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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/18/2016 in all areas

  1. I enjoy viewing the natural gold, silver, or other minerals that forum members find. I doubt with most photo contributors that it has much or anything to do with boasting, but rather it is the fun and enjoyment of sharing your recoveries and experience with everyone. Natural specimen photos and scenery shots are a great way to illustrate posts, provide encouragement to fellow hobbyists… especially the newcomers, and photos doubtless enhance overall readership interest. It seems to me that the circumstances surrounding this fellows demise has little or no relationship to what we do on this forum. If you can’t share your discoveries here with similarly interested hobbyists, then where can you? Jim.
    6 points
  2. Young couple called me three weeks ago to help find a lost ring in Pueblo Lake. He had just purchased the 2K+ ring and propsed a week earlier and when they were tying up their boat he had his fiancee take off the ring and give it to him for safekeeping. Of course he dropped it in about four feet of water. Myself and several other club members have been searching for it ever since and today was my lucky day. He's now out of the doghouse and wedding bells will ring in the future. Yes, he offered a wad of money but I asked him to "pay it forward" and help somebody in the future. I was using the AT Pro in "zero" mode and iron discrination of "35". The AT Pro and the Garrett Carrot make a nice combination for water hunting.
    3 points
  3. Hi everyone, as you can see my name is Dan and I live in Darwin Australia . I went out with my new Garrett ATX yesterday for my first go at finding my fortune on a local quiet beach. After an hour or so of playing around with it I started getting tabs, bottle tops, nails etc which gave me confidence it was actually working ! . I found my very first coin and was well pleased but the very next swing was very faint. As I'm new to this I thought I'd dig everything and get used to the machine. At ten inches out popped my very first gold thing !! I think it's a ladies wedding band, it weighs nearly six grams and is 18 carat.it also has two names and a date inscribed in it , so being the sentimentalist I am il try to find the person who lost it. Probably worth so much more to them than me for scrap.
    3 points
  4. Welcome to the forum Jon! The Tesoro Tejon can be a very capable nugget detector - my buddy George had one and I saw it find nuggets. The size of the nuggets you expect (from research) helps choose the coil size, the smaller the gold the smaller the coil. In general though it is hard to go wrong with a 10" x 5" DD (widescan) coil, which is why so many nugget detectors come with one. Not knowing anything else that is my recommendation.
    2 points
  5. I've been detecting for gold for over 20 yrs and never had much interest in the coin and relic side of detecting, but I was getting bored in sunny/hot Yuma. I got interested in the XP Deus because of its potential for gold prospecting in heavy trash and started my online research. Naturally, I experienced a good deal of confirmation bias, finding all good reasons to get a new Deus and ignoring all the downsides. I'm really betting on the come with the alleged new coil with higher gold frequencies. Nevertheless, I decided to buy one and get started learning a different side of detecting. Many thanks to Rob Allison at Rob's Detectors for helpful advice and putting together a nice package deal with the Garret Carrot pinpointer. It's only 87 degrees here at sunup so gold prospecting was going to have to be short and sweet. Yesterday I took the Deus out to the PotHoles area where I met Fred this past winter. We had detected near his camping spot and found way too much trash, but a few small nuggets. I brought along a .5 gram and a 1gram nugget for testing. I detected for less than an hr before it got too hot and found no gold. I practiced with my test nuggets in some of the hotter ground and in with the trash. The Deus detected both nuggets with relative ease, the .5 gram at about 4 inches in hot ground. I would not say that it was any better on the .5 gram than the $499.00 Gold Bug, but there are some nifty things you can do by adding different tones to ferrous targets without adding depth killing discrimination. I'm still learning this process, but I'm pretty sure it will have its place in some gold areas littered with iron trash. This morning I decided to try coin/jewelry hunting in the park. Yikes, I was not prepared for cacophony of noises from the trash in parks. After a dozen flip tabs and bottle caps I decided I better learn this detector elsewhere without making a mess of the grass. I understand the whole "plug" thing and the pinpointer helps, but I was not too confident that someone might not bitch about my excavations. So then I noticed that there were 5 new volleyball courts with nice washed river sand footing. I started thinking about Steve's micro-jewelry concept and decided that was the place to learn this new detector. I could dig every target and not make a big mess. I detected the first court and found a few zinc pennies then played around with the detector settings. Since the ground was relatively clean, I ran the stock "Fast" program, but took the discrimination down to 0 and switched the tones to "Full Tones". You won't miss much in clean ground with that program. The photo shows my success in less than 2 hrs of hunting. A couple pieces of micro-jewelry. The one piece has 2 sparkly stones, doubtful they are diamonds, but I'm on the right track. Now, normally I doubt you would see me bend down to collect a zinc penny in plain sight, but with detecting it becomes part of the chase. So I collected a bunch of zinc pennies, shouldn't take me more than 3 yrs to pay off the detector as this rate.
    2 points
  6. The Deus is my main machines these days,have owned one for about 3 years and it just suits my type of detecting when hunting for roman and hammered coins,only use the 9'' coil these days,full tones and 1 on discrimination,Audio Response 5 and basically thats about all the major alteration that i use. Mine is mounted on the Golden Mask 5 carbon shaft and always run it as a audio only machine,controller is always in my pocket just incase i need to make the odd fine tweak but as a general rule its used as a switch on and go machine,as a result of wrist problems from a bike accident 30+ years ago the injury has started too haunt me when detecting,so for a everyday detecting rig they have to be light weight and the Deus with the 9'' coil certainly is light. For when i use a heavy hitting rig when on say a possible hoard site using the TDI Pro with a larger coil then i use a full GPX harness and the superb Hipstick which certainly takes all the weight and can swing a large coil with easy,the Hipstick i might add is the vital part of the equation. Have the WS5 full headphones and also the WS4 for summer/winter use,but in recent months both of these are not used much as i have been using the superb Sennheiser OMX 185 headphones in ear ones but have loops that go over the ear to stop them falling out,the clarity and the improvement in the audio quality is outstanding,when used with the AR5 the deep normal feint targets ring out lounder. Of course we all detect differently and for different targets,so basically i can only say what works for me on the fine tuning and overall setting up of the Deus,for really trashy sites i use the 'Sifter' settings,infact i will plan on using those settings for almost all my sites.
    2 points
  7. Well, I think your strategy is a fine one. I could do all right with the Tejon personally. Hunt in all metal if you can. Only go to disc mode if hot rocks and nails are unbearable, and use absolute minimum disc required to just barely knock them out (tics and clicks instead of pure rejection). Don't be afraid to lower gain in bad ground to get stable performance. Main thing to remember is the Tejon has a touchy ground balance control, so stay on top of it being sure ground balance is correct. Anything you can report back would be great. Good luck!
    1 point
  8. Welcome to the DEUS club! The Goldfield program is not bad, but I am one of those that does not believe the DEUS in its current form offers anything to prospectors that can't be had with a Fisher Gold Bug or Gold Bug Pro for far less money, and really not enough weight saved to matter either. The real promise in the DEUS is for people who want a detector for multiple uses with a focus on pulling non-ferrous out of ferrous, which it excels at. Still not quite enough for me but the V4 update did promise to push it over the edge for me at least, so like you I popped for a DEUS in anticipation of the smaller coil and higher frequencies. A DEUS with a smaller coil and at 40 khz might just be hot enough for me and enough of an all arounder that I could let the Gold Racer and Racer 2 go. I sill have too many VLF detectors and am seeing a selectable frequency model as being my eventual way out of that situation. The key is how high is the highest frequency? White's DFX - 3 kHz and 15 Khz selectable XP DEUS 3.2 - 4 kHz, 8 kHz, 12 Khz, and 18 kHz selectable Minelab X-Terras 3 kHz, 7.5 kHz, and 18.75 kHz selectable (via coil change) Nokta Impact (not yet released, preliminary info) - 4 kHz, 14 kHz, and 21 kHz selectable White's V3i - 2.5 kHz, 7.5 khz, and 22.5 khz selectable XP DEUS V4 (not yet released, preliminary info) - 10 kHz, 20 khz, 30 kHz, and 40 kHz selectable I am not counting the Minelab Eureka Gold and predecessors as they are not really a multi purpose detectors but dedicated gold prospecting machines. At 40 khz the DEUS V4 would be significantly upping the game to double the approximately 20 kHz range that currently sets the limit in multipurpose selectable frequency detectors. While it would not be as hot as the GMT, Gold Racer, or Gold Bug 2, it may very well be "hot enough". My DFX I only own because it runs my Bigfoot coil otherwise it also would be on the chopping block.
    1 point
  9. Hey Fred, I worked right under the power lines, some interference but not bad. I'm studying the Sabisch book to get a better handle on tone discrimination rather than conventional discrim. I wasn't that impressed with the stock GoldField Program. The Deus will never replace my Zed, but I'd like to open up the possibilities some. I may head north next week and spend the worst of Yuma weather in the CA high country or N. NV.
    1 point
  10. Too bad it wasn't General Hercules who found that one. He could make one hell of a video digging up that bad boy. He can use the F-word so much it loses its shock value.
    1 point
  11. This guy was fort knox on feet....flaunting it in one of the poorest countries in the world per capita, should have learned some modesty. I hardly think posting a few nuggets here and there would make any one of us victims...just be smart about it and carry a big stick. I would agree its a good reminder to us all to be very careful who you choose to share information with.
    1 point
  12. In the middle east and Africa many fake detectors are sold. Chinese copies look exactly like the real thing, - except they don't work. I know a guy who spoke with Depar and found a better deal and saved $500 on a GPX 4500. The other dealer promised that he also was a factory dealer just like Depar. His detector looked exactly like the real thing - I saw it - except it would not detect even large pieces of metal touching on the coil. His money, which was all his savings, was lost, and his detector was worthless. Be very careful about who you purchase from, so you do not get caught the same way, trying to save a small amount and getting nothing back for your purchase. Hiding within Ebay can be a den of thieves waiting to take your money.
    1 point
  13. Research is good, but after 30 plus years of detecting gold, lots of armchair reading and dreaming, only one thing puts you onto gold consistently that is swinging the coil. If your in gold country as shown by mapping, and even outside it on the fringes, regardless of whether informed sources say the gold is too fine, is mixed in minute amounts in complex ores, is only on the out of reach bedrock or is all gone. There is detectable gold in reach of todays detectors on all gold fields, a bold statement true but a attitude that will put you onto gold. Attitude is king, swing that coil believing it is there always. Tis where tis!!!!!!
    1 point
  14. Be wise and don't outsmart yourself. "No bedrock" doesn't necessarily mean "no gold". You have to stop and think about the big picture to find the little nugget.
    1 point
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