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Recovering from a record breaking Winter of Snow, now we are suffering from near daily Rains. My Theory is there is so much moisture in the Sierra’s coupled with warm Spring days turns it into afternoon Thunder Storms. Anyway a person addicted to our hobby has to get out and search for their fix. This story is about my 3rd trip and just like the first two trips knowing that the ground was subpar for detecting…but, it’s the hunt and hunt we must! Met my Pard Lucky Larry out of Elko, NV we quickly hoped into my RZR and hit the trail. Notice I didn’t say Dusty Trail. We hit several old haunts with limited results at each. We ended up hunting some new ground, I dropped Larry off on one side of the hill and I drove over it to hunt the other side. Hour later, I went back to my RZR to pick up Larry and my trusty machine would not start! During the over a mile hike back to my truck, I figured it was my Fuel Pump…of course no Shade Trees out in the high Desert to confirm my diagnosis. Lucky I have a winch on my RZR as we would have never got her loaded up, didn’t bother trying to crank it before loading as I knew I’d need every bit of my battery to load it. It rained on and off as we drove back to camp and continued thru the night. Next morning we drove to a nearby patch and pulled a few more dinks before I loaded up and left with rain drops just starting to fall. Back home with my newly Amazon delivered fuel pump, I hoped in the bed of my truck where I left my RZR. Let’s see if the battery recharged itself, the sucker cranks up! I unload it and take it for a ride in the back 40. Cranked every time I turned it off too! Still no shade trees, but in my garage I thought maybe it was Vapor Locked? I read up on it and it’s not uncommon…so if you see my little Red RZR way out in no-man’s land laying in a puddle of oil, know I shed a tear! It’s Memorial Day and according to Weather report 3 more days of afternoon thunder storms. Rye Patch area will need a few dry days to get the ground settled down to hear them dinks, but there is always some shallow ducks to get your coil over until better conditions arrive! Here’s our loot for the day and a half trip…yes, my poke is on the left. Both Larry and I used the 10x5 Coiltek on our 6000’s…great coil. Until the next hunt! LuckyLundy

The great debate of DISCRIMINATION, Iron ID and Target #'s when detecting for Gold. The war of words is about to begin. So lets try to stay on point and be courteous of others ways/ideas or skill levels for those who are newer to the game. This is an open end post and all who respond, reply, ask questions, disagree and or partially agree is 100% totally fine and discussion desired. So many times I’ve heard from the Experts who detect for gold, they say “Dig It All” and to never used Discrimination. So I guess there really is no debate? Just do what the Experts do and live with the results. Is that such like good advice from so called Experts. So if this is the case, then why do the detector manufactures offer it (discrimination or ID) on their machines? VLF Gold type detectors have had Iron Identification on some models since the 1980’s and I also know earlier General Purpose detectors offered DISC as far back to the early 70s. I imagine those of you who have been around for longer than I could even know of detectors with such capabilities go back before the dates I mentioned? Heck, even Minelab Pulse Induction detectors in the 1990’s provided Iron DISC feature. So are all those manufactures and variety of detector models, just selling us bells and whistles? Remember what so called Expert says, “dig it all”. The manufactures have to know something? Maybe there are times and or locations that Discrimination and or Iron ID is indeed a needed feature? Maybe the models with such are for dummies who know nothing as they have never spoken with an Expert? Could said Expert who does this for a living be wrong? Well most certainly not in his mind anyway. I’m going to give you my reasons why I end using detectors with the Iron ID or Discrimination features and I’ll even go into detail of using both the traditional VLF’s and the more robust Pulse Induction power detectors. I’m not an Expert and I do not do this for a living (well I do not hunt gold for a living), but I do sell detectors as my full time job. So since I’m not an Official Full Time Prospecting Expert, does that mean the knowledge I have of various detectors not count? That is to be debated down the road. I will say this though and those who know me for many years know I can back up my words with the amount of gold and the sizes of gold I have recovered. 1st off, when you are out there detecting, I want you to do what you are most comfortable with and what has provided you success on previous trips. I’m not here to make you change your ways. In fact, those of you who are just as happy with your results and not using DISC., I totally understand you are not about to change your ways. That’s totally fine with me…I’m happy for you. It’s the rest of the folks who are newer to the game of Electronic Prospecting for gold and or even those who are experienced hunters that have decent success…but you are wise enough to realize at times ..just maybe there is a better way at doing it? This article is for those folks. The average guy who goes detecting a few times at the same locations with a little jingle in the pouch. Your success at those sites tell, you’re doing it correctly so you’re quite pleased, happy and not willing to change your ways of thinking or doing things. I’m fine and happy for you. But, sorry that is not me. I’m all about Adventure and Travel with detectors in hand. I enjoy new detector technologies and trying to find ways to make them perform better for the task. I like gold and the varieties of gold I pursue is quite varied when compared to many other folks who chase it. I don’t know if it’s because of my knowledge and skill level of gold detecting or just that others are stuck in a pattern and don’t know any difference? My travels in pursuit of gold have guided me to more states than most (NV, OR, ID, MT, SD, WY, AZ, AK) 8 to be exact and 2 different countries (Australia and Mexico). I’m not counting gold jewelry and coins/artifacts (my list would be much larger), just natural Au gold in it’s raw form. All the states and countries I mentioned, I have had success with my metal detectors. In fact, I have yet to hunt a state and not find gold with a detector. CA, CO and UT will eventually get checked off my list. OK, back to the Discrimination/Iron ID discussion and why I want it on my detector tools. Why I feel DISC and Iron ID are of desired features on a metal detector and there are many times when they need to be used. Those features save me time and energy. Both Time and Energy are something I desire more and more each year and seem to get less and less of. A detector with the features of DISC and Iron ID can save me Time and Energy when digging. When I use a detector with such features, I get to SELECT the amount of targets I want to dig. Here is a typical situation I experience many times in my hunts. I hunt gold where gold has been found and I like to detect in such sites. Here are the main sites I prefer to hunt and use DISC and or ID machine. Old hand placer workings, Ore dump piles, and Dredge Trailing Piles. These golden grounds were proven producers at one time and they leave plenty of targets for us. Old hand placer workings (6 pics below of Au digs using PI DD coils with DISC or VLF's with VDI Readout) In OR, NV, ID, MT, and SD. The problem is most of the targets are trash and many of the trash items are man made iron. My DISC and Iron ID capable detectors save me time/energy in these gold rich locations. Using common math to show. How many times will that person dig in an hour? How many hours a day will that person hunt? How many days on that trip will they swing the detector and dig targets? Let’s say a person can dig 10 targets an hour and 6 hrs a day = 60 targets for the day. On average, average site produces 15 non ferrous targets and 45 iron targets. So of the 15 non ferrous targets, lets say 20% are gold (3 pieces of gold) of the 15 nonferrous targets and of the total 60 digs. In Eastern Oregon those numbers are pretty close. Here is where I like the ID. I can save Time and Energy by not having to dig 45 iron targets. I now am digging more non ferrous targets than the average guy so my gold count goes up. Say I saved T&E on those 45 iron targets so I still get the 15 Nonferrous, but the extra T&E allows me to dig 15 to 25 (not 45) more targets that are Nonferrous. I’ll be extremely on the cautionary side and say I only dug 15 more NF targets. That ends up 2X my gold count for the day and also still saved me T&E. Plus as well all know, the extra boost of finding more gold seems to earn me a little more Energy. Ore Dump/Hardrock Piles- (5 pics of success using VLF's & their Identification systems) Many areas I hunt in NV, ID, MT, OR and I’ve seen many in AZ have such hard rock ore dumps. Do you know the preferred detector for this kind of gold? Do you know if you take a target identification VLF and use it at such sites, you can recover more desired nonferrous targets. I select only certain VLF type detectors for these sites. Iron ID is nice and if that is all I have then most certainly, I use it. But I know (from previous testing) that certainly VLF gold capable detectors can go a step farther and provide me with even greater odds of Success at gold and saving me T & E. Dredge Tailing Piles – (8 pics of gold using VLF's & their ID features) Love hunting these locations and my success in Tailing Piles of ID, OR, AK, NV is golden. Some of my largest gold recoveries are from such piles and the funny part is most all of them were recovered with VLF detectors using Iron Discrimination. Why you ask? Because in dredge tailing piles, even a VLF detector can pick up a rail tie spike at 12” down. Even a VLF can hear a rusty prospectors tobacco tin or smashed sardine can at near a foot and a half deep. Even a VLF detector can hear at depths of 2 feet down for a rusty grease bucket or lid to a 55 gallon drum. How about the 55 gal drum itself…well I know for a fact some VLF detectors will respond pushing near 4 feet down. Are you man enough to dig those monster holes in loose rocks and gravel? If you have never attempted it, good luck. The material you are digging keeps caving in as you go down and the next thing you know…after 45 minutes, you have a 4 foot wide and 3 foot deep hole. Only another foot more to go. Oh those days…can kill an old mans ego for the whole trips…I’ve seen it happen. As you can see from the Success pictures, the ability to use Iron ID on Pulse Induction & VLF detectors has proved golden. Now, taking today's newer Identification ID machines a step further saves me much time on pursuing only the best and most probably signals to dig. No, there’s no magic to it, but I’ve learned a lot more than most about different kinds of gold and how it reads on these ID machines. So many of the sites I currently hunt, the bigger solid nuggets are gone and have been for 10+ yrs. But there’s still some of that specimen stuff the older technologies missed. Sites I enjoy detecting are the trash areas most others try for an hour or 2 and then they walk away is discuss. They’re tired of digging holes and finding iron nails, boot tacks and shovel heads. Sure, I dig a few of those shovel heads, but not as many as most others do. I’ve spent the time in the field and learned. I’ve purchased most of the newer technologies and tested/compared each to see how they stand. No one detector does it all, but I know this. I quality PI and a new technology VLF sure does cover most bases. After all, I can tell you with fact, that the last 5 yrs, my gold finds are better than most and the majority were recovered using my techniques in the locations I mentioned. It’s hard to beat what works and puts the gold in the safe. Knowing where and how varying gold finds register on your VLF detector is crucial. Here’s an example of what most folks encounter when in the field at an old gold producing site. Ore dump piles, are full of rail tie spikes and blasting caps. Also seems to be a beacon for lead bullets of a variety, but usually .22 and 9MM slugs. Many of my gold recoveries from these sites, the newest of VLF gold detectors can ID the difference between such targets. Also, the majority of gold specimens in a certain pile, seems to ID the same #’s or very close to it. Yes it does take practice and time to learn, but in the end, you have knowledge to be selective and save time/energy. Hand working placer digs has a bigger variety of trash items and one some of my locations, the gold is thicker, more dense and reads different. I usually use VLF ID’s to help identify and ignore the high conductor targets while concentrating on the lower ones. Most gold (not all) will read in the low to possibly medium range. Even using a Pulse Induction detector with Iron DISC is possible and quite rewarding. Dredge Tailing piles are a lot like hand placer workings, but they provide even a bigger variety of trash. These piles are the hardest to learn and use a PI detector. I prefer a VLF for most of the tailing pile hunts I do, as the machine itself is much lighter and easier to swing on side hills all day. Besides I don’t want to dig 2’ or 3’ deep holes and those occasional 4’ ones will practically kill you. On the rare occasion there is big thicker gold (Ganes Creek, AK). I recommend if you swing a PI, you better have a quality VLF detector handy to help ID as you dig. So many varieties of gold and the areas, terrains and methods they were minded in the US. Australia and other countries of the gold bearing regions are different and those of you from there may not see any use in my techniques and style of hunting or the detectors I use. That’s totally understandable and I have no issues. But if you do have hard rock ore dumps and hand placer workings with trash, it might be worth the time to swing PI and DD coil or a VLF with good target identification. I look forward to hearing from those who use my techniques and I also want to hear from others who might have things to add. What is most important about this post and discussion is the actual discussion and sharing of knowledge. After all, that’s why were on here right? Thanks for your input and reading.

Today was the last day I could get out before a week long relic hunting and possibly water hunting trip. It's been raining since Saturday night on and off, windy and in the 60s so I didn't expect to find much at the beach I went to. I recently updated the D2 to V1.1, did some air tests to create a new beach program. Used Beach Sensitive, disc at 10, no notch, no Silencer, Bottle Caps ended up at 5. High Square Full Tones audio. Gotta say I really thought XP had got the iron falsing under control with my air tests, even aluminum makes a distinct "brassy" sound with this program. However, all that glitters is not gold. 🤣 This beach is rough, at one end there is a motel and the beach is almost all pebbles, you cannot go barefoot or wear sandals if you have old feet. 😀 In the middle it's a mix of sand and pebbles in bands, and the other end it's a mix of sand and red clay. Ground balance varies from 79 to 95 depending on where you are. Got here early hoping at least someone braved the weather and came to the beach, it looks like some did and I was the first to hit it. 3 other people showed up later and complained they weren't finding anything, I sort of had to bite my tongue. 😏 Iron did false until I changed bottle caps a bit, there is quite a bit of junk in the sand. Pushing disc to 10 helped a little, I'm glad they fixed the audio. With disc at 10 most iron will disappear. (Thanks Andy!) Most pull tabs have that brassy sound, I dug a few to prove it. I think one was in the 70s so I dug it anyway. That one fooled me. I was getting coins here and there, they jumped out sharply with very close IDs. Managed to get at least one of every US denomination, and a nice 1945 wheat. That was a great sign. On the pebble beach I got a 47 and found this tiny ring, I doubt it's anything good but it was a solid tone and ID. It was just in the surf, and pretty deep. Next one was this bling ring, a hard 85. Looks like it's been there a while. My best ring today was this tungsten carbide and malachite ring that my wife took immediately, it was a 54: About $15-$30 on Amazon. 3 Keys Jewelry. Here's the total take: And the trash: The doll swims if you tighten the innerspring by spinning the arms. 😀 Second small doll I've found there and second pair of tweezers. 😵 It was interesting to see the difference between air testing and real world, never done it before. Think I'll stick with real world.

1st silver of the year, and I have been detecting since the snow was on the ground, its marked 925 LATH , It has a bit of tarnish on it from being in the grass for a wile, its not plated, I was running the Gold -1 program on the ORX and i got a solid 83-82 VDI , well the drought is over , maybe some Gold will come along to . It says on the pendant the words, Faith, Hope ,& love, my setting in Gold 1 where 84 gain, 14 khz, 2,5 speed, 2 IAR,

Chris and I spent a few days poking around a portion of then perimeter of the second largest known US meteorite crater. (Beaverhead Impact Crater) On the way back to camp one afternoon, we saw a sign for Malm Gulch about 9 miles west of Challis, Idaho. Malm is famous among geos' for its ancient petrified Sequoia stumps, which can be as much as 8' in diameter. The elevation is about 5,600', and the temp was about 75, so I knew the snakes might be out. I was alittle worried about Heidi, but we hiked on in the 1 1/2 miles. As I turned into the4 final small dry gulch, there was a knee-high shelf in the wash, and as my eyes rose up there was a small pile of rattlesnakes, At first, I thought it was one really large snake, but as I looked, I realized it was two snakes. I assume they were mating, as there was one male and one female. The female got quickly hostile, and never did calm down. The male never budged, or rattle...maybe post-coital bliss, or fatigue...LOL. Thank God Heidi was not out in front as she usually is, and Chris was able to get her corraled. We decided to beat feet back to the rig. I could get by the snakes, but we were obviously near a den area, and I didn't want to risk Heidi being bitten by a snake we didn't see. You guys be careful out there. The male snake is on the right. Jim

I had some fun hunting a couple of 17th century English home sites, that were located on an earlier Native American site. 2 days hunting, with the first day working with field school students teaching them how to detect and the use of metal detectors for their Archaeology work. I was a bit surprised since all we could find that was relevant were 3 pieces of lead. All the detectors had issues and the GPX had weird spike sounds sporadically killing the threshold. 🤔 I thought it may be the storm that was coming in later in the day. Day 2, the noise remained, so talking with the owner of the property, I asked him where the nearest electric fence is, and his reply was …. right over there! 😡 He was gracious enough to turn off the fence and the GPX worked better than ever. I did not take photos of everything found, but some of the finds included 4 musket balls, 2 scrap pieces of brass, some eyeballed pieces of early pottery, a silver decorative buckle and these 3 items…. cylindrical lead shot (no it’s not a sinker 🙄), an early 1-piece brass button (cat on it?), and a surface find quartz point. (maybe Levana – around 1400 years old. 🥰) I planned on doing a bit of water hunting, but I never got around to it. I may head back there one more time next week to finish off areas I wanted to do. It was fun just getting out. Finding the time lately to do anything other than home and work stuff is almost impossible, so I was grateful to get some time off.

The river I prospect was high today, and my usual spots were under water. So, my buddy and I shifted gears to another place, which is not as ripe as my usual spot, but, gold is gold. He used his La'Trap mini and I used my favorite river sluice, the "Itty-Bitty" sluice. Click on the photos to see today's hunt.

What does Geosense do? Surely it's not just a name for auto sensitivity and auto tracking of the ground and we don't even know if it does actually adjust the sensitivity at all. I've often wondered what it actually does and nobody seems to really know from what I've been able to see, maybe I've just missed an explanation from someone who knows. This is what Minelab's description of it is GeoSense-PI™ technology analyses and responds to ground signals with great clarity and precision, so you can detect in difficult environments once thought undetectable. It rapidly suppresses unwanted signals via three overlapping feedback systems for superfast detection of even the tiniest gold pieces. So it's a form of auto ground balance that sounds like it's in 3 different feedback systems, what are these so called feedback systems? could it be like on the older GPX where there was sensitive extra, fine gold, enhance and the 6000 runs in all three of these timings Minelab selected as optimal all at once for the ground conditions its in? So maybe according to ground conditions it selects the timings most suitable out of the range it has available for the ground automatically and keeps analysing the ground and if in a difficult situation it changes selected timings? I guess it's Minelab's secret sauce for the GPX 6000 and the engineers probably have a giggle at me when I say I'd like a way to disable it sometimes as then it wouldn't be a GPX 6000 at all 😉 It would be nice to know a little more about such a defining feature of the detector. It could explain why there is no fixed ground balance as using the three different timings at once it needs to constantly check in case ground conditions change enough that one of the timings is no longer suitable. It would also explain why Jason's pointed out if you hit enough bad stuff, like a few big steel bolts shallow or something the detector appears to lose sensitivity and take a while to get it back, as it's switched out to a more difficult timing that's not so sensitive. If it was just the big bolt throwing out ground balance the auto tracking by Minelabs own admission maybe too slow to update and a quick trak is recommended, see here from the manual. GPX 6000™ tracks automatically to changing ground conditions during normal use. It is effective for typical detecting in most grounds. There will be times when the automatic ground tracking will not be able to track fast enough, such as when moving to a different type of ground. In these situations, a Quick‑Trak Ground Balance will quickly recalibrate the detector to the new ground. And for those that say the GPX doesn't track out small gold like the Gold Monster does, again Minelab say it does and when recovering small targets its wise to use quick trak to prevent it happening. I'm sure many of us have experienced targets disappearing when trying to find them with the GPX, especially those of us that hunt small gold. Just like the fully automatic GM 1000 it tracks them out, again from the manual. Quick‑Trak ` Ideal for both new and experienced users. ` Tracks successfully to most ground conditions. ` Detector continuously tracks ground during detecting, but Quick‑Trak may still be used to rebalance to changing or variable ground conditions. ` Ground balances more slowly than Quick‑Trak. ` Quick‑Trak is a manually initiated Ground Balance process for faster ground balancing than Auto. ` Use to ground balance to a chosen area of ground, e.g. patches of extreme mineralisation, hot rocks etc. ` Use in between digging and checking for a target, so that the target is not ‘balanced out’ accidentally. All this Geosense stuff is just a wild theory of course but my understanding of what Geosense could possibly be. Models are usually successors of older models so features we saw on older models are often incorporated into new models like the GPX timings, perhaps in a modern world they were able to automate them and auto adjust which timings you're using while allowing multiple timings at once with the software doing the work to pick signals out of each timings results. We went from having 9 timings on the GPX 5000 to no longer having any on the GPX, although you could say that normal and difficult are its only timings. The conductive setting and the EMI setting on the DD coil don't appear to be associated with timings, more functions of the DD coil. It also detects both small and larger gold at once and handles various ground conditions at once eliminating the need for manually selecting timings like we do on the older models.

A Gpx 6000 user spent 3 days prospecting this cut on the Taft claim near Red Chiapas coming away with 16 nuggets. I came along after with my Garrett Axiom and found a nice nugget he missed!

Hope y'all like this video. It was a miserable day of detecting. 🤣

Recently dug these buttons a few weeks ago and thought that I would post them on the 4th of July but Memorial Day works as well.The Deus 1 with the elliptical coil running at 74 KHz in a pitch program was able sniff them out of some serious square nail and other iron pollution and the ungodly amount of weeds.The small half dime sized button is listed in the Warren K.Tice book as a Union Patriotic Button and the larger one is a California state seal/militia type that I am guessing is post civil war era? Tinned Iron Back This One Was A Little Difficult To Get The Details On The Script On The Topside Says Eureka Now I Need To Clean Them Up There Is A Lot Of Gilt So Lemon Juice?

Not the kind you want to find. Nowadays you can find anything and everything at the beach. I’m glad I wear gloves during my hunts. Stay safe and protected out there. HH

Update: Hunt # 2 with V1.1 So rather than start a new thread I decided to just show the results from my short 2nd hunt with V1.1 yesterday. This was about a 2 1/2 hour hunt at an older park that one of my detecting buddies told me had been hammered hard since the 70s and lots of old silver coins came out of there. I was hoping there might still be one hidden there, so I made a quick run before the afternoon rainstorm came in. This very small park is well manicured and clean as a whistle. There was no surface trash and the daily rain has made the grass about 3-4 inches high and the ground is damp. I ran V1.1 in the same config as the first hunt a couple of days ago, Fast, Disc 6.8, Notch 7-30, Full Tones, High Sqr, Sensitivity 95, Reactivity 1.5, Silencer and B.Caps 0, Iron Vol 7, Audio Response 4, FE TID on, Audio Filter 0. There were almost no signals anywhere except for occasional deep iron grunts. I played with lowering my Reactivity to 0 but there just weren't any signals. I figure that place still gets detected pretty often. When I got near a grove of trees I started geting the familiar ring pulls and pull tabs, but I was able to call each one before I dug and also the few bits of canslaw I dug by also checking them with Deus Mono in the XY screen. That was dead on for every bit of trash with squiggly lines and wildly jumping numbers. The only bits that fooled me were the broken off beaver tails which rang up and sounded very much like nickels. However, one signal I thought was another beaver tail ended up being a 6 inch deep 1964 nickel. There was still minimal iron falsing and most was really easy to tell with a 90 degree turn on the signal and also by the iron tone being right with the false. I was also able to trace the end of the iron object with the pinpoint mode and if the high number was at the edge it was obviously iron. The big rusty nail I dug was about 7-8 inches deep, oriented with the head up, and threw an occasional 90-91. It was very iffy but I had to check it out. The iron washer was also deep and just gave an iron tone but sounded round so I dug it partly because there were so few good targets. As I was heading back across the open area to my car I got a solid 80 which I thought might be a bottle cap, but just sounded too good for that and it was a foreign coin of some type. I haven't figured out where it's from yet, so if anyone knows, please let me know. About 10 feet from there, I got pretty solid 76-78. It was just a little too solid sounding to be a ring pull so I popped it up and out comes a .925 silver cross pendant. Woohoo, silver # 11 for the year. I've found 6 pieces of silver since January before the update. I've found 5 pieces of silver since the V1.0 update (3 with V1.0 and 2 with V1.1) so far this month. I only found 15 pieces of silver last year with the D2. That may not mean anything, but then again, it might. 😏

Yesterday I found 15 cents in change, and today I found 3.50$+ in change, No rings this time , but found one good heavy piece of copper wire, happy with the finds.

I never notched out pull tabs...or tried to.... because as we all know they ring up in a similar range as some nice targets. But I thought I'd experiment with 32 random pull tabs from a variety of manufacturers using Deus V1.0 and V1.1 just out of idle curiosity more than anything. Had the new update versions changed how pull tabs were identified? What I confirmed was more or less the obvious...pull tabs, like bottle caps, are not all created equal. In other words, pull tabs in pristine condition rang up in a range from 61-65 in my tests. Now keep in mind these pull tabs I used were relatively new. None were broken or had been in the sand for an extended period of time and the tests I ran were air tests...yes I know...air tests...ugh! In real salty beach life, pull tabs are found in a wide ranging state of deterioration, age and design, as well as an endless array of parts and pieces. As a result, I've found their VDI to ring up anywhere from the 50s to the 70s! Notch out that range at your own risk...regardless of the update version or detector used. Now if you want to focus on recently dropped pull tabs, i.e. new ones, you can try notching out 61-65 which will indeed get rid of SOME new ones. However, a women's 22K ring I brought back from Saudi Arabia after DESERT STORM rang up as a solid 62!!!! So again, enter that door at your own risk. Granted, you'll find tens of thousands of pulls tabs for every 22K ring but what other nice gold items of various metallurgical composition will ring up in that same 61-65 range? In any case, it was an interesting exercise and I enjoy interesting exercises where metal detection and detectors are concerned. Bottom line for you; the results of this personal lark is worth exactly what you just paid for it...🤣

I bet to some it's golden.

But I’ll take it. I was hunting at a Civil War union camp. Located the nail beds of two more camp buildings (found four so far) and one Civil War era residence. The camp buildings were a little further over than I expected based on the old map. I was running a V1.1 modified fast square and had to bump recovery speed to around 2+ due to the nails. The EMI at parts of this site is bad enough such that the best offset and sensitivity in the low 80s still results in warbly signals. Came across a relatively good nickel signal near the side of one of the nail patches. Around 4 to 5 inches down, up pops a dirt covered disc with silver highlights - a 1945 P war nickel! Not the war I was looking for, but I’ll take it! The wrench is also not the desired time period. But I kept getting a consistent localized 70s reading surrounded with iron grunts. I’m still relatively new to the D2. But one thing I’ve learned in the last couple outings - if I’m getting a consistent signal but can’t pinpoint as there is a large metal target underneath or multiple metal targets in the vicinity that pull the pin point off to the side of the “good” signal, then I locate as best as possible based on the signal and then leave it to the MI6 to pick it up as I dig. That has resulted in several coins. This time I got a wrench thrown in my plans. 🤪 I think the residence has been pretty well hunted. The only signals I was pulling from the nails there were 60s and 70s – can slaw, along with new and beavertail pulltabs and flaps. The small motor brass (?) gasket and lead strip were there.

June 13 2002 It was another peaceful night on the claim. The only movement I heard was a black bear who had ventured near camp and circled us a few times until Jacob let loose with the Thompson to scare the critter away. It no doubt smelled the remnants of our supper but was too timid to come all the way into camp. We got to work early and tried to send as many yards through the tom as possible before the heat came on. And come on it did. With a vengeance. By noon it was over 90 degrees and we took a short break for lunch. This time I gave in to my yearnings and had a cold beer as did the rest of the crew including Jacob and man, did it taste good. Jacob had the gold cleanup done and we drank out beers and looked at the pan of gold. All 11 ounces of it. And from only 35 yards of gravel. It was unbelievable but it was real gold. I even asked Jacob if he was tricking us and he just laughed and said to enjoy the view. We got back to shoveling gravel and worked until dark. I didn’t have any sweat left in my body and had drank gallons of water. The entire crew was shot to all heck but we had processed 44 yards of pay gravel. We were all pretty damn proud of ourselves as we sat down to supper. We were becoming a rough and tough crew like the old timers. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

If a person had neither and was serious about nugget detecting, money no object, I'd lean GPX 6000 with aftermarket coils. If they want the detector for additional uses other than nugget detecting and/or budget is an issue, I'd lean Axiom.

SnakeJim - Glad you are using the features some detectors provide and saving your back/legs for another hunt. Yes, I too used to dig it all and then wondered why some machines have those features on them. Just like a new truck has options and features most of us never use, but in the right situation, those bells and whistles actually make the truck that much more enjoyable. Thanks for the input. D&P-OR (Del) - Eastern Oregon (my stomping ground as well) has some really nice gold. Here's a golden grin of the Idaho find before I cleaned it. Below is a pic after cleaning. Your neck of the woods below (Eastern Oregon). The 10 ozt. specimen below, I recovered in ore dump piles with a GM-1000 while training customers. They were running GPX detectors and the amount of iron they were digging was very frustrating for them. I tried explaining the importance of using different gold detectors in situations that can save time and energy. I used one of the students Monsters and recovered this $5000 rock. I didn't keep it though. When you hand over a chunk of gold that size to the claim owners and explain why they make different gold detectors with varying features, it surely makes a believer out of them. Could a GPX detect it? Most certainly, but they had about given up with those machines as most PI's raw depth and power is a double edge sword. It's a hard pill to swallow, when someone with a $5000 gets so frustrated and then a sub $1000 recovered the gold with much less effort. Just another reason why I try to help educate folks on the importance of different technologies and detector methods. As for the piece I recovered with 24K, that's an Idaho find from ore dump piles. The gold in the pic with the bill, is from Oregon and was also Ore Dump piles using Iron ID. Thanks for your enthusiasm. Blackjack - Most certainly different regions/areas require varying tactics. Knowing where/when to use Iron ID/Target ID/Disc is key. At one time (we all) used to dig it all. Some of eventually wonder if there is an easier or more proficient way. Most certainly is in many (not all) situations. Glad you are open to trying features on your detector. Heck, when the Equinox 800 came out, how many people actually used it for gold? Most laughed at me and thought it was all salesman talk. I'd say more on the subject, but my mouth is full at the moment. Thanks for your input as well. Geof_junk - Yes, it's an art in a way and knowing when/how to use it can be very beneficial. I realize many areas are not the same as I hunt here in the USA, but the area you show in the picture with rusty cans and tin, is a good place for different detecting techniques and approaches. Expert hunters as yourself even said you walked away. That's exactly my point. The best of us give up on certain areas and explore the fringes and outer perimeters of that site, in pursuit of less trash. But in all honesty, here in the US, it's time to go back to such sites and use features some of the detectors provided. 1st thing I would do on that site is drag some super magnet bars and try to remove as much as possible. You're experienced enough to know different tricks to get a few more pieces. Now, I agree 100% if small bits in that trash area, then I'm not as desiring to spend a lot of timing cleaning up the trash. Sure, I know some gold may still be there, but I'll chase bigger stuff 1st. Actually, at my stage of gold nugget hunting, I'm not one to get excited on small bits anymore and I don't do it for a living. the last 5 yrs, I spend most of my time focusing on the few bigger chunks. Thanks for adding.

Top insights Gerry to start this this thread, I`ve not used iron reject/discrim at all in my 45 plus years, mainly because there is not any need for such out in the unworked fringes where an occasional horseshoe/nail/bullet/pellet is encountered. Aged legs are dictating those long searches in rugged country via shanks pony are near over so part of this season on day trips I`m amongst the junk in closer to the mines/settlements. I will be following this thread with much interest to pick up any hints from those who work such areas that may help the Manticore or Axiom w/. DD score amongst the junk without losing what`s left of my sanity from our crazy fever. Young fellas get out into the unworked fringes whilst your legs can...... it can only drive you crazy but.... when you score... tis magic no.

To help us give you sound advice it would be good to know your detecting objectives, if known. For example: Do you primarily detect for coins, jewelry, relics, meteorites or natural gold or a combination of these? What typical environments do you detect in: parks, farm fields, woods, tot lots, ball fields, cellar holes, salt beaches, or freshwater lakes and rivers? Soil types: Sandy, rocky, or clay. Mild soil, black sand, or ferrous mineralization? Trash and target density: Lots of aluminum, nails, bottle caps, and/or big iron? To get you started: The Orx is primarily designed for detecting natural gold and has very limited, but usable “coin” settings. It probably lags the Xterra Pro at salt beach performance but both are probably outperformed there by a multifrequency detector like the Legend. The Orx is super lightweight primarily facilitated by it’s all wireless design. But that feature also limits its ability to operate with its coil submerged in water, necessitating use of additional antenna wire claptrap. The xTerra on the other hand is fully submersible, including it’s control box. Finally, the xTerra has more tone customization options than Orx, including the ability to adjust tone breaks. Overall, xTerra Pro is more versatile and affordable than the Orx by virtue of its design and plentiful selection of accessory coils, but the Orx has it beat at micro target sensitivity because of its ability to operate a higher frequencies than the xTerra. The main knock against xTerra that I’ve heard is target ID stability. If the Orx is within your price range, and depending on your detecting objectives, I would give serious consideration to picking up a value-priced Simultaneous Multi-Frequency detector such as the Legend, which has even more capability and performance than either Orx and Xterra Pro. But if you are on a budget, the Xterra a is a capable and versatile value detector. Edit: OK - Looked at your previous posts and I see you already own the Orx and have experience with the Legend and Whites MXT so I probably wasted your time with information you probably already know. Providing a little additional context when you ask such an open ended question would be helpful. In the absence of that, I am going to start at square one.

I returned to a site that had yielded an 1886 US V nickel and an 1876 US Seated silver dime about a month ago when I was using the Equinox 900 with 6" coil. I had Deus 2 with version 1.0 software and 9" coil along with the Nokta Legend with 6" coil. The area I was hunting is full of magnetite, square nails, tin of all sizes, all sorts of other iron and sheet lead trash and some other junk within a clearly marked roughly 20'X20' hand stacked stone foundation that is level with the surrounding ground. I was using Deus 2 version 1.0 with a modified Sensitive #2 program set on Pitch tones/Hi Square audio with sensitivity 90, disc at 6.8, silencer 1, no notch, reactivity 2.5, iron volume 7, audio filter 0, bottle cap 0, audio response 3, threshold 4. I wanted to see if I had missed a lot of non-ferrous targets using the Equinox 900 due to having only one hour to hunt this site with it at the time. This time I had 4 hours to hunt. Let me put it this way. That was an extremely unpleasant 2 hours using Deus 2 version 1.0. I struggled to find any non-ferrous targets. I did manage an 1888 S Seated Liberty dime but that was basically by accident. There were so many nails in the area where the Seated dime was recovered that were fooling me, I would have probably missed it. The nails in the photo represent the ones that were in good shape. These were falsing with good non ferrous tones and IDs from the low 70s to high 80s. I left around 40 other nails/tin shards sitting behind a boulder at the site. I had some lunch and then gave the Nokta Legend a try. This was the first time I had used the Legend in this area. I hunted the exact same area. The 6" coil let me get into spots that Deus 2 with 9" coil could not reach so I was able to hunt more thoroughly. This site has boulders, sage and aspen saplings all over it. This difference in coil size did not result in any major finds but it could have. XP....please give us a land based small elliptical coil!!!!! I was using the Field program M2, Pitch tones, disc on G which rejects most ground noise, ferrous/non ferrous tone break 10, sensitivity 23, recovery speed 5, iron filter 1, iron stability 4, bottle cap 0, ground stability 0 using the 6" coil. To my surprise, falsing was minimal, and distinguishing iron targets versus non ferrous targets was not a problem. So when I found the 1891 Seated dime about 5" away from where I recovered the other Seated dime earlier, I knew exactly what I was about to dig since it had great non-ferrous audio and great ID even though it had plenty of man-made and natural iron surrounding it and it was 4" deep in a clay ball. The other non-ferrous targets on the plate were also no problem to distinguish from all of the iron and tin trash. I did not get fooled by any smaller iron targets using the Legend. Ferro-Check was spot on and so were the target IDs. I got home from the hunt and noticed XP had put out update 1.1 to help with the Silencer. Thank God!!!!

June 12 2002 The night had remained quiet and we got to work shoveling gravel into the tom. When we broke for lunch Jacob had the concentrates all cleaned up and there were 6 ounces of gold in the pan. He grinned and told us to shovel like hell because we were in a sweet spot. If only we had our trommel we could make a real killing I figured. But we went back to work and did the best we could. The heat was relentless. By the end of the day we had processed 35 yards. I figured that to be a very good days work in the heat. We were all worn out. Jacob took a few scoops of the concentrates and told us they were loaded with gold. He said maybe we didn’t need any trommel and had himself a good laugh. The rest of us looked at him and I thought he had gone mad the way he was laughing so hard. Jacob stopped and told us we didn’t seem to understand and that we had hit a jackpot. An area of concentrated gold deposit. Sizeable tonnage. Whatever you want to call it he said. Then he began to laugh some more. He said he’d seen this kind of thing several times on these claims. We might just have ourselves a gold strike. TO BE CONTINUED ...................

The June Minelab Promo is here and yes Gerry’s Detectors has stock ready to ship. Here’s what we're offering for June. Purchase a GPZ-7000 and get a Gold Monster 1000 for free. If you already own a GM-1000, no worries, we'll talk and get you taken care of. Purchase a CTX-3030 and get a 6” coil for free. Purchase a Equinox 800 and get a 15” coil for free. Purchase a Gold Monster 1000 and get a Pro-Find 35 pointer for free. Of course and as a Veteran myself, I am privileged to offer those who serve/served in our US forces a 15% discount. Also, take advantage of the 3 Days Field Training courses we offer to my customers at a discount. 25 years of testing, using, selling Minelabs and still helping customers learn their detectors to find gold. If interested in trading your used detector towards these or any other I offer (I sell all major detector brands). Contact me & we'll discuss it. I've traded with many members here on DP & sold/trained even more. If our discussion and value of your used detector is not 100% happy for both you and I, no worries and we both go our own way. Happy Hunting. Gerry

Recently while detecting around some sizable rocks I got a pretty good hit that sounded like big iron which always gets me worked up at an early site.So anyway I dug this piece out which was jammed pretty well up underneath a large boulder.My imagination runs wild sometimes with these sort of things and my first thoughts were that it was probably the tip of a pike pole or perhaps even an oxen prod since I have found ox shoes nearby.It's six inches long with the first two and a half being hollow with the pin and the rest is solid and it's quite heavy.Anybody out there with any thoughts please feel free to chime in.I'm aware that it's just a piece of iron but I like it and it's a little out of place and like I said the site is very early. Like I said my imagination runs wild.

Which is best? Heck man that's an open end question. Best at value? Best at Ergonomics? Best at Discrimination? Best at coil options? Best at durability and least amount of issues? Best at Relic Hunting? Best at small gold? Best at Big Gold? Best at User Friendly? I own both and have posted much gold found with both in times past. For a 50% more price increase of the GPX-6000 in the USA $6000 vs $4000 for the Axiom, what is best? I don't see the average person needing to spend the extra $2000 and in fact I would recommend that person get a good VLF to complement the PI. As I said, I own both and for now, plan on keeping both. But I use them as tools and can afford both. I'll be in the field soon and hopefully find some gold this year. So far my best piece is a small chunky specimen with the Equinox 900

Found this today. Top pocket find... I think it finds gold, just fine. 14.6 gr. 10k.

I have to say, after a couple months running the Legend on the 1.11 updates, I am experiencing a much better target/trash ratio, and I'm seeing results on a variety of coil sizes. Use is mainly in parks and playgrounds, searching modern clad and whatever weird stuff might live in the ground. (Granted, some portion of this improvement has to do w/increasing my experience on the machine.) 2+ months in on the 1.11 update: Target/trash ratio <=1:3 (all coils) More like 1:10 before. Quarters are my new nickels Used to call myself Johnny Nickels, now I'm Quarter Johnny. (all coils) Silver ring Yep, but a bit crushed and in need of repair. (LG15 - Weird, but I've hit all of my ring finds on the small coil.) 1st $1+ 30 minute run + Sacagawea dollar Yeah, that was tonight ($1.51 total 🙂 ) with the LG35 on the Legend, Field M2, sweeping over an area previously worked on the 1.09 Legend and Nox 800 w/stock coils in Park settings. LG35 rang super-sweet on those good targets. I was shocked by the doller coin result -- I've never seen one in circulation around here, let alone in the ground. Oh yeah, should tag @bigtim1973 here!

Notwithstanding Steve's having told me years ago that alluvial gold in Greenland is probably scarce due to glacial activity...I keep look around to find encouragement. Google's new Bard, AI assisted search engine is fun to play with, so I had some fun just now. So I asked.. is there any notice in the last 3 years of finds of alluvial gold in greenland Yes, there have been a few reports of alluvial gold finds in Greenland in the last 3 years. In 2020, a team of prospectors from Canada discovered a large deposit of gold in the Kangerlussuaq region. The deposit is estimated to contain over 100,000 ounces of gold, and it is the largest gold find in Greenland in over 50 years. In 2021, another team of prospectors discovered a smaller deposit of gold in the Isortoq region. This deposit is estimated to contain over 10,000 ounces of gold. These discoveries have renewed interest in gold mining in Greenland, and several companies are now exploring the possibility of developing these deposits. Here are some of the details of the recent gold finds in Greenland: 2020: A team of prospectors from Canada discovered a large deposit of gold in the Kangerlussuaq region. The deposit is estimated to contain over 100,000 ounces of gold, and it is the largest gold find in Greenland in over 50 years. The discovery was made by a team of prospectors from the company True North Gems. The team was using a helicopter to explore the Kangerlussuaq region when they spotted a large area of bedrock that was exposed by erosion. The team landed and collected samples from the bedrock, which were later assayed and found to contain high levels of gold. 2021: Another team of prospectors discovered a smaller deposit of gold in the Isortoq region. This deposit is estimated to contain over 10,000 ounces of gold. The discovery was made by a team of prospectors from the company Veritas Gold. The team was using a ground-based exploration method called induced polarization (IP) to search for gold when they identified a strong IP anomaly in the Isortoq region. The team then drilled a series of test holes, which confirmed the presence of gold in the area. These discoveries have renewed interest in gold mining in Greenland. Several companies are now exploring the possibility of developing these deposits. However, it is important to note that these discoveries are still in the early stages, and it is not yet clear if they will be commercially viable.

I have screwed up and made technical specs mistakes on forums and I often apologize for them. I try to do the same when I mistreat someone because of a misunderstanding or because I am having a bad day and let it filter into what I write. Merrill and a few other YouTubers have made basic technical mistakes in their videos. Whether they do it on purpose, accidentally or out of ignorance, for me it really doesn't matter. What does matter to me is how they handle it when people actually call them out for their blunders/bloopers/deliberately wrong information. My experience with trying to suggest that some of these YouTubers are giving out wrong information based on a technical mistake has generally not gone very well for me. Merrill stopped responding to my comments on his videos long ago and I have stopped watching them also.

There is an art in discriminating, but I have seen a lot of failures with it. Most of my spots are virgin areas and not much junk and when it is fully of junk I conserve my time walking away from it. In the photo below got gold right up to the junk (It is not the junk you can see that is the problem it is the small bits) and I walked ½ a mile away I got my largest specimen 3.5 kilos with 16+ gold in the second photo.

Noriv - I'm totally content with you using zero DISC for those open areas. When I visited Au back in the 90's, I never once even thought of using DISC as the sites we hunted were as your mentioned and pretty much trash free. Sure there is the occasional surface target (usually trash), but nothing like I encounter here in the US as I mostly hunt previously worked gold bearing ground. And yes I agree, as we age with wisdom, we learn to conserve the amount of energy our body provides us each day and use it most wisely. No more spring chicken left. Thanks for chiming in. Gold Catcher - Yes for the average beginner Joe, I feel using DISC or Target ID features is not desired. Those folks have not learned the ropes yet and need to dig their share of holes. Heck, that's exactly why I don't mind having a group of newbies go swing an area before me. Just make sure they pack the trash out that they are digging. In the end it makes my job much easier when they remove the majority of trash. Yes, small gold and even bigger gold at depth will not register properly on all detectors. Each one built that has such features, there's a depth or ground conditions that all of them can be fooled. That's why when I'm at sites like Rye Patch and realize the gravy is gone, I'm more apt to use ZERO DISC. I usually won't chase those screamer surface targets out there either as 99% of the time, they are fresh bullets. Knowing when to be selective is very important. Thanks for adding. Andrew - I'm glad to see you chime in as I know your experience with a PI for relic hunting is near the tops. You have tested, compared and listened to enough targets to teach yourself the fine lines of PI's and how they respond. Heck, even your skill with many of the VLF's is tops. I've seen enough of your posts and videos to know you're one of the few who takes the time to go out and just compare/practice/train your ears. Using DISC in your head is very important and you do better than most. Jasong - Interesting quotes my friend. Being a WY guy who travels to many areas/states hunting gold, I think you/I are alike as we encounter many more options of gold bearing grounds. The rules to gold hunting? I honestly don't think there are rules to hunting gold, as there are to many variables for the ones who travel. That's part of the reason why some have success more often. But being able to adapt is a big part of it as well. Thanks for providing. Dirtman - The ear is a great tool. I just wish more newer customers relied on it and not the LCD screen on their detectors. Even advanced hunters such as yourself use Mind Discrimination and make a decision based on signal width, strength and site location. I noticed your profile does not give a location of you and it's hard to tell where you spend your hours swinging? Based of your comments and style of detecting, I'm willing to gestimate you usually don't hunt dredge tailings much? No worries, as many folks don't, just for the facts that not are around. Everyone has one.... I've seen that before. Alls good and thanks for input.

Last week--biggest back left 14k, 6.5 gr. pendant 7.4, 10k, front center 18k, 5.2 ....Manti, Impulse AQ, GQA2... French Foreign Legion with waves...about $1700 CDN minus dealer cut. cjc

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist". - Picasso Aphorisms like "dig it all", "low and slow", etc are good for people detecting club claims, heavily worked areas, old patches, etc. For those detecting a wide range of different environments and doing exploration, it's often more about figuring out when and where to break the rules and how to adapt to changing, new environments in order to maximize yield (aka - your total gold take per unit time spent).

Most roads in Goler Gulch are like this or worse, which makes dodging the gullies challenging.

Rest in peace Jacob

A few days ago, I saw a popular YouTuber telling his viewers that if a signal disappears when you turn on it, it’s going to be iron, and digging it would be a waste of time. I can’t tell you how many silver coins I’ve dug that only hit in one direction, and would completely disappear if you turned just a few degrees. Seems like the moment some of these guys get a few subscribers, they think they’re some kind of Detecting Guru and start slinging out “pro tips” left and right. Nothing wrong with sharing knowledge, but actually knowing what you’re talking about and having a little humility never hurts. As for Merrill, I’ve enjoyed watching his videos in the past. I believe he is a fairly knowledgeable detectorist, therefore I’d have to agree with the others that some of his recent antics are done solely to get more views. I don’t let it bother me too much. YT is purely entertainment value for me, so if I don’t like what a particular channel is doing, I simply stop watching.

I've had a known gold-bearing patch stare me in the face for over 35 years, denying me any semblance of gold under my coil. I've tried my luck there dozens of times, with almost every new detector or coil combo, all to no avail. The place just thumbed its nose at me..... until Monday. I used my 6000 with the 10x5 Goldhawk mono, wound up to Auto 1 in difficult (my 'go-to' setting if soil conditions allow) and I found 2 small bits weighing just .3gm. Then yesterday I went back....just to prove it wasn't a 'fluke'. The result was the nugget in the attached pic.... 3.1gm. Another 2 small bits followed. My Nemesis is now conquered! Anyone else have a 'Nemesis' patch that defies all efforts to pluck gold from? Of all the places here in Victoria that I've tried, this one was the only patch that defied me....but no longer! Sorry but I had to tell someone....just to celebrate

What's most concerning about the video, is the comments. Many were saying things akin to, "Thanks for pointing out the problem with the Manticore", or "I was going to buy a Manticore, and now I'm not". It gets my ire when newbies are being misled by erroneous information and half truths.

Great find whatever it is, but my guess would be an early bazooka shell. I said that I didn't know what it is, so that's my guess and I'm sticking to it.

Some of these video guys get more wrapped up in view and follower numbers, rather than learning the machines.

It was so odd this morning, as I was getting ready to duck out for a few hours to get some more trigger time on the D2 with V1.0 before the afternoon storm came in to see if I could tame this beast, when @abenson posted that XP had released V1.1. What?! I read my emails this morning and didn't see anything about an update from XP. So I logged on and sure enough, there it was. I updated my gear and reloaded a couple of my slightly modded programs and hit a nearby park as there was only an hour or two before a rainstorm was coming in. The two programs I loaded up are based on Fast with the following settings: (Note that these are based on settings that have worked well in my particular mineralized soil conditions) Both programs had Max Freq at 40 kHz, Disc= 6.8, Notch= 7-30, Sensitivity= 95, Reactivity= 1.5-2, Audio Response =4, Iron Vol= 7, FE TID= On, High Sqr Audio, but one program in Full Tones with Offset FT= 5, and the other in Pitch. I set Silencer and B.Caps at 0 because I wanted to see if I could. My part of the country (US Rocky Mountains) has a lot of iron and coal in the soil plus it been raining every day for over two weeks so the ground is saturated with water, and in V1.0, the machine ran too hot with Sensitivity in the 90s so I had to use some Silencer and B.Caps just to calm down all the iron noise, and of course there was a lot of falsing. One of the things that I was going to try was running the Audio Response lower than my usual 5 as suggested by Paystreak in a video. I had no idea that Audio Response was one of the things that was beefed up in V1.0 and it turned out that was one of the major contributors to my falsing problems. Instead I was bumping up the Silencer and B.Caps to quiet the machine down and it was just making things worse in my scenarios. When I hit the park today with V1.1, I was amazed how quiet the machine ran with no Silencer and no B.Caps with Audio Response only lowered to the stock 4 setting. Also, with AR at 4, target size and depth was much easier to gauge. Running in Full Tones was glorious again. I really liked Full Tones in V0.71, but it wasn't working well in V1.0 for me (probably because I was running too hot for my conditions), but in V1.1 it's even better! I was able to hear eveything well defined and was able to call almost all of the targets before I dug them. A couple of canslaw pieces fooled me and, to my surprise, a nickel fooled me. I thought it was going to be a pull tab. Speaking of pull tabs, I was able to call almost all of them by lifting the coil and hearing the squeaks in High Sqr Full Tones. Also, checking suspect targets in Deus Mono in 17 kHz with the XY screen correctly exposed all the tabs and iron I encountered today. The two rusty nails I dug were obvious to me so I used them to test out the Silencer and B.Caps functions while still in the ground. Silencer started to break them up at 2 and almost eliminated the falsing entirely at 4-5. B.Cap handled them well at 3, after testing I set them both back to 0 to continue hunting. I didn't find anything earth-shattering today, that wasn't the mission, but I did find a silver bracelet and my first gold coin! Well gold-colored coin anyway... I almost dropped a duece when I saw that in the hole! 🤣 But I will say I'm impressed that XP managed to get these fixes out in just 10 days after releasing V1.0 and I'm sure there's more to come, but now I feel like my D2 is even a better than before, so thank you, XP!

Last night after work I went to the beach with my Terra Pro to search the dry beach. My beaches are fairly trashy and full of all types of metals and targets. The machine worked well and I don't have anything to report on water use. It found me as much as I think any other machine would have found me if i used another machine. I found its first Silver ring and a junk ring, 1 small foreign coin and £9.33p in spendable coins. If there is anything at all that i can criticize it would be the inability to knock out crown caps. (The one in the picture) They constantly come in at a high number and as the Terra and the 900 and the Manticore by the looks of it aren't the most stable on numbers , it would be an absolute dream come true if Minelab would just do something about that one thing. Then the new Terra will turn into a proper Terra'ist of beach detecting. My next hunt will be in the week if i can but not so sure which machine to use. 800 , Legend or the Terra again ? I think without looking the tides are a bit longer then. Could do with the sand showing.

Hi, To stay simple, Frequency addition means that you take every response of a target from the different frequency the D2 use, you average all the results and you convert to a sound. so for example, you take a little piece of aluminium that can't be taken by far with low frequency and you take a very high conductor that have a scratchy sound with high frequency, with a program who have frequency addition, you can have a good signal on both target because you use the response of all the frequency range between high frequencies and low frequencies. For the conductive ground substraction, you do the same but because you use multi simultaneous frencies, you can compare every signals and you can identify the signature of the conductive ground and you can litteraly substract it from the final audio signal. the salt sens can widen or narrow the window of this substraction. the big difference between ground substraction and notching is that with notching, you detector see the notched target but it cut the sound so there is a masking effect. With the substraction, it's like pure magic, the conductive soil is wiped out so your detector can pass trough and even if you have a little target witch will normally be masked, here you can see it clearly like in an air test 🙂 all these explanations is my way of seeing from the explanations I received from R&D XP team.

With all of the new updates that keep coming and wiping out my previous settings for custom programs, I have generated a form to put all of the settings for each program. It's a Google document and hope it will help you because I think it's helping me! When you click on the link, it will automatically force a copy, so that you can edit it. Hope you're able to access it. Let me know what you think. Custom Program Deus II

Hello everyone from Boise, Idaho. I was a member of this forum 9 or 10 years ago, hanging around in the dredging forum; but of course lost THAT username and password (maybe even the email too). About a year ago, I bought a GPX 6000 from Gerry. What a great guy! Met him at his house for the purchase, couldn’t have had a better experience and can’t say enough great things about the guy. I’ve “mostly” always been a dredger since my grandfather introduced me to mining forty five years ago – geez, longer now that I think about it lol. I did have a gold bug back in the 80’s and poked around a bit then got discouraged. All because I didn’t take the time to learn the machine properly: I want to emphasize, that was 100% on ME. I got a Whites GMT ten or fifteen years ago, love that machine, but failed to find any gold with it. Again, the reason for that is time behind the coil. I just couldn’t dedicate enough to get after it. Well, now I’m finding more time for detecting and oh my how I love the 6000. Haven’t found any gold yet with it, but that will change any day. I have a new puppy on the way, so it will be a few weeks before I can get back out there. I haven’t been able to get out at all this year yet, (I know, I know) I’ve been busy. Last year about this time I got up to the mountains for five days, then in august another 9 days straight. I tell you what, with the 6000 in hand over that 9 days I dug 204 targets: boot tack’s, buckles, fragments of wire I can barely see, a chisel, square nails, and then... “Story Time”. I heard the perfect “Zip Zip” way down inside a bedrock crevice. I’ve always found it a bit comical how the fever takes hold on a target like that! The new pick wasn’t going to cut it, I had my own heavy tools back at the truck, an 8 pound sledge and 3 foot pry bar. I had that bedrock so clean the crevice was screaming “HEY, I’M GOLD! CATCH ME IF YOU CAN!” “Oh, I’m coming little fella!” I kept zipping the coil over the target, “zip zip zip”! And the more bedrock I broke off THE LOUDER IT GOT! “This can only be one thing!” I became frantic, “Finally, after a lifetime of looking for gold, could this be my first nugget with a metal detector? It’s got to be a TOAD!” I broke away more bedrock, only to get louder and louder, “zip zip”. “This has to be it! Ahhhhh!” I’m shaking as I wave the coil over it one last time, “ZIP ZIP!” “Oh this is going to be ENORMOUS!” I finally popped it out of its hiding place, the end of an old timers pick stuck way down there in the bedrock. Hahaha! The hunt was just as fun. The enjoyment of the hunt will never end. Thanks for having me.

I use the stock coil, it's perfectly fine and works great, very sensitive too but the little 6" is just more sensitive and for me that's a big deal because I primarily live in an area with very small gold.

Good advice VL, but the 600 is just as waterproof as the 800 🙂 I've dunked mine a lot and had no problems.

That need not be the case at all. The machine is very simple to operate (basic start guide below). The issue at hand is nugget detecting. VLF discrimination in mineralized ground is unreliable at best. You should not use discrimination, but should be using all metal, digging all targets, and leaning hard on a magnet on a stick to separate ferrous from non-ferrous. It is absolutely impossible to reliably separate gold nuggets from lead, aluminum, or any other non-ferrous items from other non-ferrous items, and at a minimum you must dig all non-ferrous items. Brass, copper, and silver do tend to deliver higher probability numbers, but so will large nuggets. If you wish, I recommend using all metal, in conjunction with the meter reading, to make a dig or no-dig decision regarding ferrous. A ferrous object should bang repeatedly to far left, never bouncing above 40. You do ten sweeps, you get ten far left readings. If, on the other hand, you get one or more hits that bounce higher, especially if the bounce over 40, dig it. I've seen nuggets in bad ground read ferrous over and over, with only rare spikes to non-ferrous. But be aware that some ferrous also spiked high, and you will dig those. As you should, unless you like leaving nuggets in the ground. Look for reasons to dig, as opposed to reasons not to dig. You must dig targets, and lots of them, if you want gold. By using all metal, and using the probability meter constantly, you will learn the odds via meter readings and repetition, and can shift the odds as you please by modifying the resulting dig/no-dig decisions. How that meter responds is key, and that varies with how fast you swing, and how the coil approaches the target. Bouncy numbers are common, and the weaker the target, the less you can believe what you are being told. In truly trashy areas I get more picky, in less trashy areas I get more aggressive. The last method is go to the discriminate "beep mode" and use the actual tones and rejection settings, just like coin hunting. This makes dealing with the worst trash easier, but it also tends to miss more gold, so for me it is a last ditch approach for the trashiest locations. See my detailed review of the 24K for more on that. Goldmaster 24K Quick Start FACTORY RESET - Hold the Down button when turning on the detector. Press the Pinpoint button when “Fd” is on screen, to reset the machine to factory defaults. Just in case. VOLUME - Set the volume to your preference (tap Speaker button, use Up and Down buttons). THRESHOLD - Set the threshold to a faint hum (hold Speaker button, use Up and Down buttons). For silent search, turn the threshold down until it can’t be heard, but no farther. SENSITIVITY - Set the sensitivity to a level that ensures smooth operation (Up and Down buttons). The 24K will generate a harsh overload sound if the coil is placed on ground too mineralized for the setting. If this occurs, reduce sensitivity until the overload tone does not occur. GROUND BALANCE - The default mode is automatic XGB ground tracking. Simply raise and lower the coil over the ground a few inches, two or three times, and start detecting. Alternately, lock the ground tracking by tapping the Lock button (a Lock symbol appears on screen). While the tracking is locked, you can press the Cross Hair button to perform a Ground Grab. This updates the ground setting to what is currently under the coil. With a combination of Locked tracking and Ground Grab you can easily update the ground balance point as you swing. DIG ALL TARGETS - With an emphasis on the faintest targets. A magnet on a pick or a wand can make quick work of excavated ferrous items, while recovering all non-ferrous targets. If an operator wishes to avoid digging ferrous items, employ the meter to ignore items that repeatedly, and reliably, produce far left meter indications. However, always remember that discrimination is unreliable on weak signals, and strive whenever possible to dig all targets while nugget detecting. RETAINED SETTINGS - The Goldmaster 24K will retain your settings when powered off. Once you get the machine set for a particular area, it will be ready to go next time you power it up. When in doubt, repeat the steps above, starting fresh with a factory reset.