Gold Prospecting With The Garrett Atx

[Steve Herschbach]

Hi Jim,

Maximum sensitivity is about all I ever run on the ATX. Frankly, it appears to me a bit more could be squeezed out of the detector. I like when I run the sensitivity too high on a detector and it becomes unstable, so I back it down a bit. That just never seems to happen on my ATX. I do think running at max contributes the the coil bump sensitivity I experience at times, but like anything else I have learned to deal with it.

Hopefully you will have a thread about your latest adventures. Successful ones I hope!

[Jonathan Porter]

Hey Steve, really nice nugget. I get the feeling you could find gold with just about anything, even an LRL. :-) I enjoyed the ATX and found gold with it pretty quickly even in the mineralized dirt here in Central QLD, but the falsing was an issue for me. I agree on the Sensitivity for the ATX, flat out was my GO-TO as well.

JP

[Steve Herschbach]

Hello JP,

There are still many gold nuggets out there just waiting for the first coil to get over them. Most of the ground I hunt is not nearly as mineralized as that in Australia. Therefore, most of the larger nuggets I find, I would have found regardless of the detector I was using. In other words, I found the nugget, not the detector.

The smaller nuggets I find tend to impress me more about the detector I am using than the large nuggets. There is a reason the big gold nuggets disappear so quickly from new patches. Most of them are easy to find. It is the smaller stuff that challenges prospector and machine.

A lot of places around here, the bedrock is not very deep. Gold tends to be surface gold. Unfortunately, that means getting more depth on an old patch often does not reveal new large nuggets down deep.

Luckily, I have lots of hours to burn, and I am patient. Put me in gold bearing geology, and I am the blind squirrel that will find a nut now and then. It is the hours I put in that matter more than anything.

I know you know all that about me. I am not as good as you are at squeezing the last possible bit of technical performance out of a detector through proper tuning and hardware enhancements. I hope you are having a very profitable year!

[Steve Herschbach]

Ray, I have been following the Kinzli Forum and Friendly Forum watching the action on the California beaches last winter. It is what made me decide to be on storm watch this winter, and the forums are my alert system. I love detecting for gold, and gold found in a park or beach suits me just as well as any. Some nuggets found on beaches come with diamonds attached!

[azblackbird]

The satisfaction of figuring things out and making a good call means more to me than the nugget. It is what real prospecting is all about.

 

Now you get it.

[Steve Herschbach]

Now I get it? I got it 40 years ago.

[azblackbird]

Now I get it? I got it 40 years ago.

 

When you stated… "I was ecstatic. I have to tell you that nugget really means a lot to me. Why? Because the location I was hunting was nothing anyone pointed out to me. I was running around looking at some old prospects and had a theory going on the geology and where the gold was coming from. I decided the location would be good on my own just based on what I was seeing, and I scored a really great nugget. The satisfaction of figuring things out and making a good call means more to me than the nugget. It is what real prospecting is all about."

 

I was assuming that you normally don't do a whole lot of research on new prospects and usually hit known and pounded areas when looking for gold. My bad if I made the wrong assumption. Personally, I try to stay away from the "tourist areas" and totally rely on my research, limited knowledge of geology, and what mother nature is trying to tell me when prospecting for gold. When I find that first nugget in an area that "there is no gold", then I know I'll have accomplished something! It could be next week, next month, or next year, but I'm gonna keep prospecting in areas that I think the old timers might have missed.   

[Steve Herschbach]

I'm speechless. That takes some doing.

[Jonathan Porter]

Hi Steve, I think our approaches are the same, mine is just due to 21 years based in an extreme environment that requires tweaking of the equipment to drag every scrap of depth possible and the fact I'm HUNGRY for every gram of gold that might be available to help pay the bills. (I'm sure you are too BTW)

Believe it or not the gold I find is generally on the small side too, it is the stuff I'm always chasing as its the gold that keeps me fed. As an example getting a 1 gram piece at 14 inches is very exciting for me, especially if it is due to a deliberate change in the way I've gone about getting it, getting an ounce of small stuff in quick order especially at depth is right up there with my all time favorite occasions.

The ATX was fun for this very reason, it required a lot of input from me, drawing on every ounce of skill I had to be successful, something I found extremely satisfying when I started to find gold with it. I'm sure if I had had the time I could have found decent gold with it, but alas time is something I only have in short supply, so I have to go with the machine that has the most grunt in the ground I work.

Your forum is fast becoming a favorite hang out of mine Steve, keep up the good work, I cherish my morning coffee time reading it's pages.

JP

Can you see the sun baker, heard a tiny little whisper, looked down and there it was.

[Steve Herschbach]

Thanks Jonathan, I am pleased with the way the forum is going, due to great posts from everyone.

 

Amazing how gold just jumps out. My eye barely registered the photo before seeing the nugget. If I have to spend much time looking it rarely turns out to be gold. the nuggets just pop out of the dirt pile. Or on the ground, as may be the case.