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We've been out every morning for a few hours since Sunday practicing for the summer of Aussie Gold. Today was my day on the big gold. I was detecting a desert wash bench zone, and got what the Aussies call a Zed Warble. Down here in Sunny Yuma the Zed Warble usually means an old rusty bent nail. A bit of digging down to the hard pack maybe 15 or 16 inches. I switched detector down to Sens 1 to try and pinpoint, bit it was still overloading with the warble tone. Dennis and I took turns breaking up the hardpack and scooping out the hole till this nugget rolled on out. The small stuff I found over the past 2 mornings, I think I'm going to throw them back for seed on the big ones.

Forget the bag, your waisting time... you don’t need the ring.... you need set up at the caravan park and your coil on the ground! ASAP

Jin, no problem with EMI at the back of the caravan park if you are using a QED. Mitchel, if you had asked Julie in the Wedderburn cafe for advice she would have given you plenty. Nice lady. You don't need the ring, unless it makes you feel better. Do a little dance and a quick prayer to the Great God of Nuggets, and it will have the same effect. My place is not exactly on the way to Wedderburn, but if you can't do without the 'pwecious', I shall leave it on the gatepost if I happen to be out. I have an extra one that I got somewhere along the line, and you can have that as well as it never served any purpose that I could see.

I call caravan parks over here ‘claim jumper villages’. In Victoria they are usually good for a base camp, it’s too bloody cold this time of year in the bush over there. Last time I was there the owners were very friendly to all the tourists, mention your looking for gold and they give you maps of all the local state forests and areas you are allowed to detect. They have a friendly group of about half a dozen couples who are there every year and you can sit around the fire an yarn about the days takings, someone might even take you under their wing.

Pro tip #36. Stop moving around so much, you have near been to more areas in Victoria then I have. Pick an area and stick at it till you get gold. I noticed you only spent 1 day at Wedderburn, the caravan park there is cheap to stay at and literally right on the gold. I sent a newbie there a couple years back and he got his first nugget a 2.5oz piece 300m from the back fence. If your getting rubbish it’s not flogged, have some faith in your research and stick to it, good luck mate.

Your not wrong about that, took two blokes to even lift the box your ‘tent’ came in, going to need a tandem trailer just to get it all out to site. I got an area ready to test the 17”, your going to need a lot of gold to cover generator and jackhammer hire, 3ft of iron cap will sort the men out from the boys.

Yeah...mine is a little more sensitive. But, it depends on the battery pack voltage. With the NiMH pack in mine, at 10.7volts, I was getting about 13.75" on the nickel, but with the fully charged Li-ion at 12.6 volts, I was getting 14.5, and with the 16.8v li-ion, I was getting 16.5". All these with the 12"DF. With that coil, the battery voltage is the difference, Mark. And, I gained about 1/2" by turning the GB on, but set at zero. By maxing the GB, I gained an additional 1/2". Jim

I think you should call on that fantastic luck you had before you knew what you were doing... forget everything I ever said and use that magic... make me proud, Mitchel. And, even if you don't find a nuggie you have seen the elephant! fred

Holy crap, you're all over the place. You have to decide if you are prospecting or sight seeing. You'll need at least a couple of days in each of those spots just to get your head around what is going on. Spend the first part of the day looking around and trying to understand the ground and what is going on. Then in the afternoon go for a swing and get the excitement out of your blood. Then the following day, slow down and concentrate on working the area properly. Gold has had millions of years to learn how to hide from us. Cant expect to find it in one day. Ok lecture over - looks like your having fun though. If I didn't have so many backorders to get through before the weekend, I'd join you (and maybe hobble you a little to slow you down lol). Good luck for todays adventure and I do hope you get on to some yellow. regards Pat

Very interesting, we were all complaining about the EMI yesterday, didn’t know about this thing.

I'm beginning to believe there are several different production models when it comes to the TDI. One might be obvious, the TDI Pro and the TDI SL. But from other users I think there are manufacturing variations in the SL model. About half the users I've conversed with state there is a huge depth advantage when turning the ground balance off, but that is not the case with mine. Speculating, the difference could be attributed to substituting TX components to coil specifications. I did some internal voltage/current experiments a few weeks ago and noticed one main thing. I could increase the standard input voltage entering the system but never saw a significant increase to the coil TX circuit (less than .010 volt) regardless of input voltage. I believe, in my unit, the voltage regulator might be preventing the use of increased voltage to the TX coil connection. This would explain the constant air test distances across the different settings.

Quit reading and fn around,,,,get it arse to the caravan park and don’t post anything else unless it’s a nugget!!!! Only half joking....no I’m not ..get serious like you do on the beach at SM.... get in a groove and do it Don’t take any more advice after tonight Get your nose to it and relax it will beep when you swing over it ? Good luck!!!

Good point, everyone stay away ?

Sorry, I didn't think of that as being an issue. Here is a good website for checking out what is what as far as state parks, forests, national parks, reserves, heritage areas, etc. http://mapshare.maps.vic.gov.au/MapShareVic/index.html?viewer=MapShareVic.PublicSite&locale=en-AU And 300 metres from the back fence of the Wedderburn caravan park is the new hot spot ?

Trent King has given you the same advice that I did.

I ate well in Oz i was lucky every time then ..........i also brought back jams,honey and chutneys which i bought on a local market in Warrnambool ,top breakfast in Appollo bay and had a fab burger in ......forgot the name just to name a few.Everywhere i had coffee it was better than UK . The best was Goldrat BBQ and wife salad buffet but that s another story.... RR

Both you and phrunt have really bad taste in food. Chain store rubbish. You can eat that crap in America Mitchel. That sort of food is why Australia and America have so many obese people. Bogun food. Should be banned.

Well Air testing a PI although it's fun and informative, Many believe that PI's actually do better when a target is in the ground because when a target is in the ground a PI sort of electrifies the Ground/Target combo and it measures the response time hence the name TDI and depending on the moisture/ ground makeup can add to the depth although a PI does not like soaked ground it does do well is the ground is slightly damp, Where as a VLF is good in very damp ground but not soaking and they start to loose depth in very dry ground,. The depth of a machine can only be seen on genuine target recovery, I had a 3500 that air tested quite well yet in mild ground in 2 spots at the same location I found a VLF seemed to be just as deep. This is not a dig at anyone because I made this very mistake. "But". The trouble is many folks see a PI as a magic stick like some Super deep all seeing eye but the truth is they are not, All they do is give normal good detection depths in difficult ground conditions where a VLF Suffers, In normal conditions a Sovereign GT with a 10" coil and a GP3500 with an 11" DD have fairly even depths, and in the same soils the MXT with the 12" Concentric coil will match or even beat a TDI when it comes to all out depth, I actually saw someone do that with one of the first MXT's when I gave them a 12" coil to try out and he only had the Gain up around 6 to 7, The only honest to God reason to buy a PI machine is if you have bad ground to detect, Again this is not directed at anyone but these are a couple of examples of what I found by owning and buying the above machines, Take a PI and a VLF in to hot prospecting gold baring land and a PI will whoop the VLF all day long. Don't be down about your air test results because in bad ground or at the beach a PI will do those depths all day long where as a VLF will be lucky to get 50% of those depths but on a good day or the right soil conditions a VLF will surprize a person, As to which is better or deeper is more of a case of matching the machine to the soil conditions. J.

I still only have the one hour in it. Family duties called me away for a bit so no ironstone or serpentine yet. I would imagine serpentine will limit its effectiveness and I’ve found ironstone can vary so much in detectors I'm not sure my report on it would be of great value to you. I don’t post on here much but I was trying to decide between a nox and Gold Monster. I’ve used the monster but this is my first go with the nox. I thought I should give my impressions in case it helps others since the users on this forum helped me make the decision. I wouldn’t take only my opinion as a guide but thought another view would help someone get a better overall educated decision before they shell out the money. I hope you enjoy the Instagram. I do it to help others get an idea of what us gold Detectorists do out there and maybe get some younger people involved in prospecting since it seems fewer and fewer people are doing it every year and kids don’t even get outdoors anymore.

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

My friend don't waste your money. I'm in Niger and I bought the Germans detector called GPA1000 suggested for me as the deep possibility to found the underground Gold is 15m. I use it for 3 months across all the gold area without nothing. It can't found nothing. At the end I realise that the Germans Detectors are mad and delivered with wrong informations. At the end advice you just to work with Minelab product called GPZ.7000 with 14inc coil. He is the best detector I try in the world. Good luck

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

Published on May 14, 2019 “Hello all, hope you’ve all had a great weekend. We’ve just put a short video covering some of the aspects on the DeepTech Vista X together, some of the features that you’ll see in the video has been altered but we will be making a new video on these changes very soon. We’ve had so much interest in the Vista X, we put a video together as fast as possible to show some of these new features. Thank you for your patience, more information and update video on performance coming shortly. Recommended retail price: 580 Euro”

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

Published on Apr 21, 2015 - Found this 3.8oz beauty in the goldfields of Victoria using the GPZ 7000. It was nearly dark but I couldn't resist a few more minutes detecting. It gave off a strange signal because I believe it was standing upright. Pay close attention at the 7:45 mark, you can actually see and hear the nugget as its dropped inches from the coil!!!

I'm calling it Fred ... time to go. Another report later.

Guys, guys ... you gotta see a place before you know if you like it. There could have been nugget suicide on one of those places where I swung. As a matter of fact at least half were pointer spots (someone else did the research and found gold there before me and shared the spot). Thanks, I'll try more. One more today before camping on a spot in the cold. I'm not dragging a trailer around so I can and will go back. No matter where I stay I'm about an hour back to any spot I've been to so far and I assure you if I would have found gold I would have stayed. Fun would be finding lots of nuggets. Enjoying myself I am. I've done a little sampling of foods, a little souvenir buying and seen lots of things I've never seen before. One of the things I've realized is that Australia is just one big kangaroo graveyard! I'm off soon to tickle some more bones with my coil.

Gold Monster OutingWent to the gold camp in the Rocky Mountains last week. The weather was gorgeous, all kinds of songbirds back, plus the flowers of the mountain meadows are in full bloom, purple crocus and shooting stars, yellow buttercups, multi-coloured Johnny Jump-ups, etc., etc.At the camp as I was checking over the living quarters (camper and two travel trailers), a humming bird buzzed straight past my right ear! That snappy racket from those wings going a million miles an hour is unmistakable. So, we set out the humming bird feeders hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful and dazzling red to orange coloured throat of the Roufus variety before they head farther north, and we’ll keep an eye out for the beautiful iridescent green of the more common ones that stick around all season.My wife unpacked her shiny new Minelab Gold Monster, and for those of you familiar with the machine, there’s not much reading to do, but I watched a whack of user videos before we hit the mountains so I could give my little darlin’ some tips and guidelines as she set out to learn how to use it.I picked a spot for her to try her luck on, an old fairly level place in a valley where some placer miners once had their wash-plant. The claim is now abandoned, last worked by some modern-day Chinese miners, but they left the area under a gloomy cloud, and I doubt they’ll ever be back.I gave my June Bride some general instructions on how to run the Gold Monster (I’d never used one before, but the YouTube and other user-posted videos were a great help. Furthermore, I’d like to give a shout-out to Bill Southern for his wonderful educational efforts.). But, we figured the Monster out quite quickly, and that’s why I’m grateful to Steve Herschbach for recommending I get my sweetheart one due to its ease of use, and kudos to Steve and Jonathan Porter for their write-ups on the machine which helped me quickly get a handle on the basics; their input was invaluable.By eye-balling the old site, I could tell pretty close to where the Chinese had pulled out their wash-plant, so I used that information to gauge where I’d have my wife start to detect as there are always some “spill” areas that offer a better shot at finding a nugget or two. Having said that, it was easy to see they had bladed and bucketed the area carefully after they were done to gather any spilled material; those miners were no greenhorns.I blocked off in a rough rectangle an area I thought might pay, and right away, my wife was hitting targets, but they were almost all ferrous, so she kept experimenting toggling back and forth between discriminate and all iron, learning the different sounds, learning how to make it easier to ID targets (to get them to sound off louder), learning how to read the little bar graph when it gave its indication of non-ferrous more than ferrous, as well as getting used to the sounds of shallow vs. deeper targets, and learning how to use the magnet wand to save time while sorting trash signals. (To elaborate, she’s a great panner, but a green, green rookie when it comes to nugget shooting.)The thing about detecting an old wash-plant set-up is that it gets very easy to quickly tell where the repairs (welds, patches, etc.) took place, and the numerous bits of welding rod sure make for some interesting sounds, and curious readings on the graph! Having said that, the Monster’s discriminator sure came in handy, and yes, depth was lost, but by using the small round coil, target separation was much better, and I was impressed at how my wife was able to move slowly from target to target, separating their locations, as she dug out signals.While she was test-driving the Monster, I was going for a comfortable cruise with my Gold Bug Pro. That is one hot machine, at least mine is. (I’ve heard detecting folklore that some machines leave the factory “hotter” than others, and I have no idea it that’s true or not, but the one I have is a firecracker for sure, super sensitive, and a true gold hound for sniffing out gold from tiny flakes to meaty nuggets.)I started to hit non-ferrous targets in one slice of her search area, so I marked a few so she could check them out. Well, those miners had liked their cigarettes, and there were plenty of crumpled bits of foil from the wrappers as well as some other kind of lead foil with a gold-coloured outer covering that made for some increased heartbeat, but only turned out to be a bust.After having dug some of those duds, she called me over. “Hey, what do you think of this signal?”. She was getting a great reading on the Monster, and it sounded sweet too. She worked the ground for a bit chasing the target around with her scoop (when a target runs from the scoop, it’s usually something heavy, as most ferrous trash seems to hop quickly into the scoop). Dropping the dirt from the scoop onto the coil, she moved things around and there sat a pretty little picker, about a quarter of a gram! Man, was she pumped!!So, she kept on working that rectangle while I ranged farther afield with the Bug Pro, and I too found all kinds of cigarette foil, and that maddening, thick lead foil with gold coloring--craziest stuff I’ve ever seen, and I have no idea what it originally contained. I recovered a small aluminum parts tag, several electrical connectors, bits of lead, and pieces of broken brass likely from a bushing of some kind.My wife gave another shout, and over I went. Her meter was pinning consistently in the sweet zone, the signal sound nice and crisp. Capturing the target, she threw the dirt in a gold pan. Next, she then used the Garret Carrot to chase the signal around the pan. She moved some dirt then cried out, “Look at this. Is this gold?” At first, it was hard to tell what it was due to a covering of grey clay, but using a bit of water soon revealed a sassy nugget! If I’d thought she was excited about her first find, it was nothing compared to her reaction on that one!I can only come to this conclusion: The Minelab Gold Monster is a sweet machine that sure produces sweet results, because it’s so easy to use, and it makes my sweetheart happy (couldn’t resist punning on sweet, forgive me).All the best,Lanny

I've never checked mine, but find that interesting. Mine was built in '13. Do you have a diagram for the coil connector? I'd like to check mine. Something's fishy, for sure, as the voltage clearly makes a big difference. It's possible, because the voltage pulses at 100kh, that you can't read the voltage difference, except with a synchroscope, or other similar device. Jim

Mitchel, Mitchel, Mitchel; FOCUS!!! Did you get any time on the QED?

And Thursday?

That's a good map. You don't know what you don't know until you find out you don't know! Can I blame it on jet lag or just stupidity?

The EMI from the power lines is insane at the back of the caravan park.

Ok, let me update and observe. In honor of Phrunt I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC to him) tonight and got a favorites meal. It's finger lickin good! I've checked in early tonight and got a fantastic place at the A Line Holiday park. It has a queen downstairs and 3 twin beds upstairs. I am in #7 but there are more of these A frames than that. What a deal. I got it because I used my phone (the cell is working on my T-Mobile with unlimited text and data) while I was at Whipstick detecting. The last couple of days I detected all day and got what was left of the rooms at the end of the day. This would/could be a longer term place to stay depending on my research tonight. It is part of southern Bendigo. Now to the detecting. I suck. I've got nothing to show for this first few days. I've gone to a couple of places I picked out before the trip, a couple of places where other told me to go and just looked at workings and stopped but my Australian algorithms haven't kicked in yet and I haven't gotten lucky hunting the roads and parking areas! haha Tonight I need to look at my options for the next few days and perhaps get some comments. Let'm fly while I eat chicken. Mitchel

Hey Dave, Thanks for putting all that together for me. That 17" coil seems like the ticket for sure. My storage bill at Trent's is escalating rapidly. I sure hope I soldered the coil adapter correctly. If Trent has to fix my mistakes my "cartons owed" column is going to be downright scary.

Thanks everyone! All this time I never tried changing the target tones and I was too lazy to look it up in my manual. Lol!

Excellent find, not only large but great character - congratulations! The challenge is on now - can Oz put a larger nugget in your pocket?

I agree. Thanks for posting Mike ?

Finally go the video finished of comparing equinox 800 to the gold monster 1000 on in-situ targets in the field. This is my no mean the comprehensive review as im sure the settings on the equinox could be tweaked more produce even better results. But from what i saw on my ground they were vary evenly matched. The gold monster seemed to pop a little harder on the targets, but the equinox still hit all the targets the gm1000 hit. Since i detect mainly creeks the equinox has a leg up since its water proof and i dont have to worry about it getting wet or falling in the creek. Hope you guys enjoy the video and ill take more footage as i work this little patch.

John, I couldn't agree more. I'd be happy with a TDI SL that ran from a 21v 5-cell Li-ion battery pack. Maybe with Reg Sniff's filter capacitor modification to ice the cake! Combine that with a Nugget Finder 12" round, spiral wound coil and you'd have a lightweight, really capable PI. Jim

Watch a few more of your videos last night and enjoyed them, thank you for taking time to do and post them. You folks find some nice gold!

Beautiful coin find ! And out detecting, it seems your doing well after surgery, I'm glad to see that.

You should teach him my rules and apply them to yourself... You get the first, the last, the biggest and the most...he gets the rest! I love my rules but no one pays attention to them... fred

Ive used every single detector mentioned on this thread, for ease of use the 2300 is best. Best value for $$: QED (but more self training is needed to get the best out of it) and the 4500/5000 is of course a great option. For the QED and GPX, use spiral wound coils only, otherwise you're flogging the same depth capabilities of everyone else for the past 10 years. The QED is a killer with the small 9" coiltek elite and any big coil when adjusted to a wider pulse train and coil match.

Hi I see that there is a lot of questions I will not answer all / confidentiality clause oblige .. some precision all the same the cable outlet on the coil is not an aesthetic fantasy ... the 7us in large series to technical consequences it was in front or behind / not to bend the cable it is in front of ... Impluse AQ is optimize for the beach with one goal: gold, gold no gb that produces noise mono coil / specific connector again: it's a technical constraint on most inexpensive connectors the pins are mobile = to 7us they make noise not the one who was selected all to be thought and planned at all levels to reduce the noise less noise = more gold .... from the start, the goal was to produce the best beach pi not a machine goes everywhere if you make compromises: you lose performance ... Since the Russian video, the detector has been touched up to say nothing more .. just that many will be surprised at the results and of course, are twin brother // optimize for the nugget is on the road

Stick with Minelabs, the number one choice of professional prospectors worldwide. There are less expensive alternatives but nothing better. Beware the many vendors who want to take your money by making excessive claims. No metal detector made can find gold nuggets, even the largest ones, more than a few feet deep.

There have been like a dozen threads on finding gold nuggets with the Equinox and 6” coil since last year if you do some looking. https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/7468-my-tips-on-nugget-detecting-with-the-minelab-equinox/ https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/9606-tiny-gold-hunting-with-the-equinox-800/