Looking for GP3500 advice

Just got a great deal on a GP3500. I go down to VA a couple times a year and want to use this when I go down in March. Looking for any tips at all. Never ran a PI unit before so treat me like I am dumb because I am when it comes to these units. I am hearing that the ground mineralization does not affect these so can I build a test garden here and expect to get similar results in the Red VA soil?

"Well got! The 3500 is/was a great detector.

Yeah...you're right to a certain point: ground mineralisation doesn't matter to certain GPX units but it does matter to the 'lowly' GP3500

But you could go ahead and do your test garden just to get used to how the detector sounds on whatever you care to put into your test patch?

When you get to VA, you can expect severe cutback and some difficulty ground balancing as you probably won't be able to balance out ALL the mineralisation levels?

On the GPX4800 & 5000, 2 New Timings were introduced and these enabled GPX' to GB [ for the first time I might add ] in virtually every soil/s found. Or at least that's what was claimed.

If I remember rightly, I wrote an article about the GP3500 many years ago? I'll see if I can find it and if you cast an eye over it it might help with some basics?"

Depending on what you paid for it, you didn't do too awful bad in detector choice. I have had most of the machines from the GP Extreme up to the GPX 5000. The GP Extreme is the one you kinda want to steer clear of. There was a big discrepancy between unit to unit of those. Some were great and some were sub par. It got such a bad reputation that Minelab decided to sell the "good to go" units under a different name to avoid confusion and ...thus the GP 3500 rolled out. The GPs will still get the job done for relic hunting...no doubt. The GPX models have more timings but those timings are geared towards finding gold; basically the GP machines are running in what the GPX machines call "Normal" timing. Normal is what most people use when relic hunting with those machines anyway. I am the odd ball and would run my GPX in the Sens Extra timing but I was known to swap back and forth to clean a site out pretty good. They use a different battery pack than the GPX machines....the GPX has a built in speaker amp in its battery. The GPs do not...which means that some headphones will not be loud enough when plugged in. The earlier GPs are also more prone to EMI than the later GPX counter parts. I could tell a big difference between the GPXs and the GP Extreme when I ran them in the same sites. The coils are all interchangeable in case you find one of those you might want to try. Overall, if you got that GP 3500 for under $800 or so, you did fine and it'll do just fine. Leaked word from the Minelab dealer thing last week, is that a new lower priced gold machine is coming out this year from them. Not sure if it is a PI or VLF machine though. I would assume it is a stripped down GPX; I guess we will know before too much longer.

Daniel Tn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The GP Extreme is the one you kinda want to
> steer clear of. There was a big discrepancy betwe
> en unit to unit of those. Some were great and som
> e were sub par. It got such a bad reputation that
> Minelab decided to sell the "good to go" units und
> er a different name to avoid confusion and ...thus
> the GP 3500 rolled out.
>

"Daniel,

Excuse me for asking but where did you come by the information you outlined above? I worked with Minelab for 14yrs and this is the first I heard about "bad reputation of some units" etc?"

Des D

Des,

I ran across the info from several sources when I was researching the GP Extreme before I purchased it. There were several places I found that mentioned the hot/cold units in the Extreme line. I almost didn't buy it because of what I had read but I asked the seller if they would air test a nickel for me and was satisfied with the results they gave me.

[www.detectorprospector.com]

Is one source that I found for it that I just did a real quick Google search for. I was wrong though...it was the GP 3000 that was the successor to the GP Extreme and not the 3500.

Thanks for all the good advice.

I bought the unit with the stock lead acid battery as well as the Li Po batteries and amplifier unit for $500. I need to replace the Li Po batteries as they have sat for several years drained but see I can get a pair of them for under $50. I know I was able to bring a couple of the CTX3030 batteries back to life with a good 16 hour charge cycle bit that has not helped with these batteries.