X-Terra 705 Gold Pack Prospecting Settings

[Alluminati]

Right on Gibson.

Former Xterra user here, nice to see the 705 bag some big nuggets. Good going.

[Gibson]

Phrunt

It sounds like i am already addicted, I am even thinking to quit my job hahahah

Gibson

[Gibson]

JW

Thanks man, its just that its boring being stuck in the office and considering that it doesn't pay much. The money that i got from selling the nuggets i found was way too much from what i earn, but i will weigh the pros and cons then make a decision. 

Gibson

[Alluminati]

I lived in an area with native gold like that and had a low income job, I just might consider doing it full time.

What these guys say is very true though, keep that in mind.

15 grams wouldn't make me quit my job in North America, it is very expensive to live here. However if I lived in Africa, or anywhere else where you can survive off a few hundred a month, I would go looking for nuggets instead.

 

 

[Jeff McClendon]

Hi Gibson,

great work on finding those two awesome nuggets! They look beautiful!!!!  I'm retired so I would be all over spending my day prospecting where you are. Here in Colorado I would be lucky to find half of a gram of fine gold in 2 hours of panning or sluicing. Most of the time I happily settle for less. Keep listening for those faint signals too.  The 705 can punch pretty deep. Good hunting.

Jeff

[Wyoprospector]

On 10/11/2018 at 2:10 PM, Jeff McClendon said:

Hi Gibson,

you asked about settings and I am going to assume that you are fairly new at this, so here are the settings that worked for me in Arizona. -Turn on the 705 and press the pick/coin mode button so that you see the pick up at the top of the display. -Press the menu button and go through the auto noise cancelling process. -Also go through the auto ground balancing process. (Don't use tracking unless you absolutely have to since you can track out a good target by swinging the coil over it repeatedly.) -Set your gain somewhere between 18 and 22 as long as the audio is stable. -Set your threshold for a low background fairly steady hum. Basically you are ready to go once you hit the pinpoint/detect button and you see the number 5 along with the pick symbol on the display and you hear the threshold hum. 

Prospecting mode is audio only. The big number 5 is the default iron mask setting. Leave it alone and listen for faint or loud repeatable tones. Once you detect a good sounding target you can dig it or you can toggle to preset coin mode 4 and check the target's numerical ID. (The other preset coin modes have several low conductor numbers disked out including small gold.) You can also make your own custom preset coin mode for quick low conductor target ID by just having -8 -6 -4 and 48 disked out) For gold and a whole bunch of other low conductors you should definitely dig if you see a number between -2 and 22. Ground balance again after really big targets or if the prospecting mode threshold gets chattery suddenly. Again, avoid using the coin mode except for TID numbers quick check, since many low conductors are automatically discriminated out in those modes and depth is  really lessened.

You can get a great signal on 1 gram or heavier gold/lead targets at around 4"to 6" and possibly more if your ground is not too heavily mineralized.You should also see low numbers in the coin mode you setup for ID numbers that can jump around a bit sometimes. Smaller gold and small low conductors will give softer repeatable audio responses but may not give a target ID number in your chosen coin mode

Minelab has a very good gold tutorial on their website and on youtube by Kevin Hoagland that goes through this basic process for the X-Terra 70 and applies to the 705 too.

Hope this helps,

good luck,

jeff

Hello, newbie to this forum, not to detecting. Bought a few detectors over the years based on Steve's great reviews. Had trouble with the 705 though, got one when they first came out, after a few days it failed,  kellyco replaced it, the second failed after 3 mos, third was a charm. 

So I learned and used it on FL beaches and was very satisfied. Then I took it to WY and started nugget shooting in the prospecting mode.  Everything was fine until I came to a tailings pile when I could not get the machine to STOP sounding off like it was over a target. Went off the tailings pile and it worked fine as before. I made several adjustments and without any success I called minelab, they tried to help but could not solve the problem and were going to have John, the X-Terra specialist call me back. The call never came and I sold the unit to someone who only detected beaches. Luckily I had my Tesoro Diablo II to take over, it worked flawlessly on the same tailings pile and others that I searched. 

Anything similar happen to you down here in AZ?

[fredmason]

That is weird, WYO;

did you try other tailing piles?  There is a possibility that some big iron was buried in that pile...

fred

 

[Jeff McClendon]

Hi,

phrunt said it well, I had a discrimination program set up that I could switch over to for target ID and hot rock identification when needed.

I could sometimes ground balance on the hot rocks too and that would take care of most of the problem.

Jeff