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Showing content with the highest reputation on 09/05/2021 in all areas

  1. Hello Friends, My Oldie finds have been building up for the past month or two, so I decided to make another post. All of these finds were with my Nox 800 from around 10 different parks in my locale. These parks have been detected by numerous hunters around me many dozens of times over the years. I’ve been detecting them for close to 15 years now. All the parks are very trashy, and most times my hunting protocol is to pick thru the the trash and dig the deeper, higher conductive targets, in addition to digging all quarter signals regardless of depth. I’ve hunted these parks so many times, I know the depths of the oldie targets, which range from 6-9+”. I’ll also dig the occasional nickel signal. I have some hunt buddies that prefer digging all clad signals regardless of depth, but that hasn’t been my style of hunting for decades now. It has been a very hot and dry summer in my area (dryer this year than previous years), and I have limited my hunts to just a few hours at a time. It works for me because I can’t stay away from home too long anyways since I take care of my Dad (preparing his meals and medications daily). Thanks for looking! Good luck on your next hunt! Raphis Dan
    18 points
  2. It seems one of my recurring detecting New Year's Resolutions has been to find new hunting grounds and not get stuck in a rut trying to find the last crumbs I'm capable of tasting in the sites I've detected extensively. So far this year I've done well (at least one silver coin in each) at three 'new' sites (two parks and one school) and 3 weeks ago before heading out East I was able to get in a short 1 hour hunt at another park I've never previously visited. I vaguely knew about this spot previously but for various reasons I never tried it. My first 'requirement' is that a new (to me) site have a decent chance of hiding old coins. For the most part that means having had significant human activity prior to 1970 and preferably prior to 1960. This 4th 'new' (to me) site of 2021 didn't seem to meet that minimal requirement. In fact there is a prominent bronze plaque on site which states it didn't become a park until 1974 and previously was an industrial storage lot for several decades. However, Historic Aerials hinted at a more promising past. It seemed to show that some of the modern park's features were present at least back to 1965. I'll go deeper into that later in this post. That first 1 hour hunt produced three Wheat pennies along with four copper (alloy) Memorial Cents and a couple clad dimes. Three Wheaties in an hour on a site which supposedly wasn't frequented until 1974 was surprising but far from earth shaking. I filed it away until after getting home from my week+ in the East. After getting home I needed some time to decompress (i.e. take care of other things) and it was quite humid besides. Further, this summer has been wetter than normal and the grass grows back as fast as it gets cut. Finally this past Thursday (2 days ago as I write) I got in 3 hours on a freshly mown park. I concentrated on areas that the Historic Aerials indicated would be most promising but still did some fairly broad surveying. The results were a bit disappointing compared to the previous short run -- 1 Wheat cent vs. 4 copper Memorials along with a few modern 5, 10, 25 cent coins. Here's a photo of only the coin finds (oh, plus a Sterling ring my wife has already claimed): The next day I returned for another 3 hours, this time hunting exclusively on what I considered the most promising part of this site. Now the floodgates started to open: 10 Wheaties compared to 5 copper Memorials along with $1.85 in larger denomination modern coins: The dates on the 10 Wheaties are: 1909, 1918, 1920, 192x-D (haven't yet resolved that last digit), four from the 40's and two from the 50's. Non-cent finds don't seem to show any particular date pattern although only 2 or 3 are from the current millenium. Now for the non-coin finds from these last 2 days (total of 6 hours): Pretty much the typical park trash. There is one arcade token from 80's or later (right below five Stinkin' Zincolns). The ladies watch appears to be nothing special (no precious metal or stones). Possibly most interesting is above the drink can lid -- it's a copper piece that looks like it has a coin slot in it. The padlock is badly corroded and the shank has been cut with a hacksaw. It may be from this site's industrial days. Oh, one last interesting find. To the right of the Hot Wheels car is a wooden piece I recognize as being from a Lincoln Logs wooden playset (not metallic)! So what explains the plethora of Wheat Cents? Here are some hypotheses: 1) The bronze plaque is wrong and the property was turned into a park well before 1974. This seems a bit odd -- I mean the park department historian can't get a date right and spends hundred+ dollars on a sign with erroneous information? 2) The industrial site's employees spent some of their lunch-hours in the same shady(?) sloped spot, either accidentally dropping coins or even possibly playing some kind of penny-ante game tossing them and missing picking up some? 3) Nature's randomness is conspiring to try and trick me into thinking this site's Wheats/Memorials ratio is indicative of something other than just luck. The plausibility of this last hypothesis can be tested with statistics. I'll start with my on-going 5 year record of fraction of copper Lincolns that are Wheats. That's 338/1547 = 21.58%. Most of these have come from parks and schools, all of those sites having been established no earlier than 1974 while most of the remaining sites were private permission homesites that were established no later than 1960. Thus using this value as 'typical' for sites frequented for at least 47 years is a stricter requirement than necessary. Still, using 21.58% ratio of Wheats to total coppers, the chance that of the first 27 copper alloy Lincolns found, 14 or more would be Wheats is less than one in 7100. Of course Wheats tend to be an indicator that even better (yes, silver coins) treasures are hidden and awaiting a coil to be swung over them. Hopefully I can add some more evidence by digging one (or more) of those on my next trip to this spot.
    13 points
  3. The GPX 6000 Detector is great at revisiting old patches and finding missed gold. Really impressive how deep and small this detector will go while handling the worst ground. I do not need a vlf anymore unless working spider gold at hard rock mines or dealing with trash sites. Smaller gold piece 2 grains. Bird shot way smaller.
    11 points
  4. Tony When detecting in trashy areas, gullies and desert washes I frequently carry a VLF along with the GPX 5000, GPZ 7000 and now with the GPX 6000. If roaming large areas of desert with only an occasional bullet or boot tack to contend with the VLF is left in the Jeep. Over many years as VLF detectors improved the models for this purpose were upgraded from the early Goldmaster series to MXT to GMT to Gold Monster to now to a Equinox 800. All equipped with the smallest coil available. When a target is detected in a trashy area with the Large PI coil it is quickly pinpointed and discriminated with the VLF. If is too deep to detect with the VLF it gets you pumped up a little thinking that this is something good. As the hole gets bigger and deeper the small coil on the VLF pinpoints the direction to dig. Sometimes a dozen plastic knives with bright colored surveyors ribbons tied around them are used as markers. Detect the area with the PI. If a shallow loud target is detected lay a knife over it. If it is a weak low broader signal place the blade into an upright position. Lay the PI down and detect each marked target with the VLF. The shallow loud ones are fast and easy. The deeper ones require some aggressive digging to get the VLF close enough to detect, pinpoint and discriminate. From years of experience with many detectors has led to this determination. The Equinox 800 with the small coil is the best, simplest automatic detector for this work and/or for stand-a-lone gold detecting. It has a build in pinpoint mode that immediately gets you on top of the target. Once on top you punch it back to discriminate mode and one or two sweeps you know whether it is ferrous, nonferrous or a hot rock. The target number read-out is so much better than the Gold Monster bar graph. Like most modern highly sensitive VLFs built for gold detecting it will sound off on many hot rocks. But it will have a repeatable number read-out that will correlate to the normal hot rocks produced in that area. Have a good day, Chet
    9 points
  5. When I bought my Minelab Explorer back in 2007, over a period of 2 years, I purchased 3 different smaller sized coils for my machine (Sunray 10”, a 6x8, and an 8”). Did I find oldies with those coils? Yes, I did. However, as the years progressed, as my skills/capabilities increased with my machine, in addition to the purchase of a new Minelab Pro coil a few years after my detector purchase, I ended up using those smaller coils much less. I actually used a 13” coil for nearly 2 years with my Explorer in heavy park trash with much success. With that coil, I found an 1800’s $5 gold coin (at 9”) in addition to a large handful of barber coins, some seated, and lots of Indian pennies/wheats from a park that had been pounded by the local detecting club for many years (including myself and all my buddies). I prefer the stock coil for park turf. The Nox has amazing target separation with the stock coil if you use the coil wiggle technique for co-located targets, and the depth (which I require) over a smaller coil for park deepies.
    8 points
  6. I’ve had mine out a couple times for 4 or five hours the first time on an old club claim I’ve never found gold on with my 7000 and 14” coil, switching to the 22” X coil didn’t change my luck but as mentioned it runs very stable and quiet air testing against the NF12” on the 7000 with a sub gram nugget the depth difference was impressive at a rough guess I’d say 1/3 to 1/2 again more running as hot as the GPZ allows with both coils the soil not overly hot or salty. it found plenty of small and large trash, but for me this is a big gold clean-up coil on proven ground as opposed to patch hunting at 68 my back can only take so much of it before the pain in my upper back begins to wear me down it’s a heavy beast out on the far end of the 7000. I’ve not put mine over a nugget yet although no fault of the coil, I’m signed up for Gerry’s training on the 6000 In November I’m bringing the 7000 with the 12”NF and 22” X coil they are there if anyone here is around and wants to play with them or do any comparisons.
    7 points
  7. I saw this video posted by Chicago Ron about his visit this summer to the AKAU operation in Nome. From YouTube: “1 week trip to Nome Alaska with 7 other hunters. We tried everything they had. 2 days working the slick plate, groups of 2 for half a day. High banking and panning, and lots of detecting tailing piles that had been pushed with a dozer. Mike got the find of the trip with a 7.93 ounce specimen worth well over 20K. I had the most nuggets with 7 and we all got gold and had a blast! Already planning the return trip End of July 2022” Nome Alaska Gold Hunt August 2021 Warning Adult Language!
    6 points
  8. I'll let raphis answer this but want to point out that if Equinox is primarily initiating the flagged targets, that is telling you something right there about the combined skills of the detectorist and the capabilities of the detector whether or not the eTrac can call the target after it is flagged. The Equinox generally has the edge over the eTrac in thick trash due solely to its undisputed higher recovery speed which will give it the edge in initial detection, EVEN if the eTrac can come over and wiggle in to make the correct call (In other words, the question is, would the target have been picked up on the initial search sweep with the eTrac?). So with the flagged target question, the answer depends on who's doing the most "flagging".
    6 points
  9. Tony, IMHO Depending on your ground, most 20 kHz and lower frequencies are better at handling the more mineralized ground conditions. That’s why I use the Equinox 800 in heavily mineralized ground as it gives you a single 20 kHz frequency for hot ground or you have the multi-frequency option for less reactive ground when looking for smaller gold. It also has some really good discrimination abilities for trash sites. If any 20 kHz or lower detector doesn’t work in your ground then I would recommend a PI machine at that point.
    6 points
  10. Thanks for the reply! I find over 98% of my gold at the beaches, but one of my largest gold rings came from park turf...it was a quarter signal at 5”. It was an old class ring from the 50’s era....over 20 grams....I was able to locate the owner and return the ring back to him.
    6 points
  11. CTX 3030 You fellas have me way out dated. If only I had started earlier lol strick
    6 points
  12. Yes, it’s the same ring style. I’ve been finding that floral sterling style of ring regularly over the past 14 years. Thanks for the reply. Your absolutely correct about how owning a top of the line machine does not correlate to instant deepies success. If it was that easy, we’d all be buying Tiger Wood’s golf clubs and making millions! 😅
    5 points
  13. Nice shooting there...and I understand your reasoning..... but your passing up the GOLD! 😄 strick
    5 points
  14. steveg has outdone himself again, and produced a "tall man rod" for the GPX 6000, that adds 5" length to the length of the stock rod. At 5'11" I find the stock lower rod to be just long enough, so this will be great for the taller people out there. See The Classifieds If This Link Does Not Work For Latest Ad
    4 points
  15. I'll tell you what I know, which ain't much. I have no idea how an AQ ended up in India, maybe FTP sent it or maybe he got it through some back channel. But that YouTube channel isn't run by FTP, someone else created it. Also, the website & Facebook page Steve mentions don't belong to FTP. I'm pretty sure the website belongs to Alexandre. A problem has developed with the AQ Ltd in that a voltage regulator has burned out in 3 customer units. Production is suspended until the problem is identified and corrected. They wanted El Paso people to do the analysis but that has not yielded any results so I'm hopeful Alexandre & I will get some material to analyze. Meanwhile, the mechanical design has been changed to eliminate the external battery pack and put the batteries in the tube. Probably when the AQ goes back in production it will be with this scheme and the Ltd will be done. I agree, this whole thing has been poorly executed. Sorry, wish it had been different. Wishing is about all I can do these days.
    4 points
  16. Nice haul there, as always. Your "month or two" is more like my half year, and I'm probably putting in more hours since I have less responsibilties leading to more time to detect. But quality (skill) tends to beat quantity (time). Glad it's not a competition. 😉 A significant difference (and there are likely quite a few others) between your sites and mine are the number of hours they've been detected previously. One would think that would be to my advantage, but it doesn't seem so obvious, especially with your results. (Many more variables leading to those result comparisons, though.) Regardless, you give me hope that there are plenty more worthwhile targets in my ground, I just have to figure out how to find them. BTW, are the pennies in that pile (LH of the last photo) all Wheaties? I assume so since the only reverses I see are Wheats and I don't think you'd mislead us by making sure all the Memorials are heads up! If so, can you give us a silver dime to Wheat penny ratio? (And I'm assuming you don't ignore either of these targets, even if you can separate them by dTID.)
    4 points
  17. Nice collection of goodies there my friend!!! Persistence pays off. As for the competition, I find most guys just don't understand all the things involved with finding good targets. Its way more than swinging an expensive machine. That's why you will continue to extract more goodies from these places. Best of luck next time out!!!! That floral ring looks familiar to me, hard to tell from the photo. I found one a couple of months ago.
    4 points
  18. Sodalite, lapis lazuli, turquoise, varcasite, jade/nephrite, serpentine (wear a respirator), amazonite/labradorite, aventurine, malachite, chrysocolla….
    4 points
  19. Hunting gold in parks is tough with all the aluminum. One thing I noticed is if you come across can slaw which is the worst it tends to be in patches. Rings aren't too bad to weed out from tabs but chains are the toughest. Real nice work with the Nox. Have you considered a 5x10 from Coiltek for that work?
    4 points
  20. Very well done, I dislike hunting in trashy areas but you've found a way to make it work for you and it's paying dividends. That one big ring looks huge, maybe it fell off Mr T.
    4 points
  21. I've always been fascinated with what attracts and repels insects...why some people are constantly bombarded and the person close by is left un bothered...from studying this photo it appears that dressing in all yellow may be worth a try...maybe time to pull out the old disco outfit from the 70's just hunt alone the first time. strick
    4 points
  22. All detectors are of little use at 1m depth unless it is that rare multi-ounce retirement nugget. As previously stated you must remove the overburden. Watch Rob’s video on this forum at; https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/16593-part-2-dig-shovel-rake-metal-detecting-for-gold-nuggets-video/#comments Have a good day, Chet
    4 points
  23. Bounty Hunter 840! Not because it was necessarily anything technically special at the time, but because it was simple to use, and the anodized electric blue color was way cool!🤣 (the Red Barron was cool looking too!) And it found me a bunch of silver in the late 70's! Along with the lack of restrictions that we have today, to be able to have fun, and hunt practically anywhere without being hassled! 👍👍 And yes, I still have it!!🙂
    4 points
  24. This site I'm linking to has been known to bend the facts a bit, so as to be first with something to post. That way people like me will link to it. So take this all with a grain of salt. However, I did hear a rumor that the Sept issue of Western & Eastern Treasure magazine has a teaser ad for the new NM multi detector, so this may be on target... or not. Link removed as information proven as bogus, including the Lightning name Anyway, with Detectival right around the corner (Sept 11, 12) we may have an unveiling very soon. Fingers crossed! Anyone who gets their hands on a W&ET magazine, do look at the Nokta/Makro ad, and see what it says. EDIT - HERE IT IS!
    3 points
  25. My suggestion for what it may or may not be worth would be to do what the old timers did. If the depth is only 1 meter then just dig random prospect holes in what you consider the more likely spots until you hit the bedrock. Then wave a detector over the dug out spoils & scan the bed rock. No gold is easy gold & if you cant helicopter a small excavator in to do a bit of the hard graft then you will need to work up a sweat & do it by hand. Either by shovel or how about a post hole borer? To detect to 1 meter is pretty unrealistic as has been mentioned. Greg
    3 points
  26. Thanks for the reply, GB. When I used to avg over 500 silver coins a year, I was digging nearly 50 silver a month, but I was averaging almost 4 hunts a week back then, and my hunts were 6-8 hrs avg. You also have to take into account the foot traffic of the parks I’ve hunted in my locale to yours over the years. The 40’s/50’s era where I live was booming...lots of people, great weather, and the parks were packed throughout the year. That equates to a lot more coin drops (and trash drops). Some of the parks where I have been detecting, I have recovered over 300 silver coins (and counting). There are also a handful of parks where I’ve dug over 200, while most are under 100 silver coin parks. I don’t have a lot of Barber/Indian penny era parks where I hunt (under a dozen), yet I have found barbers in 40’s and 50’s era parks. Aside from 3 wheat era Canadian pennies (grouped on the right side of my wheat pic), and an older cinco centavos coin, the rest are wheat pennies (even the chopped pieces in the upper right). I never post my clad coinage (just not my style), but I do find a decent amount of quarters and incidental dimes/pennies that I thought could be silver/wheats on every hunt. My wheat:silver ratios have always averaged around 5:1 since 2007. Sure, I get some hunts where I’ll find over 20 wheats and maybe one silver, and also hunts where I find 5-6 silver and just the same number of wheats, but if there’s been a trend each successive year I hunt, I’d say my wheat:silver ratio is slightly declining to near 4:1.
    3 points
  27. If you are hunting gram plus nuggets in dense ferrous trash, any detector with a good reputation for relic detecting in trash will do the job. The XP Deus or ORX are top contenders, and offer different frequency options in one machine. Equinox is extremely close but maybe just a hair behind the XP offerings for working in dense ferrous. Once you get past XP and the Equinox there are dozens of good machines that all might serve as well, the key being small coils and lots of patience. I would say I was not impressed with the Gold Monster in dense ferrous, too many weird signals. The 19kHz Gold Bug variants all do better in that type scenario, and for the price are very hard to beat. You list the MX7 as a detector you own, and it with a small coil would be the first go, before actually buying anything. It’s an excellent detector. You’d be surprised also at how many people use an Excalibur in ferrous. It suffers from masking, but excels at killing ferrous signals. Out of the machines I currently have on hand I’d probably grab my Equinox for the task. Here is a link to some testing I did a few years ago. Main thing to take away is that most machines are up to the task, and the differences in most cases are rather minor. The real key is a small coil and knowing your machine very well, which is why I’d grab my Equinox. I’ve so many hours on it now it just talks to me in a language I can easily understand.
    3 points
  28. Nice job. Deep finds are hard to do at trashy parks. Speed is your enemy 😄 Since you found Seated and Barber, you already know there is another layer lower than most people can figure out on how to get to. The constant renewing surface trash is slowly making it impossible to hit that Barber layer. It gets harder and harder every year to finds a clean enough section to punch deep. Looks like you are hitting that '50's layer solidly. Great selection of rings too. You need that bulldozer guy to scrape off 6" for you. 🦺
    3 points
  29. Thanks for the reply! That large brass/copper ring has Fleur De Lis symbols on it, but who knows what was glued on the face of that ring. I think it’s a Biker ring from the 60’s era. I’m in my zone/element for trashy park hunting...It’s my forte! Been doing it for decades. I enjoy the challenge of finding masked oldies/deepies others have missed (including myself).
    3 points
  30. The August Garrett Searcher is out https://bit.ly/GarrettSearcher_08 The AT Pro really dominates the finds in this one, hopefully I can find some nuggets with my Garrett 24k to submit to try get myself into this next time!!!!
    3 points
  31. 3 points
  32. You'll find something decent sooner or later Simon. Gotta be more than flys#it in Kiwi land somewhere? :) The 22"CC certainly has the depth advantage over standard coils. I only wish I was allowed to go and use it -
    3 points
  33. He told the X-coils guys before buying it if this coil goes deep he'll find big gold with it, he must have had a spot where he'd found big gold before and thought there must be more, and there was 🙂 If you listen to the video he references Mr X saying I told you we'd find one Mr X 🙂 I guess that's the X-coils guy he was talking to. I don't swear but I'm sure I'd slip a few words out after finding a nugget like that if I could maintain consciousness. 🙂
    3 points
  34. I spent 6 weeks camping in Canada and Alaska in the summer of 1989. It was a great road trip except for the mosquitoes and flat tires. I did master the Canadian salute; the action of slapping them flat on my forehead.
    3 points
  35. I just had to show this one, a guy in Victoria Australia found a 165 gram / 5.8 ounce nugget with his 22" Concentric coil, he'd only had the coil for a couple of weeks! He caught it all on video too. Here is the live dig video. If only it were my find 🙂 I release the same sort of excitement for a 1.65 gram nugget 😛
    3 points
  36. Hello GB_Amateur. Thanks for asking. Yes, I know fun and success are two different things. But to me success with no fun is hard work. So what is a detector worth if you have to have degree in electronics and physics to find stuff without digging piles of rusty iron? To me the hunt itself is the goal. Fresh air, spending time with friends/family, talking to people... and not fiddeling to the instrument for the best find, the oldest coin and things that are not under your coil 😉. Yes, a few goodies are a welcome gift beside 😎😁. But that's only my opinion. Oh, and messing with a manufacturer isn't fun at all, too. And I never, never had a problem with Minelab, White's or Wilson. To me that counts, too. About the Fishe m-scope... the idea was to put all Fisher detectors (former Los Banos, now FTP) into that, and not the pulse ones from JW Fisher, which has it's own index. I know there are some brands missing, but you're only allowed to do 20 😒. but otherwise it may become confusing. When I started detecting the first ones were handcrafted. They worked, but you know, there must be something better...😅. So the Wilson Relic & Coin IV was the first "real" detector, manufactured by Wilson Electronics, South Bend, Indiana.
    3 points
  37. That's interesting, b/c that's the exact opposite of how I hunt (in parks). I only focus on coin targets that are shallow enough where my F-Pulse pinpointer can detect it from the surface. This means, as you might expect, that I only get clad and miss out on the silver/older coins. But I take this approach to avoid major digging in parks. But I also take this approach b/c most of my parks are fairly new and I don't expect them to have much silver. Additionally, there are so many clad coins, I can't bear to skip over them out of principle. However, there is one park that has some older areas where I might look into focusing on silver instead of clad. In my front yard, which is (was) basically virgin soil from a landscaping and metal detecting perspective, my wheatie to silver ratio is about 6:1. Thanks for your post; it's produced a lot of interesting responses.
    2 points
  38. I ignore a ton of targets between 20-25 tID on my Nox. There’s a catch though....those targets that I pass up are typically shallower than the wheats/silver I’ve been finding at that specific site. More specifically, a dig-able target, for my sites, typically equates to at least 4-bar depth on my Nox. Every one of those targets in my two pics I posted were showing at least 4-bar depth. If I have a 27 or above tID, I dig those every time, regardless of depth. Sure, there’s parks with lots of gopher activity that I’ll dig less than 4-bar depth, but it’s not the norm. Yes, I may just pass over a shallow, small sterling ring that id’s in the 20-25 range, but if I were to dig every 20-25 ID target at the parks I detect, I’d have $4-$5 worth of new pennies/dimes, and a whole lot less oldies. That’s not how I want to hunt. A Successful hunt for me first and foremost is determined by how many oldies I have in my pouch at the end of my hunt (in relation to the difficulty of the spot I’m hunting).....the total amount of clad I recover is a distant second. Even so, it’s surprising how many clad dimes/copper pennies I do recover though, because they were at 4-bar depth....I’d hate to estimate how many 1959-1969 copper pennies and 1965-1975 clad dimes I have recovered over the years, but I know it is a very high amount! Forgot to mention, there’s also incidental clad dimes/pennies I’ll end up digging because they were part of a pocket spill of new coinage that I initially ID’d a quarter signal in, or the spill cumulatively ID’d above 25. Also, I do like how the Nox up averages the ID’s of deeper targets. I know some hunters may find that a negative quality, but the up averaging allows me to dig very small pieces of copper or smaller pieces of sterling at depth...I have found some cool items at depth with my Nox I don’t think I would have dug with my Explorer. I’ve witnessed on many hunts the Nox up average very deep 20-25 ID’s in the mid 30’s.
    2 points
  39. Thanks for the reply! Nearly every park here in So Cal that I’ve hunted (the count is close to 500), is fairly trashy. Like I mentioned to Phrunt in my reply, I’m in my element when it comes to finding deepies in trashy turf. I look forward to it and have much confidence that I will find deeper, keeper targets hiding in the trash. The Nox has upped my game since my Explorer SE swinging days...It picks thru the trash better and hits deeper targets better. A lot of the local hunters have given up on many parks around me because they are trashy and all they dig up is trash and clad. Only a small handful, I surmise, have reached a level of competency where they are finding the oldies on a regular basis. The only nuisance trash targets that prevent me from hearing deepies in an old park are surface clad and crown caps and crushed screw caps. I pick up all crown caps off the surface when I see them. Foil and pieces of can slaw ranging from ID’s between 1-15 on the Nox are not a problem for me. The iron (when it’s not in blankets, which is the case in my parks most times) is not generally a problem for me either.
    2 points
  40. CAPT - welcome back! Yes. The Garrett version of multi frequency is called Multi Flex on the Ace Apex, it also refers to the fact that the Apex (like Equinox) has the ability to operate in multiple selectable single frequency modes which I think is a great feature. I don't think you can go wrong with either, the Apex or the Equinox but the additional price of the Equinox machines reflects their value in versatility and capability since they incorporate the refinement of multiple generations of Minelab simultaneous multifrequency technology innovations vs. Garrett's first attempt at SMF and they have higher responsiveness than the Apex which gives them an edge when hunting in high junk target density environments. Don't get too caught up in the fancy marketing speak - MultiFlex and Multi IQ is just tech sounding marketing buzz for Simultaneous MultiFrequency and doesn't really tell you anything about capability or performance of one versus the other. Good luck and let us know if you have more questions and how you are getting along once you get that new detector next spring.
    2 points
  41. The main two mods reg recommended were the Sweep Speed mod (mod 1). That mod applies to all SL's regardless of date. The second mod was to increase the sensitivity, and that mod was adopted by the factory in 2015. I'm not sure which 2015 machines have it, or don't. my understanding is that all SL's after 2015 had that mod from the factory. A search should locate the posts regarding what`needs to be done to do the mods. Mod 1 is fairly simple, as the caps needing to be replaced are large, and thru the board connections, and can even be done on the top surface of the board by cutting the wires of the old caps, and connecting the new ones to the old leads. The second mod requires a decent soldering station, and some serious skills as the components are really tiny, and surface mounted. I did both and the second taxed my skills as a solderer...LOL Jim
    2 points
  42. I forgot to include a few more pieces of info that may shed light on my experiences so far. 1) Regarding detector and settings, my usual park and school 'rig' -- ML Eqx 800 w/11" DD coil in Park 1, no notching, 5 custom tones, Recovery Speed = 4, Iron Bias F2 = 0, ground balanced and EMI cancelled. In heavily detected sites I usually go with gain = 24. Here I turned it down a bit to 22. 2) I mentioned some similarities between pre- and post-park aerial photos. Where currently there is a concrete block restroom building (men's and women's sides plus a central utility/maintenance room), back in the 1950's (as far back as the photos I've seen are taken) there was a different building the same location. It's about twice the size and had a hip roof. I suspect it was some kind of office for the industrial site. The park itself is rolling hills/valleys along with several flat areas. The building is on a high level spot but right behind is a slope down to lower ground -- an obvious place to sit and eat lunch, drink beer, waste away the time now. But was this also a spot where the workers lounged during lunch and breaks and after work? There are trees there now but too small/young to have been there 50 years ago. Aerial photos are often too fuzzy (and sometimes taken in the winter) to figure out where the trees were back then. 3) Besides the building, there are two other landmarks which appear to have commonality between the 50's and now. One today is a circular sidewalk with exercise equipment inside. There was something of similar size and shape there in 1965. Where today is a baseball field, there is a ghostlike field of similar size back in the 50's. 4) For the most part the recovered Wheat pennies were not deep. Of the 14 found so far, one was about 7" deep, one 6" deep, most 3-5" deep and one about 2" deep. Always something I try and figure out is whether or not a site has been detected previously, and if so, when. This one has me baffled. Who doesn't dig high conductors which are shallow? Am I the first one to hunt this park? Hard to believe in 2021 that an easily noticed (at least on maps) park has never been hunted. If so it's the first I've found. Another minor mystery is "why so few nickels?" If the Wheat pennies are representative then there should be an occasional Buffie as well as an early Jefferson or two. I'm hardly finding any nickels at all, old or new. Plenty of clad dimes and quarters, at least compared to my typical park/school detect. Also, pultabs in the nickel range seem to be on the sparse side. That would make sense if this site didn't see traffic until after the ring-and-beavertail era (1965-75) which is consistent with the 1974 date of the establishment of the park. I tend to stay away from parks on weekends (especially holiday weekends). This week looks like nice detecting weather so I should get over there at least a couple times during the upcoming workweek. More evidence will show up, it's just a question of whether it will help solve the mystery or simply add to it.... And I want to prove Raphis wrong as to whether or not I'll find a silver dime.
    2 points
  43. Equinox 800 gets all the vlf glory these days but the Gold Bug Pro (19 kHz) with the 11" DD has been my best gold detector in iron infested trashy mining sites .........still to this day. Just love the simplicity, depth, ergonomics and very effective discrimination.
    2 points
  44. Azurite(blue) and Malachite(green) are two rather soft copper minerals with stunningly pure bright colors. They are relatively common and not that expensive. You could moderate their intensity by mixing some white or black mineral powder. They tend to form acids when wet, so seal them well. Show a picture of your work as I do woodworking too.
    2 points
  45. Here is the July version of Garrett Searcher, some pretty good finds, good to see the old Ace series still popping up good finds regularly around the world, although this version seems dominated by the AT series finds. https://garrett.com/sites/default/files/pdf/2021-07/3500097_July_2021.pdf The last page has the advertisement for the Garrett 24K, I want one!
    2 points
  46. Thanks GotAU. I can actually say ‘thanks’ because I did find it, but it’s not mine. I was showing a mate how to use his new GPZ and this was one of 6 pieces I found that day. He’d spent the big dollars on the Z and it was his patch so he kept it all. We found that piece within the first 10 minutes of turning the GPZ on! I have actually just put it up for sale for him on PA. He is not the most computer literate bloke. https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/viewtopic.php?id=37881 The day we found them.
    2 points
  47. The original TDI was limited to a max battery voltage of 16V. I designed the SL so it could take 20V and will probably be OK up to 25V. That's the rating of the power supply caps and anyone not comfortable running caps all the way to their rating (I'm not) can swap them out for 35V caps. The next limitation are the voltage regulators which have a max rating of 30V.
    2 points
  48. Well, there you go. Not only is the Wilson detector not from Europe, it's from my home state! In fact the first coin I found (that with the Heathkit GD-48) was less than 100 miles from South Bend. One of the great things about this site -- always something new to learn. Thanks for the answers and details of your detecting philosophy.
    2 points
  49. Aesthetics, weight and balance. But i would also like a CTX style discrimination and programing in an Equinox.
    2 points
  50. I have too many detectors and am slowly making my way to a "thinning of the herd" this winter. This is a very informal little test I set up today for no purpose other than to see if I can sharpen my opinions about which ones stay and which ones go away. The goal is a general purpose tackle anything I might run into while wandering the hills machine. Above we have, from left to right, the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 w/10: x 5" DD, Nokta Impact w/11" x 7" DD, Teknetics G2 w/11" x 7" DD, Minelab CTX 3030 with 10" x 5" DD, Makro Gold Racer w/10" x 5" DD, Makro Gold Racer w/10" x 5" concentric, XP Deus HF 10" x 5" DD, XP Deus 11" DD And below we have a bunch of common ferrous trash on right, including some problematic items like sheet steel, bolts, etc. plus a scattering of hot rocks. There are a couple nickels, couple copper pennies, and a dime placed in the mess, one of the five in the open as a comparison. The stuff is rather randomly scattered with the coins placed so as to be hard to detect but not impossible. I am as much interested in how the hot rocks and trash responds as I am in how the coins respond. My testing is non-scientific and only intended to help me sort things out for myself, but I can offer a few observations. My criteria are my own, but do include how the detector feels on my arm and how it sounds to my ear. This session is without headphones as I often detect in quiet locations and want a detector with good, loud, clear audio as provided by an external speaker. The Gold Monster and CTX 3030 are not on the chopping block, but just for more information. The rest are all VLF type detectors and I am trying to sort out which I may be happiest swinging away in locations where I may run into hot rocks or lots of trash, while seeking non-ferrous targets. Here are some random observations, few of which are new by any means. 1. The Gold Monster excels at pulling non-ferrous items out of the hot rocks. It balances the rocks fairly well in all metal mode but this mix of intense hot rocks can be a little noisy (still way better than most machines). The iron disc setting however just shut the rocks right down and still popped on the coins. Very good. The machine fails however as a detector in dense trash. I can attest that the GM1000 does very well with scattered trash. The dense stuff however is more than the machine can handle. The high frequency helps enhance signals on flat steel in particular plus you get peculiar ghosting effects, weak signals that sound like echos of the stronger signals. So while the Gold Monster is a good nugget detector, even in scattered trash, it is not, in my opinion, a machine for pulling non-ferrous items out of classic "carpet of nails" scenarios, like old burned down cabins. 2. The Nokta Impact does extremely well overall, though the number of settings options are a plus as well as a negative. Lots of possible options to fiddle with. My main gripes are the weight/non-compact design and the odd overload signal. It is tied directly to the volume control. As you advance the volume everything gets louder, including the overload signal, until you hit 8/10ths volume. From there on up the target volume increases but the overload signal volume decreases, until at full target volume you have next to no overload signal. People who go to full volume at all times probably wonder why their detector makes no overload signal. This gets mentioned in the manual but I am sure people miss it. Even at its loudest the overload signal is very faint to my ear. Why do I care? An overload is a quick hint that you have a flat steel item like a can lid or large bolt under the coil. The Impact like other Nokta/Makro machines likes to overload on shallow targets so running sensitivity low in dense trash (39 or lower) can be advisable, and you are not going to lose depth because no machine gets any depth to speak of in dense trash. I do like the ability to adjust the ferrous volume as a separate item in the dense trash. 3. The Teknetics G2, a Gold Bug Pro variant, continues to impress me by being really simple and effective. Best speaker volume of them all, it really bangs out. However, there is no volume control at all so it can be quite the noisy machine in dense trash. 4. The CTX 3030 is amazing in its ability to just shut the trash up. If flat steel is your problem, the CTX is the answer. Almost quiet as a mouse in the trash. Unfortunately and no surprise, the CTX also suffers the worst from target masking. The CTX is superb if it has room to maneuver, but it goes almost blind in dense trash like this, and is only so-so at best when it comes to finding the targets in the hot rocks. 5. A couple Gold Racers, one early prototype and one late prototype (more or less production). At 56 kHz the Gold Racer handles the ferrous better than I would expect, but it does tend to "light up" flat steel and such and is very prone to overloading in dense trash. Again, sensitivity 39 and lower can really help. Overall however the Gold Racer holds its own with the Impact and G2, especially at picking low conductive items out of the trash. The concentric does seem to help a little with ferrous trash and hot rocks, but not so much as I hoped. No real need for most people to have the concentric coil from what I have seen. 6. The Deus is a wizard in the trash but not by the margin I expect given how popular the machine is. The 11" coil seemed on par with the other machines (the 9" is no doubt better) and the elliptical overall has the edge over all the other options. But only by a little, not a lot. Flat steel and bolts that bother other machines bother the Deus also. I tried small coils on most of the machines also. They do help getting between the trash but obviously ground coverage suffers also. That being the case I was more interested in what the stock type coils did. If I was headed for the Sierra Mountains tomorrow and wanted something light to prospect for gold with, and some ability to deal with the ever present ferrous trash left by logging operations, I would grab the Gold Monster. It bangs on gold, handles hot rocks, and can deal with normal random ferrous trash. If I thought I might bump into an old cabin or camp I wanted to hunt however, it gets to be a hair splitter. For just shutting trash up the CTX is unbeatable, but it also suffers the most from target masking. If you just want a machine that shuts up unless a good target is under the coil, hard to beat, but a lot will get missed also. Good for low to moderate trash levels but in dense trash it is going to suffer, even with a small coil. I will generally stick to parks and beach work with the CTX. I have and continue to have a hard time loving the Deus, although it is the winner in the densest trash. The external speaker volume is very poor but for me the main problem is simplicity and priorities. I dream a lot about hunting old sites with lots of trash chasing a gold coin, but the fact is it is probably the type of detecting I do least. With apologies to the relic hunters, the stuff most people show on forums like the Dankowski forum would just go in the trash at my house. Gold, silver, and platinum in all forms (nuggets, coins, jewelry), plus coins made of anything else, sums up what I detect for. If hunting dense trash was something I did constantly the Deus would be a no-brainer, but as rare as it is for me to engage in relic hunting, something like a G2 does nearly as well from what I am seeing, or at least well enough to suit me. I like the idea that if my battery goes dead I just put another battery in the G2 and back in business. No separate charging of coil, controller, and headphone. As much as I like playing with complex detectors when it gets down to my detecting I do prefer simplicity. The bottom line for the Deus is I was hoping the 14/28/74 kHz elliptical might be as good as a 19 kHz G2 and 45 kHz Gold Monster combined. The Deus has the edge in the dense trash but the Gold Monster has an even bigger edge on the gold nuggets, so having my cake and eating it also all in one detector still involves compromises in real life. For a different perspective on the Deus HF elliptical coil from a hard core relic hunter see Keith Southern's review. The GM1000 and CTX 3030 are keepers for different reasons. I have not given up on the Impact and Gold Racer by any means though between those two I still get along best with the Gold Racer for my particular purposes. The Deus is really good at what it does best. The machine that impressed me the most does so by being so simple. The two knob G2 combination of lightweight, excellent ergonomics, loud audio, and simple but effective operation make it very hard for me not to like the machine. It is not "the best" per se but the G2/Gold Bug Pro still hits a certain sweet spot for me personally. For a trip into the hills to prospect for gold but to also hunt a cabin site or old camp, it is a toss up for me at the moment as to which I would grab, the Gold Racer or the G2. Gun to head right this moment, I guess it's G2. Tough call though. Anyway, that narrowed it down a bit and gives me more directions to pursue going forward as far as what to test and how. I will finish up again by pointing out I am not trying to prove anything to anybody but some of the observations may be helpful to some people - so there you go.
    2 points
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