How about trying to set them the other way around? In the source the default values are:
maxVisibleScale = 100000000.0;
minVisibleScale = 0.0;
What to call max and min in this case is often a source of confusion, as technically 1/1 is larger than 1/3000. But it seems the naming of properties was chosen by comparing values of denominators only, 3000 > 0.