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Makro Gold Racer - Target ID, full range discrimination, steeper learning curve. Bottom line? Better for somebody looking for a more general purpose machine (gold, coins, jewelry, relics) that is very hot on gold. Minelab Gold Monster 1000 - No target ID, no adjustable discrimination. Ease of use a priority. Bottom line? Better for somebody looking for a gold prospecting specific detector with possible jewelry applications (dry beach, tot lots). My general recommendation is if you only want to prospect for gold, then use a detector made expressly from the ground up for that purpose. If you want a detector to do more than just prospecting, get a general purpose detector that is hot on gold. I have both and neither is going away anytime soon. Click images below for larger views...

Strick, if you can find the location where they are hauling the dirt you could have a nice bonanza!

On the threshold at 29, I`ve found same even before this update for me tis important to keep that vol at 8 or lower, stops all that "internal machine" noise coming through and allows that stable threshold. JP on a few occasions has posted this, seems better to use an external booster rather than upping vol if you can`t get a stable threshold. But as always is a individual user thing I suspect.

This is a final cleanup is from many days of running but it sure looks nice... Once again this is from a friends work... just helping him get things cleaned.

I used the new update in the hot rocks and mineralized soil of the high Sierra for a few days and must comment the update is terrific, ground balance is faster and after running the coil over the ferrite ring and surrounding soil the ground noise for the most part melted away, this was true both on the first gb in difficult and a much better gb after switching to normal than before updating. I ran mostly; high yield, normal, sen-9, thresh-27 (will try 29 next time), audio smooth-off, vol-8, semi auto gb, everything was reasonably quite, switching to locate patch made everything very steady and subtle targets seemed to stand out against the background threashold better than with it off. The worst hot rocks still gave off a little high/low groan that was easy to differentiate from a compact metal type signal response. This was a great update for the conditions I was hunting (now if only the iron disc...). Need to put the coil over the yellow stuff as none this trip, still...the zed felt one with the force and I had little doubt I would hear the signal if it came. cant wait for the next release, zed is getting so much better the next go should be sweet!!

It helps if they are near the surface. The one with the gold running thru the quartz was a sunbaker..

while the GB2 is not known for great depth, it will find the goods pretty deep-if you are listening. I found a 1/2 oz piece past 12 inches in some very bad ground...I don't remember if it was the stock coil or the 6-e... fred

This winter I did a lot of climbing the hills. Sometimes it pays off good..... The fellow I sold this nice find to made this Youtube of it... Hope you enjoy it.

Quality metal detectors have been around long enough that it isn't easy to find virgin ground, no matter what the target goal (coins, relics, nuggets, even jewelry). As previously mentioned, I got hooked on coin collecting when I was in 1st grade thanks to the influence of my mom and two of her brothers. I found my first coin with a metal detector the summer before my senior year in high school (1970). After school and three years in a good job, in 1979 I sprung for a Garrett Groundhog, thinking I would use it to make a nice profit hunting coins and nuggets the way Charles Garrett and Roy Lagal described it in their books.... Then life (many other interests) got in the way. Fast forward 36 (now 38) years when I was again bitten with the MD bug. A lot happened in the treasure hunting world in those 36 years. Detectors got a lot better, and the hobby (or even 'profession' for some) had blossomed. The low hanging fruit had been picked. There is still plenty of treasure in the ground, but most is not very close to the surface and/or severely masked by junk metal, meaning it's going to take new equipment and techniques and/or a disproportionate amount of digging to find the good stuff. But as always, there are exceptions. I mentioned in a recent thread last week that I had stumbled upon a lot where an old home had recently been razed, and it appears that the city now owns it with the intent of appending the land to an adjacent park. It's like stepping back in time -- a time when the detectors were few and primitive. And on my journey on this time machine I was allowed to bring along a Fisher F75! I felt like Cinderella at the ball. My previous post reported that in 3 1/2 hours on Independence Day I found two silver coins along with five Wheat cents, using three detectors to sample the ground. This past Saturday I stayed the entire time with the 5 inch DD on the F75, FA (fast) process, gain of 70, zero discrimination, 4H tones. I had twice as much time to hunt and I only stopped to get water and food which I brought along in the car. I again dug two silver coins (dimes -- see photo below) but this time 34 coppers, NO zinc, and only two clad (dimes). Earlier my Wheat to copper ratio was 50%. If that held up I'd have 17 Wheaties. I could only hope. Arriving home and soaking them, I was amazed to see 27 reverses with Wheat stalks. You'd have thought I spent the day on a combine in Kansas. Four Wheats per hour. Will I ever again experience such a high recovery rate? To emphasize, I hunted two rectangles in those seven hours, one along the city sidewalk, about 6 ft X 60 ft. The other was of similar area along one side of the now missing house. I wasn't finding 'spills'. One hole had three coppers and another had two nearly touching Memorials, but all others were single finds. The most enlightening thing to me is the depth of the coins. All but one (in that group of three coppers) were 4 inches or less. The Barber dime was in the 3 1/2 --> 4 inch depth range. The Merc was 1 inch deep! I don't think the ground where I found the Merc had been distrurbed or reworked recently. The sod looked typical of the area. Is this what it was like back in the late 80's and 90's? Many of you should remember. I returned the next day for another 5 hours but the glass slipper had fallen off and the coach had reverted to a pumpkin. I'll give a followup post on that hunt plus next weekend's planned return hunts. There has to be more there, but now I've harvested the low hanging fruit and what's left appears to be seriously masked with iron nails from the missing house.

Hi Fred thats exactly where i've been hunting. The street and sidewalk is already graveled in so I've been hunting the area where they are putting all the dirt. Problem is it changes so fast during construction. Will keep you up dated. Thinking beach tomorrow... strick

I got my HF elliptical coil and finally got it charged up and paired. I was hoping to take it out this weekend and compare it to a gold bug II but work issues have come up. I did do a quick air test and was easily able to get 2 inches on a .5 grain piece of gold running it at 74 Khz in Goldfield program. The 9" round HF wouldn't get it even rubbing it on the coil.

I love the ones that ask me if my detector is water proof when im in the water,,, People are mostly friendly but after awhile answering the same questions over and over gets to much, i then take my mask and snorkel and stick my ed under watr to get away from it all.

I was kinda disappointed with the locate patch filter on our local California Motherload red mineralized clay schist. In the past, the 7k was only operable in difficult ground setting, as every other swing results in a false signal using Normal ground setting. Locate patch did not kill the false signals in the least, although at another patch with groaning ground, the noise was smoothed out nicely.

Was going to make a SA comment but............... ah!!!!!! bugger it psych or psycho?????????????

Portola the new Stepford, a plot by the towns menfolk...are they putting it in the water?? I knew that place looked to good to be true, any homes for sale?

Love it SS, live life to the hilt............. dangerously....................

Ten posts, very reasonable...give a new member time to say hello, doing them a favor really as a little street cred bumps the value of what's for sale in my mind. Was someone new selling a ctx3030 pkg on another forum for a great price, the detective members there outed the seller in hours. Seller advertised the sale as US location, someone on the forum was sharp enough to ID the "baseboard molding" used in the home shown in the pictures as not sold in the USA, but European and they also spotted non standard electrical sockets as euro...from there the whole sale story fell apart and the photos were outed from an England eBay sale, amazing...scammers would be better picking easier targets.

Thanks for the advice! And I have plenty more to share.

Hi Steve, The lobo is a great machine and I don't have any issues other than batterie wires. Once I figured out how to use it and started finding gold it's been great. I don't plan on getting rid of it. I'm going to mount it above my fireplace if it ever stops working and can't be repaired. I guess I should have said 2nd detector sorry about that. I love detecting and do it as much as possible, and I think I'm ready for a second detector. Just something different. Thanks for the response. I'll keep you guys/gals posted. Jason And another picture

I'll bet Paul forgot his boots someplace

Dang! I hope the flip flop is OK.

I say make it 10 posts. strick

The Scuba Tector is made by Deteknix and is a great water detector if you are just looking for rings ( maybe ) and coins. I was wondering around the net and was looking at MD-Hunter.com and here was a picture of my Scuba. I click on the picture of it and it went to three videos. I pick one of the videos I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It couldn't detect gold chain. So here I go digging out gold chain i'd found in the past. It didn't make any difference being one two are all three in a ball the detector didn't see them. I pulled out some nuggets and the results was the same as in nothing coming out of the Scuba. Now it detects rings great and my thinking on this is because of other metals in the rings. Even at 14 K gold that's only about 65 % gold. So you can forget about finding any gold chain with the scuba Tector . If i can't detect it in a ball with two others your not going to find one laying out straight. Looks Good. Chuck

Here is the video.... I can't say I am surprised. This is a PI pinpointer set to ignore salt water, so gold sensitivity would be impacted. Still, it looks worse than one would expect. It hits rings better simply because a ring in a loop of metal. Any ring like item (steel washer) with produce a better signal with a metal detector because they create a good circular path for eddy currents by essentially mimicking the loop of metal in your metal detector searchcoil. Chains on the other hand are notoriously hard to detect because of the loose connection between links. A detector is more prone to seeing each link as a separate item than a continuous mass, making detection difficult. Why Won't My Detector Find A Bottle Full Of Small Nuggets? Or A Gold Chain?

Not much of a story... just back and forth on the hillside with the GB2 with small coil and hit it. pretty much all was within 20 feet. Deepest was about 8 inches. Took the ATX back and found a few small pieces. GB2 did the job.

Hi Montammie I have experienced many instances of harassment over the years whilst beach detecting but also many great times.I've had young thugs throwing beer bottles at me,Someone called the police on me one night and told them I was swinging a shotgun.I had a guy run up and grab the detector shaft and start swinging it wildly in front of his mates.But the many nice people far outweighed any issues.Most people showed interest in the hobby or when explained understood the pastime. Since moving to the goldfields over 7 years its been sweet sailing as there are many like minded people to meet.