Well.....what do you think of the GPZ 7000???

Is there going to be much of a market for it?-----Who is going to buy it?---Better have deep pockets!

All I can do is drool over that one!

ALOT of guys have already bought them Del. The usual suspects, you know, the hardcore nuggetshooters that always purchase Minelabs latest/greatest. Lots of reports on Steves forum, www.detectorprospector.com.

Pretty safe to say this is a machine only for those who have a high confidence in their ability to find gold nuggets in quantity. That said, I am surprised how many are being purchased given the high price. There was a short period of doubt but now it seems most of the guys who have been at this awhile are getting or already have a GPZ. Frankly, too many too quickly for my liking!

The main problem the GPZ would have for relic hunting is that it is extremely sensitive to small items. I am finding 2-3 grain gold nuggets which is pretty amazing considering we are talking a 13" x 14" DOD coil. The tiniest ferrous bits signal. There is no discrimination to speak of other than that afforded by the dual tone responses but they do not work the same as on the Minelab PI units and so you can pretty much figure on digging it all with a GPZ. There is a Deep mode that is less sensitive to small stuff and that combined with maybe keeping the coil an inch off the ground would help deal with tiny surface trash but anyone running a GPZ as a relic machine is going to have more power than they know what to do with. It is not something I would want to tackle and I have a pretty high pain threshold when it comes to digging junk.

The unit also is not fond of salt and alkali soil and there is no true salt mode so it really is not a salt beach unit. I would use mine at the beach but would not buy one for that purpose.

It is an amazingly powerful detector and since it is not a pulse induction machine there is a strong possibility of discrimination in the future so it will be interesting to see what the future brings. But for now I am sure this is a machine that will not be seen often outside the goldfields.

Thank you for that insight/info Steve---very interesting indeed.