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My summer season consists of a lot of VLF detecting at some old tertiary channels with quiet ground and exposed bedrock. I’ve been using a Gold Bug 2 with a 6” coil for years and found thousands of nugglets with it for quite a few ounces. It decided to crap out on me and I thought it was time for a change after seeing a Gold Monster squeeze out some good gold from old ground. After researching I decided to go with an Equinox 800 I picked up from Chris Gholson. I can say it exceeded expectations with the 6” coil. I only had an hour to spend at an old patch that was hammered with GPZs, Gold Bugs and Gold Monsters. FIRST SWING popped out a gold bug caliber speck. In a half hour 4 more popped out and I decided to give it a try at a cabin site where I found some great relics and bottles and an 1872 seated dime and 1911 nickel. It was a wooded cabin with foundation intact and long period of occupation so the trash density is as high as you’d expect. I’ve hit it hard with an XP Deus but thought this 6” coil might have an advantage. The ground is incredibly hot, as in hot with a GPX and GPZ, it drove the Deus nuts and definitely was a chore with the Equinox but with patience I was able to get new and impressive targets. The cabin was built on gold ground and sure enough a foot away from where the nickel was found I picked up the biggest flake in the photo. It’s a flake at only 1.8 grains. I don’t know how this thing picked it up in that ground with that much trash. I also picked up a handful of birdshot lead and small copper sheet scraps amidst everything in the heart of the site. Needless to say this thing rocks. And yes it can find gold as well as a gold dedicated machine. It’s the first dual purpose detector I’ve ever seen that can perform at the top of the spectrum with both. No coins or relics this day but I only had a half hour to look and it found unbelievable targets in the most difficult of sites. I think it could excel on half dimes and $1 or fractional gold coins if they’re around. So many of my patches have cabin or town sites around them and now I don’t have to hike in two machines or spend the full day with only one. Can’t wait to see what more time will produce with this thing.

I was able to get back to my 1850's site early this morning for an all day hunt. First half of the day was slow, only a couple of trouser buttons, a percussion cap and some lead. The latter half of the day finally started to get a bit more exciting with 4 buttons, more percussion caps and some misc, pieces of flat brass debris and more lead. Running my Nox as follows. 11" coil 2-tones recovery 6 iron bias 0 tone break at -9 to +9 sens 23 Park 1

I Hopped on my quad bike yesterday afternoon just to take a run up to top of the Hill to check out phone service. After that I saw some quartz That got my attention so I drove over there and Then over there, and then over there , next thing you know I looked around and went uh-oh. so I decided which way I should go to get back to camp drove that way just for a little bit and then I checked my phone with the map app I have on it and Of course I was going about 90° the wrong way. It’s easy to mess up out here. And I won’t be depending on my phone alone again.... it almost died before I got to camp .........digging out my gps today like Norvic told me , it’s the little stuff you forget that will get you killed here,,,,and getting lost is one of the most common

I asked and got permission to hunt an old yard in the older part of town. I was told that it had been detected several times over the years and a $20.00 gold coin was found there about twenty years ago. I said that technology had gotten better and I would like to try my chances. I was very pleasantly surprised with this coin

It only took one walk in the outback to convince me to use my GPS....most of us do not have an infallible sense of direction... fred

Hey Mitchel, sorry you haven`t found any yet, welcome to Victoria. Mate up at Inglewood I`ve never got much more than color, but I have friends that have done very well there. To give you a word of advice, at Inglewood make sure you mark your vehicle on a gps. There are huge areas in Inglewood where if you walk 50 feet from your car you wont be able to see it and particularly if it is a overcast day and you don`t even have the sun as a reference you could wander around for hours and have no clue where you are. One day up there I plotted the vehicle into the gps on the 7000 and I was just head down and wandering and at the end of the day the GPS was telling me I had to go in the exact opposite direction to where I thought I had to go. The gps was right. I was wrong. Best of luck tomorrow mate ?

Well, I'm back from Wedderburn. I saw a great sunrise on the way there. I had been given a pointy finger up there because it was supposed to be dryer than the other places. There were puddles all over the place and you could see running water streamletts from a few days ago. I don't know what that did for my detecting but I came away without any gold this day. I've got a pocket full of trash (I left my pouch at Reg's). The beginning of the day I was on the mullock piles just trying to get started. In the second half of the day I got a Doug Stone's map for the area and was trying some of the reefs rather than the workings which looked like they were very deep. At the end I went to Pickles and swung a little before I left. I left to go look at Inglewood and Kingower. I didn't get out of the car but that looks like where I'll go back to tomorrow. My impression is that the workings were not as deep and there is more of a slope to the Long Gully that I could grid if I get something. I was very much hoping I'd have some color at the end of the day. I got in 7 hours of swinging and the remainder was looking and driving. I've put a couple of racing stripes on the rental car under the dirt and mud. I think someone dinged it with their door at the beach. When I turn it in it will be dirty and maybe they won't notice! More later.

So I titled this as such because when it gets especially hot (here in Arizona) I start my hunts at midnight and go thru until the morning until about 8am. For me, this offers multiple benefits. There is more time with the family on weekends, which for me is #1; I cherish this more than gold. And secondly, if it is hot out, I cannot keep my ground balanced, as some put it. When it starts getting hot, I would tend not to look as hard and rush through areas. Anyways, back to the gold. I was in a wash last week when I ran into some pretty good gold. I found 11 small pcs adding up to almost 4 grams. Now, for my night hunts, I won’t go every weekend, I usually skip 1 or two so that I get my sleep cycle working again. But then there is Mother’s Day coming up and so my wife briefly mentioned that I should go this weekend, too. An hour later I am charging batteries. She walks by and says, “wow, you really have the fever don’t you”. I just laughed. She knows me. She has seen me prospecting for 5 years and put up with it for 5 years. One of the best decisions I made was marrying her. I explain all of this because it was nice to come home and show her the source of the fever. So I went back to this area with my GPZ and started walking through more washes I had marked out on my gps. Nothing for the first one, but the second one, I got a nice strangely shaped 2.75 grammer. Now, I can kinda see a patten on my gps when I look at my finds. I finish the wash and go to a wash that is in the direction of the gold distribution. Good topography … I am in. First couple of minutes of slow hunting in this wash yields, nothing. And then I start focusing on a bench that is maybe a foot higher than the rest of the wash… and I get a signal. A clear, still loud, but smooth signal. My heart jumps as I begin to dig. The dirt just fell away until 15-16” I hit gravel. By now the target was booming. I scrape the gavel back with my pick and I see a large piece of gold flip out! It replays in my mind over and over. Needless to say, you may have heard my scream at 2:15 in the morning (Arizona time). LOL. From there the gold kept coming. I got a couple more pieces farther up the wash and then came back and placered the area for a couple more little ones missed by depth. Wide range of sizes. THAT is why I love the GPZ. And it was nice to see my wifes face change to a smile when she felt the .86oz chunk fall into her hand. Priceless. All in all, my findings came to just over 1oz. Who needs sleep ... Andyy

Hey Everyone... Myself and Chris (Chris Ben) got out for some Nugget hunting , and want to share a video we put together... much more to come later... Dave

I'm an ex-surfer. Swinging was just part of the trip. I saw the wave report and HAD to go. haha

My Baja detecting partner Dennis and I went out this AM for a little practice before we hit the Aussie Shores next week. I found one little rice grain sized nugget, Dennis went hog wild on me. I hope he doesn't use up all his luck before we get to OZ.

Mitchel; forget the beach, you can do that at home! Take advantage of the offers you have from the friendly Aussies... Running from place to place is not going to get you gold...focus! On the other hand, if you want to be a tourist the are lots of sights to see...take a drive up to Sofala and areas around...very pretty. fred

Garrett recently hired new engineers (four I think...). They aren't just resting on laurels.

Mitchel, by the way, did you happen to pick up a Bendigo Advertiser and read about the Kid who specked a 20oz nugget on Mothers day morning while walking the dog?

A straight answer might be nice.....but don't hold your breath. Mushrooms spring to mind....kept in the dark and fed on excrement.

I had good success today partly to reading your post about your T2 and settings. Thank you for that. With the Equinox it was more a problem of the tones for me. For some reason I couldn't grasp the tone pitch of the 600, felt they were too soft. This does not seem to be a problem with the T2 for me. I didn't have any problems with EMI on this one today either. The only issue I experienced was some falsing when the coil touched things or on far end of sweeps. I ground balanced and that problem went bye bye. Really impressed with the whole package. The Cors coil is what completes it. Will get me a bigger one soon for larger areas. Did try the Disc at 0-20, and didn't like all the 30-40 signals popping through. It distracted me quite a bit. One nickel was down over 6 inches and the Shrew coil pulled it in just fine. I get an overload signal on any nickel signal that is less than 2 inches deep. I pull it up a little and get the 57 on the meter, and get a nickel every time. Killer on nickels. And the way I see it, if I'm in that range and the detector is strong in that zone I should be able to get gold jewelry if any every passes by my coil. Was also picking up really small things with this coil. It's crazy because I've been over that same spot with the XP ORX and couldn't get these things. Been over that area numerous times with it in the past couple months. And these items were down far enough to have been there then. Long story short, this T2 and coil combo has the right stuff for me and my ears.

Very nice piece Andyy. I often go out early in the morning over here, it’s amazing how much quieter the ground is. I think it’s a mixture of two things, less EMI and the ground seems to degauze (not sure that’s a real word) overnight and reenergise gradually during the day from the sun. I have a mate who loves detecting straight after lightning storms, he reckons that also seems to degauze the ground and make really hot ground quieter.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I haven't had much time to work on it but I looked at the pins and connector again and everything looks brand new. It continues to not give any tones or display indications when first turned on after sitting or a day or 2 until I jiggle the coil cable. According to the previous owner he only used it a few hours and never in water. It looks basically new. He said it was his first detector so I am wondering if the issues I am experiencing caused him to sell it. I decided to call Garrett as suggested by Kac and they said it was never registered and it was 2-3 months past its warranty going by the date it was made. Garrett is sending me a slightly used replacement coil they said was used in some videos at no charge. Hopefully I will get it this coming week. I'll keep you posted. Thanks again!

Very nice Norm, halves are a rare find anyway and that one sure has sharp details! ?

No worries Mitchel. Inglewood-Kingower is only about 300 square miles. We`ll find you in no time? Dave

If I go missing I'm headed for Inglewood and Kingower. That is the plan.

Dang, I almost missed this post because of the DD question... I love the good information, I love the drama...and I love it when the teacher has to step in and quiet the students. such fun fred

I haven`t worn a watch for maybe 30 years and I don`t carry a GPS so I find the GPS on the 7000 very helpful. I have my user button set to the GPS. Most of the time I run the 7000 with the gps off, but if I want to know the time or I`m using the gps to find the vehicle, or to mark a way point or find, it`s very easy to turn the gps on and off. I hope you get some gold today Mitchel. ? Dave

Yes, I resemble that kid in the candy store when it comes to the gold fields. I do know a bit about surf and I read my surf report and this was going to be the best surf for a week. It just happened to have a low tide. I'm satisfied with 'wasting' my Sunday based on the surf and the famous surfing spots I saw. All of that made me feel good. Now I need a feel good nugget. It doesn't have to be a sunbaker but I can't find them 5 feet deep either. I've got a lot to learn. Thanks for helping me to focus. Mitchel

Mitchel did send me a message but I wasnt on my computer all day so I missed it until it was too late. Bell is great for surfers (none take anything valuable near the water except for their boards) and generally tourists only get as far as the carpark . As for the gold - you'd be better off picking a spot and giving yourself at least a few days. The first day you'll be buzzing from spot to spot not really covering the ground properly. On the second day you will have gotten over the initial excitement and slowed down. The gold here isnt that easy to find and it takes time and patience (unless your that kid who tripped over a nugget in Bendigo).

I'd say! I did notice a faint -S mintmark on the reverse. About 1 million minted but the condition makes this one worth in the hundreds of dollars. Well done (again), Norm! Way to challenge that "hunted out" qualification we hear so often.

Nice buttons!!

Can't wait to try one of these coils on a QED. The Bulgarian carbon fiber CC coil has yet to come up to expectations so far.

The Sadie is a great coil, I won one when R.J. first released them in competition naming the coil. I did not call it Sadie, but got a runner up coil. I did not use it very much as the Wife claim it and it was hard to get much of a go with it

When I was in the oilfield I remember we often had to monitor solar activity and geomagnetic storms. Our MWD tools were sensitive to them, even downhole, the magnetometers would get skewed. It would alter the declination readings, which if I'm remembering correctly means that the local magnetic field of the Earth itself was slightly altered there too. It may be possible scientifically for the sun to have some effect on detectors too when the sun is out vs sun down, by the same token. Certainly less EMI too.

I will let Eric know he left those behind

Uh. Minelab slow drips vague marketing intended to generate rumors for all their new machines straight into the social media vein like it's advertising steroids. See: the Equinox. What exactly do you expect? If one creates a monster, they had better be prepared to live with it. Also see: Vanquish video, clearly intended to generate rumor. Is it not Minelab's video? If not, no one has bothered to say so since it's getting free advertising for them either way.

Stunning coin Norm! Congrats.....the detail is supurb!

These came from Eric's zone just past Sugarloaf. We've still got 5 days to practice down here in sunny Yuma by the Sea. Maybe 3 or 4 hrs detecting time in the mornings. Yuma summer arrives early.

I received my new Teknetics T2 SE Thursday. I also ordered a Cors Shrew coil to go with it. Was using the Cors Shrew for everything in these pictures EXCEPT the bullet, which was found with the stock 11" coil. There will be another Cors coil in the future for me. They make an excellent product. I'm very pleased with the T2, it's an amazing detector and today it showed me what it can do with less than 4 hrs total time on this machine. It pulled nickels out like no other detector has ever done for me. Lots of power under the hood, and I didn't even run it past 65 on sens. Had really good results cranking disc up to 40, ran 2 tone and 3 tone. I've finally found what I was looking for in a detector. All the coins and junk are from roughly 3 hrs metal detecting today, bullet is from another site visited today less than an hour. Nothing but clad here, and loads of nickels that are very discolored.I've hit this area earlier this year with the Equinox 600(now gone), and XP ORX. The bullet I found at another place today, but was not even there an hour due to rain. I'm looking for some identification on that lead bullet so if any of you can help with it I'd be glad to hear it. Any idea on age of the bullet?

Wow great job Dennis!!!! There is no gold that big in WA for sure....may have to change your plans to The Triangle or send you to Norvic.

Stop it, Mike! You are scaring me. ? It is funny how the mind plays with you for a while when you first get out there. I have a 9mm that I wear that makes me feel a little warmer inside. And when I have forgotten it, I keep my pick extra handy. But I think if a mountain lion or chupacabra went after me, I wouldn't have much time to shoot. I'd probably shoot myself trying to get the jaws off my neck. LOL. Thanks for the comment!

Yes, work between and around the old diggings. But, it is often worth while to work tailings and throw-out for specimens and nuggets. You can get left-overs or you can try for new; ground-enjoy the adventure. fred

WTG!

Killer coin Norm Congrats! strick

A Big Congrats on that find Norm a real beauty

He kicks butt !!!! He just had surgery, I dont have an excuse, lazy, hehe !!!

Published on May 8, 2019. Detecting veteran and reality TV star Tim Saylor tackles the question of traveling with metal detectors. How does he pack his detector, pinpointer and shovel when he flies overseas?

It is always worth while to search where the old-timers worked...but there is tons of trash. fred

My beach detecting season is coming to a close, so I took the opportunity to get in another hunt. I am still recovering from a cold, but decided I wanted to get in a hunt anyways. Besides, I got a couple of new coils to try out and couldn’t resist. First was the Equinox with the 15” coil. I wanted to return to a spot that I found those rings last week. Unfortunately, the area was mostly sanded in and the tide was relentless. First off, the arm cuff finally completed it breakage. The stand part broke off weeks earlier and now the arm cuff snapped. Why anyone would use PC instead of ABS for their material is beyond me. But I did get a chance to try it out for a while before it snapped. First impression is that coil did not like the sand at this beach. Reminded me of the CTX in that purple/black sand. I got a very iffy target that jumped to the 30’s every other sweep. So, I did a lot of iron bias/recovery speed adjustments as well as adjusting the sensitivity down as well as up. Tried beach 1 and 2. Quarter was 4” down and I couldn’t believe how poorly the signal was received. This was dry sand area. So, I will test it another day at another beach. I’m sure it’s a great coil, so I’m still looking forward to hitting the fields with it. Now, the 8x16” coil for the GPX was just what I expected it to be. Solid, deep and a tad bit heavy, but a perfect size for deep beach hunting. Not a lot of coins found, probably the lowest coin total for this year. A did stumble onto a planted beach hunt V nickel that looks like it has been there for a couple of years. Nicer finds included a couple of probable silver earrings, a stainless steel (unfortunately) ring and a nice gold hoop. It has extremely tiny hallmarks and an off-center stamp which probably reads 500 (12K). I can see the 00, so I’m assuming it says 500. Not the best hunt in the world considering the drive down. Always nice to see the sun out and do what I love to do best.

The ORX limits on tone ID with just 3 tones is in play here. I could live with that tone limitation if XP saw fit to also provide pitch tone as an option. Be careful about Coin fast. Coin fast utilizes an automatic silencer filter which quiets the machine down in thick iron but can also exacerbate non-ferrous masking. Overall, the signal processing of coin fast vs. coin deep results in quieter overall operation even if you take silencer out of the equation. If auto silencer is implemented on ORX similar to Deus than it should be turned off at Reactivities 2.5 and above (which is also where you probably want reactivity to be in super thick iron anyway). I would give high reactivity coin fast a spin at this site. Also, you might want to experiment with Gold mode. It can ultimately give you a pitch-like tone deeper than the coin modes but of course no Tone ID (only visual target ID) and takes some getting used to because it also does not use traditional discrimination but instead an iron audio cancel setting that just breaks up signals it thinks are probable ferrous. Good luck.

This past weekend me and a buddy got out and did some prospecting, on saturday we both dredged with 4 inch dredges, I did ok got 2 small pickers and a bunch of fines. My buddy killed it and got three nuggets and some pickers. He has basically located our next paystreak that we will hit hard in the coming days. The second day i decided not to dredge due to an old injury that was acting up, so i packed my dredge up and went down stream and decided to pull out the GM 1000 and detect around where my buddy was finding nuggets with the dredge. Just up stream from where he was dredging there was a nice large area of exposed bedrock in the creek that was pretty soft and decomposed, so i fired up the the monster and started detecting. Low and behold the first hit i get is a little picker, second hit another little picker, and so it went. During the course of about 1.5 hours, i got 13 little pickers in about 5 square feet of bedrock. I was stoked, this is basically the first gold patch i have found with a detector. Ill be taking the equinox back there later this week to see what it can find. Once i clean it up with detectors we will dredge it to get all the fine gold that is hiding there. Should be the start of a pretty rich paystreak/patch. All in all a fantastic weekend and i cant wait to detect that spot more as well as dredge that whole section of creek bank to bank. Should eventually get a video together of the weekends events.

Steve - a friend once described me as a “man of strong opinions - loosely held”.

Yep, it worked great. Did it about three years ago to a Garrett Pro Pointer. It's still there.

I was hoping you would chime in JP - great explanation, thanks! I have yet to observe the famous DD blade as sold by marketers actually exhibit itself on a coil. Just take a DD coil and a coin and run some brief air tests (see article below under heading "Target Size"), and except for tiny objects the blade thing is largely myth. All the DD thing does is cause the electromagnetic field to elongate and become a little shallower compared to a mono coil (or concentrics on VLF detectors). The field of a mono coil as defined by a coin finding the extremity of the field is more like a basketball cut in half - a bowl. A DD coil is more like a U.S. football cut in half lengthwise - an elongated bowl. You can only see this on a VLF detector running in all metal or pinpoint mode. Discrimination modes reduce most signals to a simple beep, and a VLF concentric will indeed beep more in the middle of the coil whereas the beep generated by a DD coil elongates along the overlap. The rest of the electromagnetic field is there however, it is simply being hidden by the single report nature of disc modes of operation. This article below is about induction balance detectors and some of the diagrams are exagerrated but it provides a decent overview of coils, electromagnetic fields, and eddy currents. Excerpt from "Modern Metal Detectors" by Charles Garrett