Jump to content

Gold Modes While I Was Hunting In Parks And Lawns


digger1955

Recommended Posts

Mostly Gold 2.
I tried G2 once before but yesterday I used it for a whole hunt.
I was using the sniper coil, also.

I have mineralized SE dirt plus a ton of extra iron everywhere that comes in all forms from microscopic to nails of all sizes up to horseshoe sized and even larger.
I opted for the 800 over the 600 primarily because I didn't know exactly what settings would turn out to be optimal for my challenging sites and wanted to have all available options possible.
I would rather have settings and not need them then not have them and need them.
I am a mad scientist of sorts and I am not afraid to try some very outside the box settings on my detectors and the patience to keep at it.
I am just starting to experiment with the possible settings, I have used a few of the factory settings, park and field  1 and 2, tweaking them a bit here and there and good things are happening and yesterday I messed around with the two gold settings for the first time.
I like it, it seems to work pretty well here and I got used to the super amount of data overload very quickly because of my past experience using my F70.
I found out using my Fisher lots of settings work well but the best and most productive set up I ever used is when I have it in all metal, the threshold setting set to max and the sensitivity also maxed out plus with the speed on SL...boost, most of the time.
Noisy, jumpy, schizophrenic...you don't know the half of it.
A friend watched me go right behind him and find targets he missed completely and asked what settings I was using once so I let him see and hear what was happening using these settings as we walked around.
He was flabbergasted, he asked me how in the world I could make any sense at all out of the shear wall of sound and jumping numbers and I told him it took hundreds and hundreds of hours over the last few years practicing to be able to do just that.
I like hunting quietly too, way less mentally fatigueing that way, but when it counts here in my strange devil dirt I would much rather get data on everything that is happening under my coil and use my ears, brain and experience as my prime discriminator.
When I switched to the gold modes it took very little time to get used to it...it almost felt natural and like home to me.
I was using the small sniper coil through all of this hunt, not thrilled with the small footprint but masking is my most challenging problem here so it will be staying mounted on the bottom of my lower rod for the foreseeable future.

On these modes I used factory settings but made sure to set reactivity to 6.

So exactly what were my observations using the gold modes looking for normal coin and jewelry targets...

1...This mode can sense the smallest targets, it seemed to lock on some very tiny pieces of foil all day pretty solidly and accurately even fairly deep like at 5-6".
I can see why gold hunters would use this, extreme sensitivity.
Using these settings I watched the screen pretty closely most of the time but I was listening for some solid good tones with sharp ends even closer.


2...Depth, even with the small coil depth was very good even in my devil dirt where sensing anything accurately  past 6" is usually a gift.
All I really need to hit is the 6-7" level because that is where there is a layer of great targets that have been missed for years by huge amount of hunters with all kinds of detectors because of masking, however there are some targets deeper in some areas and it would be nice to be able to go deeper if possible.
On this hunt I got a very jumpy signal that went from lower numbers up into the 30's and that usually means iron falsing around here but I got a deep depth reading so I got curious.
In the hole I opened there were a couple of rusty nails on my way down, common around here, but there was still something pretty big deeper so I kept going even though I knew it was probably going to be junk.
I finally hit it and I didn't measure but this thing had to be at a minimum of 10"...could have been a bit deeper.

I am still shocked I hit this thing that deep with the sniper coil.

It is pictured below, a very old nozzle that had to be down there for many decades because it has fallen completely apart past the screw on end part.
I think it is probably a water nozzle, it seems too big to be for gas or anything else I know of but the metal that is just above that end is thin, brittle and falling apart.
Only extreme age and a long dirt nap can do that to metal.
Conclusion...if I was going relic hunting I would probably be using gold modes instead of others to get the deepest in my mineralized mess.
I still have to compare to other modes but what else can I ask for when looking for deeper targets?

3...Coins on edge.
I can't say for sure but on two coins I came across, in areas I have scoured in the past by the way, I hit the tightest, smallest, quickest signals I can remember getting so far but they sounded so good I stopped in my tracks and had to dig them.
One was a quarter that came up when I flipped up the plug and the second was a Susan B Anthony dollar coin that literally flew out of the dirt when I flipped over that small plug.
I am pretty sure both of these were on edge, the dollar coin almost definitely but I can never know for sure.
On the dollar coin I did try a few other modes and to me it did not seem to hit that coin quite as well as the gold mode did but I did not try them all and I might have not been over the exact area of the target with the others because I didn't suspect I was swinging over an on-edge coin at the time.
All I can say is in gold 2 even with the small coil and over this unusually tiny signal I was able to hit it easily and get 29-30 numbers to show up very solidly from more than one direction.
I wasn't going super-super slow either...I was not crawling but moving the coil at my normal speed ant that solid quick tone really stood out every time I passed over that spot.
On both these coins it was the tones that alerted me to them first, I didn't even look at the screen and see the good, repeating quarter numbers until I stopped and examined the area after I heard those tones.

At this point I still don't know exactly what will work the best here or what will be the best setting combinations to make it the easiest for me to notice targets but I do know that these all in gold settings, especially gold 2, with a bit faster reactivity is definitely something that isn't the easiest but definitely can produce once I get some more practice.

More to come.

nozzle.jpg

Susie B.jpg

  • Like 7
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites


Hard to believe no responses to this post. Quite a few users are finding the Gold Modes useful for more than just prospecting, and there have been requests made to Minelab asking for a VCO option in the other modes. VCO tends to evoke a love or hate response from people. As a nugget hunter from way back I cut my teeth on VCO and so I am one that loves it.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have tested gold mode out in a few tot lots.  Usually when I want to clear out every bit of foil and every bobby pin (surprising they are still used in abundance around my area)… and hopefully small gold.  It is a powerfully sensitive tool. If only I lived near gold country, I would be prospecting with the 800 regularly. ~Tim.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...