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Minelab CTX 3030 for Gold Nuggets


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Ron (CA) has shown at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/292-minelab-ctx-3030-finds-25-ounce-gold-nugget/ what should be obvious - the Minelab CTX 3030 can find large gold nuggets. Lately, I have been getting very interested again in just what detectors would serve me best hunting mineralized nail infested tailing piles looking for gold nuggets. The Minelab PI detectors and Garrett ATX have limited ability to identify ferrous stuff but both fail at depth and when the trash gets really thick. So a VLF is still needed for some situations.

The Minelab CTX is not particularly hot on small gold but it is exceptionally quiet on nails and other ferrous stuff that produce high tone false signals on other VLF detectors. This also makes the Minelab multi-frequency units more prone to masking, but that is less an issue in tailing piles than around a cabin site.

Which is why I found this video of the CTX and the new Coiltek 10" x 5" DD interesting. It would be a good nugget coil for the CTX, but the $369 price tag is unfortunately quite steep. I may have to make do with my Minelab coils for now, but if the CTX proves out for me this coil may be a future acquisition.

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Lately, I have been getting very interested again in just what detectors would serve me best hunting mineralized nail infested tailing piles looking for gold nuggets.

What happened to that guy who told me that if you find gold in an area, you have to dig it all anyway?  ;)

He also told me how much a detector looses in the way of depth with the filters that give you discrimination.  ;)

All kidding aside, detectors are tools, and you want to choose the right tool for the job, so its important not to get too locked into one tool or technology. There is a place and situation for most detector technologies (though some overlap of similar detectors by different makers).

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On 10/16/2014 at 6:31 PM, Reno Chris said:

What happened to that guy who told me that if you find gold in an area, you have to dig it all anyway?  ;)

He also told me how much a detector looses in the way of depth with the filters that give you discrimination.  ;)

All kidding aside, detectors are tools, and you want to choose the right tool for the job, so its important not to get too locked into one tool or technology. There is a place and situation for most detector technologies (though some overlap of similar detectors by different makers).

Yup, I know that guy, and he is absolutely right!

The key part being "if you find gold in an area". If faced with a mile of new area littered with nails, just where is the gold at? Rather than start at one end with a PI digging nails for eternity, a VLF may serve as a recon tool to maybe, if a person gets lucky, find an indicator nugget or two. Then, with the location narrowed down, bring in the PI and dig everything.

I know you know that. Every place and location calls for a different strategy. Dig it all is a great theory but other realities intrude. The main being how much junk there is and how much time is available to deal with it.

There are no doubt many places PI users have been avoiding for the sheer amount of junk. Old campsites in particular. We have all seen them and walked away from them when toting a PI. A good VLF could really pay off in such locations. As Ron's videos proved. http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/292-minelab-ctx-3030-finds-25-ounce-gold-nugget/

But once a given location proves to have gold, yeah - dig it all!

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Nails or pieces of wire will produce a double type tone such a ..woo / woo...woo / woo.. on a PI with a mono coil but only if they are laying horizontal to the coil.

But how far away from the coil will this type of response still persist to enable a reliable discrimination at depth over a VLF on this type target is the question?

Although nails or pieces of wire would be more likely to be laying at the horizontal in the ground so a PI would detect them at a greater depth with the double tone.

However in a tailings situation they would be laying in all types of directions.

Would the CTX 3030 discriminate a nail at the same depth no matter which direction the nail was to the coil for example, vertical, horizontal or at an angle?

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Funny thing about that double hit is that it can be so wrong, I had a target in a trashy wash last year that was right in the middle in a shallow area with some exposed bedrock, which made an perfect double hit and was loud enough that I was sure it was trash and I almost moved on, there were all kinds of detector digs all around that spot so I know everyone else passed on it, but for some reason I tried to pick it up with my magnet and when it wouldn't pick up I scraped the area and saw a deep crack and after I blew the crack out with a straw I found a three pennyweight nugget that was a cylinder shape about an inch and a half long . I was shocked because of the double hit, it snapped be back into that mindset that you just can't prejudge a target.

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Got a great double hit last summer. Was digging everything anyway but I told myself "nail". It was a nail a few inches from a 1/4 oz nugget.

The Minelab BBS and FBS detectors have exceptional ferrous discrimination, perhaps the best money can buy. The only issue is nuggets very close to ferrous stuff, like my example above, can be hidden or "masked" by the nearby ferrous item. One of the big issues today in new detectors is work on reducing this masking effect. Bottom line is there are lots of PI tricks you can use to reduce digging ferrous items but none so reliable as using a VLF. Not to say VLF detectors do not have issues also. Nothing is perfect and no magic answers for this issue. It is just another tool in the toolkit for possible use in situations that vary widely from location to location.

Some people can dig nails all day with no problem, others hate digging any at all. It is hard to say one way or the other is right or wrong per se, each of us has to find a combination that works for us. If you hate digging nails so much you are going to quit detecting an area anyway, there is little to be lost by using a VLF to make the situation more acceptable.

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Just goes to show in the 2 previous postings that you can not that rely on what I said above.

 

I wonder will the next model Minelab PI detector for nugget hunting look similar to the CTX 3030 with a screen on top of the hand grip a built in battery system, wireless headphones and no cables exposed or to get tangled up in, just turn on and off you go as is the SDC 2300, but not standard with a small coil for small nuggets, but with a larger coil for larger nuggets.

 

Just my thoughts on the next ML detector going by the success people are having with the, compact turn on and go, SDC 2300. 

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I remember detecting at Moore Creek with my 3000 and I was sure I had the discrimination down to an art and then I almost left a two ounce nugget in a hole because it blanked out perfectly, it was textbook, needless to say I turned the discrimination off

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