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X-Terra 70 & X-terra 705 As Nugget Detectors?


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8 minutes ago, Haal said:

Well goldskr 4000 I guess you said it all when you said to take the time to learn the machine.  I've decided I like the x-terra 705 and I'm getting the small 6" coil,  It may be comparable to the GMT and  GB2 after all.  Have you ever found any use for the beach ground balance in gold prospecting?

The 705 is a great machine but the GMT and the GB2 are about 10x hotter and even at reduced gain settings they will see much smaller targets, but the 705 will work a bit better on larger Gold in hotter mineralization,

J.

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I have used the beach mode on Scratch Gravel Hills in Helena Montana. The entire hill system is made up of granite. It is rotten and in the gullies you can dig down two feet and constantly hit visible thick layers of magnetic black sand. It helped a little but the quietest detecting I had was with the 15" HF, surprisingly. There have been nuggets found up there as large as 9 ounces detecting. It is definitely an area ideal for pulse induction.

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I have been using the X Terra 705 since 08 or 09 but for me what I have found while using the 705 on hot ground or mild ground that less gain equals more with the 705 and maybe that is why I have gotten along with the GM1000 so well when i am running the X TERRA 705 if I get into an area that has lots of hot rocks or it becomes unstable from the ground I start lowering my sensitivity and it usually quiets down,I run in prospecting mode almost exclusively with tracking activated the thing with the 705 you have to learn to trust that the GB tracking is working which I do trust I have seen GB numbers as high as the mid to high 40s and as low as single digit numbers within a 10 to 20 foot area, with the X Terra 705 the lower the GB numbers the hotter or more mineralized the ground is but even though I run with the GB tracking activated I still will occasionally stop and re ground balance and check the GB numbers just to see what the GB numbers are.

I found the best find for me back in 09 with the 705 while I was living in Ohio the house I owned was built in 1889 and its pretty much what got me into detecting the only info that I could ever find out about the house in my research of it was there was two bank robbers had been arrested in it , it was on about 3/4 of an acre and for the first 3-6 months I did nothing except detect the front and back yards found several mercs some of which were down to 10 or 11 inches deep and other silvers and good things but the best find I ever found and still to this day have not beat for me was under the house which had a basement with an attached crawl space the crawl space had a dirt floor and was big enough that once you were inside of it you could stand up and swing a detector while detecting the crawl space in the furthest back corner I got a hit with numbers that were jumping all over the place I dug up a box that someone had buried it contained all kinds of coins in the box lots of silvers and other coins but the best coins in it was 12- 2.5 dollar gold pieces I don't know at this point what would ever top that find for me maybe that 2 pound gold nugget but for me i will always remember that find

I have always felt the the X TERRA 705 was and still is one of the most under rated detectors on the market,still to this day even though I have been using the 705 for as long as I have been I still learn new things about it that amazes me if you have one and do not like it you haven't given it enough of a chance and learned all of its great features the X TERRA 705 is the one detector that will always be with me until either I or it dies thats how much I love the 705 I have used other detectors but none of the others I took to like I did the 705 me and them just did not click so I ended up getting rid of them but the 705 still lives with me for those thinking about getting the 705 download Randy Horton's E Book on the Minelab site and read it several times its a great free book with lots of great info          

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Interesting DSmith.  I feel that way about the mxt, but in the last 2 weeks I'm being converted.  The xterra 705 is a confusing machine for tech challenged like me, but well worth the effort it turns out.

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2 hours ago, Haal said:

Interesting DSmith.  I feel that way about the mxt, but in the last 2 weeks I'm being converted.  The xterra 705 is a confusing machine for tech challenged like me, but well worth the effort it turns out.

Trust me Haal I am not that tech savvy neither but the one thing I do with the 705 is play with settings in it if I set something up in it that just doesn't seem to work then I do a factory reset and start over thats the way I have learned it, for me it seems I always end up back at the factory settings which always seems to work best for me the other thing I have done is learned to trust what the 705 is telling me and usually the 705 is rite as far as what it is telling me its really hard to explain to someone until the bell goes off in your head and realize to trust what the 705 is saying and believe me it took about 2 -2 1/2 years for that bell to go off in my head but once it did I started having a love affair with the 705 LOL.

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Haal the 705 is actually a very easy detector to learn. Like DSmith said play with it and see what happens each time you try it. A couple things to remember that are very important. If you run the 705 in the preprogrammed coin mode you will rarely find the good old coins because those TID's are blocked out to be rejected. Read Randy Horner's ebook and set one of your preprogrammed modes to open up the tide for those old coins and watch your best and oldest coin finds stacking up. The other thing play with the other tones that are on there. Don't just stick with the 99 tone as minelab calls it. It is actually one tone for each tid notch. Try the 4 tone and two tone. Never ever pass by a target for example 10 12 and with it -6 -8 if those 4 tids keep coming up it will be a nickel with a nail or other piece of iron.

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I really could not tell anyone just what TID numbers associate with any coin because I hunt pretty much exclusively in prospecting mode whether detecting for coins or gold when in prospecting mode there are no TIDs back when I first purchased the 705 I used the coin mode to start out but that was eons ago so I have forgotten all the TID numbers and what TIDs at what  like I said earlier I use prospecting mode pretty much exclusively,which with the prospecting mode I dig by sound if it sounds good I dig that could be another reason I get along with the GM 1000 so well also because while in prospecting mode the X TERRA 705 is a lot like the GM 1000 to me while in all metal or deep mode with the GM, I had even stated that in a post about the GM 1000 when I first got it and started using it that it reminded me a lot of the X TERRA 705 in prospecting mode 

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1 hour ago, goldseeker4000 said:

Haal the 705 is actually a very easy detector to learn. Like DSmith said play with it and see what happens each time you try it. A couple things to remember that are very important. If you run the 705 in the preprogrammed coin mode you will rarely find the good old coins because those TID's are blocked out to be rejected. Read Randy Horner's ebook and set one of your preprogrammed modes to open up the tide for those old coins and watch your best and oldest coin finds stacking up. The other thing play with the other tones that are on there. Don't just stick with the 99 tone as minelab calls it. It is actually one tone for each tid notch. Try the 4 tone and two tone. Never ever pass by a target for example 10 12 and with it -6 -8 if those 4 tids keep coming up it will be a nickel with a nail or other piece of iron.

That is the other thing I do is I use the 2 tone or 4 tone simply because if my brain was to try and process what the 705 is telling me with 99 tones set I would be more nuts then I am now I also feel that with 99 tones set for the detector to process it looses some sensitivity so I am usually set in two tone or four tone,but I have experimented with the 99 tones set and usually only last about and hour tops with it set that way,like I said in an earlier post the best way to get a feel for the 705 is to play with all the settings it is vary easy to go back to the factory settings if you do not like what you have set up but to me that is truly the only way to find out just what the 705 is capable of play with everything that is in it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just a reminder for all who use the 705 for gold. If you utilize the ground balance offset at a given spot you need to go into your setting for the offset and zero out the setting you just set when you are done. If you don't do this the detector will remember and save your last setting and when you go to a new area the 705 can and will act overly sensitive and lead you to think something is wrong with your detector. So remember to zero out that ground balance offset when you leave an area where you have employed this feature.

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  • The title was changed to X-terra 70 & X-terra 705 As Nugget Detectors?
  • The title was changed to X-Terra 70 & X-terra 705 As Nugget Detectors?

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