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What Do You Do When ??


DSMITH

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as the title reads what do you do when you are detecting an area that is so heavy in Magnetite that none of your detector work

the area I am in detecting for gold is this way, the solution I have come up with is to fill five gallon buckets with dirt haul them back home and run them through a small sluice, like the gold fox mini monster, the area has a layer of magnetite down anywhere from 1-5 inches, when you drag a 2 inch rare earth magnet through it the magnet comes back looking like a tennis ball,it is like trying to detect over a iron plate, have found no detector as of yet that will see much deeper the 3-6 inches and the 6 inches is exaggerating it LOL, and that includes a pulse detector that I just recently sold, just thought I would pose this question and get some opinions from the more experienced gold detectorist, every area I have detected here where I live is like this, I have tried the Legend which when you activate the mineralization meter on the Legend it literally pegs the iron particle side of the meter at 10 bars the salt side is reading 3-5 bars, GM 1000, Xterra 705, Whites TDI, Simplex Plus as well as a few others, nothing seems to work, so what do you all do when you encounter an area like I described

 

Thanks for reading

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Some of the places I detect, there are solid magnetite specimens the size of golf balls with every conceivable smaller sized magnetite pieces throughout the dirt down to sand grain size. Thinking of it as an iron curtain is very realistic. 

I have found that the higher frequency weighted modes on the Equinox and Legend will at least have a fighting chance at these places. The original XP Deus and the ORX did fairly well too with the HF coil and frequency set above 31 kHz. Deus 2 using its Multi frequency Goldfield has basically been a bust for me. It just can't handle that kind of thick magnetite the way Goldfield is setup right now. I hope XP fix this.

The other single frequency gold prospecting detectors that I have tried in thick magnetite (if they will even ground balance!!!!) will overload fairly easily. So turning down sensitivity below half power and using a DD coil instead of a Concentric coil (if there was a choice) was the only way to keep detecting with the Nokta Gold Racer, Gold Kruzer, Whites/Garrett 24K and the Minelab Goldmonster 1000.

At least with the Equinox 800 and Legend using their Gold modes in Multi setting, I can run the sensitivity up high enough to get some background noise along with a threshold tone (if you want one) and the target tone. I listen for what the background chatter and target tones do over different targets and learn their tendencies. For instance, many of the big magnetite chunks will double beep on the Equinox 800 and give -9 to -8 responses with a sort of whoooop pow audio response along with a big blanking of all sounds between the whoooop pow and after the target response ends. The Legend does something similar. Compare those audio responses to the mostly clean zip/zip sounds of smaller gold nuggets which also only momentarily blank out the background chatter.

Dealing with the smaller bits of magnetite.......that is where these simultaneous multi frequency VLFs in their high frequency weighted gold modes are supposed to get better depth than a single frequency detector and that has been true for me with the Equinox and Legend. Don't expect anything close to incredible depth and expect iron target IDs on smaller nuggets like 1 or 2 on the Legend and -9/-8 on the Equinox if they aren't on the surface, but they will sound different from magnetite even though they will have the same target IDs.

The SDC 2300 did okay on larger chunks of magnetite. So did my GPX 5000 but neither could get the smaller bits of gold that the Legend and Equinox can hit with ease.

The GPX 6000 using its DD coil does okay on magnetite too but again some sensitivity is lost. Using the 11" Mono in golf ball sized magnetite is not a pleasant experience.

Hopefully the Axiom will do okay..........

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If you were closer to So Cal I’d say try a Equinox also- do you also have access to a 7k?

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49 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Some of the places I detect, there are solid magnetite specimens the size of golf balls with every conceivable smaller sized magnetite pieces throughout the dirt down to sand grain size. Thinking of it as an iron curtain is very realistic. 

I have found that the higher frequency weighted modes on the Equinox and Legend will at least have a fighting chance at these places. The original XP Deus and the ORX did fairly well too with the HF coil and frequency set above 31 kHz. Deus 2 using its Multi frequency Goldfield has basically been a bust for me. It just can't handle that kind of thick magnetite the way Goldfield is setup right now. I hope XP fix this.

The other single frequency gold prospecting detectors that I have tried in thick magnetite (if they will even ground balance!!!!) will overload fairly easily. So turning down sensitivity below half power and using a DD coil instead of a Concentric coil (if there was a choice) was the only way to keep detecting with the Nokta Gold Racer, Gold Kruzer, Whites/Garrett 24K and the Minelab Goldmonster 1000.

At least with the Equinox 800 and Legend using their Gold modes in Multi setting, I can run the sensitivity up high enough to get some background noise along with a threshold tone (if you want one) and the target tone. I listen for what the background chatter and target tones do over different targets and learn their tendencies. For instance, many of the big magnetite chunks will double beep on the Equinox 800 and give -9 to -8 responses with a sort of whoooop pow audio response along with a big blanking of all sounds between the whoooop pow and after the target response ends. The Legend does something similar. Compare those audio responses to the mostly clean zip/zip sounds of smaller gold nuggets which also only momentarily blank out the background chatter.

Dealing with the smaller bits of magnetite.......that is where these simultaneous multi frequency VLFs in their high frequency weighted gold modes are supposed to get better depth than a single frequency detector and that has been true for me with the Equinox and Legend. Don't expect anything close to incredible depth and expect iron target IDs on smaller nuggets like 1 or 2 on the Legend and -9/-8 on the Equinox if they aren't on the surface, but they will sound different from magnetite even though they will have the same target IDs.

The SDC 2300 did okay on larger chunks of magnetite. So did my GPX 5000 but neither could get the smaller bits of gold that the Legend and Equinox can hit with ease.

The GPX 6000 using its DD coil does okay on magnetite too but again some sensitivity is lost. Using the 11" Mono in golf ball sized magnetite is not a pleasant experience.

Hopefully the Axiom will do okay..........

Thanks for the response Jeff, I am just trying to figure this out have never detected ground like I am on rite now so it is a learning experience i am giving the Axiom some serious thoughts but will wait until it has gotten out into peoples hands not saying I do not trust what Mr Hershbach and Gerry is saying but I just want to here how those that detect on similar ground as myself does with one, the GM 1000 was so unstable on this ground it was virtually UN usable, my TDI was pretty much the same the one detector that has surprised me is the Xterra 705 but even it struggles as does the Legend, again I will eventually figure it out and this is a new learning experience for me 

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36 minutes ago, GotAU? said:

If you were closer to So Cal I’d say try a Equinox also- do you also have access to a 7k?

don't have access to a 7K I do have some friends that own the Nox 800 their nox does the same as my Legend, like I said I have been using a Gold Fox Mini Monster to run dirt I have collected while out detecting and been getting some gold with it and also a dry washer but I would love to be able to find some with a detector,if at all possible, Like i replied to jeff I am giving the Axiom some serious thoughts 

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The Legend has done really well for me using the 6" coil in its Gold prospecting mode on Multi. It will ground balance and using a little threshold tone smooths out the audio too. I just use enough sensitivity to get the detector to barely chatter and go with that. I use that tiny bit of chatter to help with hot rocks, cold rocks and magnetite audio recognition. 

There is zero way to eliminate responses from magnetite while allowing responses from small gold nuggets where I often detect. They can share the same target IDs and the magnetite rich ground will easily mask smaller gold. Running the Legend in magnetite with any iron target IDs discriminated out is asking for trouble and will definitely eliminate some gold responses if your ground is anywhere as bad as it sounds from your description of it.

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1 minute ago, Jeff McClendon said:

The Legend has done really well for me using the 6" coil in its Gold prospecting mode on Multi. It will ground balance and using a little threshold tone smooths out the audio too. I just use enough sensitivity to get the detector to barely chatter and go with that. I use that tiny bit of chatter to help with hot rocks, cold rocks and magnetite audio recognition. 

There is zero way to eliminate responses from magnetite while allowing responses from small gold nuggets where I often detect. They can share the same target IDs and the magnetite rich ground will easily mask smaller gold. Running the Legend in magnetite with any iron target IDs discriminated out is asking for trouble and will definitely eliminate some gold responses if your ground is anywhere as bad as it sounds from your description of it.

I am using the 6 inch coil, the odd thing is the ground balance, this ground runs in the high 90s on ground balance values with several of my detectors but the Legend keeps dropping of to zero which I feel is not correct the mineral meter on the Legend is pegged with 3-5 bars on the salt side, i just do not see how the legend is reading the ground balance correctly my understanding is on low mineralized ground it will drop to zero if the meter is pegged tells me my ground is not low mineralization and the ground balance values should not be zero, or am I thinking wrong i just really do not know I have ground balanced several times with different detectors and the ground balance value is always in the 90s but again this is not the case with the Legend it always tracks down to zero.

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The Legend and Equinox give the opposite ground balance numbers from other VLF detectors. My ORX and Deus 2 ground balance on high iron mineralized ground with maxed out mineralization bars at 86 to 87. The Equinox and Legend on the exact same spot ground balanced with numbers from 1 to 5………

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27 minutes ago, Jeff McClendon said:

The Legend and Equinox give the opposite ground balance numbers from other VLF detectors. My ORX and Deus 2 ground balance on high iron mineralized ground with maxed out mineralization bars at 86 to 87. The Equinox and Legend on the exact same spot ground balanced with numbers from 1 to 5………

is it normal for the Legend to just automatically drop to zero Jeff and also have you ever activated the mineralization meter on the legend while out detecting with the Legend I use the mineral meter all the time or should I just ignore the mineral meter, some ground I have seen the bars really low but not in the area I am currently detecting the meter is almost always pegged at 10 bars max and on the salt side it runs 3-5 bars

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