Let's Give The Detector A Little More Credit

[hawkeye]

I'm going to buck the conventional wisdom that it is 80% ability and 20% the detector.  How big would your pokes be without the superb VLF's like the GMT or the GB2.  What about all the Minelab PI's which revolutionized detecting for gold.  Lately the SDC2300 which provided you with gold you previously walked over.  Now it appears the GPZ7000 is doing the same thing.  Sure you mastered the detector and it provided more gold, but where would you be without it.  Probably walking around with two bent clothes hangers.  I think it is more realistic to give the detector at least 50%.

[Reno Chris]

Yes, the detectors are great, but I disagree with you.

Far too many times I have seen new guys with the latest and best equipment go months and even years without finding a single nugget. No detector can locate gold if it isn't there. You the prospector have to put the coil over a nugget for it to be useful. If you don't have that skill, the detector, no matter how great, cant help you.

[hawkeye]

Chris,

You make a good point.  You are including one's broader skills as a prospector which is valid.  Finding that place to put that detector over detectable gold is getting more and more difficult for the amateur detectorist.  Recently developed detectors such as the SDC2300 and the GPZ7000 are allowing us to find gold in areas that were cleaned out with previous detectors.  For whatever reasons, time, money, age, length of time detecting, many hobby dectectorists do not have the advantage of being able to find new areas to detect or go back to old patches.  A good detector capable of detecting the missed gold offers us a more than 20% advantage.

[RickUK]

Research,location,skill level of the detector operator,the detector that you use and do you fully understand what its telling you and also a bit of luck.

All of these items play a big part in your success,it makes no odds on what type of detecting you do i have never hunted gold nuggets but i do hunt for coins and artifact/hoards and we all adapt techniques for our different types of detecting.

Folks in Aussie land use mainly Pulse machines but you try using one as a general everyday machine on a trashy roman site,it would drive you loopy.

For me detecting is all about enjoying myself,if i ever lost my passion for detecting i would pack up and sell everything.

[Norvic]

I go with that 20% for detector, and add another bit of tech at 20% too, the GPS in conjunction with geological maps, especially the smart phone-oziexplorer app combination. Time prospecting in NQ Oz has shown that.

[jasong]

I think the 80% operator 20% machine is pretty accurate. Patience, perseverance, ambition, knowledge, and field experience account for more than any 1 machine in my book. The maps/phones/etc are a good point too though. Google Earth Aerials, the first Droid phone release, and various historic and geologic map overlays accounted for more finds and discoveries than any 1 detector ever has for me.

[DDancer]

Hawkeye its a very astute assessment of what it takes to prospect in any form.  The tools are just the beginning, not the end.  Shovel, pan and classifier are very basic but they are just tools.  Cant pan gold in Kansas but you might have a shot in Colorado just next door. Thing is prospecting is a gamble and gamblers know the cards before they sit at the table.  Its a tool.

The latest and greatest is just another tool. No different than a rocker box or a Keene dry blower.  You still got to do the work and a bigggg part of that is knowing what your about.

Pretty plain and simple.  Seen plenty of Noobs panning in dead sand.  Been there. Told them what to do and where to go even.... seen more than a few noobs in the right spot doing the right thing and again told them to dig deeper... been there myself.

 

Credit to the tool is one thing.  Credit to the person who figures it out is another.  You have opposable thumbs right? Well that means tool user and tools are only as good as the hands that use them.  Sorry but ML got clever.  Now we are trying to figure out how to use these thumbs and be more clever Hahh!

[mn90403]

One of the 'selling points' of the 7000 detector has been the idea that an operator could go back to where gold has been found and you will now find more.  The operator will find gold that was missed and gold that was deeper than the previous detectors could find.  (The machine could be worth more than 20%!)

I think from what I have not seen posted by many operators and what I have heard from a few of my friends is that this is somewhat of an illusion shattered.  Many dozens if not hundreds of detector hours on certain patches has indeed depleted them of big and small gold.  Being the first operator with this new detector on a big gold site has not won the day. (Of course it is very early.)

The research shortcut of going back to old patches has given my friends less than spectacular production.  Now we will all move on in our search for gold with a more powerful detector to patches less detected or perhaps undetected. (75/25?)  If motivated, operators can do this with the old machines also. (80/20?)

The advantage this new machine will give some of us will be the renewed spirit and for some the very real advantage of being more powerful than our old machines.  Anything that pushes us for a few extra minutes, makes us go on an additional trip or gives us the ability to find more gold could bring us in contact with that nugget of significance.  How does one separate this between a machine and an operator?

Ask the operators you know how many different types of machines they have used to find gold.  Some will be restricted to one or two machine types and others will list many machines or even no machine.  These are the men and women who use a detector as a tool in area that holds gold.  That is the 80%.

The new machine will become an excuse to go to some places not previously detected or a difficult place and gold will be found for them with this new detector too.

Will it be 80/20?  70/30?  50/50?  What will matter most is using it.

Jim Straight's old adage holds true again:  A detector in a closet only finds dust!

I hope we all find more than dust this year. 

[Steve Herschbach]

The 80/20 thing for me is based on many years of watching detectorists with similar equipment at Ganes Creek and Moore Creek, Alaska so there is actual field observation to back it up. At my Moore Creek mine almost everyone used the latest Minelab gear. The novices were lucky to find any gold in a week, the experts found gold every day. That is not an exaggeration. I will post a compilation of results which we recorded weekly for several years plus some I have from Ganes Creek to illustrate when I have time. 

It is not that better equipment does not matter. Where equipment matters is when you eliminate the novices and only deal with experts. If I am in a hunt with a number of guys that really know their stuff, I will if possible use better gear than they have. However, that does not always mean what you think. Sometimes that means breaking out the Gold Bug 2 when everyone else is running a PI. That again is where the skill and knowledge thing kicks in.

Operator skill being equal better detectors do matter. But the difference between what an expert prospector/detectorist can do versus the run of the mill types is stunning. I have seen it in action way too often to have any doubt at all in that matter.

[flakmagnet]

One line of questioning that often comes up in the forums I follow

is when people ask for a list of the settings being used by detectorists in a particular area.

 

But the real question is WHY are those settings being used.

What are the specific conditions that necessitated the setting adjustments 

and how do those adjustments interact with each other and effect the overall tuning of the machine.

 

This is one of the reasons why people like JP and you are such valuable teachers for all of us.

You are able to talk about how the different settings affect the overall tuning of the detector

(technical knowledge), and why those choices are being made in the first place (prospecting knowledge).

 

Unless an operator begins to understand that approach,

they will be not learn to make their own decisions about how to use the settings to best advantage.

That seems to be where the prospecting knowledge and the techical understanding of the detector

come together to become the 80% so many of us reference.