Impact On Gold

[PhaseTech]

Hi all, 

While up in the goldfields earlier this week I tried the Impact on a trashy spot. I used the stock 11x7" coil in the All-metal Gen mode and 20 kHz. I was very impressed at how well it ran. 

I was in "warmish" mineralisation. Mild sandy wash, but with various sized hot rocks. It was where a forest track cuts across a creek/gully. This particular junction has quite a bit of trash, so I just detected along ignoring any very low numbers. Most targets dug were non-ferrous. I got fooled on one large bit of wire that was sitting upright. I dug about 4 hot rocks that were a very faint but good sounding signal, but not strong enough to register any ID on the screen. The most impressive dig was a nice clear hit ID of 35, and I dug down and it was a small round seal off a juice bottle, which was sitting on it's edge. No gold, but Zed's have cleaned up all the fainter signals in this spot so no surprises there. My settings were Sens 66-72 and iSat on 6. I wasn't using Tracking, so was re-ground balancing using the trigger. 

I've done some tests using the smaller 7.5" elliptical in 20 kHz, against the Fors Gold+ (19 kHz) with the 5" coil, and there really isn't much in it. The Gold+ has a little bit more aggressive sound to it, but the Impact is smoother, sounds pretty much like an older wiser Gold Racer  

The threshold and tone adjustments steps in the Impact are spot on - two features I rate very highly for a unit to be taken seriously as a gold machine. It's really looking to be an excellent all-rounder. 

[Steve Herschbach]

I wish Nokta had spread the frequency more. Like 5 - 14 - 30 kHz. The Nokta/Makro units already run really hot and so there is not much difference going from 14 to 20 kHz.

I expect the Impact to be an extremely capable gold detector for a VLF but at the end of the day I offer the same criticism with it that I have in other multi purpose machines. And that is that machines like a DEUS or Impact are first and foremost for people who really are looking to own one detector to do multiple things with the emphasis being on coin, relic, and jewelry. If all a person wants is a VLF purely to go prospecting, then I think machines made as dedicated prospecting units are the better way to go.

Thats not to say you give anything up going to something like the Impact. Not at all. Just the opposite in fact and what you get is a ton of features at a higher price. It's just that most of those extra features will go unused by the average prospector yet you pay for them.

To me the real promise in a machine like the Impact is that you have extra ground handling by way of frequency that a single frequency machine lacks. So in theory a person can be running at 20 kHz and doing well. Then that person runs into some bad hot rocks that really light up at 20 kHz. In theory dropping back to 5 kHz should really help smooth things out and allow the machine to punch much deeper in bad ground on larger gold, especially if the large 15" coil was used. So the way I would tend to look at the Impact is as a great machine for a person wanting to hunt large gold in bad ground running the large coil, and still have a small gold sniper running a smaller coil at 20 kHz.

At some point I will round up the large coil and sort all of this out but I am in no rush so you may beat me to it Nenad. I am in particular interested in how the Impact with 15" coil at different frequencies stacks up against the Gold Racer with 15" coil.

Thanks for the report!