What Can A 3mm 10k White Gold 4 Prong Earring Stud Tell You?

[Steve Herschbach]

The Gold Kruzer is a good machine. Still have mine. I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves. Could be a surprise for the relic hunters if they gave it a go with the concentric coil.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Could be a surprise for the relic hunters if they gave it a go with the concentric coil.

Could you expand a little on that Steve?

[Steve Herschbach]

Everyone is gaga over Deus high frequency. Gold Kruzer runs at 61 kHz, and unlike Deus has smaller DD coils and a concentric coil option. Coils are half the battle and Gold Kruzer has the edge there, not to mention you can buy several Gold Kruzer coils for the price of one Deus coil.

I’m not a big relic hunter but I am surprised nobody has picked up on this yet.

Micro jewelry and micro nuggets are similar, with variations in natural gold running both smaller and less pure that eventually make many nuggets undetectable. Frequency is only one of many components, with circuit gain being a larger factor in many instances. Case in point the new digital 19 kHz Gold Bug does much better on small gold than the original analog 19 kHz Gold Bug. Gain can be pushed so high that many prospectors dumped the 71 kHz Gold Bug 2 for the highly boosted 45 kHz Gold Monster, which will air test better. Gain pushed so high leads to coil instability however that can prove problematic in field conditions so the equation becomes less clear in actual use. Coils matter a lot, concentric vs DD. 

A huge difference exists when talking all metal vs discrimination. Machines that are better in all metal can drop behind other machines when the discrimination is engaged. It’s two different detectors really when talking disc versus all metal because there are different ways to approach discrimination at the micro level. 

The efficiency of the ground balance circuit matters as sensitivity varies with the ground balance setting and so people in different ground see different results simply because they have different ground balance settings. Some detectors have discrimination ranges that run into the ground range, and opening that range can have dramatic effects, but with attendant issues in dealing with the ground and hot rocks 

Then the dirty little secret nobody likes to mention or hear. At the micro gold level differences between individual detectors exhibit. No ten Gold Bug 2 detectors will test the same. There are good ones and bad ones. The GB2 is factory tuned for the coil it ships with. Merely changing coils can turn a good GB2 into a bad GB2. The coil design itself has changed over the years as has the Gold Bug 2 itself. Forum members here are probably aware of CZ differences. Well, the CZ has got nothing on the Gold Bug 2 differences that exist at the micro level, and it is far from the only detector for which that is true. 

Once you sort all that out, the ground rules. Hot rocks nobody ever knew existed magically appear when running this class of detector to the hilt, and for micro jewelry the issue of micro aluminum raises its ugly head. In the real world practical limitations appear that air tests ignore. When you add all this up anyone thinking there is one magic detector that solves this equation best for all people.... good luck.