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My Tips On Nugget Detecting With The Minelab Equinox


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I'm going to have to sit down and read this thread thoroughly I think. After two days of swinging the nox over gold bearing areas, I hated it. Tried gold 1 and 2, even tried lowering the gain. ....For anyone reading this - its more likely the user not the machine :)

Found a nice little lead pellet and tried it out as a test piece in another location where there was lots of ironstone/quartz rubble. Seemed to have trouble picking it up unless close the coil (11").  What worried me was the changing numbers when sweeping over the lead. I was getting a range of numbers. Id had the opinion that I could just swing the coil all day and when a target read somewhere in the range of 1 - 3 then it may be lead or gold. (small gold or lead) With the machine farting and burping every second swing and showing lots of 11- 13 numbers, I wasn't going to start digging everything so only dug low numbers. Also whats with the target response? With the 4500 I get a target and within 2 seconds I know where it is. The nox coil takes me ages to work it out. I know where the sweet spot on the coil is its just that it seems like its appearing /disappearing so quickly its hard to pinpoint, anyway sort of got a bit confusing by the end of the day. I don't know, I sort of gave up after a couple of days and wished id taken my 4500 with me. I think the problem is that I still don't know what the real difference between ground noises and targets are yet with the nox. I must admit a few times i was worried that the depth capabilities were quite poor so i cranked it up to 25 but in the mineralised ground, it was pretty noisy so i settled on about 17. Anyway ill keep persevering and do some more reading, hopefully in time I'll get my head around how this thing works. 

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On 9/8/2018 at 12:41 PM, phrunt said:

Where you talk about the snails crawl on the 20 square foot patch do you mean walking really slowly or swinging really slowly or both? KiwiJW commented last time we nugget hunted I was going way too fast as he was pulling up gold constantly with his Zed and I found nothing except pellets and 22 shells.  I admit I was sort of jumping around all over the place, I was like the ball in a game of pong bouncing around the area we were in.

Was the better method for me walking slowly, swinging slowly walking back and forth like I was mowing the lawn?  I was in Gold 2 with it's default recovery 4 and 25 sensitivity and the detector was playing nicely,  I didn't change any other setting, I generally just use defaults for the modes.

I need to start to work on technique now, John was going very slow in the same little patch almost all day, and I was darting around but I didn't want to get in his way so I stayed away as much as possible, but the ground I was in nearby had gold I missed as he later went over it and gold was popping up for him.

It could just be it was all too deep for the Nox and 6" but it could also be my technique made me miss some of it. 

 

Simon,

I remember when JW told you that.  I have been told the same thing.  Funny thing about this is I know how to slow down and grid on my beaches when I find something but it is a bit different when searching gold.

When I grid at the beach I get slower and make sure I get my coil over all of the area where targets might have been deposited.  I don't want to miss a target because I failed to get over that target or near enough to it for the 'off coil' targets.  This type of hunting for nuggets is a bit incomplete.

Steve has just described to us setting up the Nox and other nugget detectors to make the ground become as silent as possible and with proper coil control we will find more nuggets.  There is one aspect I don't think was directly mentioned although following the Minelab sweeping directions does take this into effect.

You mentioned jumping around like a pong ball.  When we do this we are constantly jumping to NEW ground under the coil.  The ground in gold areas varies much greater than my ground at the beach.  When I grid there I can keep targets more in mind that ground variations.  I and perhaps you need to do as Steve, JW, JP, Lunk, Swifty, Micro Nugget, Bill and all other good nugget hunters and listen to the ground and not just the targets!  (Is this really the secret?)

The overlapping swing technique lets the detector stay smooth and just sample a little bit of new ground and we are supposed to take that new swing and find the subtle signal variation and turn it into a target.  All metal detectors can only process so much information from the ground (a Swifty quote of sorts).

So, maybe this thread just helped me to make up my own quote to find more nuggets.

Nugget hunting is about the ground ... not the targets.  Dig everything that doesn't sound like the ground!

Mitchel

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Simon,

You made two observations there that are true for me.

Sometimes there is no gold where I am prospecting.

Often times I am with a detectorist who is better at finding nuggets than I am.

Mitchel

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23 hours ago, Jin said:

With the 4500 I get a target and within 2 seconds I know where it is. The nox coil takes me ages to work it out. I know where the sweet spot on the coil is its just that it seems like its appearing /disappearing so quickly its hard to pinpoint, anyway sort of got a bit confusing by the end of the day. I don't know, I sort of gave up after a couple of days and wished id taken my 4500 with me.

Hi Jin,

If you want depth in Australian ground then stick with the GPX. You just have to accept that with VLF detectors that they only get the depth they are going to get. And the detector will be more difficult to use. The only reason for using a VLF is to get tiny bits a GPX might miss. Or for dealing with lots of trash. Never leave the GPX behind!

Basically, if I want to go nugget detecting I am going to use my GPZ. The Equinox is not in the same class as the GPZ or GPX by a long shot. Once you go from a GPZ or GPX to a VLF you have already walked away from “more depth”. The only goal with a VLF is to 1. Get the ground including hot rocks to shut up to an acceptable level then 2. Dig everything else that sounds out outside the noise level you have chosen in step one.

Trying to force a VLF to go deeper when it can’t is an exercise in futility. Once you accept that it is what it is, and tune accordingly, things get easier. There is nothing in any manual that I have read that says the bottom half of a sensitivity control is included with the intent it never get used. “The sensitivity control goes from 1 - 25 but we insist you never under any circumstances use less than 50% of the available control”. Nope, I have never read that anywhere, but I would swear it is graven into the mind of every nugget hunter out there.

Lower the sensitivity as much as is required to get the machine to settle down.... end of story. Remember you are learning, and you can work on boosting the sensitivity as you get more used to the sounds, but for starting out let’s just get the machine to run halfway clean over the ground. 

The signals in the 11 - 13 range are either flat tin steel or hot rocks. If hot rocks you have to lower sensitivity and play with the ground balance in an attempt to alleviate them. 40 kHz or 20 kHz may also help. The last ditch solution is to either ignore or block signals in that range.

Finally, I should note I consider the 11” coil to be “not a great nugget hunting coil” and part of the problem. The 6” coil is much more stable and certainly easier to pinpoint with. The main problem with the 11” is coil knock sensitivity with a combination of high gain and low recovery speeds.

I hope this helps but as always Aussies are left to figure out what works best on your ground. :smile:

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Another of your inspiring and well written articles of real field use and expert knowledge.  The NOX is one of those machines that comes along once in most detectorists short carriers.  Some folks are fortunate to see 2 or 3 said machines, but that is about it.  The overall capabilities and uses of 1 detector under $1000 just buckles me knees ...and I love it. 

The 1st month I was selling these units (200+ so far), I would have not said it is a true Gold Prospecting VLF detector, but boy I can say that it most certainly is and even better than some of the other Gold Prospecting Detectors out there. I had it in my mind as a Multi Purpose (pretty good at each style of hunting) machine.  I can't wait for the comparable models of the other manufactures to come out so we have even more options.

Your writing skill is as good as your detecting Steve and that is very rare in this industry.

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On 9/11/2018 at 1:52 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

Lower the sensitivity as much as is required to get the machine to settle down.... end of story. Remember you are learning, and you can work on boosting the sensitivity as you get more used to the sounds, but for starting out let’s just get the machine to run halfway clean over the ground. 

As always Steve, good advice, thank you. I did own the V Sat for a while but basically couldn't understand how to operate it and sold it. So not much experience with VLF's. Next time I go out ill take the nox along and try what you suggested and lower the sensitivity right down and see if it makes it easier to use. 

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I've been reading Clive's book on the Equinox and he had an excellent section on the numbers jumping around as you described, and I have noticed the same thing.  His said that the Nox is actually reading not just ground and targets but even within targets, so bottle caps, alloys, are actually sounding on the individual components of metal alloys, some tin, some steel, etc.  With bullets they are lead and probably other metals to adjust hardness, sometimes copper jackets, casings can be brass, aluminum, filled with mineralized dirt, or have a different metal for the primer.

First detector, so still trying to wrap my head around how the detector actually works and how to fine tune everything, but his book has helped me understand a lot.

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Sorry to take the thread off track, but on the advice offered before, I thought id try the Nox using a lower sensitivity. Giving it a run on the front nature strip (not gold-bearing country). I used park 1 and lowered the gain down to 8 (think FP is 20) The machine was stable and quiet.  Within minutes I got a nice signal that read  #22, which was a $1 dollar coin. A target number of #17 revealed a fifty cent coin and a #15 revealed a pull tab. A few squashed bottle tops read #21. I think id watched too many youtube videos and had the wrong impression as to how fast to swing the coil. This time I went slowly and the targets were distinguishable unlike before were I was hearing signals all over the place. I know this is not mineralised soil but it still showed me what the nox is capable of when the sensitivity is turned down a bit. So thanks again for the helpful advice. Looking forward to SLOWLY learning this machine.

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  • 3 months later...

Thanks Steve for the insight on the gold modes. I may try that on the beach and see if that system works there. I really want to try gold 2 and get it stable on the beach.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'd love to have one for the super trashy areas around an old homestead.  But I guess I'll keep using the F75 with the 5" coil for that purpose.  In the future I might see into trading other coils for a used one for the Equinox.

 

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