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bought my first detector which is a gold racer. I detect mainly in the area from octave road to box canyon (Stanton az.) the ground has a lot of hot rocks also just a lot of rocks hard to keep coil on the ground. I started with the sensitivity and threshold on the high end in the 70-80 range just screaming in the head phones. after watching the video that was on this site now have set sensitivity at 15 threshold at 19 can now hear those whispers but no id on screen still dig all (quite a collection of lead and foil) maybe I should have started with a gold bug detector. I will keep swing what I have and hope to try a pi detector some day. being out in the desert taking in the beauty around me keeps a smile on my face also some yellow to make that whisper would be sooo great to.

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It is hard to start with a high performance race car when you never driven before. You are on the right track - back off the sensitivity, a lot! You need to make life easier and have the detector running as smooth as possible.

As far as digging lead and foil - if you are not you are really doing it wrong. Every foil or bullet target tells you that you are running your machine correctly. The smaller and deeper the foil and lead bits, the better you can consider yourself to be doing. Flip it around, dig them and tell yourself "could have been a nugget" and go dig some more. The only thing target id is possibly good for is telling you that you have a ferrous target, and even then it is not 100% reliable. If the target id bangs hard on 21 over and over, it is almost assuredly ferrous. Dig everything else until you learn the machine better.

From my review at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1387-detailed-review-of-makro-gold-racer-by-steve-herschbach/

"All Metal is the heart and soul of nugget detecting, and the Makro Gold Racer has an extremely powerful, smooth, and sensitive threshold based all metal mode. The Sensitivity setting is familiar to anyone who has used a metal detector, except that there are three base levels of sensitivity or gain. Significant boosts occur between 39 - 40 and again between 69 - 70. Most detectors max out at what is a setting of 69 on the Gold Racer. Settings of 70 and above are a type of hyper gain setting that takes the machine above and beyond, but in extreme ground overload signals may occur. Overload signals are indicated by a “warning siren” audio and the machine is telling you that there is either a large metal object under the coil, or that you are encountering extreme mineralization. In the case of mineralization, either raise the coil slightly while scanning, lower the sensitivity setting, or both. Overloads occurring at 70 will almost always be eliminated by dropping to 69.

Rest assured very little is lost by lowering sensitivity to 69 or below, again, because many detectors cannot be set as hot as the Gold Racer even at their maximum setting. Do you ever run detectors and have the distinct feeling some performance has been left on the table, because the detector can always be run at maximum settings? Makro has given you that extra power for where it can be used, but in doing so they expect you will lower settings in places where that extra power works against you. Luckily, the audio alert makes it easy to know when this is. Most people do not know it but many detectors simply shut down and quit working under similar conditions with no indication at all to the operator, a situation referred to as “silent masking”."

Be patient, it takes lots of that. The truth is that unfortunately some ground was just made for a PI and running a VLF on that type of ground can challenge the best of operators.

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I too have had not much success with the gold racer. But only because I don't use it much. I have really no need having the GPZ 7000. But on a side note, wife and I were driving on the California Oregon border. We drove past this Potato farm. I then yelled at the wife. I said " dammit I wanted the Russet potatoes, not the red potatoes.  You got the Wong Potatoes" . We then laughed for a half hour. Lol. 

2017_050514_2854_864.png

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You actually have the right detector....you just need another detector...

strick

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