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To the local ballfield today with temps in the upper 50s. I know, most of you feel bad for me having to endure the cold here in Florida. I was so cold I had to wear PANTS! Running the Equinox 15" coil on 24 sensitivity and 4 recovery in Park 1, I got an iffy high tone mixed with some iron grunts which sounded a lot like other silver dimes I have dug on the same field. While Rosie has seen better days, the hunt ultimately had a silver lining.

As an introduction, I am the president of a small placer gold mine exploration & leasing company. While doing research on one of our mine properties I came across an old leather journal & thought i'd post the entries over time here. I named it "Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine." Hopefully the old timer who wrote it won't mind. I tried to find any relatives but have run into one dead end after another. I felt it was a story worth telling & over the period of posting the entries I will include pictures of the area as it looks today and what our modern activities at the site have been. The journal was mentioned in a 282 page government report that I stumbled upon while doing research. I was able to secure the original journal from the descendants of the president of a defunct mining company who did some work in the area back in the mid 1960's. The journal itself was written by a prospector who worked the area in 1936. He hit a gold strike of epic proportions and lived an adventure that is very fascinating to say the least. It's a wild ride showing a glimpse back into a long lost time. I hope you enjoy the journal.* PROLOGUE : This is a journal of the experiences written in the first person in 1936 by a prospector by the name of Jed Stevens while mining at the Whiskey Jack Mine. Jed had several claims in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. This area of claims produced large amounts of gold from the mid to late 1800's. The old placer mines were abandoned in the late 1800's as a result of California's Sawyer Decision which banned or severely limited hydraulic gold mining operations and left large amounts of undiscovered gold in the gravels. Here is the first entry : APRIL 12 1936 : Today I filed all the paperwork at the county court house for the mining claims I now hold near Lost Ravine. I then drove my Ford truck out to my claims. There was a good spot near Jake's Creek up to the north about 1500 feet from the main road that follows Morgan Creek where I set up my camp. It took the entire day to pitch the tent and set up my kitchen. The tent is a 15 foot cabin tent with a stove jack. I have a first rate box stove set up inside to be used for heat and some cooking. I also set up a second stove about 200 feet from camp for the main cooking jobs during good weather. Today was a good day for getting camp set as it was sunny and not too cold. Tomorrow my plan is to investigate one of the claim sites where the old diggings took place and get a bearing on my situation as far as where I might sample gravels and old tailings. I am losing daylight and getting cold so I will get into my sleeping bag on the cot and get some sleep. TO BE CONTINUED .................................... Here is a picture of Jed's journal as it looks today. It is in fairly good shape & also included some old maps. *this story is based on a real gold strike in 1936 according to what reports I have in my possession, but the journal itself is a work of fiction.

😊 Have we ever seen a photo of Gerry with his mouth closed? strick

Update: I just field tested my $30 Giveet Bluetooth transmitter (link posted above) with my Avantree Torus wireless Bluetooth collar headphone for 2 days now and it worked really well for prospecting. Pairing audio from the 24k to the headphones was easy and fast, and the audio responds quick with no discernible lag time between swings over a target and when you hear it, the sound quality is very good, and the charge is lasting more than 10 hours now. It also works well with my GP 3500 - no interference.

APRIL 14 1936 Today I traversed a major fault about 1500 feet to the north east of camp. Part of the fault was exposed by old diggings while the northern portion on my claim was burried in heavy gravels. Unable to get a good hole going in the heavy material I focused my pick and shovel work near the base of the exposed area which was about 60 feet below the top of the rim. I took several buckets out of the area and panned them in the creek near camp. The pan showed fines mixed with coarse and weighed heavy. So far the claims are showing good signs of gold and I am thinking of a way to do more digging at each of these spots. I will do more exploration out there at the fault tomorrow. It is closer to the creek so i'm thinking it may be a good location for serious digging. It is beginning to snow tonight as I write this and I am stoking the stove and turning in. TO BE CONTINUED .............

APRIL 13 1936 Last night got very cold. My water containers had some ice in them when I made morning coffee. I hiked out to the eastern most section of the property armed with my Smith and Wesson Model 27, a shovel, and a bucket and I found an abandoned drift going into the mountain. It was timbered for support and looked to be solid. Inside the opening was an old two man tuttle tooth two man saw. The tunnel had seen some good work. I'm guessing back in the late 1800's. All the mines here as far as I know were placers so they probly dug this when water was scarce as I saw abandoned iron pipe in the area. It was nearly high enough for me to stand upright and went back about 200 feet where some of the timbers had started to rot and were collapsing. There was signs of some exposed country rock in the drift. I used my shovel to dig some sample gravels and took them back to camp where I later panned them in the creek. There were fines and a few nice coarse pieces from the two buckets I processed and the drift looked to hold some promise. Tomorrow I am going to hike out on a fault line in the northern area of the claims to take more sample gravels. I've got beans on the stove and a cup of good Irish whiskey before I turn in tonight. TO BE CONTINUED .......................

Biggest scoop I could get. Stealth 720i, 14 inches deep and 7 inches tall...That 14 inches long really hammers deep. I have hundreds of video's of digging gold but most I cut out all of the digging and get to the final scoops. Here is one I did not..got all of the scooping to show the depth..I would say this first gold ring was in the 16+ inch range. Second Video I measured the depth of the gold ring ..1.6 grams at about 15 inches.

I wonder if they really know the 'value' they have in that detector. I remember (hopefully clearly...) back in the mid-late 70's. White's was advertising their 5 kHz Deepseeker (also called 'Master Hunter') VLF as the gold detector and their 15 kHz Groundhog (in the 80's called 'Gold Hunter') as a coin detector! Now that Steve has pointed out the relationship between target size and optimal frequency, maybe they were effectively pushing the 5 kHz model because it sounded off well on large gold (which was more available then, although not plentiful). Anyway, within about a 5 year period the roles flip-flopped. I think at least part of the reason for the change-of-heart was the success the 15 kHz Groundhog had in Australia. That was mostly Charles Garrett back then, with his pal Roy Lagal as advisor and now they're gone. But who at Garrett (or who among their supported field crews) is a true native gold detectorist? They have plenty of coin and relic hounds -- see the plethora of videos. They had some of the Gold Rush TV show cast (yeh, Todd Hoffman hawking your products -- how wise is that?) using their pans and I remember a YouTube video where Freddy Dodge swung an ATX, but I think he admitted he hadn't done much detecting. I recall the Ace Apex pre-release video by an Aussie but he was finding coins. Maybe he is their authority on native gold detecting? Simon, IMO you can be their expert gold detectorist spokesperson. The least they would do is fly you over some (free) gear, like a hat and finds pouch.

Just a note here : Jed's use of the term country or country rock was and still is another name for bedrock. Later in the journal when things become clearer on what he is doing I will post pictures of the area he is working as it looks today and also what we are finding.

The problem with new prospecting VLF's is everyone already has a VLF they're reasonably happy with, they're used to using it and it finds them gold. They see little reason to get another. The other problem is they've all been so similar, they'll all find gold to about the same size, micro flakes you have no hope of picking up with your fingers. Usually the reason you'd get a different one is it has features that suit you. Detectors like the Equinox have also made dedicated VLF's for prospecting less necessary and you can get by without even having one and do very well. Where the 24k to me is different is it's handling of the hot rocks, and while I don't have all that difficult ground I can imagine because it handles the hot rocks here better it would handle difficult ground better too? It sounds like from the limited number of users so far in hotter ground that this is the case. Whites struggled to gain any ground with it as the writing was on the wall with them, people expected them to collapse and perhaps were worried about warranty? I wonder if many even thought Whites was capable of a cutting edge detector anymore. Whites never really did much in the way of marketing and promotion of it. It was released and just blended in to existing detectors, there wasn't a flurry of information about it and a bunch of people using it showing people what it's capable of. Garrett has made some changes to the electronics since the Whites design, I'm not sure what they changed and I've never used the Whites version of it but one thing is for sure their coils will likely be better if for no other reason the way they're manufactured would improve them. Tboykin said he cringed when he went into the coil assembly area at Whites, very dated. What Garrett needs to do is let people know whats different about it over the competition, why they should buy it. The ground balance is the obvious difference to me that even in my mild ground have found to be fantastic, the way it works and the fact you can lock it. It has a gold meter up the top of the screen to tell iron and possible gold targets and also has target ID, although the Target ID scale is different to that of a coin machine but still goes up to 99, I guess adjusted for gold targets. The vSAT is also a good feature that I'm experimenting with at the moment, it can boost the sensitivity even higher. It has non-motion pinpoint, adjustable threshold, Ground grab and ground balance lock, adjustable discrimination and a Tone ID mode, and all of that and you don't really need to use any of it as a beginner, you can just turn it on and use it like a Gold Monster, but if you need settings you've got them. Having the battery box like it does makes for a quite well balanced detector too. They really need to focus on the lack of bump sensitivity with the 24k, as the Minelab's are plagued with that, the 24k is not. Sure you can lower the sensitivity and fiddle around to lower the bump sensitivity on the Minelabs but you can run the 24k flat out and have virtually no bump sensitivity. That's a huge plus as each time you set the detector off by bumping the coil you're potentially missing gold, they're like false signals and if you get enough of them you expect them and occasionally one of the false signals may have been a nugget and you dismissed it as just another bump. Another big plus to the 24k is the coils, at the moment the range isn't all that big, and those lucky enough to get Whites coils have the 6.5" Concentric which is a brilliant coil, there was also the 4x6" DD and 8x14" DD, I wish I had those two coils, I could put that 8x14"DD to use straight away. Garrett just has the 6x10" DD so far, great coil too, no bump sensitivity and a nice solid design. Nel has also indicated they're making coils for it, although they're already overdue, but that seems normal for Nel.

I use a low latency Avantree Torus wireless Bluetooth collar headphone with my Equinox and wanted the same option for my Garrett 24k. This Bluetooth transmitter works well with my 24k and is also rated as low latency, so there’s very little lag time between swinging over a target and hearing the target tones. Use stick-on Velcro to hold it onto the back side of the arm cuff and run the cable into the audio input/output port on the detector. You will need a 1/8” female to 1/4” male plug adapter to connect the two. A right angle adapter helps make for a lower cord profile into the detector’s audio output plug. The manufacturer says it lasts up to 14 hours, mine is new and I haven’t used it over eight hours yet. It seems to work well, causes no interference and delivers nice audio. I’ll post a better review after a few days of harder field testing. It may be a good option to use for wireless Bluetooth audio with other detectors as well. Edits: not water proof so use a baggie cover. A right-angle adapter makes it nicer as the cord won’t stick out the back so far (as shown in new photos) Giveet Bluetooth 5.0 Transmitter... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07198BBZN?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share CERRXIAN Right Angle 1/4 Male to 1/8 Female Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N5LWJWQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_QP59Q3BYB1T42CSRZGGV

Yes, Nokta are even open to making Concentric coils for it. And hopefully Nel and Detech step up to the plate and make coils for it, Dilek has said they're open to it as Cal_Cobra pointed out. Nel may have found making coils for a detector the price of the Simplex wasn't viable? After all the coils would cost almost as much as the detector when you include shipping from Ukraine, the Legend is in a different price range so coils for it are far more likely.

I hunt salt/fresh water..Brackish .. Chesapeake Bay. I would say 80% of the gold I do dig is deep..in the 14 to 16 inch range. The other 20% can be in between deeper or shallow..rare to find gold near the surface unless a storm has sturded it up but it does happen. And this is the older beaches, early 1900's to the late 60's. Fresh drop beaches, I'll cherry pick surface targets.....there are so many hunters out and gold is the target. There are old areas at the fresh drop beaches but it like your on a mission..either to dig fresh drops or look for the low spots, nasty smelling areas of sand.. and listen for the faints. The type of hunt has a lot to do with the season..summer fresh drops..winter old gold and silver.. All depends on the history of the spot, the bottoms condition and is it trashy. All sand, old beach I would say 3 inches is needed. If it is a young lake with little history and shallow sand.. lots of hunters keeping it cleaned out.. anything is fine.. But me I like having that extra depth all the time.. I have not hunted many lakes. And this event was in my rookie years. (2009) Hit this lake, had a swim area with platform. Spent two days there with a friend who invited me. First day I got several coins, targets were not very deep. Talked to one of the workers there and was told someone was hunting the spot every year after labor day. Second day I did score a small gold signet ring over in the kids area. Ring did not fit the time period. Before leaving we got talking to some the the regulars that had been there for years. We were told the place had been dredged about 10 years ago) due to state laws saying the dive area needed to be so deep. We were told the stuff dredged was spread up the trail and silver coins were found for several years.. No one said anything about gold being found.. We never went back...

I've had the Red Racer, Racer 2, Impact, and MMK and they all had a rich selection of both factory, as well as after market coils. I don't see why the Legend will be any different, Dilek said they're happy to work with 3rd part coil vendors, as long as it made sense for both parties. She also ran a poll on their Facebook page to sequester polling on the most requested coils for the Legend. I see a 6x10 closed loop elliptical DD coming 🙂

Garrett is on a winner with the 24k then, they just need to market it well as it hasn't had the publicity it deserves yet. It's just as easy to use as the Gold Monster, if not easier as it's ground balance is superior and it has coils that aren't bump sensitive at all. It also has concentric coil support, I run the Whites 24k 6.5" Concentric on mine at the moment as Garrett are yet to release their Concentric coil, and if Nel comes out with the coils for it like they've said they will it has a distinct advantage there too. I wouldn't mind getting the little 4x6" DD for mine as well if I can source one.

I have never heard of one being named that, but I think you ought to call him Nox. Cute little fella but that won't last long before he starts knocking things over.

Hey got a new yellow lab puppy. Just wondering if anyone has ever named their lab Minelab? My wife won’t go for it….

How deep have you dug a gold ring in a mild mostly sandy freshwater lakes? My Gold Kruzer w/ 5x9.5 hits a 14k 3.77 gram gold ring at 11" buried in a sandy beach. I wish this detector had a 8" or 9" round coil. Nox w/ 11" coil and Orx w/ 9" hf hit it at 14"+. When hunting in a lake, is that extra 3" worth it or are you just hunting for fresh drops?

Wednesday I had a brief moment in the arctic air that is hammering PA. It was going up to 50 degrees, So I thought I'll take what I can get during this frigid spell. Off to the park I went to try for some silver. I had about 2 hours to complete the mission before my wife decided to cash in on my insurance policy. Three clad and I dropped a silver in the box, A 1964 rosie. Light was fading and a bunch of clad later I decided to detect back to the truck. Starting to get a little colder I needed to adjust my hat and as I sat my Tesoro on my digger I got a nice tone. Thought maybe it was just the ground sounding off. Once adjusted I swung again and it WAS a good target. Time to dig, At 8'' I had the wonderful Heart Attack moment. All I saw was diamond and a big one!!! Well once cleaned I realized it was a CZ mounted in a silver Mexico setting (CRAP). But I thought to myself it's still beats a white metal ring. I think we all have those Heart Attack moments, some are real and some not so much. At least this one didn't turn out to be a pull tab ring. Pretty sure this is what drives us all to keep digging. I love each and every crappy target I dig knowing something good is just around the corner.

Ahh, better data, thanks. Your measurements are in good agreement with the scientific tests we did ( on the Geotech1 forum ). I calculate ( with Eqx TID ) 2.0mm : freq = 13.5 kHz, TID = 14 2.2mm : freq = 11.3 kHz, TID = 16 3.2mm : freq = 6.1 kHz, TID = 20 There's a bit of leeway allowed, I'm converting from F75 readings to Eqx ones, I never got round to 'calibrating' the Eqx ID's, in part because they covered a rather small useful range. In case anyone's slightly interested, here is the maths: We found the target time-constant was proportional to the cross-sectional area of the wire, and proportional to the electrical conductivity of the metal, and the result was this formula: TC = 0.029 * D * D * %IACS where TC = time-constant ( in microsecs ); D = wire diameter ( mm ); %IACS = metal conductivity. Example: 2mm diameter copper, TC = 0.029 * 4 * 102 = 11.8 usec To convert time-constant into target frequency use this: target freq, f = 1/ ( 2* pi * TC ) with TC in seconds using the above TC as an example, this gives 13.5 kHz It's a good straight-line match for wires up to 2.5mm, then it starts to drift away a bit , due to skin effect; the full diameter of the wire is not all seen. PI machines don't see this so badly. But regarding: "Not surprisingly the in-field dTID's vary with length and shape" I think you may have missed the main point of my earlier post : TID does NOT vary with wire length, unless you have very short lengths. It can depend a bit on shape, irregular objects commonly give erratic ID's.

But at least you have time for research! Here in Florida there is so little time for that because we have to detect instead. Grass is always greener on the other side... especially in Florida.😉

Good job, one is better than none. Oh and by the way it was 11 degrees here in my haunts. Ground is pretty stiff right now.

it looks like you're clenching your mouth shut in those photos Gerry, and you've got a tasty treat in your hands, I can see you were struggling not to fill your yapper! Some serious willpower there.

The 6000 can easily pick out gold the size #8 bird shot at 2-3 inches deep... In my opinion the 7000 can as well but it sucks for this type of gold as it will tune out the gold or it double blips on it...its not a clear response like the 6000. Were talking stock coils here...The 6000 is a plug and play type detector. gold the size of #9 birdshot is dig-able as well but listen carefully lol The gpx 6000 is an amazing machine in it's capability of finding small sized gold...I liken it to a long range sniper rifle with carefully hand loaded rounds. But ask yourself before you buy... do you really want to find gold the size of fly poop? strick

Happens on a rare occasion. When the flies/nats are bad, I try to keep the gold trap shut. Notice one on my chin. he wanted to join a mouthful of flies I already had eated that day. The really rare occasion I find something odd and start to think, will that ostrich egg fit?

My lakes are sandy down deep. On a local lake it's been that way since I was a little kid. So I guess any gold rings are going to sink pretty fast. Still I'll use my detectors that go deepest. I have a couple ss 8" scoops. One all ss including the handle and one ss with wood handle. The all ss scoop is heavy. It was a supid question lol. Who's not going to use there deepest seeking detector in the water.

All of what OBN said is spot on. What I can add is that up in the Northeast most of our fresh water beaches or swim areas were replenished with sand in the late 50s and 60s . I would suggest digging down in different areas to see how deep the sand is and if it is all the same. if the depth of sand goes way beyond the reach of your detector be happy picking fresh drops if you hit a hard bottom at a depth your detector could be capable of hitting then you could work that area very slow with much higher odds of finding silver or old gold. If it makes a sound dig it.

Iron reject. Noticeably missing from the GPX 6000. I would have been happy if ML would have just ported over the algorithm from the GPX 4500/4800/5000 intact (no improvements or other R&D needed). But alas, it was left off the 6K. So Nokta, here's a chance to grab not only prospectors but hot dirt relic detectorists (not an insignificant number of relic detectorists in the US who use the GPX/TDT/ATX machines) who are weary of the old GPX/ATX form factor and who ML chose to cut loose with the introduction of the 6000.

Quote: "I find quite a bit of copper wire -- single stranded. The gauge is in the 12-16 range. They typically hit in the USA zinc penny and aluminum screw cap range." Assuming that's American Wire Gauge, AWG, that is 2.05mm to 1.29mm. Mathematics tells me that would be the target frequency range 13 kHz to 34 kHz, respectively. On the ID scale, 13 kHz is above US 5c coins ( 16.5 kHz) but way below 'zinc cent' ( 5 kHz ) , and 34 kHz is down in the foil zone . So I'm unsure why you're getting your wire come in at '5 kHz'.

Not sure if it is the balance, quality black paint or intuitive dials and switches but the XL PRO is a pleasure to swing. There are lighter multifrequency alternatives, but when I'm in the mood the older White's hits the spot and brings home the goodies.. Old school yes, but that meter is accurate and she still hits deep.

The Gulf settled down after abt a good 3 day blow. Sure enough 3 of us waded out to a to a good ole hole Neptune reopened. North winds beating the Gulf calm. ...So we all scored a nice take of Clad and 1 of us snagged a 2021 graduation 10K ring. Good as new. Tried it again this morning. .I didn't last 45 minutes. Water about 60 and wind chill 32, that and no targets , I bailed. To hunt another day. This is my Tarsacci's 2nd season wading and wet surf hunting. With out any problems . The Vessel in the picture is the Terrapin Island about 6,000 tons dry. Hauling another load of sand for replenishing. Makes about 3 round trips a day.

Every time we get new detectors for the beach, we get the same question. "Will it find thin gold chains better?" It comes up so often I finally dug up an old post I can just point to whenever it comes up. Here you go. Gold Chains and Other Small Gold In Saltwater Here is a similar question that comes up a lot: Why Won't My Detector Find That Gold Chain? There seems to be a thought process that thinks somehow multifrequency overrides basic laws of physics, that some magic new processing is going to fix the issue. No. Not as long as conductivity is the measure. Once you understand this, you stop asking the question. Hopefully the article helps out with that.

Gerry! The ground here is full of poisonous nematodes, Juanta virus, bubonic plague, and alien flesh eating bacteria. But there are a few nuggets that you wouldn't choke on in your traditional mug shot.

OMG. Try nugget detecting in a location where bedrock has been cleaned with steel brushes! I have another location where a small shack had steel mosquito screens on the windows. Those have since decomposed and scattered across the placer due to high winds. The GPX 6000 is hot enough that these very thin 1/4" make a perfect small gold nugget signal. Hunting the area with a VLF and tuning them out miss the small gold. The only solution is a good magnet, as thankfully the targets are shallow. I've no solution though for the tiny lead birdshot I'm finding now with the 6000, that all my previous PI detectors missed. This whole subject is about discrimination, and fact is for 90%+ of my detecting I use no discrimination. If a location has a high value target I want, there is for me no solution ultimately but to sanitize the location with the most powerful PI I can use. Discrimination is too unreliable, and masking is a massive issue. Yes, I dig tons of trash, but I also find lots of gold in locations others considered to be worked out. I'm talking ounces of gold, not a few nuggets. It is not just nugget hunters. Any beach, and relic location, where there are desired high value targets, all discriminating detectors are a just a phase, a waypoint. Once they start coming up dry, people will go to PI to finish up. Or move on to new locations. But no good site is truly done until something like a GPX 5000/GPX 6000/GPZ 7000 can simply find no signals. That's how you kill a gold patch - you hunt it until nothing goes beep. And that only lasts until a more powerful PI comes out.

These forums are by and large are pretty respectful. FT has made it clear for quite some time the marketing and management people don’t care what we think, and don’t care to engage. What you are seeing is the result of years of customer neglect. There is no point in pretending they (management or marketing) will ever show up officially, and no reason to be fearful of hurting their little feelings. If you are going to be in business, you need to put on the big boy pants when it come it comes to critics. You think a Minelab does not get an earful here? But they still lurk and learn. Or Dilek - fierce warrior that she is, she takes it and gives it right back. Ultimately, it’s First Texas loss, not ours, if they choose to ignore their most rabid fans…. and critics. Any company whose social media strategy is “let’s engage, but only if people are sweet, and treat us with kids gloves” knows nothing about social media, or how to engage with it. If I was running the show at FT, I would show up once a quarter at key locations to talk shop. I’d make it clear it’s just for the day. It would not have to be much, even the barest tidbits. The idea is to show you care enough to bother to engage at all. It’s a two way street, and FT could show a little respect also. Ultimately though, they say a relationship is still alive, as long as there is some passion left. People at least care enough to be sarcastic. It’s when nobody cares at all anymore that it’s really over for FT. They are in serious danger of sliding into irrelevancy.

Kunkler, Ugly is just the scruff on the outside, kinda like caliche covering a nugget. If the bedrock story is true and you need an experienced Equinox 800 user to help you count nuggets, I'm available and my rates reasonable. I'll even wear the dreaded mask to boot. Do you think any nuggets big enough for me to choke on? Now that it's a new yr, I'd like to find a dandy to continue my mug shot tradition. Might not hurt to sweep a 6000 over those crevices either.

Simon does your GM1000 have the forced GB feature via holding in the disc on off? I pushed for this right from the start, it was introduced in later machines with no fan fair. An absolute must in an auto GB only machine.

Yes, congratulations on your nugget by the way. As far as hot rocks go the 7000 and I assume 6000 should be better overall than any VLF however from what I've seen so far my 24k handles the common hot rocks in my area better than any other VLF detector I've tried. This was my first test run video when my 24k arrived, I knew nothing about it then but filmed a video of it passing over hot rocks and filmed the Equinox doing the same. Both detectors were ground balanced. The Equinox I could individually ground balance out some of the hot rocks but others still showed up, the 24k took out most of them just by running with XGB (ground tracking) enabled for a bit then locking it. Obviously with the Equinox I could then notch out the -8 -9 Target ID's and the Target ID's of about 10 and up to 15 to mask a lot of the hot rocks and so on but I'd still get broken audio as often the ID's bounce around so I'd need to notch all the way to 0 to keep it more quiet, but in my experience small gold can and will bounce ID's from -4 up to 2 so it's possible I may miss small gold by notching out up to 0 and obviously those higher numbers like 10 to 15 can easily be decent size gold of a gram or so. There are concerns I don't have with the 24k as I'm not discriminating anything. You'll see the 24k still picks up a number of hot rocks but it's ID is very stable on them, you know they're a hot rock, with the bouncy numbers on the Nox you need to investigate a lot of hot rocks to see if they're gold, they behave the same way. For the particular types of hot rocks we have here, the 24k have proven to be a good performer.

It has to do with the way the XGB ground balance works. When we were designing it I paid special attention to variable ground since that’s where most detectors struggle. And also where a lot of specimen gold lives! So I came up with the idea of a ground balance that had a variable Q (similar to a parametric audio equalizer). The 24k tracks multiple ground points simultaneously and is able to open up the ground point to include a range of VDI’s instead of it being just one number. Luckily Jacob the engineer had some audio background like me and was able to make this happen. I made a special pit at White’s to test this that was a mixture of black sand (Low ground point) and red cinder (high). I should have taken some pics of me out there in the noon sun with a shovel playing ground chef. None of the other vlfs on the market worked in that pit! The engineers made me several dev units where I could tweak the ground balance speed and Q width. I took the machine to dozens of locations across the Western Hemisphere to make sure it was dialed in right. Might be interesting to develop that further and allow advanced users to do the same. Even though I was only working in the industry for 3 years I’m really glad this detector kept going after I got out. Couldnt save Whites but at least there are people out there finding gold with a detector that wouldn’t have gotten made without me pushing for it. Everybody else wanted to make more MX Sport variations. Since I’m not under NDA anymore let me know if you have any more questions.

The Quartzite Gold Show is February 11,12,13 and I will have a booth there selling my book. I will be in the section in the parking lot so I can camp out of my chuckwagon Taco and keep an eye on my rig at all times. If anyone is in the area, please stop by and say hello. It would be nice to meet anyone on here that is able to make it.

Gary Blackwell explains the Deus 2 Notch feature. Good news, the notch feature is on the WS 6 module too.... Bad new for gold prospectors and micro gold jewelry hunters, Sensitive, Sensitive FT and Fast have halo effect/coke notches by default at least on the version of software that Gary is using. Park also has the big 23-36 coke and tiny aluminum notch. So if gold prospecting/micro jewelry hunting with some of the 40 kHz discrimination programs, better remove that notch first. Dumbing down the Deus 2 for the masses like this is very similar to how Minelab dumbed down the Equinox with coke discrimination in Park 1, Field 1, Field 2 and making every program including the Gold modes have iron discriminated by default.

You're funny (hilarious) Gerry.----Makes me wanna buy a detector from you.:)----I'm right up the road from you (Baker City).----BTW---don't choke on that Ostrich egg. ha ha

Nice catch on the coin, and I hope you get some of our weather down there just so that you can say it was cold. Today was about 30 and now it is about 22, so sorry that you feel cold when it is in the upper 50's. Good luck on your next hunt.

Wide open space. I would wander like a goose.

We have had two yellow labs now, one still with us. As puppies, they are TERRORISTS! Cute terrorists, but terrorists nonetheless. Everything you own -- including your body -- will be chewed relentlessly! 😉 If you can tough it out for the first year, they make a most outstanding pet...aside from the ridiculously copious amounts of hair that they shed constantly... And I think Minelab is a great name for her!!! LOL! Steve

Personally I wish they’d can that show. Yep may be entertaining to some but it causes a massive headache here on the ground. The mess left by one team on our station is horrendous, just pulled up stumps and left a disgusting mess with some of the worst rehab I’ve even seen. Then there’s all the units who watch the show and think they can head over and make a killing. Many are totally unprepared, get themselves stuck, lost, break every rule, trespass, steal, leave a mess and worse, some even die.

Don’t think it’s about forcing you to buy into a new one but more to do with developing tools for the end user to upgrade which requires a lot of R&D dollars etc, when you consider the vast majority of Monsters end up in Africa where there are largely no computers or even service centres it ends up in the not viable basket. Just my opinion of course I really have no idea behind the real resistance but would say its down to resources on a mass selling extremely simple product into markets where the upgrade would never be used anyway. But I will say this, the new forced GB feature transforms the Monsters usability, the auto GB is really good over the ground but the second you lift it away it goes out then takes ages to get back again, in most cases I would just power cycle and let the forced GB at start up deal with the problem rather than pumping endlessly waiting for it to get its act together. It is also very handy to force a GB on a suspect hot rock, giving you more info to help make an educated guess. The GB on the Garrett 24K sounds interesting especially here in Australia where even our quiet ground can be quite variable.

My intent was misinterpreted, so I clarified it in the Classifieds rules. New members will have to have made at least ten posts over a minimum of a 30 day period on the forums before being allowed to post in the Classifieds. The change was from “members” to “new members”. Frankly, I thought that would be a given. I had to make the original ten post over 30 day rule because people would join, make ten posts in a day, and place an ad. The change made them work a month to do it, and did put a stop to it. The intent of the Classifieds is simple. Provide genuine active members with a free venue to advertise. That’s it. But the internet being what it is, I’ve had to add all the BS to head off scammers. Anyone that’s been a member for years is welcome to post ads, even if they have not posted anything else in ages. I realize the original post is in jest, but the actual issue has come up before, so I figured good time to fix it. Thanks Norm. And good luck getting the disguise. Me, I think I’d just need the little mustache, as I’m half way there already.

Couldn't agree more on all you said. I will never forget when I hunted behind a guy with a Nox when they 1st came out and before I got mine. And I was using my DF. He was leaving an "X" in the sand behind him. Which I dug just to see what they were. 95% was trash. I got 2 junk rings and a $700 SS watch. I've learned that many of these "discriminated trash" signals can be a cellphone or even a rusty junk chain with a gold ring on it. Ya never know , till ya know.

So today's hunt was not at a beach, but at a place that I should have been hunting all along! I thought I missed my opportunity (kind of did) to hunt a very old drained pond. I could not find a place to park, so I kept putting it off. That was in the fall of 2020. They said the dam repairs would be done by January 2021, so I forgot all about it. Last week, I have a client that needed a scrap electronics recycling pick up, so I drove to his new house which just happens to abut the pond. Now this pond is HUGE and a lot of people have been pounding it for a year (at least 30 people that I heard of. Many nice coins and rings have come out of there, including Seated coins. Oh well. So I asked if I could park in his yard and go down to the pond and he said - anytime. Now because it has been dry for over a year, except with a small river flowing down the middle, lots of vegetation has sprung up and makes it impossible to hunt. It's very boggy in about 90% of the pond now. The side I am on is not the popular side that has been used for a couple of centuries, but I figured I would start there and maybe return some other time. Also being cold, some of the desirable area froze solid. I brought the Equinox and the GPX 5000 for this hunt, and decided on the GPX even though I would be in areas with a lot of iron ( I assumed). I was amazed that the iron rejected extremely well and most of the iron I dug was out of curiosity. This was a 4 hour hunt and I had to dumb the GPX down sensitivity wise in order to not go nuts. Targets were everywhere. This was going to be a low conductor hunt because of all the iron, as my primary goal was finding gold! I knew there would be a lot of lead, but I did not take into account the sheer number of small pieces of aluminum that I would encounter. I worked non stop and got a lesson on trashy pond hunting. I'm glad I did it and glad that I found a little bit of gold, silver and even a very crumbling Indian cent. Man o man, do humans pollute!!!! 🤬 I will be back if the weather doesn't freeze over everything soon. I'm glad I had a chance to detect it after all. 🙂