Why Did You Buy Your Detector ?

[Eklawok]

A guy I used to work with used to bring these treasure and gold magazines to work and forget them in my office. I had always been curious about mining/prospecting for gold, but steered away from it. At least till I started to read his magazines. Before I knew it I had picks, shovels, sluice boxes, and gold pans. But I also wanted a metal detector for going out nugget shooting.

I did some reading on them and decided to get an Ace 250. I knew that it wouldn't be a great machine for hunting gold in my area, but it would be a good machine to learn on and see if I liked them. Well, needless to say, I never really warmed up to it. I used the heck out of my sluice boxes, pans, buckets and shovels. But that little  Ace and I never seemed to have much of a lasting relationship. It always felt toy like to me. And I had gotten tha hankering for a one of Whites machines. But I knew if I was to get one that I would never hear the end of it from my wife as she would roll her eyes about it every time she seen it.

Fast forward a few years I started to realize that I hadn't really gone out and done anything that pertained to my interest. New job, a divorce shortly after, and learning how to be a single father had all taken their toll on getting out and doing anything. But the gold bug bit me again. That one and the dirtbike bug, but that's another story. So, I went out here a few weeks back and bought my MXT A/P , and couldn't be happier with it. I have been out using it in the parks around where I live while the kid is in school and found it to be really relaxing. 

Still haven't been out nugget hunting yet. I am going to get the smaller coil and try that out this summer. And get some water running through the sluice boxes again too :)

[Roughwater]

6 hours ago, Eklawok said:

A guy I used to work with used to bring these treasure and gold magazines to work and forget them in my office. I had always been curious about mining/prospecting for gold, but steered away from it. At least till I started to read his magazines. Before I knew it I had picks, shovels, sluice boxes, and gold pans. But I also wanted a metal detector for going out nugget shooting.

I for sure don't know but if I was gambler, I would bet he left the magazines there on purpose.  He was just trying to spread the love.  

[Eklawok]

1 hour ago, Roughwater said:

I for sure don't know but if I was gambler, I would bet he left the magazines there on purpose.  He was just trying to spread the love.  

I thought that as i typed it last night. He was far from a gambler. But it did spark a lot of conversation between him and I. Maybe that was the point

[Ridge Runner]

Talking about treasure mag's. I called Lost treasure and ask them if they would send me some of their mag's for the military hospital here in  San Antonio. Sure enough this big box came in the mail full of treasure mag's. My church does a lot all the time to take out there for our men coming in to the hospital.

The best thing about Lost Treasure they didn't say maybe they just done it. Who knows it may have got some buying their mag. and treasure hunting too.

Chuck

PS This has been a while I guess I need to do this again. .  

[argyle]

On 09/04/2016 at 3:09 AM, Ridge Runner said:

In years past I was thinking of only coin hunting.Some may buy one as a hobby but I was a little deeper than that. All my free time was spent behind my detector land and water. I didn't care where I had to go you'd find me there and my wife was just as bad.

I didn't get into nugget hunting until the early 90's. I started prospecting about 61,62 making my own equipment to find that yellow metal but detectors didn't come in to play like said.

Oh I got more nugget detectors than a guy needs. Coin hunting I can walk away from time to time but that don't hold true with gold.

The MX Sport that I'm sitting here waiting for is to replace my only other coin detector.

How about you ?

Chuck

Each to their own of course. Not bagging or up-talking any unit or brand ...just my reasons for purchase and use thereof.
Not all machines I've had, just a few I can think of at the moment.

Compass Challenger X-100.
A fantastic unit.
Bought for coins and nugget detecting.
In the dealership at the time there was a six foot high four foot wide display sign announcing "Are you ready to take the Compass Challenge today"
Top units with functions not seen on other detectors.
Sold in a three coil package (forget the sizes now but small medium and large it was) 
Bad ni-cad rechargeable battery set up as even though advertised as a thousand charge life, they were typical of nicads, especially early versions of that battery type, and you'd be lucky to get 30 charges before the batteries were ruined. 
And any power outage during charging or slackness on your part of the charging regime would kill them dead in a few weeks.
Massive power drain with the huge 16" coil, would give about two hours detecting if you were lucky.
I went straight to Alkalines pretty quick.
Only got around two to three years on each detector as they suffered corrosion on the boards.
A real favorite unit.

Garrett Deepseeker.
Bought because it was the most popular unit at the time. Great coil range. You could choose a straight shaft and extension leads if you wanted to hip mount.
Low in kHz and cruised on ground far better than any previous model I'd used.
The last run of them were more refined somehow and had darker decals, much like the nice look of the GP 3500 face plates vs 3000's.
You never forget the sound ...phaaaaarp.

Whites 6000 somethingorother.
Bought to be modded for gold. Very nice unit.
Back then you were either a Whites guy or a Garretts guy. Very rarely both.
The modded Garretts won out in the end for me. Better coil range to boot.

Garret A2b.
Bought due to the higher 15kHz being able to pick up smaller pieces than the Deepseeker. Great coil range.
You had to have many spares on board due to coil bracket snaps, lower rod snaps, bad lead connection, brittle leads.
Much better when modded.

Tesoro Eldorado uMax.
Sinsodial or monolithic coil, cant remember, but nice stock concentrics anyway!
Beaut machines, very versatile, could step into the hotter ground easy enough.
My fav Tesoro by far.

Tesoro Lobo supatrak.
Bought for gold detecting but didn't like them. Useless Ground Tracking I felt. No good for the purpose I bought it for.
Fine on benign ground and mullock.
That entire earlier platform, manual balanced Gold Demon's and Diablo's and Lobo, even though were marketed as ironstone killers and hot ground handlers, could not handle even the milder mineralized dirt. A very wayward balance and horrible threshold. 

Tesoro compadre.
Bought simply to see if such a cheap detector could hold a place.
Useless little gadget, they'd give a one way hit on a $1 coin at four inches and I had a hatred for the donut coils on them. 
When they were later released with the small 6" coil I were much more impressed with them as the smaller coils isolation seemed to suit it's pre-set mark better. 
Played a bit with both the balance and gain pots but just only managed a shade better difference in performance.

Goldseekers 15000.
Bought due the old 'handles mineralized ground' marketing. Which in this case was true for the units up until that date, for sure.
Not a bad coil range, 8", 11" and a big useless wopper of a coil, maybe 15" but can't remember.

Minelab Eldorado MK 1.
Metal box, cheap price.
Bought for single tone judgement on coins, but soon realised that even with their low frequency, with a small coil they were sensitive on small gold (not sub gram) over hot ground, with extremely impressive depth and smooth running with large coils on hot ground.
One of the best Minelab's ever made.

Dual Ace.
Bought for the twin frequency of 8kHz and 20kHz, plus the fact they were only $895. 
Best manual balance ever put on a unit. Ran them in 8kHz exclusively. 
Went through a long stage of hipmounting these and the GT/FT. 
Took a lot of pressure off the arm and made for easier and longer days.
Just like the Bugs, I used to buy two at a time.

GT/FT16000.
Bought for the auto ground tracking. 
Functioned far and above what I thought they would.
Low kHz so handled ground with ease.

XT 17000.
Bought due to twin freq, but I was after the 6.4kHz more than the 32kHz. Good machines.

Xt18000
Bought for the Triple freq and to check out if everything ran stable with such a variety of correlation going on. 
Best general gold VLF to date.

Ace 250.
Bought because they were so cheap. 
And if they hit coins well and hinted at junk to an acceptable level ....well at that price you gotta give them a go.
Horribly disappointed with them, hated them no end, what a shambles.
Later on when using pre set balance non threshold based VLF units to go back over ground the PI's had been hitting on but were moaning and groaning and shutting down with big sig responses, I found a place for that horrible little Ace.
Bought another when the larger 12" x 9" concentric came out and bugger me, you could mount them on a straight shaft and general detect with them, digging all very deep quiet Iron hits. 
So I found a place for them and loved the little Aces.
I still say today, that if a kid had an Ace and popped on a large concentric and detected every day, his gold take would be more than anyone's for the year.

Original Gold Bug.
Bought due to them being in 20kHz. 
Lovely looking black unit with an Egyptian looking Bug on the side of the box.
Badly correlated threshold on all units, crappy thresholds all told really. Run mostly silent mode for ease of use and seemed deeper than threshold mode.
Set em up in front of the handgrip and rode the balance. Or hipmounted them on long dragged out daily sessions.
Loved them, really did.

Gold Bug 2.
Put off by such a high frequency at first. 
But bought for shallow sniping and reef working.
Light, did their job extremely well. Loved riding the balance and they excelled at what they were made for. Threshold still not very good, no real full life to them.
Had they been engineered with a rock steady threshold and tone control they, along with the original Bug, would have been top notch on both mild and hot ground.
Loved em.

Whites GMT.
Bought only due to the fact that I got a chance to use one for many hours, and once I worked out the correct correlation of SAT speed against gain I bought one immediately.
After the nice square box Goldmaster11 and following VSAT, then the magnificent GM3, then a change to the 4B, I thought that entire platform was the best small gold or mild ground detector range made for those usages.
The GMT with it's beaut ground grab and run manually could handle any dirt.
Yet a lot of gold detectorist's couldn't work them out, which I never really understood as they were very simplistic in operation.

MXT.
Bought for gold only as it ran with a prospecting mode, and running in the lower kHz of 14, I thought it'd make a smoother and deeper 'general detecting machine than the GMT.
But I was very disappointed with it on most ground in comparison.

Fors CoRe.
Bought it for gold. Cannot travel over hot ground. With large coil over mullock it's a deep gain pushing superstar.
Gave it good go for coinage on mild ground, nowhere near the mark of my other coin units on trashy ground.
But found a neat use for it along inland river banks and their picnic areas. Perfect machine for me there. Big coil lives on it. Love it.

SD2000.
Bought for gold detecting, hot deep ground only.
Big money up front, some new type of signal transmit we were told, so I naturally thought the dollar difference would match up in performance between the current and earlier VLF's with 11" and larger coils quite significantly.
$4600 vs $1500
Sadly disappointed in comparison, and felt that the price was about $2000 out of whack. 
Couldn't believe how many people were stating how quiet they were on hot ground. What bullshit that was.
Moaning and groaning beasts, annoying threshold stability. Quite a sloppy threshold dial compared to the vlf platform. And the ground balance wandered badly. 
Rushed onto market instead of taking a few months to refine them.
I still like em though, running one at the moment actually.

SD2100.
Bought because when I used the first one, the difference in sensitivity over the 2000 was noticed straight away. More stable unit outright too.

SD 2200d.
Bought simply because I was hoping the auto ground tracking would operate exactly like that on the VLF platform and weren't let down in that regard, Superb. Sadly my first was a dull dud. The second unit was I bought was particularly hot.

GP Extreme.
Purchase being due to 'new technology'. Sadly got a dull dud yet again.
The second unit I tried was a TRUE Extreme and handled itself accordingly. Bought it instantly. Great unit.

GP3000.
Had a good feeling on this one, bought because I had an inkling the units would be even across the board, no duds, and I was spot on.
Loved the faster tracking over the 2200 and much more sensitive of course. 
All time favorite PI when I sit down and think about it.

The following run of GPX's I bought because I'm an idiot.
The purchase, selling of earlier machines, and re-purchase of the GPX range was an expensive lesson learnt, and made some average years turn into break even years.
Wasted a lot of money and time pulling tiny little sparklers a few inches away from previous dig holes. Big bloody deal...

[Steve in Idaho]

I went to hunting gold with a detector because I got sick of all of the permits and hell that I had to go through for dredging. I have found more gold with my detectors that I ever did dredging.

[argyle]

On 09/04/2016 at 3:09 AM, Ridge Runner said:

 

 

41 minutes ago, Steve in Idaho said:

I went to hunting gold with a detector because I got sick of all of the permits and hell that I had to go through for dredging. I have found more gold with my detectors that I ever did dredging.

They completely banned dredging for us here Steve. I had deposits on new dredging gear at the time the law was passed, and I was lucky to get my money back.

 

So what first gold detector did you buy?

[Steve in Idaho]

I bought a Garret Deepseaker and I found a 3 oz nugget with it. I also used it to hunt coins. That was about 30 years ago.