Garrett Goldmaster 24K Australia
-
Similar Content
-
By karelian
As time goes on I hope to see more videos of the Garrett 24k used all over the world. The 24k does seem to impress those who have used it. We can never have too much choice when it comes to machines. As good as the new GPX 6000 is on small gold I still believe there is room for a good VLF in the arsenal. All the best.
-
.thumb.JPG.b46839319dc8de4aefe1f42407094dbd.JPG)
By phrunt
We've been in a bit of a Covid lock-down recently and during that time my Garrett 24k arrived so I wasn't able to use it in the gold fields straight away, it was quite painful to look at it knowing I can't go and use it, fortunately we came out of our lock-down and as took off for a prospect with the 24k as soon as I could.
I ordered a White's 6" concentric coil for it to tie me over until Garrett and with any luck Nel come out with other coils for it, I hope they continue with the 6" Concentric as I'll buy a Garrett 6" Concentric as soon as they release it. It's a remarkably sensitive coil, I expected it to be less sensitive than it is as it's quite big however it surprised me and matches or exceeds smaller coils on other high frequency gold detectors. I've always been happy with Garrett coil quality so upgrading the Whites to a Garrett would be worthwhile I think. In saying that, neither the 10x6" Garrett coil or the Whites 6" coil were at all bump sensitive, not one bump noise the entire day. I'm so used to coil bump sensitivity from the Equinox and Gold Monster it was a rather pleasurable experience being able to scrub the coil on the ground like mad and bump it around not setting off the detector, giving me a distinct advantage over using bump sensitive coils.
I started the day using the 10x6" Coil as I wanted to see how it goes and I was going back to a spot I'd found a fair few grams of gold in the past, about 30 or more nuggets using the scrape and detect method taking off layers of soil at a time and detecting it. The initial nugget which was just under half a gram and a fair few more were found using my GPZ including a 4.2 gram nugget and then I brought in the Equinox with 6" coil to clean up as a majority of the nuggets were very small and the VLF's tend to do better cleaning up these very small nuggets. I'd even gone over this little scrape and detect area with the Gold Bug 2 however it was a bit of a nightmare as the area is absolutely full of hot rocks and the Gold Bug 2 in heavy hot rocks isn't a good detector in my opinion, it's too busy making it's response noise to the hot rocks to worry about the bits of gold next to the hot rocks so you miss nuggets if they're near hot rocks. The problem is this spot is loaded with hot rocks all through the soil of various shapes and sizes mostly a green type of schist that is all crumbly and broken up and detectors love to sound off on it. It's likely there from the old timers, it's basically some old workings where the old timers left their rock pile in a little gully, and right on the lower downhill side of the rock pile was my little scrape and detect patch. Even the GPZ struggled with all of the hot rocks so I was quite pleased how the 24k was coping with them, sure it was sounding off on some of them too but it wasn't too troublesome and seemed to ignore the little broken up bits and very usable.
I ran the 24k with the sensitivity maxed out, Sat on the middle setting and audio on Boost 2. The ground balance was quick and easy then I switched into the Locked balance mode. If the broken up schist bits of hot rock were too severe I left it in tracking which helped to knock them out. I gave the 6" Concentric coil a quick try and it struggled more with the hot rocks and i didn't want to lower my sensitivity down so I reverted back to the DD which appeared to handle them better and is still remarkably sensitive.
So I just started scraping back layers and detecting taking about 2 inches off at a time knowing the gold here is likely going to be very small and it will be stuff I've missed in the past as I've scraped this spot out before and back filled it so I was essentially checking the same soil all over again for anything I missed. I had high hopes I had missed some as all it would take is a small hot rock to be sitting on top of the bit of gold the previous time and I'd likely miss it or just the bit of gold on it's side being a very thin one or any number of reasons, even just at a depth too deep for the size of gold with the detector I was using.
It wasn't long and I had my first piece.
Quite a decent size one too, I was baffled at the time why I'd missed this one in the past. The 24k had now found it's first gold, highly likely the first piece of gold found in New Zealand with the Garrett 24k, a badge I'll wear proudly. 🙂
Next up was a reasonably faint but very repeatable signal with no target ID showing, I delicately used my scoop to scrape soil away knowing this was likely a very small bit of gold and it sure was... my smallest bit of the day too and surprised I managed to find it with the 10x6" coil, I don't recall ever finding a bit this small using the 10x5" type size on other detectors.
Can you spot it? 🙂
There it is!
0.007 of a gram, not bad for the 10x6" coil, especially in this hot rock infested ground.
I always check targets in case they're odd little bits of metal with my pick magnet, and you'll see it was quick to build up black sand, this soil has plenty of it in it.
I kept scraping down layers and found another.
Quite small too... but a bit more meat on it than the previous one 🙂
I'd had enough of the scrape and detect spot by now and wanted to go explore a bit to see how the 24k performed for general detecting so I walked for about 10 minutes to another spot I'd found some gold in the past and detected for about an hour digging plenty of shotgun pellets, completely normal in this area as there is a rabbit plague that causes countless thousands of shotgun pellets to be distributed all over the place for me to clean up 🙂 I didn't have high hopes as myself and a friend (JW) have absolutely thrashed this area but it's always possible to miss gold when there is so many pellets. We generally scrape a few times and if the signal persists dig it, if it moves after the first scrapes ignore it thinking it's very likely a pellet.
A few pictures of the sort of terrain I was detecting.
My batteries went down to 2 bars quite quickly, within an hour. I assume as they're rechargeable and run at 1.2 volts instead of 1.5 volts for standard AA's but it stayed at the two bars for the entire day so still plenty of life left in them yet by the looks of it.
Pretty wild rocky terrain and only really suitable for smaller coils.
The GPZ with it's stock coil is terrible here, the smaller the coil the better in general.
I did manage to find a piece though, after a lot of pellet digs 🙂
Not a bad size bit for the area too
I now decided I'd put the Whites 6" Concentric coil on and give it another go as this area doesn't have near as many hot rocks as my scrape and detect spot.
I found a bit of raised bedrock and had a signal that persisted down into the schist. At this point it almost had to be gold so I started filming.
And it was gold 🙂
I had to break up the schist to get it out.
A nice little piece too, a roundish flat one.
This area has plenty of black sand too, this was my pick after checking that bedrock in case it was a steel shotgun pellet.
It was getting near time to go get some dinner and I was pretty satisfied to even get one nugget in this area but I kept going a little while longer and it paid off. I like the bulls eye sight on the 6" coil, it really is the hot spot too, great for pinpointing.
I had a signal that persisted down into the gravels on the bedrock.
And got this one!
It's hard to tell the depth in the photo but it was a reasonable depth. A few inches anyway.
And that was it for the day, I was starving!
So, do I like the 24K? You're damn right I do, it certainly exceeded my expectations and will now be my primary VLF gold detector replacing my Equinox which replaced my Gold Monster, and the Gold Bug 2 was just not for me, I didn't gel with it at all especially with the masking from hot rocks. I look forward to getting more coils for the 24k, especially smaller ones, and judging by how well it handled the hot rocks I wouldn't mind a larger size coil for ground coverage too.
The total for the day. Very happy with the results.
-
By Tony
Not sure if this has been covered before but I’d love to know how the Garrett 24K can handle heavily mineralised ground such as that found in Western Australia. Looking for fairly shallow nuggets amongst eye popping amounts of old iron trash targets. Yep, I’ve tried the Minelab PI machines with small DD and mono coils but I nearly threw myself down a mineshaft such was the frustration. I’m thinking a 6” sniping style coil is the way to go.
Thanks for any advice,
Tony
-
By phrunt
I've wanted the 24k since Whites released it, it was all too hard to get with Whites and their very limited worldwide distribution, Garrett is making that easier and has a much larger distribution network around the world so the 24k is becoming more accessible now than it was. I had this one sent from the USA to get it quickly as the New Zealand dealer isn't likely to have any until next year, although I think that'll change when they start getting people asking for them 🙂
I was pleased to see it came with rechargeable batteries to get me up and running fast, a good brand too being Duracell AA NiMH.
So a few photos.... starting with the box.
Whites fans will be pleased to see all the references to Whites on the box.
That looks like Steve's scoop to me 🙂
And the box contents
The charger and car adapter, lighter socket to USB adapter and also a power socket with various countries that is like a phone charger really, it just converts the AC to DC 5v 2.1 amp USB power, so you can use any USB charging adapter that can output the 2 amp's to charge your batteries. The charger will also charge on a common 1 amp USB port, it's just going to be slower. Very handy as I can charge the batteries in my Caravan or anywhere really with USB charging. The charger can also charge AAA batteries as well as the AA's required for the 24k, quite handy.
The 12v alligator clips charger to lighter socket is very good quality too, nice thick cables and inline fuse. Even the little lighter socket to USB is a good quality product, came in a little package showing it's got a 2 year warranty. It's made by Aukey and has 2 x 2.4amp USB ports on it for fast charging.
The charger has Micro USB and USB-C support, so you can use your phone charging cable if you've got one of the many Android phones using Micro USB and forget to bring your Garrett supplied cable.
This is the batteries inside the mounting box that slides up into the back of the 24k. They're easy enough to put in there.
The battery box has a nice Whites logo on it. You'll see I've already used the little plug they supply to cover over the headphone socket, Good to keep the dust and weather out and I'll likely leave it in there forever. The speaker on the 24k is excellent, nice loud volume so I see little need for headphones unless I'm next to a loud river or something detecting.
The screen's nice and big, easy on the eye, every icon and bit of writing is oversized, quite good for people that need glasses I would guess. The buttons are nice and easy to use and you'll note they left the Whites logo on there.
The coil's nice, I haven't weighed it yet but it feels light as a feather, and the detector is very well balanced with the batteries under the arm cuff, I've never used one of the Whites detectors with the box under the arm cuff, but I'm seeing how nice the balance is with this style detector. Garrett also supplied little feet to stick onto the bottom of the box so you're not resting the plastic box directly onto the ground, quite a good idea as I generally hunt in very rocky areas. One thing I noticed almost straight away as you don't have to put effort in when you put it down to prevent it from falling over, it naturally wants to sit upright. 🙂
And the back of the control pod, again another Whites logo
I think they've done a good job paying homage to Whites, while also putting their own touches on it, a very impressive detector.
Now for the meat and potatoes, I took it down behind my house to the river and fired it up, I had no idea what I was doing as I'd only used it for a few minutes but I took a couple of videos comparing how it was operating compared to my Equinox with the Coiltek 10x5" Nox Coil. Take these videos with a grain of salt, I've spent 5 minutes using the Garrett 24k but I found it very easy to use and understand, it can just be a turn on and go detector by the look of it. It handled the ground well, and I was very happy with the sensitivity of it, I absolutely can not wait to get the smaller coils for it, especially the concentric coil.
I had put the Coiltek 5x10" Nox coil on the Equinox so it was more like comparing apples with apples and tested both detectors on a small #9 lead pellet. The 24k certainly had the edge on air test depth.
The ground performance seems excellent too, I love how quiet it runs, the threshold is very smooth, it's also interesting you can run it right next to the Nox with no interference for either detector, both run fine right next to each other. The build quality of the Garrett seems excellent, the shaft nice and solid and nothing feels flimsy.
In this video I take both for a little walk around showing how they handle this difficult ground that's covered in hot rocks. The 24k was completely free of knock sensitivity, something I'm going to find very beneficial with the areas I hunt being rocky. Both detectors have their settings maxed out, the Equinox is on 25 gain.
Now I've got to get the batteries charged up so I can use it properly, at least they had enough charge in them from the factory for me to take it for a test run. We are in a 2 week Covid lockdown at the moment, we are expected to come out of the worst of it on Wednesday so hopefully I can go find some nuggets with the 24k soon, judging by my first impressions of it I am sure I will be able to achieve that quite quickly.
-
By Dances With Doves
I have the GMX and plan on getting the snake coil first.I still might get a 24 k for the heck of it
-
By Cascade Steven
I just found a new Garrett add for the Goldmaster 24k on YouTube and wanted to share it with all of you. I did not find it listed here on the forum and if I missed it and this is a repost, I apologize. The ad is 1.05 minutes long and labeled "NEW Garrett Gold Detector" and the link is
Very "spiffy" ad and my "hats off" congratulations to Steve H. for his participation and the successful gold hunt. I sincerely hope that this ad brings in lots of business for Garrett. It is interesting to note that they give a very strong "hat tip" to Whites Electronics.
Steve H.: If I posted this in the wrong location, please feel free to change its location as necessary.
-
-
-
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events found -
Recent Classifieds
-
-
-
Other Forum Topics
-
.thumb.jpg.d71314a45f3dc82bf75ac1b96e7e9201.jpg)
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now