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Detecting Lode Gold


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My interest in detecting placer gold occasionally waivers and I find myself wanting to find and stake claim to a profitable hard rock mine. 

Other than the Gold Bug 2 what detectors have you used with success to locate pay-streaks or pockets in hard rock?

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I wish, it's on my bucket list.

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 I have a friend, who due to working an area where detecting is now frowned upon, uses a falcon probe...and finds plenty of quartz with gold that my f-19 wont hit on. Just an idea.

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I've had a Falcon, it will hit on small gold but extremely temperamental, that and it's useless when trying to cover a large amount of rock as it is more for spot sampling - I'd like to stick with a somewhat conventional detector.

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Gold Bug 2 with 6" coil still gets the nod from me. The White's Goldmasters/GMT I have used and they work well also. The Gold Racer and AU Gold Finder I have not used for that particular task but they may be in the same ball park as the Goldmasters.

The Bug is good because you can belt mount the control box and just use the 6" coil on the lower rod as a probe/scanner. The AU Gold Finder would be good for the same reason.

I have a Falcon and concur 100%. Useful for spot checking but impractical for bulk scanning.

That is all good for fairly clean ore. If you have a lot of iron mineralization or conductive sulphides the SDC 2300 might be the best option as the VLFs are going to false too much.

Detecting Lode Gold At Hatcher Pass, Alaska

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Find a promising vein or good looking float; with a crack hammer bust all pieces up as uniform as possible(golf ball size is ideal) and fill a large mortar tub about  one layer deep of choice pieces. Run the GB2 w/sniper coil over material from several directions, shuffle and do it once more. If you get a hit, pull that piece, wash it with water and look for free gold. No free gold then check with the Falcon or go right to crush and pan.

Although requiring patience it is the most efficient system I know for finding gold in quartz, I use it and it works. A "snowbird prospector" showed me this several years ago out in Quartzite. Honestly I would rather do this than dig trash all day.

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On 09/03/2016 at 10:15 AM, AU_Solitude said:

My interest in detecting placer gold occasionally waivers and I find myself wanting to find and stake claim to a profitable hard rock mine. 

Other than the Gold Bug 2 what detectors have you used with success to locate pay-streaks or pockets in hard rock?

Other than a Gold Bug 2, I've used Goldmaster's from the GM11,VSat, 3, GMT, a large variety of early minelab VLF's to current, and quite a few Euro high gain output units along with three Fishers with ggrab.

To be honest, any of the mid to higher freq units are ideal, and light, for that type of work (for myself it's chasing an off-shoot vein both inside and offside of old reef workings) but as the majority of these carry their fair share of unbroken ironstone in the form of very powdery honeycomb type, ironstone/quartz cake and the heavy cooked solid types, along with red liverstone, the minelab vlf's do hold a distinct advantage over the more sparky units.

It is reversed in quartz/clay type reef. The higher gain output units push much more deeper here with a heap more sensitivity, and allow for fiercer digging.

And performance is pretty much on par across the board between them so I do not necessarily have a favorite.

As for the SDC, I found them more cumbersome than the lightweight higher gain output VLF's, and not hitting any deeper or handling the noisier rock any better, in fact some of the slanted shale they particular hate and are 5/8ths useless through it.

I would bother with a Falcon, probably one of the most useless pieces of equipment I've ever owned.

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