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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/03/2017 in all areas

  1. I live in the Southern California just north of Los Angeles. Its been HOT, real hot the last few weeks and I wanted to get out detecting but the idea of hunting new patches in air temps of 100 degrees or more just did not seem appealing until this morning. We have had a few wild fires spreading around the Los Angeles area and even thou they are many miles from me, the wind was blowing the smoke in my direction. That was enough to get me driving out to the gold fields. I arrived at the area I wanted to start swinging my zed and decided to change up my settings. Im a smooth threshold person, cant stand a chattery threshold, but since I was going to be covering old ground I decided to turn up the settings as far as I could and see what happens Sometimes it pays to step out of your comfort zone, 2.26g .56g .05g
    12 points
  2. Having a bit of fun with the GM 1000 so thought I might chronicle my finds in the one spot (if that's allowed??). Went out this afternoon with the literal dog, the figurative dog and the 3 hounds (the kids ). Took the GM to a spot where I had been before with the SDC and the Zed and had never found anything but rubbish. Old quartz vein site that had been pretty well smashed by the old boys. Lots and lots of targets with a little bit of sign of previous detectorists but I am assuming they were put off by the rubbish too. Today I strapped on the big coil for a bit of a change. Have almost exclusively used the little fella as I think it's a bit more stable and sensitive - although I have absolutely nothing to back that up with. A few small pieces of lead and a bit of ? tin. And one nice little specie ?? Also had a bit of a noise in the quartz wall but it was hard to get close enough so will be heading back there with the little coil to get a better swipe at it. Only out for about 45 mins so plenty more to this story (hopefully )
    7 points
  3. Around the time the Minelab Eureka Ace Dual came out I found this piece near Sofala in New South Wales with a Whites GoldMaster. Neither my Minelab 16000 ground tracker or the Eureka Ace Dual can hear it and a GPX5000 with the new coils can`t hear it, but the 5000 with the 8" Commander can hear it at about 1". It sg`s at 13 grams gold but I`ve never believed there`s 13 grams in it. Most of the little pieces around it are connected electrically. cheers Dave
    6 points
  4. Hi Swamp Thank you for your answer. I fully share your thoughts. I would like to be a full time job for me. But I think that here in Italy is not possible. Just like hobbies. Even though it is so, I want to continue to try, I really like looking for gold.
    4 points
  5. Well, your ground is in the moderate range to me. Again, it does not matter with panning and sluicing. In my opinion you are missing the most likey and highest gold concentrations because you are not cleaning out the cracks. Even if you are not allowed to break the bedrock apart you can still get most or all of the gold. You might want to consider some basic sniping tools and a facemask to see under the water...search the net and you will see what I am talking about. good luck fred
    3 points
  6. Good looking locations.. In my humble opinion based mainly on the size gold in your photos, I concur with Steve: A detector would be of little value and/or help.. Further, thanks to the gold's average largest size and smaller, you can get into recovery fairly inexpensively -- a very good thing as you deceide if persuing recovery is for you either as a hobby or as a way to make money to begin with.. You have a map showing where gold has been found previously (knowing where the gold is is well over half the battle) and you are legally allowed to collect 5 grams a day.. Right off the bat you know what your "salary" will be given maximum daily recovery.. Can you live on let's call it US$200.00 a day..? Odds are it'll be closer to $200.00 a month if you're lucky, but that's a whole other story.. My time would be spent thoroughly cleaning material out of cracks in the bedrock both in and out of water, breaking them open with chisels and pry bars if you are allowed to do so, in order to get as deep into them as possible.. Once you have a bunch of material the next step is classification.. (Depending on recovery equipment being used and water flow rate some people will try to tell you classification isn't necessary.. I maintain it is vitally necessary.. But I digress..) If you have access to scrap screening, scrap lumber, 3 or 4 buckets, already own a hammer, chisel(s), pry bar and have the ability to fashion a few different types of deep-crack scrapers / scoops, it is possible to end up with gold-bearing concentrates for zero dollars out-of-pocket to this point.. Methods of recovery are too numerous to get into here, along with this being where most out-of-pocket costs occur -- all of which can be found on the net and many as vid on YouTube.. Remove magnetite or not..? Other questions.. There's nothing easy about breaking open bedrock cracks and scraping out the material contained within.. But doing so does have its own simplistic beauty and is something a few of us both enjoy and have no other choice because we live in minor gold-bearing locations much like yours.. This is especially true when the color begins revealing itself at the end of the process.. There's only one way to find out if it's for you too.. Swamp EDIT: Oh -- I see by your most recent post you're a bit further along with all this than initial impression.. Never mind..
    3 points
  7. I had somebody ask me to test a couple gold nuggets on my Nokta Impact - preferably a 1 gram nugget and a 2 gram nugget. The person wanted to know the VDI number for each in the DI2 mode and Deep mode. This by accident may be very informative possibly for people who do not know exactly how VDI numbers are generated. The short story is they are a combination of the target conductivity and the size of the target. In other words, silver is more conductive than lead, so two identical items, one made of lead and the other silver, the silver item will have a much higher VDI number. For two items made of silver (or lead, gold, whatever) where one item is larger than the other, the larger item will generally have higher VDI numbers. The Nokta Impact is unique as far as I know in that it has two different target id (VDI) number scales that are used in the various modes. The Impact VDI scale runs from 0 - 99 but as I said there are two different ways the scale is divided. One set of modes uses 0 - 15 as ferrous, all else non-ferrous. The other modes use 0 - 40 as ferrous, all else non-ferrous, expanding the ferrous range. I did not want to sort nuggets all night so came up with a 0.90 gram nugget and a 2.03 gram nugget, both from the same Nevada location, and both of similar shape although one is obviously larger than the other. Here are the results... The 0.90 gram nugget using the DI2 0 - 15 equals ferrous scale has a VDI number of 37. The same nugget in the Deep 0 - 40 equals ferrous scale reads 63. The 2.03 gram nugget using the DI2 0 - 15 equals ferrous scale has a VDI number of 32. The same nugget in the Deep 0 - 40 equals ferrous scale reads 56. Here we have a smaller gold item giving a higher VDI number than a larger gold item. How do we explain these results? Gold nuggets are not pure gold. These nuggets are probably around 85% - 90% gold. The rest is mostly silver. Here is a strange fact. Silver is more conductive than gold. You would think adding silver to gold would raise the VDI number. However, reality is pure metals conduct electricity better than alloys, and so adding silver to gold actually lowers the conductivity and therefore the VDI numbers. In this case the size, shape, and most importantly, alloy composition of the larger nugget is causing it to read lower than the smaller nugget. This is a great example of why if you are looking for gold nuggets you at a minimum dig all non-ferrous targets. And because weak nugget signals (very small nuggets or large nuggets deep) in mineralized ground can read as ferrous, the only truly safe approach is to dig everything. Here is a photo of a large variety of gold nuggets and some coins I tested with the White's DFX, which uses the same -95 to 95 scale as many White's detectors. Again, you can see that size and VDI numbers do not correlate due to shape and purity differences. In general the paler gold has higher silver content. Click on photo for larger version.
    3 points
  8. Hello Rob, and welcome to the forum. I am glad you were able to score some nuggets using my Zed settings. I had to go scrounge back in time aways on another another forum, but I managed to find my settings for the GPX 5000...they are in my second post in this thread: http://arizonaoutback.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=9255&view=&hl=&fromsearch=1 The main advantage is in the unconventional audio settings, which like my audio settings for the Zed, will work with any timing on your GPX 4500. So just choose the appropriate timing for the ground you are searching according to the chart in Steve's excellent post above. Enjoy the hunt and best of luck to you! cheers,
    2 points
  9. My advice is to stay with a gold pan and sluice box. Those are the best methods for gold that small. If you are not finding gold with those methods a metal detector will not make it appear. I would work hard at trying to find better locations where you can find gold with what you have before investing more money in a detector. If you know somebody who uses a detector successfully in your area who might give you guidance, then a detector might be worth your investment.
    2 points
  10. After logging 200 hours behind the Zed pod and unearthing over an ounce of nuggety yellow goodness, I'd like to share my settings with my fellow forum members who would like to take them out for a spin. Since settings like the Gold Mode, Ground Type and Sensitivity are dependent on the local conditions where one is detecting, my focus here is mainly the audio settings. As some of you may know, my audio settings for the GPX range of detectors were very unconventional, and it is no different with the GPZ 7000; at first glance these settings may seem counter-intuitive, but give them a try because you may just be pleasantly surprised. Before getting into the settings proper, I want to mention that they are intended for use with the supplied WM-12 Wireless Module, utilizing its external speaker. I haven't tried it with headphones yet, so feel free to experiment if you use them. I noticed right away that the Zed's pre-set audio out of the box is extremely weak, especially on faint target signals. Using an aftermarket signal enhancer like JP's B&Z booster would work wonders for it, but I surmised that a $10,000 piece of technology would have some kickin' audio amplification and modulation, and the Zed certainly does have! It is VERY IMPORTANT to make the adjustments to the audio functions in the order that they are presented below: A key component to this audio setup is enhancing the signal via the Volume function, which controls the level of amplification of a target's audio response, relative to its signal strength, so we'll start there: adjust the Volume to 15. This will really amplify any faint signal from very small or deep targets. The next audio function is the Threshold Level, which we will adjust to 35. If the threshold level is set too high or too low, faint targets will be missed. A setting of 35 is optimum for this particular combination of audio settings. The Threshold Pitch setting is a matter of personal preference, so adjust it to a tone that is comfortable to your own hearing. I personally prefer a setting of 25, as it supplies a nice full tonal range from a booming bassy bottom through to a crisp, clean high tone when a target signal is encountered. The next function we will adjust is the Audio Smoothing: set it to High. This may seem counter-productive, but it is essential to getting the most distinct target response possible, nice and crisp. I learned this technique long ago from my mentor Larry Salee, a great detectorist whom some of you may remember from his famed "Zip-Zip" series of publications. This leads us on to the next function, Volume Limit, which sets the maximum loudness that a target can make; set too high, it can over-modulate or distort the external speaker and potentially damage your hearing, especially when using headphones. Turn it down to 1, and while swinging the coil over a large metal object such as your pick, gradually increase the setting until the sound is uncomfortably loud; then back it off until the sound is comfortable to listen to. For my hearing, a Volume Limit setting of 3 is perfect. In summary, here are my audio settings back to back: Volume: 15 Threshold Level: 35 Threshold Pitch: 25 Audio Smoothing: High Volume Limit: 3 This audio set-up works with any combination of Gold Mode and Ground Type settings, and is very stable in conjuction with a Sensitivity setting of anywhere from 8 to 15, depending on local conditions, and provides a pleasant, silky-smooth threshold while at the same time delivering a crisp, distinct target response. Please feel free to let me know what you think of these audio settings after giving them a go in your favorite goldfield or nugget patch, especially if you have the oportunity to compare them to your own settings on undisturbed, un-dug targets - preferably gold nuggets! Now for those of you interested, I'd also like to share my complete Zed settings for the greater Rye Patch region of northern Nevada; they handle the area's noisy, variable ground found in most nugget patches extremely well. In addition to the above audio settings, they are: Gold Mode: High Yield Ground Type: Difficult Sensitivity: 15 Ground Balance Mode: Auto Thanks for reading, and happy prospecting!
    1 point
  11. get a super magnet and run it through your concentrates...a little iron= little mineralized. A lot of iron=very mineralized... a simplified test but effective. If you are not detecting it won't matter much. That is great bedrock, are you working into the bedrock and really cleaning out the cracks? fred
    1 point
  12. Hey Rod, its basicly the Jimmy Sierra "Digger" coil with different decal. Good for relics, beach swinging etc. and totally different from the MJ 8.5x11
    1 point
  13. 1 point
  14. Hi Lunk thank you ever so much, yes those Z settings were superb. I am hoping I can repeat same. This is a great site and I will learn much from it. Thank you again Steve and Lunk hope you guys have a great weekend. Regards Rob
    1 point
  15. Very nice photos - thanks for posting! I have several metal detectors that can find much of the gold you are showing. The 71 kHz Gold Bug 2, 48 kHz White's GMT, 56 kHz Makro Gold Racer, and 45 kHz Minelab Gold Monster can all hit pieces weighing less than 1 grain (480 grains per Troy ounce). One grain is 0.065 gram. The safe choice proven around the world for decades is the Gold Bug 2 with 6" coil. The catch is that to hit a 1 grain nugget (flake) you have to be right on it, like just a centimeter or maybe two a the most for depth. And sadly, loose accumulations do not enhance the signal. If you had a lot of small pieces packed tightly, literally touching, in a small pocket or crevice, that MIGHT help a little with the signal. Do not count on that at all however because it is very unlikely. The reason for this is explained here. While in theory a metal detector can find the type of gold you are talking about it generally is not the best way to find very small gold. You have to be quite expert with the device. If money was no object I would say just go for it, but you have indicated money is a concern. I would be misleading you to tell you that the money spent on a detector would allow you to do more than pay for the batteries you put in it, if that. I am not trying to be negative about this at all, just realistic based on my own personal use of detectors like this. My specialty personally in Alaska was finding very tiny bits of gold and I am quite experienced at it. Here are some articles that might help illustrate what is possible.... Detecting Small Gold at Crow Creek May 30, 1999 Lode Gold at Hatcher Pass August 12, 2001 Detecting Micro Nuggets at Crow Creek September 13, 2009
    1 point
  16. Hi 1515Art and Steve Herschbach Thank you for your answers. There are over 50 primary gold mines here. They are almost completely depleted and therefore abandoned. (I attach a map with the various mines) The earliest gold mining news, date back to the time of the Roman Empire. Here, the nuggets are rare, the little gold is abundant, (like the one shown in the previous photos or even smaller, to extract it, it is necessary to polish the stone, and to use chemical processes, sometimes small pieces of gold embedded in quartz are found. Someone has found a 15-gram noodle, but we talk about tens of years ago. Alluvial gold is present in streams and rivers. Native gold is very rare to find it. Keep in mind one thing, here in Italy it is very difficult for some important finds to be shared. Especially because the law permits a collection of up to 5 grams of gold per day. I have no experience with the metal detectors, so I'm writing to you. I have been informed (as far as possible, without direct field experience) I believe that no metal detector can find anything so small. However, I think there may be accumulations of small gold (the "tips" present in the various streams and rivers), maybe so many small pieces that eventually make 1 or 2 grams. Here is why in this situation it is possible to work the metal detector. I have many doubts just because I miss the field experience with the various metal detectors. I attach pictures of finds made here in Italy by various people (who have been shared).
    1 point
  17. There is a difference between touch/knock sensitivity and ground responses due to setting the manual sensitivity too high or improper ground balance. If the unit is not ground balancing properly it would be sounding off on the ground or hot rocks. This is not the same thing as a coil being touch sensitive. Part of the problem for Minelab is sorting out what people are really encountering.
    1 point
  18. I called in yesterday on one of Minelab's local number and the recorder said they would call me back within 48 hours. Well that came true today. I was told that Minelab had one of their Engineers from Australia coming in and he she would be testing all the GM 1000. I'm sure in hopes they can isolate the problem and can be a easy fix. I was given a return number and waiting now for a shipping label at Minelab's cost. In due time for us that have a problem with our GM 1000 Minelab will get it fixed. Chuck
    1 point
  19. There is only an issue to fix if every machine has the problem, and that does not appear to be the case. There is nothing to fix on my GM1000. What we are talking about then are some machines having an issue. My guess is rather than mess around Minelab wanted to get your entire unit back in order to help nail down what's going on. People are assuming it is a coil issue but that is not necessarily the case. There could be some other problem causing inherent instability. Stuff happens. I see a lot of the new Deus HF elliptical coils are dead on arrival or have some other problem causing quite a few of them to have to be returned. And that is after an exceptionally long delay to make sure there were no problems on release! It happens with all the companies and is the number one reason for not being an early adopter of any new item, and I am not just talking metal detectors. I used to own a large powersports dealership and we had a large service department. We had some bad management at one point that got severe enough that I stepped in personally and ran the service dept for a couple years. I could tell countless stories about new product issues that make whatever happens with metal detectors look like nothing. Here is just one. Johnson and Evinrude outboard motors were made by a company called OMC and in 1996 they came out with a new fuel injected lineup designated as FICHT outboards. This was an exciting new product with good fuel efficiency at the time, and we jumped on the bandwagon and sold a bunch of them. Then the 150HP units started blowing up. A piston would typically undergo severe detonation and literally blow a hole in the side of the powerhead. The only real solution was to replace the entire powerhead. A lot of these were installed as dual outboards on charter boats. Soon the trickle became a flood. Charter operators as a rule always want a commercial discount, and then they also want overnight service because they are losing money every day the boat is down. Now these are people who have real problems with new product that is costing them a small fortune and they are angry - and the person across the counter from them typically takes the brunt of their ire. I have had people nose to nose with me screaming in my face about their problems. I got very good at handling that stuff but it is stressful. Not only did the motors blow up, but after we put a new powerhead on, they would run a while and blow up again. We had stacks of powerheads and for some time that seemed to be all we were doing. Now OMC of course has engineers going crazy trying to figure out what is going on. The problem was not occurring at all or nearly as much at other locations. We seemed to be ground zero for the problem. OMC finally had to send engineers to Alaska to go out and run the motors and monitor what was going on to get to the root of the problem. These were very high performance motors and akey to that performance was the onboard computer or "brain box" that collected information from numerous sensors and tweaked the fuel injection parameters on the fly to get the best horsepower and fuel efficiency under various conditions. Just like new metal detectors, these things are basically running a computer program to operate. It was finally determined that at certain RPMs and certain water and air temperatures things went wrong. It was related mostly to colder operation and so we were having huge issues while dealers in Florida were having none. When they develop the motors and test run them - guess where? Not Alaska! no, they were debugged in warm climates but the program failed in colder climates. The motors under the right conditions would lean out, detonation would occur, and catastrophic failure. This took most of the summer to figure out and not only cost our company a lot of time and money (no, manufacturers do not compensate dealers for all their incurred costs when these things happen) but eventually I believe it was what bankrupted OMC in 2000. In 2001 what was left of the outboard motor division was purchased by the Bombardier corporation of Canada. I saw similar instances over the years with everything. Polaris ATVs, Honda generators, Volvo Penta inboard motors, Ski-Doo snowmobiles, etc. We sold lots of stuff by many top name brands and they all fell victim to this at some time or another the pattern is always the same. It was always brand new product. And the problems increased exponentially with the introduction of high tech products that have lots of sensors feeding information to onboard computers that in turn are actually running the show. Back in the old days all a motor needed was fuel, compression, and spark to run, and anybody with some basic knowledge and tools could fix them. Now you can't even look at a motor without first hooking it up to a computer and large numbers of motor failures are simply sensor failures. Long story short - never buy anything new in the first year of production unless you have a tolerance for this sort of thing. I don't care what the product is or who makes it. The only thing you can count on is the more complex the product, the more likely there will be first year issues to sort out.
    1 point
  20. So far only Fisher, Minelab, and White's have dabbled in multifrequency in any real way. Fisher and Minelab both introduced their new multifrequency designs in 1991 and so both can argue the fine details of who was "first". 1991 Fisher CZ-6 5 & 15 kHz 1991 Minelab Sovereign BBS 1999 Minelab Explorer S/XS FBS 2001 White's DFX 3 kHz or 15 kHz or both at once 2009 White's Spectra Vision 2.5 Khz or 7.5 kHz or 22.5 kHz or all three at once 2012 Minelab CTX 3030 FBS2 The CZ series was developed by Fisher Research with lead engineer Dave Johnson playing a major part. Running at 5 kHz and 15 kHz, the CZ is still one of the better coin detectors ever made and is particularly effective in saltwater environments. The CZ-20/CZ-21 is still considered to be one of the best saltwater models made. The basic CZ design is the same with the exception of the still in production CZ-3D, which tweaked and moved various target responses in an attempt to deliver more and better old coin finds. The CZ series is an old analog design requiring a great deal of hand tuning. This tuning suffered greatly as the "old" Fisher at Los Banos went out of business and took time for the "new" El Paso Fisher to get right. Details here by Dave J. I had several CZ detectors and my personal favorite was the CZ-5. The CZ series will chase coins with the best detectors made today. The only real complaint you will hear is a tendency to identify some deep nails as non-ferrous coin targets. The Cz series is quite unique because Fisher rearranged the classic target id scale. Nickels in particular were placed at the high end along with the rest of the coins. The scale is very basic - iron (low tone) aluminum (med tone) and coins (high tone). This simple systems is very effective in practice for coin detecting; just go dig high tones. It was so effective the CZ was nicknamed the "Coin Zapper". A fourth tone was added later to break the zinc penny/indian head penny range out as a separate "old coin" range. Fisher CZ Approximate Release Dates CZ-6 Quicksilver 1992 CZ-6a Quicksilver 1992 CZ-5 Quicksilver 1993 CZ-20 ( Underwater ) 1995 CZ-7 Quicksilver 1997 CZ-7a 1998 CZ-7a Pro Quicksilver 1999 CZ-70 Pro Quicksilver 2003 CZ-3D 2004 CZ-21 ( Underwater ) 2009 I often toy with getting another CZ but I never end up being happy playing the nostalgia game. It was always my wish that Fisher somehow reproduce the CZ as a compact digital design but so far it has never happened. The closest you get is the single frequency F75 which can be set up to emulate the CZ tones to a large degree. Making a direct translation from analog to digital apparently is not easy without something getting lost in translation. The Fisher CZ-3D is still in production. Information here. For information on changes made in the CZ-3D see Fisher Intelligence, page 5 - CREATING THE CZ-3D FOR THE REAL WORLD Fisher CZ-5 and Fisher CZ-3D Control Panels Compared (Click on all following images for larger views):
    1 point
  21. The problem with wireless headphone systems where the receiver is built into the headphone is you better like the headphone. I prefer a receiver box I can plug my own headphones into.
    1 point
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