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I woke up today with a whole list of things to do but detecting was at the bottom. Chicken and turkey feed were on the top. Then followed by veggie plants for the garden. After collecting all the said items, I was finished early and of course feeling the need to take a trip out to a local park. Running slow and in low recovery I was aiming to snipe some silver from this hard hit park. A lot of pocket change later, I was feeling that silver was just not going to happen this time out. A few more concentrated swings and I got another quarter tone. This one sounded a little different and was. Out pops a 1953 Washington, Ha Ha I beat the dreadful feeling of not finding anything good!!! A few more swings and got another quarter like tone, but it sounded a little hollow. At about four inches down and a finger scrape I saw the edge of a silver ring. At the time I wasn't sure if the ring had dancing Alien's, Monkey's or Bears (my vision sucks anymore). Turns out it was some kind of Grateful Dead inspired ring. I'll take 925 all day long. Another 100 swings and I was done and going home. Man I love Detecting, It's odd how a hobby like this can make you feel so great in an instant.

and i detected the mud from the bottom of the ditch, I found alot of 50,s ACL soda bottles and toys. and modern cladd, but no silver came up from the depths

Yeah, underwhelming I know, but I just pulled a 1955-D wheat penny out of the ground from my kids' school today during a quick 30 minute detecting window. Should be an entry-level bucket list item, I know -- I've already ticked off sliver, buffalo nickel, and jewely (no gold) so far -- but the wheaties have eluded me until today. Fun part is it was found on the section of the "old" playground (school builit in 1959) that I tried to hunt last summer as a newbie, and couldn't figure out how to sort out the signals or dig into the shallow gravel bed at the time. Pulled the wheatie and a '65 (so close to silver) Roosevelt tonight, so there's a definite indication I'm leveling up here. I used a Legend for the wheatie. but I can also say I pulled a big fat stainless ring last Thursday running the Nox 800 w/a 6" coil on a new location (local park where one of the kids had soccer practice that evening). Hopefully the next level is gold!

I was in Galveston over the weekend. Hunted a beach behind the house I was staying at. I used my CTX 3030 and the Nox 600.

Yesterday I decided to take my Legend to the beach for a morning low tide hunt. I had not had the opportunity to do this due to work and pet issues for a good month so my Legend had changed a bit. Specifically I was now running the new software V 1.11 and also had replaced the upper shaft, arm cuff and coil with the upgrades now available from Nokta Makro. After hunting for a good three hours (more on that in a bit) and heading back to the car, something struck me. The Legend, in its new configuration, is a radically different metal detector than the version that was released back in December 2021/January 2022. I field tested that metal detector for Western and Eastern Treasures Magazine for their October 2022 issue. The Legend at that time was an excellent metal detector. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that Nokta Makro could easily have locked the early version of The Legend and then later this year come out with a new, updated version. I thought back to so many manufacturers over the years who would take a model of detector, sell it a year or two, then make a few changes to it and add on "+," "II," the word "pro," etc. But Nokta Makro chose not do to do this which is, I think, remarkable. The Legend is faster, has more options, and is noticeably lighter than it was a year ago. Forgive my soapboxing here, I'm not an advocate for any manufacturer, I just use what works for me. But I thought this aspect of The Legend has been overlooked and deserved to be mentioned. The Legend is not a year old detector. If you have one and update it you have essentially a brand new model Legend. Further, if you are contemplating a Legend, do not assume it is a year old design. It is not. Now to the beach hunt. The new carbon fiber shaft, lighter arm cuff and LG30 coil make The Legend noticeably lighter and the balance is fine as always. I met up with a buddy who was using a new model detector with a harness and I asked him to check out the weight of my Legend. He did and was genuinely astonished, commenting that it didn't even weigh a pound. Yeah, I know it weighs more that that but you get the idea. That's the weight part of the new Legend. As to hunting at the beach, I was able to hunt the wet sand at full sensitivity (30) with only minor chirping. And I did not have to use the beach stability to calm the detector down. Like in my field test last year, The Legend provided excellent depth on coins and low conductors. However there was one noticeable change. Another buddy had found a very small junk chain with a different brand detector and asked me to try to read it with my Legend. At the time I was running the sensitivity at 28 and when I swept the coil over the chain I got only a small chirp. Frankly, I would have walked right over it. I decided to bump the sensitivity up to 30 and try again. To my surprise, the chain hit hard, even when I raised the coil a couple of inches. From that point on I ran The Legend at 30. For those of you who are beach hunting with The Legend, I would recommend trying to run at 30 if you can. I did not expect this much of a performance increase going from 28 to 30 and it may impact your ability to find fine chains. For the day I had a pouch full of clad, a light suntan and a smile on face. The Legend and I will be back out there again soon.

Gerry That was a fun trip... even snowed a little if I remember right. Lisa was very happy with that chevron nugget. We have not been to Rye patch for a long time. I remember looking at your trailer and thought this might just fit a side by side in it so I found one just like yours lol. We still have it and it makes trips to the Sierras now mostly. Thanks for bringing back some great memories. strick

Well I thought I’d shake off the dust from myself and prospecting gear this last weekend. I wanted to keep it simple and easy for the first trip of the year and headed to Rye Patch. I met the whole Gang from Idaho, good group of Men. Ground conditions was OK and will improve each dry day. I found it hard to get my coil over something gold in color, yet enjoyed the chase and the abundance of Horny Toads enjoying the Sun as I was. My second day, I called it a hunt at mid afternoon and loaded up making sure my one little nugget found a safe place in my truck for the 2 hour drive home back to Reno. Until the next hunt! LuckyLundy

My esteemed pal Keith Southern is a virtuoso of metal detector audio. Not only is he a highly accomplished and respected detectorist and hunter, but he deeply understands and appreciates the audio languages that they speak. I once was so inspired by his insight that I began to link it up with some very limited knowledge of information theory, dim remnants of the "Observe, Orient, Decide, Act" air combat theory as defined by John Boyd which us dumbass USAF Pilot Trainees struggled to grasp, and a couple of glasses of wine and came up with this... The purpose of a metal detectors user interface is two-fold. The first purpose is to allow user control of operating parameters. These include all the well known things like sensitivity, ground balance, discrimination, audio characteristics and visual display characteristics. The second purpose is to inform the user of what the detector is extracting from the target signal. The extremely faint electric currents induced in the target are processed in the detector and presented to the user by audio or visual means. This target feedback information - through the operator’s ears and eyes has one purpose - to cause a “Change of State” of the operator. There is no observation unless there is a change in state of the observer. The energy to change that state comes from the phenomenon being observed. The energy supplied by the phenomenon to change the state of the observer is no longer part of the phenomenon that was being observed. Keith reported that he had good results in specific circumstances with this detector due to its rich audio feedback. The energy given off by in ground targets was analyzed by the detector and presented as a complex audio signal through the headphones. The result was a “change of state” of the operator - Keith. This caused him to either dig or not dig various targets. He was pleased with the results based on his decades of experience hunting similar targets under similar circumstances. There is nothing to suggest that the largely analog single frequency circuitry resulted in inferior performance to more “advanced” machines utilizing digital signal processing instead of analog hardware signal processing. The absence of any visual user information doesn’t really have any relevance as long as the audio information is “conclusive” - that it caused the correct “change of state” of the operator. In the case of a metal detector it would mean desired targets dug, undesirable targets ID as unlikely to be worth digging. To better understand where Keith is coming from in his love of a complex audio interface have a look at his post from December 2016 titled “The Future of detector design will be Sonically aimed” [www.dankowskidetectors.com] Rick Kempf

Simon I have this coil sitting in my shop in plastic bag for a couple weeks now and I promise I will get some x rays of it and the little Coiltek this week... strick

I am busy archiving lots of his posts other places, no website is forever... here is a concrete example of what I am talking about...Keith at his finest... "What's funny on analog audio only machine especially the Tejon once you get hours on them and know them like the back of you hand at least to the operator in control of it .A coin of high conductance has a different ring to it vs a nickle ..they both sound tight and round but you know its higher the way the signal snaps.The edges f the signal the rise and fall of the target is very telling on conductance of a target on a single tone unit.Nickles hit's later and stops shorter in the instance of peak hit like a rise and and fall but round Vs a coin that hits sooner and ends later with a sharp rise and fall though round and tight too. Low conductors like to start off sort of laggy before the sharp peak where as high conductors like to snap to peak almost instantly..You may not know it or even sense it at first it takes awhile and alot of holes dug to paint a picture that one day your 6th sense takes over when your swinging and you can start to sense TIMING of hits that are round.I'm talking nano seconds delay but after awhile you get a feel for it.If you try to notice it you may never in a learning environ. but after awhile even years of analog no Visual ID on same unit use day in day out your doing it and dont know your doing it.Even foil etc can become wavy and weird sounding..NON ROUND.Subtle waves in report. Analog audio has tiny minute audio traces that a digital machine can not convey.Digital is getting better but there's still a place for audio aficionado hunting". A concert of information vs a number...lovely!

I live too far inland to do any beach hunting but I will say I agree with you whole heartedly about Nokta and the way they have upgraded the Legend. I really like using the Legend inland and here in SW Mo. it does very well finding treasures in the different scenarios that we deal with. I'm looking forward to getting the new middle shaft. I've already got the lg30 coil and going to add the lg24 when it becomes more readily available here. Also looking forward to the new pin pointer. Nokta is putting out some quality products at very affordable prices. Thank You Nokta!!😁👍👍

Back when I only used a VLF detector for gold nugget/follow black sand prospecting (I just didn't even consider coin/jewerly relic detecting...duh!), I used a Tesoro Lobo, then a bit later a Lobo Super Traq, then finally my first detector with a display-Garrett AT Gold. The Garrett AT Gold was also the first VLF detector I owned that had any kind of frequency shift. At the time, that feature was advertised as being added to help with multiple detector cross-talk. I also had a Minelab GP 3000 pulse induction detector for many years since I thought analog was just better...........it had an AutoTune feature that was specifically used for EMI mitigation even back in 2003. Other detectors may have had features like that before then. I just don't have any experience with them. So, addressing EMI has been going on for a long time in detector land for those of us that use pulse induction detectors. Completely eliminating the presence of EMI in the return signal. I don't know if that is possible or even synonymous with high gain-highly sensitive detectors. Has recent/current detector EMI mitigation engineering had trouble keeping up with the huge proliferation of human produced EMI? Absolutely. Most detector manufacturers are making VLF and Pulse Induction detectors that are more versatile in terms of the wide range of target size and conductivity that they will detect along with the wider range of soil/beach conditions that they can handle easily. Some of that wider range of soil and beach handling is done automatically in the background by adjusting sensitivity levels like with the Equinox Beach 2 and with the GPX 6000. Then there are all of the soil timings, etc on some Minelab PIs. There are other detectors that can do that too probably that I don't know about. The GPX 6000's Auto and Auto+ automatic modes do regulate sensitivity without any input from the user. Reading through the GPX 6000 manual however and from my experience, the only tools for EMI mitigation are frequent use of the Noise Cancel button, lowering sensitivity and switching to its DD coil which automatically puts the GPX 6000 in Cancel mode with atmospheric interference versus salinity interference being the recommended nuclear option. I rarely use the GPX 6000's Auto mode unless I am relic hunting in an area with lots of mineralization and EMI and I am just after multi gram sized objects. Using Auto is definitely a form of target size discrimination. If Auto and GeoSense by themselves were specifically designed to reduce EMI, I can't find any mention of that in the GPX 6000 manual or literature. The fact that Auto/GeoSense adjusts sensitivity to ground conditions is well documented. Turning off the Threshold tone can also reduce overall signal strength from any type of signal including EMI. For me anyway, getting the GPX 6000 speaker mod done and using a smaller third party mono coil for shallower gold targets/shallow bedrock areas has made a big difference in EMI mitigation so I can stick with using the GPX 6000 manual operation instead of having to use its Auto modes and/or its lone, huge DD coil. For extremely versatile simultaneous multi frequency VLFs that have gold prospecting capabilities, I want the hottest detector I can get. The hottest inherently means the most sensitivity to really small targets which automatically means EMI. These detectors already use DD coils for many reasons including ground handling benefits. They have frequency shifts- 13 (Legend), 19 (Equinox) and 49 (Deus 2 but its really only seven per main frequency/mode) (don't know about the Manticore) depending on the detector model being used and the mode being used in order to try and find a less EMI effected frequency range. Most of them have smaller coil selections for reducing "antenna" surface area which can help with EMI. They also have the ability to lower recovery speed settings which can help with EMI too and can somewhat offset lowering sensitivity. In some instances where I was dealing with electric fence or underground wireless sprinkler system EMI, using single digit notching has really helped so I didn't have to either switch to a single frequency or notch out all ferrous and most low and mid conductor non ferrous targets. Sometimes just switching to a much higher frequency weighted mode really helps too. So, dogodog, Jasong and Digalicious: I don't have any answers. I just use these detectors and try to find ways to get around EMI. I am sorry if some of my responses seem like I am ignoring you, don't want to talk about EMI or just don't care. EMI definitely is an issue. On the other hand, I am not getting any younger and I am going to detect every day that I am physically able weather permitting whether there is EMI or not. I have "it" really bad and probably need some therapy.

I understand. I am trying. Still putting in time and learning more but not there yet. It's becoming one with the machine. I can achieve this state when I'm running an excavator. Haven't reached it with a detector yet. Something to aspire to.

Used to see these in the mags back when I was starting out, and the modular nature of them always intrigued me. Still a lot to like about this design. All controls right at your fingers. Gold colour control box - self explanatory 😉 Love the shape of the coil, reminds me of the 9x6" concentric coil that was available for the old XT1700 and Gold Striker. Texture of the control panel decal and colour scheme is like the GP3500. Black and gold always works so well together. This belongs in a detector museum!

We all have our preferences about what kind of ground we like. I explained that I steer clear of patches that have been dug time and again over the decades. I agree that there is still gold. Have at it. That's not the gold I'm after. Now you mention the fringes; if by fringes you mean "a few canyons over", then again, I'm with you. I'm not the sort to start sweeping were I notice the last unfilled hole in a patch. To me, that's still a heavily worked site full of shot. If there's nice gold still to be found, that's great for people who don't mind high trash ratios in well travelled ground. I'm not betting on finding the one auriferous draw left that hasn't been dry washed. I like to imagine the thirsty OTs dragging their equipment and arses miles from water and roads. There is plenty of coarse gold that was too hard to get to be worth it in that time. So OTs would scratch about, get a little easy gold, and move on if there wasn't enough to survive on. They would have got more if they had the tools and tech I have, but they didn't. Finding that abandoned gold 5 miles from the nearest donkey trail is rewarding to me. And yeah, if there was rich gold there, there would be a road leading right to it, obviously. When someone says "I don't like heavily worked areas, even if they have good gold, I prefer to roam extremely tough places far from roads even if it means I have to work harder for less gold", you probably shouldn't immediately blurt out "hey, do your own work, there's no free lunch, stop trying to freely exchange general ideas with likeminded people on a very specific forum that exists for that purpose!" According to my original post, someone might answer something like: "California side of the Sylvania Mountains. There's no active claims, but it has produced small amounts of native gold and won't be full of trash because it never warranted heavy traffic. There's not much for access or water, but that's what you asked for right?". To me, it seems a reasonable question and rational reply. Maybe I'm missing something.

Rutus Altrex has a screen that shows you what freq has the most EMI interference.

Proofs right there, we did need another Single frequency detector, at least it has multiple frequency choices, a pure single frequency detector it's more debatable if we need that. Great work on the gold rings, must have paid for itself by now with it's good value for money pricing.

...second gold ring!

Damn Doggo, you never cease to impress. Glad you're posting finds, and silver is always a winner. Heckuva ring! And over $4 is a nice bonus. It all adds up. Hard to say about old George, he was a pretty mellow but strong character 🤔 Congrats on some great finds in such a short time! 👍

Keep digging and learning. In the mean time, the more targets you dig, the more you improve your odds of finding gold...and silver. Good luck! HH jim tn

Now that's a ring ! Your assessment on luck of the draw is very accurate when it comes down to it. Only advice I can give to up the odds are hunt where the more affluent play. You would think wearing expensive jewelry comes with commonsense and intelligence , but that's not always the case.

The one with the inoperative LED is sold. Here is the perfect one - $425 shipped Pics of the "in between" one later today, that one will be $325 shipped.

Some Photos from Vic and WA Aus. Whites 6000D and Aus Whites GoldMaster from early 1980s on the beach after Gold jewellery. Panning South of Ballarat. Note proper Steel Gold Pans. 😁 VIC. Claim I took out after finding 26+ oz in one day. The brother-in-law on claim. WA. Where I found my largest bit, 3500 gm with nearly 17 ounces of gold. General Area of above. Same area but wide view of general spot. A photo that was used on another forum that has now gone the way of many others. Four hundred small bits about 0.3 to 0.4 gm each.

Found two of these today, and one at another site a while back. Every one has the back shaft bent over in a hook shape. These are both stamped C G Hussey & Co PGH PA. I know this company made copper goods including copper rivets. I am guessing they are a copper rivet? If so, anyone know how they were used? Thanks!

While I have been down south of the border scooping a different kind of gold, I was reading some of the reports of all the records of Snow coming down. Some of the videos and pictures is just amazing and seeing how folks cope with and live through it. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/03/15/california-snowfall-record/11435377002/ Then, I got to thinking about when all that snow melts and those creeks in gold bearing areas will be at levels most have never seen. Then to go a step further, some of the rivers should just be roaring with life and movement. Heck I already heard a few washings in AZ that typically don't see much movement, were actually exposing some new layers and a few nuggets were being recovered. I know for a fact what a good gully washer can do in desert regions, as I witnessed such event at Rye Patch, NV one early Spring (April 2015) while I was getting ready for a 3 Day Field Training for customers. When driving in, I noticed the roads below were really torn up and a couple washes with deep cuts and ruts. When I got south of the burn barrel, there was one section of exposed bedrock. I figured there had to be a few pickers in there and as soon as folks started swinging, sure enough. Pics are of a lucky lady and her 1st score with a GB-2. After she swung over it, she looked down and there it was stuck in a crack, finally exposed after thousands of years. Later in the class she was able to score another chunkier nugget with some nice character. Do you think the record snows and rains will be a big benefit to for gold hunters or just a few? How many of you folks do sluicing, crevicing and other gold recovery methods? I would expect later this season to be fantastic for most who are traditional Prospectors of gold. I really don't know as my only means of gold recover has been with a detector. Yes I'll try to get some pics of a few Au rings I recovered down south...just trying to get caught up with customers 1st.

I live in a costal town on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I do Wet sand, wade, surf and snorkel. How often?...Depends, detecting in winter is not the same as in summer. The last ring, last night. I have three gold pieces since 3/27 with X-Terra Pro...😁

% years ago my grandfather and I found some flour gold near the St. Joseph river , so if your creek runs to that river you may find some gold there. We were panning and then ran the sluice, because there was no big nuggets around. Good luck and good hunting.

The 12x7 Xceed is a phenomenal coil. More stable than the stock 11 but equally sensitive, at least as judged from my first test runs. Air tests should generally be interpreted with caution. The ground processing algorithms will not work well with air tests and can lead to false interpretations when coils are being compared. Btw, kind of odd treshold sound. GC

Thanks for posting, Geologyhound, Againstmywill, and dodog. I found a bunch of those near an old demolished railroad station and couldn't figure out what the heck they were. They sure sound sweet in the ground and masquerade as IHPs until you pop them out. 🙄

I don't beach hunt but for maybe twice a year. My first beach adventure yielded pocket change and tent stakes, The second was better with a platinum and diamond ring, A tackle box full of sinkers and tent stakes. Many misc. jewelry pieces later I have come to realize you find good stuff where you swing and sometimes not. In reality its the luck of the draw and no advise will point you to some random person doing something stupid to loose a very expensive piece of jewelry.

That's the Million Dollar question. Iron nails, straight, broken, bent, or otherwise are the relic hunter's curse. Shallow nails can be somewhat mitigated by the Silencer or by using Relic mode with a higher IAR setting. Also, this thread has a video from the Gary which gives tips on hunting in iron:

Mainstream media giving coverage to panning in California. How many detectors and panning equipment will be sold because of this story? 😀 EASY Gold! https://dnyuz.com/2023/04/22/eureka-after-californias-heavy-rains-gold-seekers-are-giddy/

Ger, please pass along my regards to Keith and Spud, if you kindly will. I wish I was with you guys.

These pics are a couple replies to a post I made back in 2020. Credit goes to dogodog for his wisdom.

Welcome aboard Mike ! Always room for another . Make yourself at home . Concerned family calling you back home huh ? Ask for a concerned volunteer to go prospecting with ya ! 😜

I ran through my photo library and remembered this day! This Chinese Camp was just above the creek they pounded. This day I only found one nugget, some coins and a Silver Chain. I know nothing about the age of the chain. Over the years the little creek and bench gave up a handful of ounces they left for us and hundreds of coins. I’m sure to this day there is more to find!

I applaud the effort Ridge Runner, but at the same time, I think you just took first place for "Most Over Engineered Product" 🙂 Wouldn't it have been much less work, much cheaper, and much simpler, to epoxy or screw on some extenders at each end of the stand?

New members now have limited access until they reach Full Member status. There is no ability to include links or to edit their own posts until they have made 10 posts and been a member more than 30 days. There is no access to posting classifieds until after 10 posts and 30 days. They can post in response to an ad however. There is a limit of one Personal Message conversation per day so they can contact people with ads in the Classifieds in private if desired. Any account that has not posted at all in the 30 day period will be deleted. Anyone with more than one but less than 10 posts will simply remain in the regular Member account status indefinitely. The accounts that make at least ten valid posts and have been a member at least 30 days will automatically be promoted to the new Full Member status. This will give access to the Classifieds, remove the PM limit, allow links and post editing, preset "signatures" and more. This does not affect any existing accounts!! Any current members with less than 10 posts etc need not worry as all accounts as of this morning were promoted to Full Member status. Anyone with no posts however should at least post once or lose your account after 30 days have passed. This was done to stop the excessive spammer activity after consulting the current membership over the last month. It should pretty much put a complete halt to that sort of thing, while also encouraging new members to be more active. Lurkers are welcome, but will need to post at least once. Thank you everyone for the valuable feedback on this subject. I will monitor the new setup but if anyone experiences anything odd due to the new setup, please let me know. I changed quite a few forum settings and hopefully got it all right.

There's a lot of metal detecting advice on the internet, but it's not always correct. Reader/viewer beware... I heard that 'advice' about discriminating by pumping and tried it out on a known good target, but I did that *before* I trusted it. Never again after that.

BJ the 7 areas are the states, note I included Tasmania 😁

I did not really need another one, but I had to save it. I received it yesterday. Seller stated that it had never been used. It is probably the cleanest specimen I had ever seen. The seller was an estate/second hand type business. The downside was the on/off pot was broken. He probably didn't test it. I stole the pot from my classic SL 1. Small solder job later I was in business. I gotta stop collecting old machines lol.

Welcome to DP Mike, I do recall you working with Bill Southern, again welcome on board

All the posts I’ve seen about people successfully finding nuggets in the US these days mentioned digging in areas with trash and pellets. Steve also mentioned recently that presence of trash and pellets was a good way to know an area hasn’t been thoroughly detected. It doesn’t come easy, and that’s been something I started learning as well.

Yep.... All comes back to research & then doing the hard yards out in the field. D4G

Yeah I was just commenting in this thread because lately it's only recently that I've seen anyone but myself beat the drum for EMI/noise reduction in the forefront of newer detector tech developments on new machines and being something to really discuss. It's something I've been saying and asking for for over a decade though. And I'm passionate about it because after a tally, I'm around $25k spent on metal detectors at this point, and probably about to be $35k after the new 8000 (or whatever) comes out, so I'm getting impatient. 😄 So I wanted to add to the discussion here too because usually when I've mentioned similar things in the past it's mostly ignored or a few lukewarm responses at best, but now people seem to be paying attention. Maybe a manufacturer is too, who knows. That said, I am going to buy a Manticore or 900 or something, maybe just an 800, here soon for gold prospecting and to detect old abandoned cabins and investment property yards. So I hope I can get a bit more up to date on them by this summer too.

All seven areas have gold. Just keep clear of my patch. 😁

Ridgerunner, I appreciate it but I'm not a dealer. I just love the hobby and enjoy learning more about the people behind the machines. I like to spread the information about all detectors...but I'm trying to focus on a couple of "the little guys" in Nexus and Tarsacci. I may also have something coming from one of "the big guys (or gals)" in a month or two...Nokta.

Global warming aye......??? D4G

Wife and I have been prospecting and nugget hunting in this area since the 1980's. We've been fortunate finding wire and leaf gold specimens.

Yea after a break the gold fever just comes back stronger! 🤣