Leaderboard

And the leader in the competition is: Paul the Yank ,!! With a win for the new 14 " coil.... Put it on and had the first target, first nugget, within 15 minutes!

Hello, I finally had a chance to get out and try out the new Makro Gold Kruzer on a old gold patch that I like to use for testing. The mineralization there is tough and can be quite variable. ive tested many detectors there before and there is still gold present. I never detected all of the diggings so there is still some untouched ground. now it was the Mak gold Kruz's turn at it. The new Mak Gold Kruz is a very nice, well built vlf detector with a higher frequency that is quite capable of going after those small to tiny bits that are left over at many pounded sites. most don't like to spend the time chasing tiny crumbs, but for a lot of places there isn't much left at those specific areas but tiny gold. If your after gold crumbs all the way up to larger gold then Gold Kruz would be a great choice to arm yourself with. steve already did a well written post about everything and more on the Makro gold kruzer, so I will just relay my experience with it. For this gold patch I was able to run Gold kruz in all metal with a sensitivity of 70-75 and 80-85 at some of the areas. it runs very smooth and without adjusting any isat, the threshold doesn't blank out over heavy spots of mineralization. others I tried before there do. some I could adjust some isat for a faster retune and they were good. The kruzer has a great balance and a nice grip and is pretty lightweight. it pings on gold easily and strong and was a great machine to hit the gold fields with. I am looking forward to using it more and also trying out the 7.5 x 4 " elliptical dd coil. The only issue that I had was the length adjustment for the supplied wireless headphones was just a little short for me and didn't quite come down all the way over my ears. that is with a hat on though, so maybe without they would. also I was very near a motherlode highway with big rigs and all, so the headphones on full volume were slightly lacking. but the traffic noise is horrendous. out in other gold fields im sure they would be fine. maybe an update to the detector volume might make them louder? All in all the headphones were very comfortable and top notch. I was able to easily find a few pieces of gold with the gold kruz and im definitely confident that it will make a great gold prospector. I would recommend it for anyone wanting a higher frequency machine. I am going to definitely have more post coming and videos using the Makro gold kruzer, so I will keep you posted on its experience. I also am going to do a video on undug targets in the gold patches comparing The Mak gold kruz, gold monster, and equinox just to see how she goes. it wont be a competition , just a comparison in my areas. some will be better then others in different sites and situations. my finds for the day for a couple of hours with Mak gold kruz was .7 gr or .5 dwt. not much but was a great experience. Thanks and Good Luck!

Next target...sweetheart nugget... 2/2

This morning i took my Mum out with me for a drive and thought take the Nox with me . I drove 30 miles West and parked at a town with a sandy beach and river . The tide was going out and the sand goes out for around 500 meters or more alongside the river . I started on the dry and worked down , as i was going i picked up the usual 14 to 18 TID which always turned out to be crown caps and Aluminium . When i got to the groin that is next to the river entrance it turned to black sand and from there was black sand with around 3 or 4 inches of normal sand on top . I picked up a high tone with occasional low tones , there was lots of Iron in the area too but i will dig all targets on sand and when i eventually found the target it turned out to be this ring below . It looks like its a Silver band with a Gold top part with an Amber stone set in it , there are no Hallmarks or none i can make out but i'm sure its Silver and Gold and possibly 18k , i did a scuff test on the Gold part to see if it was plated but i didn't see any Silver below . I am thinking the band itself might have been Gold plated at one point and the ring sold as full Gold ?. The stone is scuffed and looks old . Its now 3 Gold i have had with the Nox and 16 Silvers if i count the Silver on this. After that find i worked the sand for 2 hours but only found 3 coins for £1.06p . We left the beach and we went to my local Dealer which is Detecnicks and i looked at a Macro Multi Kruzer , i have been wondering about it for a while and as i sold my Explorer 11 a short time ago and had £341 for it i could buy the Macro if i wanted with the extra cash coming from somewhere else . But it was that somewhere else that i was wondering about . As coin hunting is getting harder and the cashless society is getting worse i decided to sell my X.Terra 705 . It has had enough money off the beach to cover the small loss i would take from selling after buying it new . So that is what i have done . Now i have another new machine to learn , my mate Martin says it works well in the salt wet , we'll see. But i want it for land too . After staying at Detecnicks and chatting for around 3 hours we left for home. More than anything the Macro is another lighter waterproof machine . I now only have the ET for the noisy tops of my local beaches . But that should be enough . Also i will be buying a few sets of wired XP backphones for the Nox , i want to see if the WIFI still affects the Nox using them . I think its the Wireless Module not the machine .

Oh Paul ........ Do we really need to play these games. 8am this morning, Meeka caravan park parked in front of the ablution block. Again - be afraid You're in my territory now. BB

New toys added on the battle field !!!!

It is me Steve have been registered for quite some time and a bloody lurker.... You brought me out of the shadows. ?

These tips are based on my personal use of the Minelab Equinox 800 at a few locations in Nevada and California. That means you have to take this with a grain of salt for other locations as far as exact settings but the basic process is the same. I will probably update this in the future as I learn more, including hopefully any observations and tips people may provide on this thread. The Gold Mode is only available on the Equinox 800 and features a VCO boosted audio that is quite different than the other Equinox modes. It is very powerful, especially in Multi frequency, and will detect very tiny pieces of gold. The downside is that in highly mineralized ground you will encounter hot rocks and even the ground itself that wants to react and create signals. The basic secret of nugget detecting with a VLF detector is in tuning the detector for the best performance possible, while accepting that air test type results are not possible in bad ground. A balance must be obtained between sheer power (sensitivity) and the false signals generated in difficult ground. The key default settings for Gold Mode 1 are: Frequency: Multi Ground Balance: Tracking Sensitivity: 20 Recovery Speed: 6 Iron Bias: 6 Accept/Reject: -9 through 0 rejected, 1 through 40 accepted When I hit new ground when nugget detecting I want my detector to be running with manual adjustments. Initially knowing how the ground responds is very important and I want to make any settings that affect anything myself. Therefore, the first thing I do is turn off the ground tracking and use the Auto (pump coil over ground) method of ground balancing instead. Ground tracking can also track out faint nugget signals, so my preference is to run with it off if possible. Frankly, I have not experimented with Iron Bias much. In theory at least reducing this setting will reduce the possibility of tiny gold being misidentified as ferrous. Since I am mistrustful of filters I have been running the Iron Bias at 0. Starting out however people may want to leave it alone since adjusting too many things at once may not be productive for beginners. Recovery Speed is highly misunderstood. People latch onto one out of context statement "lower recovery speed equals more depth" and too many people therefore are immediately going to lower settings. Higher recovery speeds allow the detector to better separate trash targets from good and minimises any masking effects. "Masking" is where bad targets overwhelm and hide good targets. Mineralized "hot rocks" are really nothing more than a large target that can mask (hide) nuggets not just under but next to them. Reducing the recovery speed will often add no depth due to ground conditions, and mask nuggets next to hot rocks. Higher recovery speeds will reveal those nuggets, and so you are often getting more "relative depth" with higher recovery speed settings. I basically stick with the default setting of 6 and will not go lower unless the ground is relatively low mineral and free of hot rocks. Most importantly, in some ground you will find that the coil will tend to give false signals when bumped. This is directly affected by Recovery Speed. Going to lower recovery speeds will generate more false signals due to bumping on rocks. With all that said however, reducing the Recovery Speed can add extra sensitivity to very deep or very small targets. A setting of 4 is easily manageable in low mineral ground and can work for the Equinox in higher mineral ground with a skilled operator. It is possible to go even lower though the detector will typically become less stable at the slower recovery speed settings. Sensitivity is one of those “set it as high as you can without making the detector too unstable” type settings. My settings normally range from 18 to 25 but could go lower in bad ground. Now, the extremely important Accept/Reject settings. Weak gold signals in highly mineralized ground will definitely run into the ferrous range. Starting out, I am going to toggle the Horseshoe button to remove all rejected settings so that the detector reacts to everything. My starting point for Gold Mode 1: Frequency: Multi Ground Balance: Auto (pump method) Sensitivity: 20 Recovery Speed: 6 Iron Bias: 0 Accept/Reject: -9 through 40 accepted The first thing I want to do is see how the ground responds with these settings. Find a place hopefully free of trash, and run the coil over the ground and observe what happens. In most gold locations you should see lots of target responses at -9 and -8 plus possibly -7. These are ground responses and are giving you direct feedback on your settings. The first thing I want to try and do is reduce those ground responses as much as possible by employing a mix of ground balance, sensitivity, and recovery speed. Simply ground balancing should cause those signals to alleviate somewhat. You will want to note hot rock readings especially. The ground will balance out (ground noise reduce) at one ground balance setting, but it may make some hot rocks worse. Sometimes you can manually tweak the ground balance to also reduce the hot rock response while not really making the ground itself worse by trying intermediate settings. You can only do this when not in tracking since tracking decides for you where the settings will be. I always will stay in manual until forced to use tracking for this reason alone. Reducing sensitivity is also a good thing to do in many cases, yet people are very resistant to doing so for fear of losing depth. The thing is, unless you can get the detector to settle down and run relatively smoothly you will struggle with hot rocks and false signals. Reducing sensitivity will reduce hot rock signals faster than it will reduce metal signals in most cases, so back it down as needed to get stable performance. If the ground is mild enough you should be able to find settings that reduce or eliminate the readings in the -9, -8, and -7 ground range, plus hopefully alleviating any hot rocks that are present. However, in very bad ground you may still have a lot of signals in that region. If so, try a couple things. First, go ahead and try out the tracking. Tracking has an advantage in that it will typically tune out a hot rock in a single swing or two, while being extremely resistant to tuning out metal objects. If you can get smoother performance over the ground than with any reasonable manual settings, it may be the way to go. In the worst ground and hot rocks the magic ability to switch frequencies can be a serious aid. I have found that Multi is very powerful... more powerful than any single frequency. That does mean that by simply going to 20 khz a lot of ground and hot rocks that are noisy in Multi settle down and become manageable. One of these options may allow you to go detecting without rejecting any target id numbers. That would be ideal. However, do not be surprised if residual signals remain in the -9, -8, and -7 region. If they are still too prevalent, then hit the Horseshoe button again to engage the Accept/Reject function, but go in and open up everything except the offending signals. That for me commonly means blocking -9, -8, and -7 but accepting -6 and higher. Or maybe you need to block -6 also. You have to listen to what the detector is telling you and adjust accordingly. If you do end up blocking out some low negative numbers you may find you can also bump the sensitivity back up a point or two as long as everything stays quiet. Again, the goal is to try and shut down ground and hot rock responses to the greatest degree possible while retaining as much detecting power as possible. It's a balancing act. Tiny nuggets will often read as solid hits at target id 1 and 2. The larger the gold, the higher the target id reading. Gold can appear anywhere on the meter all the way up into the 30's if the nugget is large enough. I have not had it happen yet but be very suspicious of 0 and -1 readings as also being possible gold readings.* This is just an example of where I end up at on my ground a lot so far: Gold Mode 1 Frequency: Multi Ground Balance: Auto (Ground pump method) Sensitivity: 18 - 23 Recovery Speed: 4 - 6 Iron Bias: 0 Accept/Reject: -9 through -7 rejected, -6 through 40 accepted Note: the following works as well on both Equinox 600 and Equinox 800. Since Gold Mode lacks target tones, going to Park 2 and using the solutions above plus the additional possibility of tones is another alternative. Instead of using Gold Mode and blocking the lowest target id numbers they can be left open to signal as ferrous or mixed ferrous targets. And you now have 5, 10, and 15 kHz options that Gold Mode lacks. Park 2 set up properly is quite close to Gold Mode performance and a perfectly acceptable nugget detecting alternative, and actually superior for some situations. You may also use Field 2 as a starting point. Be very careful however because the default rejection pattern for Field 2 rejects target id 1 and 2. This will reject most small gold nugget readings and reduce signal strength on larger gold by blocking part of the signal. I therefore recommend Park 2 to avoid this possibly fatal error. For Park Mode 2: Frequency: Multi Ground Balance: Auto (Ground pump method with manual tweaking) Sensitivity: 16 – 25 Recovery Speed 800: 4 - 6 (default is 6) Recovery Speed 600: 2 - 3 (default is 3) Iron Bias: 0 Accept/Reject: Everything accepted, rely on tones (alternative reject -9, -8, and -7 if too much ground feedback) In closing, I want to say that gold nugget detecting demands far more expertise from the operator than most detecting. People who rely on canned settings provided by others will never be expert unless they really understand what the settings are doing. It is imperative that you be able to observe ground responses as I have noted above, and know how to best alleviate them while losing as little depth on gold as possible. It is a very fine balancing point done correctly and can only be done properly by a person who genuinely understands how the detector operates. The only way I know to become proficient is lots of experimenting in the field with different settings on test targets and hot rocks. The settings above are less important than the methodology, and if you want to truly become a proficient nugget hunter you do need to work at it. I hope that helps somebody out - best of luck to you! Updated Nugget Detecting Tips 9/2018 *This article recommends keeping as many negative numbers set to accept as is possible. It has been confirmed that as I suspected that nuggets range well into the negative numbers. First gold nuggets found with Minelab Equinox from Jonathan Porter report...

Last night I detected under a tree in a rain storm and still found a 1919 wheatie and today I used the Field 2 program with 5 tones, sweep speed 1, sensitivity 23, and horseshoe mode to find 2 IHs and what looks to be a counterfeit quarter. The settings found the pennies @ 9+" I also used the CGTime Golden Plated 3.5mm MONO 1/8 inch Audio Male to 6.35mm 1/4 inch Female Jack Converter Cable Cord Adapter (25CM/10Inch) to connect my more comfortable headphones.

Got a set of each, one with the Visation speakers and the first set he had with the piezos. The Speaker ones sound much nicer than any piezo does and are my wading headphones (speakers don't do so well when submerged). They are plenty loud, however, the lower mid tone is weaker than the mid and high tones, actually too loud above 23 for me. My hearing is poor (military/shooting/motocross/etc/etc) with tinnitus. The piezo ones look the same but are not as loud. They are louder than GG or Koss' on a CTX, but still "lacking" for underwater use, imo. Found that i have to stop breathing (scuba) often to hear targets and have just been taking my Excal instead, ...bummer! Had hoped Minelab would have surely made this detector have adequate volume capabilities (after the CTX was a Huge fail in this volume department underwater/waterproof). Will try the Koss yellows, not with high hopes, if a set ever becomes available....... Have had several GG waterproofs and compared many times with Koss yellows in the past, so not high hopes for the GG's either Wish there was a software "fix" to up the volume for shallow underwater use (( Minelab... = HINT HINT ))

Forgot the pics.

Good catch not breeding size, so you can take it back to USA.?

I thought you were a smart bloke. Congregating at the caravan park ....... like shooting fish in a barrel. Be afraid. BB

Hello and good week end to all !Went for a session this morning lots of eyes only searchers,i spend 2.5 hours digging on everything then end back to the exit stairs and decided to give a last go,i had victorian coins and yessssssss i strike GOLD so it is my 3rd precious metal finds in a row so well happy i havent clean it yet.But it hasn't been a while i striked gold like that . So the Lobo has proven again his abilities to find stuff in extreme condition .I am still looking for a 5.75 concentric for another lobo which i had had tuned to concentric. RR

Looks like that "capacitive discharge anti-drone thingo" is a goer Paul, BBs getting desperate and leading you behind the loo to get a proper lock, although judging by the gold, Paul might be over with JW, but the ground looks WA. I`m confused but a bit dirty about sending you a working coil.

I was across the street with my binos.... The car was bait Lolol Actually I was getting a shower and some coffee.....

Thank you.... on order

White's Electronics full line color catalog for 2018 Download Here

well now Paul it looks and sounds like your little nugget competition is off and running.

Master of misinformation.... Just some caravans, but no park.. Keep trying...?

I think this is the best White's catalog I have ever seen and one of the best ever from anyone. I say that mainly because of the great coverage given accessory items like coils, scuff covers, batteries, etc. Kudos to the people who put it together! I also like charts like this.....

Semper fi!

This is by far the best detecting and prospecting forum on the internet. What other forum does the site owner not only answer questions but gives you the answer from the manuals or personal experiences. I have been reading forums for about 8 yrs and there are many sharp guys and gals that know what they are talking about and I learn in bits and pieces because I never make radical changes to my detectors. I try and keep my detector settings pretty simple i case of a factory reset. On the other hand there are many people that either complain or don't have a clue what they are talking about. Running a website takes a lot of work aside from knowing what you're talking about. As more people learn and use the Equinox which is my detector of choice I learn a little more. I been reading a lot about the Equinox and gold hunting because I am planning my trip west in the fall and finding gold with a metal detector is on my bucket list. I love the new website because of all the articles to read before you go to the forums. I want to thank Steve for such a great website and the effort he puts in to keeping it great

Thanks Jim..... the years are kind of sneaking by us all. I hope all is well in your world!

Hello Sinclair Here in the UK we find many different flour bag seals from various country's but most originate from Germany and the Kiel one's date as far back as the mid 1600's. I have posted a photograph of the front and back of the one I found on Sunday, over the years I have found many "Flour Bag Seals" also here below is an article about the same seal which I found, you might be able to relate the location of the flour millers. http://www.bagseals.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=31&g2_page=65 German, Flour Bag Seal, Baltische Mühlehn Gesellschaft One side has a raised circular border with NEW PROCESS curved around the top inside of the border and FLOUR straight across the centre and a diamond at the bottom. The other side can be found on other seals and consists of a continuous raised line circular border with the following German words around the inner edge: BALTISCHE MUHLEHN GESELLSCHAFT . with NEUMüHLEN curved above a dash dot dash centre piece and KIEL straight across below it. A flour bag seal from Neumühlen (= New mills), a suburb of Kiel in Northern Germany.

Hey Chuck. We have very aggressive goals for 2018 and beyond, so I will let our actions speak for themselves. There are enough empty promises online to fill an election ballet. The best thing we can do as a company is put our money where our coil is and work to bring new products to market. There is a reason I haven't been on the forums much lately and that is due to traveling and being busy. Best job I've ever had and I am thankful for every second. Hope you are well and keep your eyes peeled this summer for news from White's. One great way to do that is sign up for our newsletter - https://www.whiteselectronics.com/newsletter-signup/

I assume we are talking saltwater? Was the sand wet a foot down? Dry has got to mean DRY when running Gold Mode on a saltwater beach. If conductive wet sand is within reach of the detector it will signal in Gold Mode. If I was there with my Equinox running in Gold Mode Multi, I would start at sensitivity 1 and work my way up or if you wish, start higher and work your way down. There should be a point where the sensitivity is low enough you can get the machine to behave. You could also try 20 kHz to mellow the machine out because Multi is turbocharged in Gold Mode. The only reason I would ever run Gold Mode on a saltwater beach would be to hunt micro jewelry. I would want to be high up the beach, and even then I would back it down until the machine behaved. Nobody detects micro jewelry a foot deep, so all you are really trying to do is hunt the top few inches for that tiny stuff. If the targets you are hunting have any size at all, most any mode will be more applicable on the beach than Gold Mode.

I agree with you Norm S., Steve has done a fine Job with his website over the years. I bought some equipment from his Store (Alaska Mining and Diving) in Anchorage Alaska in 1980, and have been a member on his forums for many years. Thanks Steve for all your hard work over the years and best wishes to you and yours in the future. Rattlesnake Jim Roswell, NM

You are too kind Norm - thank you. Not the best but in a few years who knows. The website lets me combine several interests under one roof and is a passion project for sure. You guys are not seeing but 1% of what has been going on behind the scenes the last couple months. For those with an interest in such things here is what’s going on. This started as your basic html website with the forum tacked on in a subfolder. No worries but then Invision started dramatically adding to the forum software capability, with the intent that it drive an entire website. The problem was my installing the forum software in a subfolder. That was common at the time just to run a forum, but for it to drive the whole website efficiently I needed to move it to the root or home folder. That turned into a huge undertaking due to the sheer size and number of files involved. After one aborted attempt I finally got that part accomplished. The last few weeks I have been copying all those old html files into the forum side of things. I am about half done with that part of the project, should get wrapped over the next week or two. Why all this effort? If you look at this page you are on, it is driven by the forum software. It automatically adjusts to any device and any screen size - it’s “mobile friendly”. Now here is an old html page. It does ok but when you go to a phone screen all that happens is everything gets really small. Not mobile friendly, and any change I make tends to break it. Right now the mobile renditions are not “locking on” properly due to a change I made some time ago. I started trying to fix it, then realized I was wasting effort better put to eliminating the html pages entirely. Once I get all the old pages copied over, the whole website will be mobile friendly, and that will boost the Google results. The next step is the whole site will be upgraded and converted to https secure communications protocol. It’s not really needed per se but Google now insists any site that has log in and password structure run off https or get downgraded search results. Since everything will eventually be in the forum database, the search function will be more efficient at finding things. Currently I was jumping through hoops trying to get the html pages to appear in searches done using the forum search function. With those steps in place, I can then do a couple things to boost website performance for faster page and image delivery, snappier performance overall. Then, once all that gets done, I can actually forge ahead adding more information and capabilities to the website! Right now it’s more about shuffling everything around to get more efficiency going forward. Suffice it to say I would not be going to all this effort if I did not have plans for the future. Not the best site now perhaps but if I get my way someday that will be an undisputed fact. Thank you everyone for your interest and participation! New Steve's Reviews Index (work in progress) New Website Home Page New Meet & Greet Forum New Updated Steve's Mining Journal Index New Updated Steve's Guides Index

I`ve got a speci I found maybe 30 yrs ago with a Whites GoldMaster that sg`s at 13 grams gold, I don`t believe there`s 13 grams in it but that`s what it sg`s at. Even though there is gold clearley visible, my GPX4000 cannot hear it, a gpx4500 cannot hear it and the GPX5000 can just barely hear it with a 8" Commander. None of the new flat wound coils on the 5000 can hear it. Both my 7000 and 2300 can hear it at 6 or 7 inches. I expect JW will be able to hear your nugget no worries with his 7000. cheers Dave

They are easy enough to pop apart, just pull the squishy part and the rest pops out with it or use a flat head to get in there. You could probably stuff some foam in there or other material for sound blocking. Had another cracker day yesterday and my first SCUBA with the equinox, had so much fun too! ? here is yesterday’s top treasures: