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I shirked my fatherly responsibilities today with the help of my wife and I managed a day hunt in Southern California. It is a 3 hour one way drive but today I was pleasantly rewarded. I was using my 7000 with 15/10 Xcoil. The larger nugget was down about 7 inches or so. One of the smaller nuggets was very near the surface under a little bush.

We'll, actually, it was in a park on the ballfield. I went on the other side of the fence from where I found the silver dime last weekend. The 15" had no issues among the trash, even running at 4 recovery and 23 sensitivity in Park 1. The dimes were about 7-8" down about 15 ft. away from each other in moist soil. This is only my 3rd Mercury dime I've ever found; the rest have been at the same park on different fields. Florida is "cold" today at 50° with strong wind. Not many people out and about.

2021 was a horrible year for me. In July my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer. she passed away in October. I threw myself into detecting again After barely detecting after Memorial Day, to keep myself sane. My focus was on New Years. New Year...New me crap...lol. 1/1 dawned rainy and warm. Rain stopped pretty early, and I immediately headed put to a local trashy park. 55 degrees and foggy. 20 feet from my truck I get a solid conductive signal out of the iron. First hole of the year, flip the plug and see the silver rim. Really! First hole of the year. Doesn't matter that its a '64 Rosie. Hopefully thats a sign of things to come detecting in '22. Unfortunately, few days later I tested positive for the 'Rona, and contracted pneumonia, so the rest of January has been a wash. Can't wait to get back out in the woods as soon as some of this white stuff disappears. Bezeled the Rosie and its hanging on the mirror of my truck as a good luck charm

Something pleasant to look at on these chilly days of January. 42 Gold rings ..3 misc Golds..268 grams total.. 188 Silvers..mostly coins, Class rings pushed the weight this year and I did find one small gold chain but only because it had a pendent on it....Excalibur found most of the treasures but the AQ came on strong the last month. Missed hunting 6 months ....Blessed to be alive !! ........Hoping to see the water more in 2022. Come on Spring.. Good Luck to everyone and Be safe.. Couple golds missing / family.

Haven't been posting much, been very busy on a few home projects. A few weeks ago I was browsing Amazon and others for Aptx-LL headphones and came upon these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B085DKHY5K Falwedi Active Noise Cancelling Headphones. They are over ear, and only $39.95, but broke as I am waiting for Social Security, I was thrilled to get them for $29.95 that day. 🤣 Whenever I find something like this, I always search the reviews and questions for "broke" or "broken", I was shocked to find only 4 of over 1700 mentions. Not bad! I also search for "Equinox", not trusting the "bathroom lawyers". There was one mention among all the other reviews confidently stating they were not Aptx-LL. So, I took a chance. They arrived in this snazzy case with cords and stuff. Here are the details: Excellent padding on the earmuffs and headband, if you get uncomfortable with these consider a head transplant. 😀 They seal solidly over the ears for folks that want the world shut out, and you can turn on noise cancelling independently, which reduces the level a bit. When I write that these are loud, I mean it - LOUD. You may have to turn the Equinox output volume down if you have these full blast. YMMV. They have metal backing for the plastic adjusters. I think the Achilles' heel is the swivel joint, some electrical tape wrapped around that always prevents breakage for me. You can use them at any level you want, the USB C fast charging input charges them up for 40 (!) hours of use. No distortion, and low tones are bassy. All in all these headphones are going to be my new favorite for cold weather hunting, they pair faster and more reliably than any other headphones I have. Turn them on first, wait for the "pairing" prompt, then turn the Equinox on. Bam. Zoom the pic to see the B+.

The Deus II arrived this morning so I’ll give you a run down of the first testing day.. To be honest my first impression when I took the Deus II out of the box wasn’t good.. It looks like a kid’s toy.. I’m glad XP didn’t paint them red or yellow, I’d send it straight back.. Once I got over the shock of how light and toyish it feels I realised what a heavy beast the Equinox is, especially with a 13x15’’ or 15’’ coil.. The pistol grip is a winner, plus the Deus II is nicely balanced but that can’t be too hard if there’s hardly any weight to balance.. One initial thing that’s got me a bit spooked is the stand-by light on the coil.. It was already flashing when I opened the box and hasn’t turned off yet! Is this normal? I’d have thought it would turn off after a certain time to save the battery.. If this is not normal, how can I turn the bloody thing off? It keeps on blinking once every 4 seconds even when the control box (or Remote Control in XP speak) is turned off.. I’ve not tried smashing it against the wall yet, but I’m getting close.. Anyway, I worked out how to run it on program 11 Beach and headed down to (you guessed it) the beach.. I was keen to see how it compared to the Equinox so I whacked on an 11” coil for the occasion.. Whilst on the job, the first thing that struck me about the Deus II was that the display on the Remote Control is bullshit.. Far too much information for the beach (or anywhere else).. The target ID only flashes up when the detector has spotted something (it doesn't stay on the target display), the rest of the time it shows you a whole load of stuff which is not important.. I know it’s a different story for prospecting but do you really need to know that the coil is still attached? I do like the ferrous/non-ferrous indicators on the sides of the display, they seem to be pretty accurate.. I tend to listen to what the detector is telling me before checking the screen to confirm what I’m hearing.. With the Equinox the target ID is there for the world to see but with the Deus II the small numbers get lost amongst all the bullshit.. Even then, as soon as you’re not over the target anymore it jumps straight back to telling you what program you’re in (which you already know because you’ve just set it).. I’m also not too sure about the little white numbers on a black background, if XP had filled the whole screen with them it would’ve worked better.. I’m sure it’s a matter of getting used to it and blah, blah, blah but this stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth.. I realise it’s only cosmetic and what really matters is under the hood, but I’d have thought this was pretty basic stuff to get right.. Anyway, back to the beach.. I did the usual scenario of burying different things (coins, gold rings and other small jewellery) at different depths in dry and wet sand.. My first impression is that the Deus II is NOT better than the Equinox on the beach.. it’s not worse but it certainly isn’t any better.. I could find every target no matter how small or deep with both the Equinox and the Deus II.. This was both a relief and disappointment.. Relief that my Foxy Noxy hadn’t been knocked off its perch and disappointment that the huge amount of cash I paid for the Deus II didn’t buy me a whole lot of difference.. I knew this would be likely (and in my defence I did buy it as a scuba detector) but I did live in hope.. I know it’s early days yet.. I’m still running the Deus with the speakers on the Remote Control and haven’t tried the headphones yet (they’re still in the box).. Also I’m not used to the tones and am still mucking around trying to get them right.. Are the tone settings universal like the Equinox or do you have to set them each time you turn it on? I’m trying to get out of the 3 tone setting the Deus uses in program 11 to get it to 5 tones.. Does it remember your settings? I’m still figuring stuff out by pushing buttons, guess I’ll have to read the manual.. But even if I get this all sorted, I don’t think that on my beaches the Deus II will outshine the Equinox.. Underwater is a different story.. I’ll be taking it for a dive tomorrow (I was going to take it today but old matey took so long to fill my tank, only just got it back).. So I’ll keep you posted on how my new Nox-Lite performs in the drink..

**** WARNING****....This will probably be long and boring As a child, my family camped at Hammonassett State Park for 6 weeks every summer. There was a guy that camped near us that was always out MD'ing. I always tagged along and was hooked. This was probably 1977ish. That Christmas my parents bought me Sears-Whites hip mount detector. Straight TR. no discriminator, but I had a blast on the beach with it. Every evening my Dad and I would bicycle, or drive, to the beach, depending on where I was hunting. I found some stuff, but never the kind of things the guy that camped near us found. He was always showing me rings and such. I copied his techniques and talked to him all the time. One night I was scrubbing a portion of the beach, ( What the guy that camped near us called it. Dragging a foot to see where you've been , more or less gridding). A guy I had never seen before came up and started detecting over my scrubbed portion. At dark he walked up and showed me everything I missed, and thanked me for picking up all the junk for him! What a tool. My Dad was livid. Next morning....My Dad says come on...we're going for a ride...He wouldn't tell me where....Well...it was one of my first of many trips to Will & Jeans Metal Detectors in Killingworth, CT. I was in awe..It was just a room in their house, but they had all the Whites detectors I had been reading about in the magazines. I'm looking around, and my Dad is talking to Will, and I hear him say, I want the best machine you've got. Turned out to be the Whites 6000D. I was shocked at the price, and even more shocked when Dad bought it for me. I was 12 at the time. After a couple hours with Will learning how to use it, and playing in his test garden, We headed to the camp. Of course as soon as the car stopped I was swinging the machine. Within 10 minutes I had a good deep signal. Dad was digging for me. It seemed like it was 2 feet down, but I'm sure it wasn't more then 6 or 8 inches, and out popped a 1951 Franklin Half. I was out of my mind. That evening we headed to the beach and find my first gold. A mans wedding band with 5 or 6 diamonds in it. I was hooked for life at that point! These are finds I will never ever part with! The next week We went back to Will and Jeans and bought a second 6000D. Dad and I hunted together for many years. I hunted on and off into my early 20s, and then life got busy, and I went 25 years without detecting. Tho, I did think about it on and off, when I would see a place that looked promising. In 2015 My Mom passed away. Cleaning out her apartment, I found the 2 6000D's and a box with some of my old finds. I wish I knew what happened to the rest....There was so much more! A friend who detected stopped by my work, and handed me his Etrac. Big learning curve from that 6000D , but after aouple weeks learning the machine, I felt like a 12 year old again! Here are some pics of some of my finds from back in the day. If you got this far, thanks for reading this!

One thing for sure there is a Market for a Good DEEP... submersible Pi that goes beep. I kind of seen all coming with the AQ ..one reason I got a second unit. And I believe there were a few others who seen the same thing and took the chance. Kind of reminds me of all the other rare PI's out there, one being the Barracuda.

MAY 10 1936 At breakfast I told John that I wanted to go up and dig again and see if the kettle would widen out some. I had put a dent in its gravels yesterday. So John caught a little sleep while I drove up there. I eagerly got to work shoveling gravel into buckets abd seeing if the rich pay would widen out. It seemed contained to this small area so I shoveled what was in there. After I took 10 buckets down to John to start his day I went back up and kept digging. I eventually took a break. I grabbed the rifle and took a seat on a log near the hole when I thought I heard something moving up in the woods on the mountain. I heard what sounded like a branch break and someone or something falling through the limbs of a tree. Then there was the sharp crack of a rifle shot. Rifle in hand I dove into the hole which was a good eight feet deep. I looked around but couldn't see anything. Then there was another shot and the bullet had struck one of my buckets that was near the hole. I was pinned down. John had to hear the shots and would come running. Camp was less than hald a mile away and sound travelled here. Eventually I heard John holler to me was I ok? I hollered back yes and told him what was going on. He had war experience. He told me to stay put and he'd try to scout the area. I waited for a good twenty minutes or so and John came back from the north hiking down the ravine. He said he couldn't find anyone but maybe we both better get back to camp. I didn't want to leave the buckets of pay so we both loaded them on the truck. There were 15 of them. Then we went back down to camp and got a surprise. Our camp had been robbed. They stole our gear and food but left the tom and grizzly alone. Our tents were ok as well. Lucky our gold was well hidden and not touched. We figured whoever these hooligans were they must have planned this out. Create a diversion at the dig site while the rest of them robbed our campand carried off what they could. John was madder than i'd ever seen him. He told me he would kill them if he found them, I calmed him down and said we still had our gold and more buckets to wash and we could go to town and get supplies to replace what they stole. So I took the truck to town while John washed gravels and kept a lookout on camp as best he could. I got back after a couple of hours and there was no further trouble. I helped John finish up the heavies and we weighed up the gold. What we saw in the pan made us almost forget about the robbers for a minute or two. We got 43 ounces out of the 25 buckets. I did some figuring and it was a better percentage per bucket than yesterday. John asked me if I thought this would keep going. I told him the kettle was nearly played out but maybe one more good day. We both stayed in camp that night and took turns on watch. I drank some Irish whiskey to ease my mind. TO BE CONTINUED .....................

Hello and thank you for accepting me. My name is John, I hunt mostly in Connecticut. I am mostly a colonial relic/coin hunter the past year or so. Before that I was a silver shooter, and I still do from time to time. Looking forward to meeting others here.

Great to find this forum and site! I'm Jim retired US military living in tropical Japan in the Ryukyuan island chain. Love to do all sorts of detecting especially beach hunting, and I like to hop on a flight to try other countries. Mostly use the CTX and the XP Deus for the adventures. Looking forward to sharing in these forums.

I’ll guess 890 ounces. Great reading GhostMiner. You are right, at times the remote places in Northern California can be down right dangerous from man or beast. Thanks for the adventure, Mike

MAY 11 1936 By now we have over $5000 in gold. John and I decided not to involve the law out here as we feel that might lead to worse trouble if information gets leaked in town. We both decided to handle any problems ourselves. I went up to the dig this morning and John held watch at camp while waiting for gravels. I dug a good part of the day while also hauling down buckets for John. The kettle is played out. I was able to get 52 buckets. These gravels were taken at or near the bottom and I was hopeful for a big day. I was right to be hopeful. The weigh was heavy once again. We got a haul of 72 ounces. We now have nearly $8000 in gold between us. For me this is nearly four years wages. I looked at John and told him we had a chance to get rich, we just need to find another pot hole in the old channel. John asked me if I thought I could find another one. I told him it was in the hands of God but I would try. I told John we had done what few miners had ever done, we had worked a glory hole. We just need to keep digging along the fault north where the old hydraulic boys stopped. The work will get much heavier now as we need to dig much more gravel to get to pay. We will soon be coming to summer months and creeks will slow. That is another thing we will face. I think we have another six or seven weeks before our water supply for washing gravels becomes an issue. After that we will need to rocker box the gravels which will be very slow compared to the tom in a fast creek or we need to get a pump. I'm going up to the dig on first watch with a bottle of my Irish tonight while John gets some rest. TO BE CONTINUED .....................

An explanation on the nature of boulder clay, and glacial gold action People have asked me what boulder clay is. Well, the only explanation I have comes from local knowledge shared with me by the placer miners in the northlands. When the glaciers were running many miles deep, and countless miles wide during the ice age, they dragged unsized rock and soil with them. They packed along serious boulders mixed within stubborn clay. While parked and melting, or when melting and retreating, they dumped this nasty mess all over the lower areas, as well as the mountains and valleys. To understand this, it’s necessary to remember those huge glaciers were miles thick, covering many mountains completely. With such titanic forces moving these glaciers, and when they dropped their loads, they often left forty feet and more of this boulder clay which smothered the existing stream beds. This protected any golden stream deposits for untold eons. Over countless thousands of years, successive glaciers and post-glacial streams chewed away at the boulder clay in the canyons, erosion working its way down to those hidden deposits. When they cut into that former river-run (freshly exposed), they started re-concentrating the gold in those existing streams. Sometimes, the early prospectors got lucky enough to find a bedrock outcrop that was the rim protecting an ancient channel from glacial gouging along a river, and then they’d tunnel in, drifting along the bedrock to mine out the deposit under the huge deposits of adjacent boulder clay bordering the streams. So, boulder clay (sometimes called armour clay), is a solid deposit of boulders and heavy clay that overlies old stream deposits and ancient channels. It is the bane of modern miners, as it has to be stripped away to get at the channels underneath, and it often requires ripper teeth on the back of huge bulldozers to break it up sufficiently so it can be bladed out of the way. Clearly, it takes a lot of time and money to strip it off. But, once that overburden is stripped away, and if the Oldtimer's haven't beaten the modern miners to the deposits underneath, it is sometimes a glorious bonanza to behold! The nuggets in the sidewalls of the channel are easily seen (a foot or two off the bedrock). I’ll never forget that incredible sight twice seen: multi-gram nuggets spaced eight to ten inches apart, making it easy to finger-flip the nuggets out of the channel material into a pan. Too bad those nuggets weren't mine to keep! All the best, Lanny

When I bought my class ring in 1979, I couldn’t afford gold so I bought one in stainless steel. The salesman pushed really hard to get me to “invest” in gold. He pointed out that if I ever was in financial trouble, I could pawn it. ”Wow!” I said. “If I’m going to be that broke, maybe I shouldn’t be buying a ring at all.” That shut him up.

Klunker, check out boat shops--maybe your nuggets could sell quicker as anchors. All the best, Lanny

Hi all coming from Essex UK. I'm most likely to be found on the beach/mud with the longest pier in the world. atb Neil

Hi all thank you for adding me, i am a Deus 2 user for the record i am not a tester I've used various machines over many years for the last 11 years mainly the Deus 1.

Thank you! It was by far the hardest thing I have ever dealt with. Has changed who I am, and made me realize what's important!

Thank you Sir!

Thank you Sir, and God Bless you also!

Joe; I was swinging the Equinox 800 with the stock coil that day. I have been detecting since the late 70's, with a 20 year plus hiatus. And, thank you....I can really use a Royal Flush right about now!

I like what Garrett did with their Z-Lynk system. It's incorporated into their higher end detectors but they've made it universal. "Our headphones. We can handle that. Your headphones. We can handle that....") I use their transmitter and receiver set (in concunction with my headphones) with all my detectors except the ML Equinox (where I use the proprietary WM08 receiver). To recap, this started with Joe musing whether the submersible wired XP bone phones would fit the Nox... I replied not likely because they use a multi-pin connector (I don't have a set of XP bone phones yet in my possession so I am relying on info in the XP Deus II User Manual). Then the subsequent comment "Something that you think XP would have thought" putting this on XP as lacking forethought to make the phones more universally compatible, presumably by using a more universally compatible connector (like the Nox's threaded 1/8" mini phone plug). Chuck chimed in with a tangent regarding Garrett's universal wireless Z-Lynk system. Well, there is a really good, but complex story behind why the specialized XP bone phone connector is used, and it is not because XP wasn't thinking about universal compatibility 🤔 or was trying to make detectorists' lives miserable . Read on if interested... While I am a big fan of using universally compatible standard connectors and wireless standards (e.g., Bluetooth) and agree with Chuck's sentiment on the convenience of the universal Z-Lynk system, which is currently my favorite wireless system, we are talking DIVE-RATED WIRED phones here. Wireless is not applicable (hence my tangent comment) and common to manufacturer past practice regarding submersible connectors, the sad fact is that watertight connectors are likely not going to be universal across brands. Garrett AT series, Nokta waterproof units, Tarsacci MDT 8000, all use different types of submersible multi-pin connectors. Nox uses a standard 1/8" phone plug but a screw in backshell/sleeve, and I seriously doubt this design would be reliable at 20 meters depth. Complicating things further, the connector on the XP remote that the XP bone phones plug into is multi-purpose, similar to the connector on the Nokta waterproof detectors. Besides audio output, the XP multi-purpose connector is also used to provide charging power to the remote and is also a bi-directional data port to enable firmware uploads and perhaps remote control configuration and programming. So regardless of whether XP thought about using universal connectors for bone phone compatibility with other audio sources (e.g., the XP headset pucks, the original Deus remote, or even other detector brands) it was apparent that both the dive-rated watertight design requirement and multipurpose nature of the Deus II connector were constraints that pretty much locked in a "special purpose" bone phone connector design lacking universal compatibility. XP does provide an accessory adapter cable that enables you to plug a wired headset with a standard 1/8" phone plug into the Deus II remote. But that still does not enable the Bone Phones to be plugged into anything other than the XP Deus II remote. See below: My apologies, Joe, if your comment was simply addressing XP providing a pinout on the special connector. All this being said, I think XP should really consider making a simple adapter that accepts the special bone phone multi-pin connector and converts the output to a 1/8" mini phone plug (sort of the inverse to the adapter above). This would enable non-submerged use of the bone phones with the detacheable XP headphone pucks and the puck headphone clip-on jack adapter plate (below) ...as well as providing compatibility with the original Deus and other detectors that accommodate 1/8" headphone plugs. HTH

The Minelab site says: ”I found a very large 61.5 oz gold nugget in the mountains of Arizona. Brandon– South & Central America” Argentina Third Largest Gold Producer in South America https://rruff-2.geo.arizona.edu/uploads/CM42_169.pdf

Hi calabash digger I just wanted to say thank you for all the videos on the deus 2 I think it will be a great detector but for right now it's out my price range so for now I'm to have to use my equinox but when I can get the money I'm going to buy one

Very nice finds at such a depth to be in great condition. I was talking to a friend in Canada over Zoom and he was outside in just a sweatshirt and shorts. He was saying how nice today was at 20 below, so please tell us again how cold it is there. I am in ILLINOIS and it never got over 30 degrees today, and I thought it was fairly nice out. Just kidding with you, but remember that it is always colder somewhere else where we can't get out to dig in the dirt. Good luck on your next hunt and stay warm.

Re: depth. Exactly….at least in my opinion. All the reports on detectors I ever published ignored raw depth since so many factors affect depth that are outside the detector’s influence. I focused on sensitivity at depth instead and still prefer sensitivity and separation in my detectors.

Nice double silver day! Do you create editorial page cartoons??

A fellow that prepaid for his a week after I did (same dealer) was told by them his should be among 2nd shipment, so if he’s in second batch, I should surely be. Problem is I get a bit obsessed with checking for hints and clues regarding shipments- and I bet I’m not alone.

Oh where oh where has my Deus II gone, oh where oh where can it be…?

XP indicated “ several weeks” after first small batch when I inquired last weeks. Mid March is what I now expect. Late Feb seems too optimistic if it’s to be a hefty one.

Thank you Lanny. Should be able to get this done on Monday, and i'll let the readers know what i learned. Everything feels right, but the color isn't what one is used to. Crossing my fingers. Had a nice ore crusher made at the local iron works shop for just this occasion, so would be nice to pay it off! Pulled about 4g of material from a piece about 1/15th of the full sample. Panned out the fines after picking the 'nuggets'. Will feel silly if this ends up being something all together different.....but you gotta have hope! Did find a few little pyrite crystals that powered up when crushed in with pliers....the the bulk of this material is soft and malleable (not lead soft) and looks nothing like pyrite.

I don't think it is a rust thing. Bobby pins and hair clips that spring back in shape are difficult at times. I think it has more to do with the alloy than rust. They act similar to the crab trap and fence pieces that have a continuous conductive loop ... but the hair pins, if swept from the right direction, give a very distinct double beep.

It's been almost a year since I had a chance to get out and detect. Last year a forum member (incidentally one of the most gold getting-est people I've ever met and also a great detector operator) gave me a rare opportunity to check out some historically productive Arizona land. This trip I've been exploring more thoroughly and enjoying some quiet and solitude in a place that gets few visitors these days, and finding some gold while I'm at it. It's a bit of a trip in, a side by side is the only way I can get my dog there as it's too far for him to walk. This thing is a real steel pack mule, and I'm amazed at how smooth of a ride these Fox shocks give over rough terrain and rocks. Love this thing and it fits in the back of my truck like an ATV. I got the idea from reading one of Condor's posts about his RZR and thought - hmm that is the way to go for the desert. I'm not usually one for try to find patterns in rocks, old Spanish carvings, etc but this one caught my eye enough to make me think.."ehhhhh, maybe?". Sometimes you just really gotta write "4" in stone I guess. Or maybe it's natural, who knows. Speaking of patterns, sometimes when you set out with an idea to start looking for ancient exhumed paleo river channels on mountain tops, you start seeing them everywhere. And like Spanish carvings, sometimes you gotta wonder it's really what you are seeing or not. In this case, I think it is though and this is a water worn remnant boulder from an old stream or river channel. Testing soils and gravels with my XRF shows a number of potential "fingerprint" elements in common, and I believe that among a few other elements, the original source rock of the gravels was anomalous in cobalt. I've also noted anomalous cobalt readings in many quartz veins in the area and as distant as 10 miles away, so I believe it may be likely the gravels (and probably gold) also came from ancestral mountains in the immediate area and of similar age to the existing rocks, and not distant or now eroded away sources of different composition than what still exists here currently. The nuggets also have all the hallmarks of once being in such a paleo channel in my opinion. Striations showing movement, well rounded surfaces. Whatever the mechanism, they have clearly moved a lot. This one was an inverted low-high signal on the 6000 and came in at 3.8 grams. This gold is quite dense and sluggy. My XRF shows almost all Au and Fe so significant Au enrichment at surface has occured and silver is entirely depleted, also common with nuggets which find their ways into watercourses and travel some distances. In this case I think that distance is probably less than 5 miles though. The ground here is what some people would consider hot for the US. Or at least "medium" on the Taco Bell sauce packet scale. It's definitely very impregnated with iron oxides. However, I seem to have no troubles keeping the 6000 running hot and in Normal here with the 11" mono. However, I've just been running in the auto settings and letting GeoSense do it's thing, so I need to try the manual modes a bit more. I am definitely noticing that either the hotter soil, or GeoSense, or both are causing a bit of a depth reduction for what I'd expect of targets of similar size in milder soil. I got another low-high here, this one ended up being 2.something grams. These two are the only ones I took pictures of, I hadn't planned on posting anything at first so I wasn't really concentrating on documentation, but instead paying attention to exploring and observing the area for patterns and oddities. This is - I think - a javelina lower jawbone. You can see the gnarly canines and whatever that tooth up front is called. They've always steered clear of me in the past, but I sometimes wonder if I might piss one off by accident and get a tooth to the calf. I don't think I've ever heard of it happening though. Anyways, 24 nuggets for the 7 days ranging from 0.046 grams to 3.8 grams. Another went missing when I pulled them out of the ultrasonic cleaner and it stuck to my finger via surface tension and fell who knows where, it was the smallest and I think it was almost sub 0.04 grams. Aside from the EMI issues, I'm loving the 6000. It's my go-to machine and the one I am going to take everywhere with me when I don't need outright depth. For depth, I still keep my 7000 with the larger X Coils and honestly nothing can compete with that setup still when looking for deep lunkers or working small areas/patches. But I love the 6000 so far, the weight and deployment speed, Geosense, the no-threshold mode built in, it's just close to the perfect exploration/prospecting machine in my eyes. When I'm exploring I don't want to think about maximizing this or that setting, I want to pay attention to environment and make enough finds to know where I need to bring the big gun (7000) in later. I hope Coiltek, NF, or X Coils makes a little shooter coil. Something like 6x9 sounds about right. Assuming that tiny coil wouldn't make the 6000 too overly hypersensitive to soils. Though I can work around it, the EMI thing really is a let down though. It's even worse here in Arizona then when I used it in Nevada last year. Great exploration machine! Just one glaring flaw though, kinda like getting a badass Vette brand new from the factory with a rod knock. It's like, yeah ok I guess I can kinda ignore it but it'd be so much better working properly. And, it really seems like something that the manufacturer should address.

Suction Eddy Gold, Part II My brain at last connected that directly above me was the bedrock hump, and here was steeply rising bedrock trending in the same direction. Talk about a cross-wired brain (and one snapped shut, remember?)! In hindsight, the eddy exposed a shelf that must have connected to the hump. Of course, there were tons and tons of overburden between me, the rest of that rising bedrock, and the hump. Anyway, my brain at last tuned in, and I scraped the exposed bedrock and sluiced the remaining material. (I had an aluminum river sluice in my vehicle up on the cat-trail. Freighting it down to the river, I had a near-death experience from the header I took while taking what I thought was a short-cut; however, I made it to the river in one piece.) I started sluicing. The first shovel of dirt produced an instant nugget. It was around two grams, and L-shaped. It didn't even get into the first riffle. It just hit and sat in the header, sparking golden in the summer sunlight. I sluiced the remaining dirt and recovered chunky gold throughout. It was getting dark, and I didn’t want to leave, but I’ve no love for mountain lions or grizzlies. So, I headed back to the safe, comfortable log cabin I called home in that northern land. (On a side note, I need to mention it had been raining for three days straight prior to my first find on the river. This helps explain upcoming details.) When I floundered my way downslope through the much safer face-slapping route the next morning, I saw the river had dropped about four inches. Seeing a fresh, soft bedrock edge exposed by the lower waterline, I was suddenly stunned. There, winking in the morning sun, was a nugget! (A little sunbather taking advantage of the new beach so to speak.) My mind, now wide-open to prospecting lore, started calculating what had likely happened at the site. I reflected that there was consistent gold right up to the boulder clay on the bank where the suction eddy had torn into it. Moreover, that gold was being drug down into the pool. So, I scraped with my shovel out into the pool as far as I could I could, but the bedrock dropped off quite sharply into that eight-feet of water. As well, for any that have scraped off river run, while fighting hydraulic pressure, it's tough-sledding indeed. In spite of the challenge, the coarse gold that came up from the submerged river-run was spectacular! By the time I'd retrieved all the material I could, I had a quarter-ounce of nice rounded coarse gold, and several nice sassy nuggets to boot. So, what’s the analysis of that suction eddy gold deposit? Well, those early square nail finds were everywhere because the suction eddy had plucked them from flood-level waters, and the bedrock held them fast. Cleary, the gold was yanked from the flood water along with the nails as well. But, the haunting reality to me now is that a whack of those “square nail signals” were feisty nuggets! This leaves me with the uncomfortable reality that what the heck did I throw into that eight-foot-deep pool as I cleared the overburden? What the heck indeed. . . . All the best, Lanny in AB [Author's note: I heard the next year that some dredgers went into that pool. One of the mine-workers had seen my truck parked on the trail, had walked down to the river to investigate after I'd left, had seen the suction eddy as well as my diggings, and he sent his buddies the next year to dredge the spot. Well, they had a field day in that hole and took out ounces of coarse gold! As I reflect now, It's clear to me that the suction eddy had cut into an old channel that trended up the river bank to that old drift mine. (Likely how the Oldtimers had found the higher deposit of gold in the 1800’s.) This gold tale is just one of my missed opportunities that still haunt me.]

The CZX was not an updated CZ, it was a completely new design. It was specifically designed for prospecting and that's where it failed. I tried to get people to shift the project to coin/relic/beach but was unsuccessful. FTP does contract manufacturing at the Juarez facility but metal detectors are still the primary business.

From his comment I'd say Luis wasn't involved in the test, he only posted it. I think this was a recent outing by Alexandre to evaluate some design changes. I have no info on whether the AQ will get back to production; my vote is 'no' unless the pod is redesigned. The AQ is a really good design (circuit-wise) and should be able to beat the new MF designs in depth. I agree that the iron masking works well with isolated targets but in heavy iron it struggles. I hunted around fire pits on an Oregon beach and the cheeps and chirps that get through the audio make it a real chore to use. In fairness, many VLFs tend to do the same. It's a shame this was pitched as "discrimination" or "iron ID" or "tone ID" etc etc. I wish we had seriously undersold this feature and let people figure out its value. It is useful in some situations.

Are the pull tabs old style or the modern ones? Are they deep? Are you finding nickels, sinkers and other heavy objects with them? If all you are finding is light weight objects, then yes you are in the wrong place..... unless you find gold, then you are in the right place 😄 Don't be afraid of wandering around until you hit some targets that you like.

Here is the link for Canadians. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09KNM86N5 they are regularly $70 on for $50 plus a $10 coupon =$40 UPDATE : THESE ARE NOT THE SAME. I used the info from .com but actually took me to something similar on .ca - NOT THE SAME. Sorry.

Nice outing Mitchell !!!! Do It Again !!!!!

Update: As of today,Amazon still has a $10 off coupon (check the box) and crazy delivery today for Prime. Thanks for reporting on these, I had purchased a pair of the PAAW Wavesound 3 noise cancelling headphones and they have worked great for 3 years but had developed a habit of getting stuck in pair mode until I drained the battery. So I was looking for a replacement. They also had a weak point of have 5 buttons on the flad end of the ear cup exposed to salt air and sometimes rain. I found a short audio cord on Amazon, ran it to the WM08 module velcroed to the headphones. Hated fighting a long cord. I used the WM08 because the PAAW phones were getting finicky in pairing to the NOX. Anyway these are on my list next to buy and at a great price. Can’t go without active noise canceling to block the sound of crashing waves and let me focus on the tones; just my 2 zincolns. Best regards.

Thanks Lanny. Good luck to you as well.

Thanks. Yep, a lot of people out east are talking feet instead of inches 😲. My area is probably going to get 8-12" at most. I'm hoping for a beach hunt on Monday if possible, but it may not happen. Cold is the norm up here lately it seems 🙄 But it limits how many walkers on the beach I have to answer "did you find anything?" to.

Suction Eddy Gold, Part I I prospected a river quite a while back. It was far to the north, down in a steep canyon lined with lots of alders, pine, and fir. Rugged slopes led down to the stream, and I was trying to find a spot where I could detect or pan for some of the nice coarse gold the area was known for. I took a wrong step and got smacked in the face by an alder while trying to get down to what was clearly an active suction eddy during Spring Flood. The eddy was straight down the mountain slope from where an old placer tunnel went in, about a hundred feet up slope. The mine (called a “drift” mine by the locals) went into the mountain on a bedrock hump, about seventy feet above the river. The Oldtimers had seen the hump and drifted toward it along the up-sloping bedrock that rose from the river, hitting the hump then driving underneath about fifty feet of boulder clay (almost exclusively clay, yet sprinkled with boulders and lesser rock dumped from the long gone Ice Age glaciers). [The mine entrance is still there, but the tunnel is caved in.] Some modern miners had come in with big equipment and made a road around that bedrock point on the hill, cutting into the bedrock as they widened the road, while slicing across the drift mine entrance. Now, what a dummy I was--I didn't detect that scraped off bedrock hump where the drift mine had gone in! Instead, I went over to the entrance, and hauled several heavy buckets of material down to the river to pan. What a miserable time I had getting those buckets down to the river, skidding down that 30 to 40-degree slope covered in broken bedrock and loose cobbles. Fun? Not as much fun as a double root canal, but just about. Still, I was way over the legal-limit for fun. Every bucket held gold, but only flakes. And, as I was chasing coarse gold, after lugging three five-gallon buckets of clay goo from the mine entrance to the river, I'd had enough fun. But, since the eddy I’d picked to prospect was exactly below that bedrock hump, I dropped into the spot, a truck-box sized hole high water had cut into the river bank. It was littered with bread-loaf sized cobbles. I was in my own little enclave down there, and I couldn't be seen from the equipment-trail above, nor could I be seen from up or down the river on my side of the stream. I had packed down my old VLF detector and a shovel with me. I fired up the detector and scanned the cobbled section. I immediately got a loud signal. I chucked a load of bread-loaf cobbles into the river and scanned again. The target was still there. Moving the underlying loose stuff, I exposed a nice square nail. What the . . .? That wasn't what I wanted, but square nails were everywhere on that bank! Well, being the dimwit that I was, I never made the connection this was a good sign (heavies dropping out during flood stage). So, I scanned more bank, got more signals, then gave up detecting because I KNEW every signal was a square nail. (Dumb yes, but I was quite a rookie back then.) I cleared the rest of the loose stuff from under the cobbles and chucked the stream-run back into a hole (eight-foot deep) in the river. That hole lay downstream from a series of bedrock drops, it being the only calm water in a long stretch. This clue should also have lit up my gold-getting brain, but my rookie mind was a steel trap, and once shut, no helpful gold logic was getting in. What I found after clearing the overburden was friable rock standing over a layer of soft decomposing bedrock. So, I scraped the shingle-like pieces off and panned it all out. Immediately I had coarse gold in my pan! What the . . .? My rookie brain began to make connections. All along that eight-foot section of bedrock, there was fantastic, coarse and sassy gold! Sitting down, I looked at that river eddy excavation. The bedrock, where the eddy had dumped the heavies, rose up into the bank. At that moment, my brain finally made another connection. (Part II to follow) All the best, Lanny

Thank you Gerry. I think you have at least given me high confidence I have something good here. Your darker examples are almost dead ringers for mine before i put them through the acid bath. This wasn't an ore dump...though i can't say it wasn't brought here from nearby hard rock mining, or wasn't part of some fill brought in from other nearby mines. You and I haven't met, but we share some common acquaintances, and I'm quite certain we've both put boots on some of the same ground. Could easily be that your samples and mine come from the same area. Think I'll head over to our local coin dealer this next week and have them give me a spectrum analysis. I have some other items to have them look at, so gives me an excuse to ask for a test. I'd take you up on your offer, but we've got about 300+ miles between us right now! Your response is much appreciated!

I really appreciate the comments. Some thoughts and comments are better when they come from another source. Interesting how closely my experiences and thoughts parallel many of yours. I did leave my questions generic and vanilla as I didn't want to appear to be steering the conversation in any particular direction. Rich -

Maybe FE2 is the second attempt to get FE right! Should have made FE with 20 segments of adjustments all equal....

I'm sorry, and I mean no disrespect to Luis, who obviously put some time into this test, but really? The reality is that the AQ doesn't exist. Let me say that again: the AQ does not exist. You can't pre-order it. You can't buy it. There is zero information available as to the status of this "wonder machine." However, you can buy a Deus II or Equinox right now. And either two of those detectors will find stuff for you right now. This continual "cone of silence" from First Texas regarding the AQ has reduced my interest in this supposed detector to zero. I really see no point in any further videos or discussion with regard to the AQ until First Texas decides to either make the thing or table it for good. Bill (S. CA)

Testing I've learned a lot. The AQ can pick up a 1 gram gold ring directly under the big golf ball size chunk of Iron shown in the picture below, then up to about 8-9 inches under all pictured. After that it fades to the point it would be something you would not stop for..Interesting gold wedding bands from 2 grams to 4 seem to show the best results,,,at 5 grams, then 6 grams does not hit as hard...but depth does improve... And this is air testing.. I do have video but unfortunately I can not share for it shows the machine... I do have video I can share of a crab pot wire, 1 to 2 inch piece above the hole that I dropped a 6 gram gold ring in.. conditions can be so different at every spot it's just a matter of hitting all at the right time, surroundings and settings..(this video is the Limited model) I've got 35 gold with the AQ's so far. 4 ..if I remember correct were found in the mute mode, and after playing around with the AQ, I think tones maybe the best mode if using the disc side. Testing looks very impressive with the AQ but once you get it out in the wild, you really have to be in the right spot for all to work as it tested, which is rare and It is the reason I say.... buy it as a PI...