Five Rp Bits With Some New Settings

[jasong]

Nice drizzly and cold day today, suits me perfect since I can't stand heat, I had Rye Patch all to myself. I'm not very familiar with this area so I was just out to test settings on the Z and get a bunch of swinging time in since I've been mostly patch hunting with the 45. Got 5 all from one side of a small feeder wash near what I'm assuming is the main area.

Sens 18

High Yield

Normal and Difficult (switching as required)

High Audio Smoothing

Kind of going the opposite direction with the settings and running the machine really hot but then letting the High audio smoothing stabilize the whole mess. I'm liking this in ground that allows it. I know the general consensus is Difficult/No Audio Smoothing/Low Sensitivty, but the advantage to running HIGH is that it kills almost all EMI, eliminates a lot of "smooshy" hot ground noise, but still lets the sharper target signals in when you kick up the sens and move into Normal.

Anyone else trying the same? Again, only good where you are lucky to have low mineral ground. But I found this was more palatable to me than running in medium sensitivity and HY/Diff/Low Audio surprisingly, even on a few hot patches.

I ran the GB2 over the little patch I found and didn't come up with any more gold but I did get a few sub grain size pieces of tin and a couple pieces of tiny candy foil that the Z missed. 

I really want more adjustment control on the Audio Smoothing like a slider instead of 3 discrete functions. Also, having 2 more ground settings would be great, one in between Normal/Diff and one between Diff/Severe. Or a slider if that's possible, but I'm guessing the ground timings are their own thing seperately.

[cobill]

Jason, great gold from RP! It's interesting how the different settings can reduce EMI and the ground noise. How deep were the bits and did you notice any major loss of depth when using the High Audio Smoothing? I see you're still running the Sens at 18!

 

Bill

[NuggetBob]

Sweet swizzle sticks! That's some purty gold, congrats!

[Gerry in Idaho]

Jason,  Good to see you starting to get the feel of the GPZ.  It is totally different technology than the GPX and guys like you who were very well at home with w GPX in hand need to spend some time learning the new beast and its functions/features.  I like how you are trying different settings, as that is what will help you get the most out of the machine.  The manual is just a guide to get folks started and then from there the fine tuning (if needed) is up to you.

The reason there are not more controls and settings is because most folks wanted a more user friendly detector.  The GPX-5000 has way more settings than most people like and that is why some of the guys still keep their GP-3000's.  Its all in what you prefer and can afford. Thanks for the comments, settings and info for others.  Well Done.

[russ]

I use to hunt with a friend that would set up his gold bug 2 with the sens maxed out at 10 and the volume maxed out at 10, but the only way he could do this was to turn the threshold down and run silent... no threshold at all and if he still got ground noise he would dumb the detector down even more by lifting the coil and hunt a few inches off the ground.  This was his way of handling the annoying squawks of the highly mineralised ground and or ground loaded with ironstones. 

 

My point is I'm not sure at what costs or what he lost by dumbing down a detector to max out the sensitivity...  Just something I've always wondered about. It might be totally different on the GPZ.

[Steve Herschbach]

Best is what works.

A big issue in metal detector land is stability versus depth and sensitivity. Usually, the hotter you make a detector the more noise you get in the form of ground noise and potentially electrical interference.

In VLF detectors this has been a big issue with the Fisher F75. It is an extremely hot, high gain detector, but had always had issues with being noisy. So noisy in some urban areas as to be unusable. Recent upgrades to the machine focused on alleviating this issue, only to create more problems with lost depth and sensitivity. It has pretty much been sorted out now, but it highlights how hard it is to create extremely powerful metal detectors that can run quietly, only detecting what we want.

Early Minelab PI detectors all had a warble that kind of drove me nuts. I would hear it in my head hours after turning the machine off! Newer models improved the threshold until the GPX got it perfect.

Now, in an attempt to get hotter, we got the SDC 2300 along with a ratty threshold some people find unpleasant. You can tame the noise but at the same time you lose an edge in sensitivity. Maybe. If the noise is distracting you so much you miss a signal, that is no good either. There is a lot to be said for smooth, stable theshold sounds. It allows faint signals to stand out as opposed to hearing a sharper faint signal in the midst of a barrage of noise.

The GPZ is not as bad as the SDC and can be made to run with a smooth threshold but the operator still faces what I think is a personal choice issue. Some people can tolerate more noise on a continuous basis and still pick out actual targets when they occur. Others lose those targets in the midst of the noise and are better served making the threshold as smooth as possible to make the targets more obvious.

I don't think ultimately anyone can say one method is better than the other. In theory suppressing the noise may suppress some edge of detection targets. But if the noise makes the actual act of metal detecting oppressive for the operator that is going to be a losing situation. Doing this all day for days on end, I need the experience to be pleasant. I am not out there to torture myself to the point of being relieved to quit detecting. It is tiring enough work as it is.

Long winded response but I like what you are doing jasong. I think there is room for both methodologies. I tend to go for smooth and relatively quiet when spending long hours patch hunting. I want to go for a nice wander and enjoy life without listening to noise all day. But when I am on that patch, getting real down and dirty, that is the time to pull out the stops and run the machine hotter and noisier if need be, especially on pounded patches.

One thing for sure. A tame GPZ is still more powerful than almost any detector on the planet regardless of settings!

Still learning myself. I figure by the end of summer I will have it sorted out, but until then all the notes we can all contribute about the GPZ and our experiences will help us all. Thanks!

[jasong]

Bill, all were fairly shallow between 3-7 inches, between 0.12 grams and 0.77 grams and all were good signals a couple a bit subtle. High audio smoothing definitely loses depth/sensitivity, but being able to run in normal plus the upped sensitivity seemed to make up for it and give a more stable threshold(maybe?). Not sure if it was better or worse than factory preset, but it was different and quiet enough and seemed to be deeper so figured I'd just pass it on.

I like hunting that way with the GB2 too Russ.   Though I'm slowly coming around to a more variable approach. That's the general idea that's been rolling around in my head though, kind of what you, Steve, and Gerry are talking about, experimenting around, push it one way to see what bends on the other side, find compromises, find extremes, find something that suits individual detecting preference somewhere in between.

The thing that I liked running the Z this way was that it definitely smoothed out the smooshy ground noise. That noise makes me have to swing a lot slower like half the speed of my GPX but with the Z setup like this I feel like I can cover a lot more ground and breathe more freely as it were. Of course I'm still very new to this machine so anything I say is just completely circumstantial right now, just relaying something that worked here in the particular case since it's a popular detecting area.

Oh yeah also forgot to say, it let me feel more comfortable with running in manual ground track mode too since I didn't feel like I was needing to balance it literally every 30 seconds or so since it takes a bit longer to balance than the GPX (i know, I'm very impatient). Until yesterday I was only doing auto track. Not sure if I gained anything from manual balance or not. Or if my desire to run in manual is just a relic from the GPX. No idea, it's all learning experience for me right now.

[jasong]

Oh one more observation that I wanted to throw out there and see if anyone else noticed or if it was just my imagination:

Does it seem like whatever balancing and processing the Z is performing under the hood also makes it slightly less hot on iron to anyone else? I mean, it doesn't discrim it out, but it seems to me that it hits on higher conductivity targets much harder than the GPX in almost all cases but hits on the iron bits equal to or even slightly less than the GPX. I was wondering if that might have to do with the way it does it's thing with the DOD and soil monitoring?

Also getting the same results with meteorites, I only tried Gold Basin chrondrites, but the Z was hitting equal to or less on them then the GPX was unless I really souped the Z up. Even though it was hitting quite clearly deeper on gold I tested.

Just thought it was interesting, was wondering if anyone else noticed or if my mind is playing tricks on me?

[Steve Herschbach]

I have not noticed it specifically with the GPZ but I have observed it with other detectors. The reality is that ferrous targets and ground iron mineralization overlap to a certain degree and ground balancing not only removes ground effects but some ferrous targets. In thick ferrous trash tracking systems can "track into the iron" with ill effects and so manual ground balance is preferred in those situations. What we really want is a ground balance system that would balance out ferrous trash along with the ground and still show us the non-ferrous items, but unfortunately we are not there yet. Ground minerals are magnetic but generally have little or no conductivity worth noting except for alkali or salt flat conditions. Ferrous metals on the other hand are not only magnetic but highly conductive which is where we get all the problems with steel items in particular. Ferrous metal that has almost completely rusted away is slowly turning into the original ferrous material from whence it came and so is more likely to be ground balanced out.

Meteorites grade from pure stone to pure metal and everywhere in between. When you think about it a meteorite is just a hot rock, so it makes sense that a good system for eliminating hot rocks would also tend to have the side effect of eliminating or reducing the signal from some meteorites. This would tend to happen more with those that have the least metal in them and are mostly stony in composition.

Like everything detecting it is all sort of relative. A meteorite in low mineral ground is going to stand out loud and clear because it differs so much from the ground, the very definition of a hot rock. The same meteorite in highly iron mineralized ground may be passed right up by the detector for being too close to the ground itself and therefore the current ground balance setting.

[jasong]

I haven't noticed it with a good piece of steel, seems like rustier unidentifiable bits are what does it. The meteorite thing makes sense, they are basically really really hot rocks, these stony ones.

Went out prospecting today with the 45, broke my pick handle so changed plans and ended up with 5 more tiny ones for the Z. 

Decided to go somewhere with shallow bedrock so I could just use my rock hammer instead of the broken pick so went to give the Z a run over some ground I'd pulled a couple out of before with the 45. There are dig holes about every 5 feet in spots, some VLF's have hit this ground too. I didn't get anything with the 45 last visit. I don't think this area has a name, it's not Rye Patch but still N. NV.

So I thought I'd take the BFH approach and see what the Z could do:

Sens 16

High Yield/Normal

No Audio Smoothing

Threshold 5

Auto tracking

It was loud loud loud. But it was hitting on stuff VLF's missed once I got used to the noise, slowed way down, and listened closely. The big one is real flat and it was on edge between flakes of shale about 2 inches into the bedrock. The tiny one is 1.4 grains, you can see it in my scoop if you squint hard and it came from where I was pointing so probably 5-6 inches down which is pretty amazing with a 14" coil. Another piece was in a lens of that hot clay, look closely it's there. I was still digging as the sun went down, there is more left there.

It would be unbearable detecting like this all the time, but for really flexing some muscle in a smallish area where you know there is already gold it can pull a couple more pieces up even in GB2 territory and get your gas money at least. The GB2 is still the king of dinks in my mind though when dealing with 4" minus depth and 1 grain minus weight, or on ore piles.

Now for the downside, I seem to have developed some issue with the wireless module. It was only 1 bar away from full batteries but kept cutting in and out for a few minutes then working fine, then cutting out, etc. Then for like 15 seconds randomly it would do a real quiet "do-woo, do-woo, do-woo" in the background underneath the threshold almost like the shutdown chime effect but not quite. I switched back to default settings and it kept doing it, reset the module and the machine and still was doing it, so after about 30 minutes of it doing then stopping off and on I moved it from the top of my shoulder to the strap on my pack that is literally right next to the detector and it seemed to help a bit but would still do it occasionally but not as badly.

It did that once before yesterday but then didn't do it again, seems to have gotten worse today so not sure what's up with that.