I’m new to both this website and metal detecting. I inherited a Minelab GPX 4500 recently and have spent a few hours familiarising myself with it.I’ve trolled through YouTube videos and the like which have been helpful but there are a couple of issues I’d like to get sorted before I hit the hills. Is there anyone out there in Central Otago specifically Cromwell who owns or is familiar with this machine that would be willing to make contact with a view to getting me sorted?
Hi 8140,
The 4500 is a great machine, and you’re in the right part of the country to use it 
You face two separate challenges,
a) learn how to use your 4500, get confident at selecting settings, interpreting the noises it makes, and recovering targets
b) identify + access locations where you can wave your coil over some detectable gold
I found these dvds very helpful with a)
https://outbackprospector.com.au/categories/dvds-books/dvds.html
Also check out this US forum which is heavily focussed on nugget detecting Metal Detecting & Gold Prospecting Forums - DetectorProspector.com
And last but not least, reading the manual is helpful!
Though new to detecting, do you have experience finding gold? If not, b) will be the challenging part.
In that case, if you know someone who knows someone, that you can tag along with prospecting for a day, even if they don’t use a detector, will help shorten the learning curve.
Research is also key, because the gold needs to be big enough to detect. Ideally you want shallow workings or streams that are known to have produced nuggety gold in the past
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To start off with a GPX 4500, you are in for a long learning curve. Add to that, that the Central Otago gold areas have been hammered to death for years by all makes & models & all the various coils that come with them. The gold doesn’t grow back once found & removed. Very difficult these days to find. You will find lots of shot gun pellets & .22 shells & their lead bullet heads. Well maybe not too many as I have found & removed more than my fair share of those over the years. The 4500 is a great detector but the gold has to be there to be found & sadly these days it is a very rare commodity. We are lucky in NZ that our ground conditions are very mild & we can generally run in the high end sensitive settings.
So what do you mean by getting you sorted? Are you wanting to be put on to gold locations? That only takes a bit of research & being in Cromwell you are spoilt for choice but as I have said those areas have been thrashed. To learn your detector, The instruction manual is a good place to start. If you don’t have one it is online & you can print it off. You can go out & bury some test targets (lead is good) of different sizes at different depths to learn the ability (depth & sensitivity) of your machine. Coil selection makes a big difference too. Mono, DD & sizes. Elliptical or round. Flat wound windings or bundle wound or spiral wound. The list is endless.
Nothing quite like the price of gold going through the roof to get people excited about finding gold. But it isn’t that easy these days & no gold is easy gold.
Just enjoy the journey & the learning curve & enjoy the out doors. Don’t get too hung up on making your fortune. Very unlikely to happen.
Best of luck out there.
JW 
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Thank you very much for your input and your time taken presenting it to me. Yes there’s obviously more to detecting than I imagined. I’m up for the challenge though.