I won't post a link as I don't know if that's allowed here but it's not hard to google it and they do ship international.

 

[Jonathan Porter]

........... Out of interest, why are there in-situ targets in well known and well worked old patches, why hasn't anyone dug them to see what they are? Are they ones left there for testing?

There are in-situ targets still in the ground because theyve been missed on previous excursions, theyve been found either through the better sensitivity of the Zsearch 12R or missed because of previous EMI, Saturation signals, Salt/Conductive signals or a combination of them all. It is far better to actually use new gear on familiar terrain to get a clearer idea of its merits rather than spending huge amounts of time on test beds with known targets. Test beds have their place but nothing comes close to the real thing. Locating a proper target in known ground is no easy thing, doing it on a regular basis is a pretty good indication that what youre using or doing is an improvement?

One of the good things about working in variable ground is there will always be some gold that is missed, this means you can always justify going back and hitting it from a different angle, sometimes you get lucky and get your coil right over the sweet spot. When you go to these areas with new equipment and start to find numerous missed gold targets that is telling you something, this was my experience with the prototype Zsearch coils. Not all of the targets can be put down to a different angle or mind set, you get enough targets and you soon start to realise the coil is the main reason for the results.

I have numerous places here in Clermont where I conduct training sessions, over the last 5 years those locations have seen a lot of attention as I encourage the students to detect these spots whenever they like, as you can imagine after a while target signals start to get pretty thin on the ground. Lately Ive started using the Zsearch during training sessions as it is so much easier on my arm (I dont rig up a bungee or harness for the sessions), the bonus is Im back to pinging gold again on all the old flogged out haunts. Its not absolutely necessary to find gold when training but it sure adds some icing to the cake when it happens.

JP

 

[Lesgold]

Good point JP on coil control. It is a demon I battle with every time I go out for a detect. Early in a session I find that concentration levels are good and most of the time thats when the targets come through. After about an hour and a half I find the mind starts to wander a bit and the swing rate of the coil tends to increase slightly. Its a mental battle to actually pull yourself up, refocus and slow down again. Thats normally when I sit down for a 5 minute break, have a drink, a bit of food and a chat with a mate. Sometimes when mentally tired you can get lucky and have an obvious signal hit you in the face. That does wonders for refocusing and resetting the mind. I still believe nothing beats a break. I reckon the worst torture is a long period without a signal. You are listening for it but theres none to be heard. If not careful, I can end up like a run away train and tear around the place like a hyperactive kid looking for a lost toy.