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Challenge Completed And Missed Nuggets Found


jasong

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3 hours ago, geof_junk said:

The old rule you need 64 times the power to double the depth so a little power reductions will not reduce the depth much at all, but will get rid of the noise.

Thanks for that info as I'd never heard of it before...where does it come from? 

strick 

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Have never used audio smoothing as long as I've had the GPZ. Are there conditions where I should? (apologies for slightly off-topic).

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2 hours ago, strick said:

Thanks for that info as I'd never heard of it before...where does it come from? 

strick 

Here is a good explanation about the depth/signal strength relationship:

"an increase in depth of 12% will result in the signal halving in strength, and an increase of 47%, that is say 40cm to 59cm, results in the signal being 10 times smaller."

It's in Bruce Candy's "holy bible". I recommend memorizing the whole document like a poem.

😇😇😇😇👨‍🎓👨‍🎓

 

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6 hours ago, Jonathan Porter said:

I think we’ve discussed this before about Audio Smoothing Off. Why not just lower the Sensitivity and the Volume a few points to compensate rather than filter out edge of detection signals by raising the noise floor? I’ve experimented with this technique a fair bit even in quite variable soils and it works pretty well. I remember your not a fan of a twitchy threshold, so lowering the Threshold a touch will help too.

By lowering Sensitivity and Volume theoretically there should be a point where the threshold feedback noise should reach equivalency with the low smoothing and high sensitivity method.

Just my two cents. 

I've also experimented with this a good bit. In the areas I detect I can lower my sensitivity from 18 to 10, take off low smoothing, and still have a bunch of spurious signals clogging my brain up and slowing things down so much that my head gets out of the game after a few hours. The amount of nuggets I miss by going slower and not having 100% focus is way more than the amount of nuggets I miss by jacking the sensitivity back up and then smoothing the mess out with low smoothing.

Low smoothing also lets me run my threshold higher (still lower than most people) than I would normally, so I get a little bit back from that too.

That said, I do take smoothing off when I'm cleaning a patch. And I hate every minute of it. 😄

2 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

Complete agree. I can't recall a single time where a target that I heard at gain 18 would not be heard at gain 12 or even 10. In particular with HY/normal/ smoothing off. I hardly ever use smoothing.

Completely disagree. In fact, somewhere at home I have a video showing this isn't the case on an undug/undisturbed 7 grammer that was a great signal at 20, and almost nothing at 10 sensitivity.

Pretty sure I also tested threshold levels and smoothing on or off on that one too. I will look for it when I get back.

I've tested my settings extensively in the areas I work, I am confident that for my area, my brain, and the type of ground and gold I find, I am running as near as efficiently as I can. If I thought differently, I would change the way I run.

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13 minutes ago, jasong said:

Completely disagree. In fact, somewhere at home I have a video showing this isn't the case on an undug/undisturbed 7 grammer that was a great signal at 20, and almost nothing at 10 sensitivity.

Pretty sure I also tested threshold levels and smoothing on or off on that one too. I will look for it when I get back.

I've tested my settings extensively in the areas I work, I am confident that for my area, my brain, and the type of ground and gold I find, I am running as near as efficiently as I can. If I thought differently, I would change the way I run.

That's the beauty of metal detecting. Every operator does it slightly differently but with some general rules that should be adhered to. Where I hunt I need to include small gold as well, 7 g's nuggets are rare. Hence, I focus on balancing different ground conditions mostly by adjusting sensitivity and volume/threshold settings without touching smoothing at all. Sometimes, switching to normal and also to difficult (if needed) helps as well. By the end of the day though the results matter the most, so I found this strategy works best for me where I usually hunt. That being said, in your grounds the way you run your machine delivers best results for you. That's great. You can't argue with having gold in the scoop! 🙂 

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The 6000 will offer much more automation, hence these different techniques with the GPZ will not be that relevant anymore across operators. Now, the focus will all be on having fun with a light weight detector, enjoying ML's brilliant engineering, and most of all: make enough research about the area where you hunt so you can actually get the coil over gold. That has always been my most important task.

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Like JasonG,

 Spurious signals and trying to concentrate on them , messing with different settings were taking up much more time, than finding nuggets to me at one point. Upon talking to others, I then tried the Steelphase SP01 amplifier/ filter. All I can say is wow !!!! It became the holy grail to me, and I dont leave home without it. Not only did it clear a lot of the interference, for me, but I can pump a little more volume into me ears for those slight threshold breaks. No more headaches from after a day of detecting with my ears jammed with white noise. Now this is just my opinion, and am noway affiliated with them....

  On the Steelphase for the GPZ7000 I use the following settings. Mode 2, Volume- set to how you want, Filter- 1.

   I have done several tests with the Steelphase and without to see if Im missing targets, and have been impressed, as it was allowing me to hear those faint threshold breaks, without all the interference. Would love to try experimenting with it with the aftermarket Z and X coils...

Dave

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The EMI situation in places close to massive population centers like in California or parts of Arizona is another level compared more remote, less populated parts of Australia, or even places like NNV. Just California has almost double the population of the entire country of Australia. Phoenix metro area has basically the entire population of New Zealand. Just as two relative references. Lots of military, power generation, air travel, and other stuff that produces EMI that travels some distance.

22 minutes ago, DolanDave said:

Upon talking to others, I then tried the Steelphase SP01 amplifier/ filter. All I can say is wow !!!!

The SP01 is compressing/limiting/expanding the audio. I'm not sure which one exactly since I don't own one. But any kind of compression by definition destroys some part of the audio. So in that way, it's not a whole lot different than what low smoothing and boosting your sensitivity/volume is doing. In fact, before the SP01 came out, I posted about just such a thing on that old 4umer forum and how you could emulate such an idea with threshold and volume controls.

The bottom line to me is that those settings are there for a reason and a place. Where we happen to be is a particularly noisy place. And people should not be afraid to use a setting (or hardware like sp1) or say they never will use it, if the results are more gold and less headache.

That is after all, one of the principal design concepts of the 6000 from what I can tell based on the limited info we have.

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