Testing A Few Gold And Ground Modes On An Undug 10 Gram Nugget - Video

[jasong]

Best prospecting partners ever. The doggies. 

 

I didn't hit much today except some small bits. I have two new observations on the GPZ though both potentially of dubious usefulness.

 

1.) It appears to talk on channel 22 on a radio. I think I was on channel 120 on the GPZ. If I move the radio close enough to the control unit the Z will start transmitting on the radio on channel 22.

 

2.) Running hot you hit a lot of hot clay balls and other various patches in the ground. These are 90% of the time low-high signals. Which also sound (unfortunately) exactly like a good deep ouncer size nugget. But...after my last vid where the 10 grammer was hitting pretty good in Extra Deep it occured to me that I might try switching into it when I hit those good sounding low-highs as well since if it was an actual target big enough to give a good signal in HY then it was definitely going to be big enough to give a signal in Extra Deep since the crossover for low-high signals is above 10 grams for the kind of nuggets I am finding (recall from my video my note that the nugget was high/low in every setting). But, ground noise/signals should go away almost completely on the other hand.

 

So, it seems like there may be a potential method, depending on your area and on the strength of the signal you are working with (caution caution, smoother and mellower signals may still be targets and get lost by doing this) to eliminate a lot of those false strong signals from hot ground patches by switching into Extra Deep and seeing if the signal is still a good solid signal and then switching back to your normal mode. Switching to Difficult is similar but will lose depth so in theory you could switch to it and the target noise dissapears and you'd think it's ground noise and not dig it. With Extra Deep, on the low/highs, the theory being that if you only do this on the strong targets then the signal shouldn't get much quieter than in High Yield on the nuggets big enough to make a low/high signal to begin with.

 

I tried it today and dug everything I hit and the hot patches and clay lenses were in fact screaming on High Yield but duds on Extra Deep. Good targets above 6 or 7 grams still sound good though (keep in mind a low/high real target will be bigger than that). Does this mean anything? Not yet, not enough testing. But it's a point of interest.

 

I think it'd be even more likely for a signal to be good if it was hitting in both Extra Deep/Normal and High Yield/Difficult. The combination of those two eliminated 100% of the bad ground targets I got today, but again, very impartial testing.

 

On that note, the more I use the machine the more I think something I would REALLY love to see on the GPZ is the ability to make the auto track trigger switch multifunction. For instance, hold it in once and you switch to a full suite of user presets (say HY/Normal/No Smoothing), click it again and you can get a second suite of presets (say Extra Deep/Normal/+5 sensitivity). Hold it in for more than 1 second and it brings you into quick track mode as normal. 

 

The user button is nice, but it's still too slow, especially when you want to quickly switch to 2, 3 or more different settings.

[spencer@wy]

Jason, looks like your new detector is off to a good start. thats a sweet find, i look forward to the day i pull one out like that. all the better you were filming your session. I t gives us newbies a little exitment, makes me itch to be out. may the rest of your vacation be as bountiful.

[Swifty]

Hey Jasong, I've been running into the same hot ground/black sand deposits hear in the Randsberg area. The signal

 

gets a little better the deeper I dig but never really solid and its a low-high return. Switching into deep mode it will

 

almost die out 99%.of the time. After watching this video I'll be swinging a pick axe tomorrow to make sure its only

 

ground noise.

[Lunk]

Good post Jason. I've been experimenting along the same lines, and that's one of the things I like about the many timing options on the GPX series; by switching between certain timings it is possible to differentiate real metal targets from hot rocks and ground noises. The several Gold Mode and Ground Type combinations of the Zed can potentially be used to do the same thing. I tried every possible combination on a solid 28 gram nugget and all but one gave a low/high respoonse...the Severe Ground Type gave a high/low response. Since Severe should eliminate most if not all ground noise, when getting a strong low/high in Normal or Difficult Ground Type modes and then switching to Severe still gives a strong low/high or a high low, better get digging!

[Marty]

I gota question for you , Why are you running your TH at 1 ?

 

Cheers Marty

[jasong]

Good question! And in my usual fashion I started writing a 3 page essay in reply. But let me stay simple here and just say it boils down to 2 reasons:

 

The first is just personal preference. I don't enjoy listening to a constant stream of hums, chirps and chatter all day, especially since I spend most my waking hours detecting when I'm out here. I also find it easier to process and pare down the good signals when there is much less noise, which in turn allows me to make more observations outside the detector such as ground conditions, geology, where I'm going, where I've been, etc. A lot of my personal success in finding gold comes from making connections, patterns, and parallels to ground I've found gold in previously. I also don't like feeling like I am fighting my tools which is how I feel after days and days of noise. I run VLF's just the opposite though, mostly because I only use them temporarily and can put up with it.

 

The second is that honestly I just haven't noticed a big difference or advantage to running it higher on the Z. I'm digging 1-2 grainers basically every day at multiple inches of depth already, in some cases places where SDC's and GPZ's have already canvassed. To me, that's pretty good and at that point almost unecessarily sensitive to the small stuff. I could save my arm and gain sensitivity and outproduce the Z by using the Gold Bug 2 instead if those are what I was targetting.

 

While my in-situ testing abilities are limited on the bigger and deeper stuff I still have had the chance to do quite a bit of fiddling around with not only the gold/ground modes but also the audio settings on the targets I have dug. And I just can't personally see very much change other than adding in a bunch of noise by boosting it up. I'm definitely open to new evidence though if anyone else posts some testing up. I do have my volume limit set to 15, which seems to make the volume range of a target also expand, so maybe that is boosting up those target signals above the background threshold better? No idea there.

 

From a settings standpoint one thing I feel like I'm doing (accent on feel, but not knowing haha) is filling in some of those big open areas left by the discrete spacing between the 3 audio smoothing settings when what I really want is a median setting in between no/low or low/high. Well not really technically, but effectively to my ears and brain it appears to work that way.

[Marty]

The reason I ask (and I'm sure many others out there are some what intrigued)

I have never seen anyone anywhere lower there TH as low as 1 , surely you are missing out on so much more 

 

[vanursepaul]

Looks like he is doing pretty good to me.... and comfortable doing it....

 

Different strokes for different folks.....

 

 

paul

[DDancer]

Cool observations jasong.  Definite food for thought for me.

I like the idea of using the quick track for a mode changer and I think it would be nice if one could set the user button up as quick track and leave mode setting to the trigger.  Basically the ability to toggle quickly as you said.

[jasong]

Everything on this machine seems relative. It's like the scales of justice...take one thing away and it tips, you need to balance it with something else. In this case I'm not sure if it has to do with my Sensitivity being 17, running in Normal, or my high volume limit. Sometimes you do want to run the machine slightly unbalanced though and let the scales tip one way or another. 

 

If I was running in Difficult, Low Smoothing, Sensitivity 8-12, and lower volume settings then I'm guessing I'd not be able to set the threshold that low, the scales of balance would already be tipped to far to one edge. I'm guessing this type of setup is what is more suitable in hot ground like in Oz or some places Arizona here.

 

After we get done with this snow here I'll make a vid on the threshold and some faint targets. I'm always eager to looking at other people's testing too which may show an even better way to run, not a lot of people posting with test results on thresholds and such though so I'm relying mostly on my own experiments right now - which certainly aren't definitive by any means and only apply for my particular set of environmental conditions here in Northern Nevada. Though when I get back to my patches in Gold Basin this winter I strongly suspect I can run in similar modes too. A place like LSD though, or some hot spots around Q-site - fuhgetaboutit!

 

I do want to mention again though that on that particular target my TH was 1 but normally I run at 5 (which itself is still pretty low).  Also, I can still hear a faint hum in the background so it isn't like turning the TH way down on the GPX where there is literally nothing, and then down even further where it's obvious that you are nulling faint nuggets and small trash out.

 

DDancer, I agree. That quick track trigger is some prime real estate. On the GPX I wore through the little green button, on the Z I hardly ever touch it because it seems like the auto track is a lot quicker and more accurate.

 

I'm going to do some more testing on manual vs auto here when the snow goes away and the mud dries up, it'd be interesting to see how much sensitivity is lost. On the GPX it was measurable, curious about the Z since the setup is different and in a sense, if I understand how the machine works correctly, it is kinda of doing a ground balance act with the coil all the time anyways since it's setup on a negative feedback loop that is always differentially monitoring the ground with the 2 RX loops.