Steve's Insanely Hot GPZ 7000 Settings

[Steve Herschbach]

I have been holding off posting this, as I worry it could get people who do it into trouble, or cause people running the way I do to blame my settings on the GPZ itself. Reality is what it is however and my journey with the GPZ 7000 has taken me to interesting extremes. I decided it is time to just tell you what I have been using for settings and let the cards fall where they may.

My early posts on the Zed all advised taking it easy with the settings early on, especially for beginners. I took my own advice and slowly ramped things up over time. The entire time however I have been going in just the opposite direction from where I headed with the Minelab PI detectors.

The goal with the GPX 5000 and its predecessors was to seek the smoothest, quietest threshold possible. Every advance the units made moved in that direction, until with the GPX we reached the pinnacle of smooth, well behaved performance.

The GPZ 7000 experience for me has been more like a return to my roots running hot VLF detectors. Most common and very sensible advice including that I have offered myself always has been about trying to get the machines to obtain a smooth steady threshold if possible. And good advice it is. The funny thing is, I usually never run my machines like that myself. I crank them up and run them hot and noisy. A novice listening to me run a Gold Bug 2 in bad ground would be baffled by all the sounds the machine is making. To me however after decades of detecting it is all just feedback about what is going on under the coil, with the key thing being that the magic sound of a real target just jumps out at me out of all the ground and hot rock sounds.

The first thing I did with my GPZ 7000 was pay close attention to every tidbit Jonathan Porter would reveal. Two things got my attention. First was his mention of how the Zed has a livelier response to the ground when in operation. The second was his obvious dislike for audio smoothing. The first thing I did was turn audio smoothing off and I have basically never used it.

The second step was in determining that in most ground I worked the Normal ground setting was far more powerful than the default Difficult setting. I used Difficult a bit initially, and fell back to it a few times, but going to Normal was something that happened very early on, and if you look at my earliest posts on the GPZ 7000 I advised people to always at least give Normal a try before going back to Difficult if need be.

High Yield is the default GPZ gold mode and I have always stayed with it. Minelabs unfortunate naming of the gold modes make people think the other modes are deeper but they only are so in a relative sense, relative to the ground you are in and the gold you are hunting. More details on this thread at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1236-gpz-high-yield-general-or-extra-deep/ High Yield is the high frequency mode on the GPZ with the transmitted field switching pole directions three times faster than in General or Extra Deep. You could say there really are only two modes because General and Extra Deep are just two versions of the same mode. Yes, yes, yes, before people chime in, I am very aware there are times and places for General and even Extra Deep. In fact, I will always downshift to General before I will come off the Normal ground setting. For me default mode is Normal/High Yield and if things get difficult then go to Normal/General. The next shift down would be to Difficult/High Yield and then finally Difficult/General. I doubt I will ever use Extra Deep until a larger coil is on my GPZ. And even then not much.

The last step was the Gain. I ran 12 a long time, then 14. Then two months ago I just jumped to 20.

The GPZ the way I run is almost always making some kind of noise, all of which lumped together is what I use as a threshold sound. I control things mostly through three audio settings. To preserve my sanity I keep settings low. I never use headphones these days unless the wind is really bad, other wise I keep the wireless module on my upper left chest closer to my better ear. One oddity on the GPZ 7000 is that there really is not a basic volume control so you have to fiddle with several settings to get comfortable sound levels.

What they call Volume on the GPZ 7000 should have been called Audio Boost. From the owners manual"

"Volume controls the amplification of a target’s audio response, relative to the target signal strength. This audio setting is most similar to volume adjustments in other devices (e.g. radio or television volume controls). The Volume control has a range from 1 to 20 with a default setting of 8. With a setting of 1, weak target signals will sound quiet, medium target signals will sound mid-range and strong target signals will sound loud. There will be greater differentiation between target signal strengths; however, weak signals will be harder to hear. With a setting of 20, all target signals will be amplified to a loud audio response. At this setting there may be less differentiation between medium and strong signals, but weak target signals will be easier to hear."

That last note might make you think more volume is better - you do not want to miss those weak signals! I tend the other way as I want my targets to exhibit as much audio variation as possible. This is one setting I still need to possibly tweak but for now I seem to have settled into 4 as the one that works best for my ear.

Volume Limit is much more like a regular volume control. I would have put Volume Limit on the main settings page, then relabled Volume as Audio Boost and put it on the secondary page. Future update hint Minelab? Again, from the manual: "The Volume Limit sets the maximum volume for target signals. When detecting, the sound produced by a target can be very loud. Adjust the Volume Limit to ensure that loud targets do not hurt your ears. The Volume Limit has a range of 1-20, with a preset of 12." More like a blast limiter than a volume control but this control is the one you really need to use to control how loud the GPZ is.

I find 12 to be way too high for me, and by coincidence 4 turned out to also work for me there. The final piece of the puzzle is the actual threshold setting. I find 22 works well for me when I am in very quiet locations, and I bump to 25 if there is noise from wind or whatever around me. There are other audio settings but I try to mess with as little as possible to keep changes simple if I do a master reset. On full reset I:

Main Settings (Detect) Page

1. Switch from default Difficult ground setting to Normal
2. Sensitivity from default 9 to 20
3. Volume (Audio Boost) from default 8 to 4

Next Page - Detect Plus

4. Threshold from default 27 to 22-25 depending
5. Volume Limit from default 12 to 4
6. Audio Smoothing Off

Next page - Settings

7. GPS from default off to Enhanced
8. Wireless from default Off to On
9. Connect to WM12 wireless module
10. Finally, go to Map Menu under View and turn View Geotrail from Default off to On

Only after all this is done do I go through the Quick Start frequency scan and ground balance (with ferrite). These settings all will be retained with power off so done once and I am pretty well set. All I do from then on is fire up in morning and do the Quick Start routine, which I will repeat at lunch time or if I move to a new area. The only thing I have to really remind myself to do is when starting each hunt to go to the Create Geodata page to initiate saving my path to memory. If you are reading Minelab, why can't I assign this to the user button? And, if I forget and walk 1/4 mile before before doing it, it sure would be nice to be offered the option to pick up and save that last 1/4 mile, which is clearly there on screen and in memory, instead of losing it. But I digress.......

Again, once all this gets set up it is retained on power off and repower, so for me I fire the GPZ 7000 up, do the Quick Start, go to Create Geodata, and start my hunt. The only setting I mess with may be the threshold, which I use as a sort of final audio sensitivity control.

The secret to all this pretty much boils down to a hundred hours or more of using the GPZ to get used to the audio and the way the machine responds to the ground. In doing so it all becomes about coil control and sweep speed. When I run into ground noise, hot rocks, or other issues like salt ground, the only thing that normally changes is how fast I hunt. Everything quiet I go faster, more sounds I slow down. In salt ground I am moving at a crawl, letting the audio feedback dictate the sweep speed. I set up an artificial threshold of rising high tones and descending low tones by using a carefully controlled slow sweep. Even small nuggets still pop for me in salt ground.

In other ground no matter what else is going on with these settings a nugget just goes "BANG"!!

Chris Ralph and I hunt together a lot. He tried not even the full bore version of this, and immediately went back to his quieter settings. WARNING! I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THESE SETTINGS! All I am doing is telling you what I am doing. I am not saying they are the “best” settings or any such nonsense. They clearly will not work for many people and in many locations etc. etc. whatever. Running too hot can be counter productive. The happiest thing about the GPZ 7000 is in most cases it gets the gold if you get the coil over it using almost any settings. Chris certainly does as well as I using the settings he uses and he is happier for it. There are various “quiet” settings being used by others out there and they are finding lots of gold doing what they do. You do have to put the coil over the nugget first and foremost, and I am not going to be a settings snob and claim I know best for anyone besides myself. I have no doubt someday I will run into ground where I do something completely different. Always remember, there is never one magic setting for all times and places, otherwise all we would need is an on/off knob. Use what works for your ground and your own personal comfort level.

But now at least nobody can say I did not tell you what settings I am using. Last warning though – getting a new GPZ 7000 and doing this would be like buying a new race car having never driven one, then getting in and just flooring it. You are going to crash and burn. If you are new to the GPZ, do please take it easy and give it time. It is one of those machines that really grows on you with time. Anyone giving up on it with under 50-100 hours really has not even tried. Or maybe GPX style hunting is just better for them. Just my opinion. Again, whatever works.

[Sourdough Scott]

They are way off of what I ran most of the summer. And outside my comfort zone. I did very very well finding gold this summer. But I'm willing to learn and try something different. Thanks for posting Steve! Going detecting in the morning. Got a screen shot of your settings. Will give it a test drive.

[Steve Herschbach]

Don't say I did not warn you. I don't keep close track of my hours but I know I have well over 500 hours on the GPZ and probably took me 300 hours of listening to the machine to get to where I am now. I have used those settings up in your neck of the woods though so it is not just a northern Nevada thing. If the andesite is not giving you good enough signals this will help!

Some places, especially in Nevada these settings actually run pretty quiet. More than I let on really. Problem is I have nothing even hotter to run now so maybe Minelab needs to put in a special "Insane" setting just for me. It would probably make a person sterile running it but I don't want any more kids anyway.

You must be headed for the foothills. Froze up solid over this way this morning. Good luck!!

[Norvic]

That is the most concise settings explanation I`ve heard for the 7000, I`ve been very fortunate to have recently found a close(1/2 hour away) patch that keeps producing at depth and thus have experimented with settings, and basically have gone down the same path as you, except I keep turning back to Bogenes settings for test now and again and find gold again, which confounds me a little. The only logical explanation I have for this is that my hearing and senses has times when they return nearly to what they were, back last century. My sons returns on this patch with his first 7000 use, after I`d flogged it, help to reinforce this logic.

I recall a fair few years back at a ML local demo day, from memory a ML technician felt that if we could have a digital sight response to signals, we`d find the detector is getting a lot more signals then our hearing can process. Perhaps a sort of sights up as per fighter pilots have might be in the future, ie we`ll wear goggles and process signals by sight.

The 7000 does bring back some practices from the VLF days for sure. Sort of back to the future.

[TRINITYAU]

Hello Steve, I have been running the same settings as you recommend now since day one. I also looked at the ZED as an oversized VLF as far as the audio goes, but a VLF it is not. I am very happy with performance. Here in my neck of the woods the ZED is really hitting on the irregular shapes of the local alluvial gold, especially the smaller stuff. I dug a one pennyweight piece last weekend that was down twenty two inches and it sounded very nice, nothing iffy about it. No Smoothing, Normal, High Yield, Gain at Twenty and keep your swing mode low and slow. Just my thoughts, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS.

Check my book out, Detecting for Gold, Adventures, Trips and Tips at

TRINITYAU.COM

[Steve Herschbach]

Norvic, I do have poor hearing and in fact wear hearing aids at times but not when I am detecting (they freak out) so who knows what other people hear compared to what I am hearing. No doubt some of this is to harsh for others and sounds fine to me? Again, that is why they give us controls to adjust. Even if we were all in the same location we all have personal differences to account for.

[Steve Herschbach]

Hello Steve, I have been running the same settings as you recommend now since day one. I also looked at the ZED as an oversized VLF as far as the audio goes, but a VLF it is not. I am very happy with performance. Here in my neck of the woods the ZED is really hitting on the irregular shapes of the local alluvial gold, especially the smaller stuff. I dug a one pennyweight piece last weekend that was down twenty two inches and it sounded very nice, nothing iffy about it. No Smoothing, Normal, High Yield, Gain at Twenty and keep your swing mode low and slow. Just my thoughts, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS.

Check my book out, Detecting for Gold, Adventures, Trips and Tips at

TRINITYAU.COM

 

You are the perfect example of a truly knowledgeable VLF operator Ray so no surprises there. I think a good VLF guy like you has a far easier time learning a GPZ 7000 than somebody who has only used Minelab PI detectors. I am glad to hear the Zed is hitting a sweet spot for you. Really an amazing machine. I have to have Chris weigh my smallest piece as it is too small to accurately weigh even on my digital powder scales. He has some analytic scales. It was no accidental find while digging something else either. I used to walk away from some tiny gold signals with the Zed in early days but have my pinpointing down pat now, and it is crazy how small that big coil will hit. I have no doubt when a smaller coil comes out for the GPZ it will match or beat the SDC2300 on small gold. And as you know it gets the depth on the big stuff for sure.

[nvchris]

Its really not that noisy to me, in fact it seem like when you do hit a target the machine quiets down and returns a nice obvious signal.

 

 

I pretty much run it like I do a GB2, maxed out. 

 

Well articulated and succinct article Steve, Thank you!

[Steve Herschbach]

I agree Chris, it runs surprisingly well maxed out. You and Ray are making me feel better about posting it as sometimes I do just think I'm nuts. It is reassuring to know there are other hot rodders out there. Thanks!