Steve Herschbach

This is a video that Garrett has done in response to some of the user videos made about the new Apex. It’s possible this was posted before and I missed it... been busy lately! “Iron targets can “mask” or change the Target ID of adjacent good treasure targets. Two examples of target masking are presented, along with a demonstration of successfully scanning coins mixed into a row of nails. Although the presence of iron can change a target’s ID, this video shows how easy the Garrett Apex can pick out the treasures in such trashy detecting environments.”

Well, although still listed on the Minelab website, most legitimate dealers are showing the GPX 4500 as out of stock. There are many still for sale, but I have to think the odds are high they are counterfeit at this point unless being sold by a very trustworthy source. Buyer beware. How To Verify A Minelab Is Genuine

Ganes Creek is a large commercial mine that has been in operation for about 100 years, and still continues today. It was open to the public for metal detecting for ten years, the last in 2012. More details here, but if you have any more questions please start another thread to ask them, as I do not want to hijack this thread. There are more stories about Ganes Creek at Steve’s Mining Journal.

Not a meteorite so moved thread to Rocks & Minerals forum.

I should not laugh, but the thought of Minelab responding directly to information requests and explanations, not to mention requests for accessory coils, seems to be a fantasy many of us have these days. Ever since the new marketing crew in Chicago took over a couple years ago, the engineering videos and Treasure Talk blogs all came to a halt. There was a email survey Minelab sent out this spring asking people what kind of information and videos people want to see, but so far nothing has come of it.

Same depth and sensitivity if outfitted with the same coils, but I’d take the Pro for the Ground Grab button, plus the seven tones option. MXT Info & Review Steve with MXT and 6.85 ounce gold specimen found with it at Ganes Creek, Alaska in 2002

It may be more the authors than the magazine that you need to contact about the rights to their works. https://www.writersdigest.com/legal-questions/what-are-first-serial-rights-or-fnasr

For machines that have been out several years we don’t hear much about them.

And I’ve got the TaoTronics low latency Bluetooth for my White’s. Any matched set of transmitters and receivers will work on almost any device. That’s kind of the entire point of using a transmitter box.

Garrett Z-Lynk employs a transmitter box and as such will work with any detector with the correct adapter. There is nothing special about White’s audio output. The Detectorpro switch is not a “White’s” switch, it is a stereo / mono switch. Some detectors put out mono, some stereo, and you need to be properly matched in that regard. Many detector headphones have a stereo / mono switch for this reason. Most White’s detectors have stereo output. Only Minelab to my knowledge uses non-standard wiring to ground and shut off the external speaker on some of their models. Long story short, for any audio system not working properly, acquiring and using the correct mono to stereo adapter (or vice versa) will almost always do the trick. Just a reminder.... Z-Lynk is proprietary and will not work with standard Bluetooth headphones. Z-Lynk Manual Compatibility • Z-Lynk can be used with both VLF and pulse metal detectors. • These modules can be paired with any Garrett wireless-enabled device. This wireless system is nearly universal, designed to work with almost any brand of metal detector and almost any wired headphone. click images below for larger versions... Garrett Z-Lynk Wireless Audio System

Excellent detectors by all accounts, what Tesoro could have done if they had not stopped trying.

Here is a map to 349 locations in Nevada: https://pubs.nbmg.unr.edu/Rocks-gemstones-minerals-fossil-p/sp029.htm Title: Rocks, gemstones, minerals, and fossils in Nevada Author: Stephen B. Castor and Daphne D. LaPointe Year: 2001 Series: Special Publication 29 Version: supersedes Special Publication 1 Format: Scale: 1:1,000,000 A 1:1,000,000-scale map of Nevada showing 349 locations of gemstones, fossils, and other minerals and rocks. Includes 11 full-color photos of minerals. The locations are listed on the back of the map along with eight black-and-white photos of minerals and an extensive list of references. Supersedes Special Publication 1.

In case people are wondering, this is not a NEW thing. The update that added this happened at the end of 2018, so machines with this function have shipped for almost two years. The Monster has no update capability, so older users can't add this, but I never missed not having it in the first place. Some people complained of overly long times to ground balance, but I did not encounter that personally. But for people that have that issue, this is the fix.

The Gold Monster has no real operating manual, and so this function is basically unexplained. However, it is identical to what Minelab has done with the SDC 2300. Again, the SDC is always ground tracking. No need to fuss with it. But it does have a “quick track” button that does the same thing the Gold Monster does. This page from the SDC 2300 Manual may help shed light on what the Gold Monster is doing.

The original Minelab Gold Monster design simply always ground tracked. You start using it, and it is ground balancing all the time. However, if the mineralization changes a lot, it was a little slow to react. So they added this ability to put it in quick balance mode. Long press the Detect Mode button, the coil symbol flashes, and for a few seconds the ground balance speeds up. Basically it is just a ground grab button. Bill Southern talks about this new function in this video. Like Bill says in the video, most people might never use it,and sure no reason to buy a new machine. It’s a small time saver, nothing more. I’m curious, for those that even know about this, are you actually using it?

One spammer was so cocky he actually posted an “attaboy” on this thread, not long before I banned him!

White’s maintained their own forum at http://forums.whiteselectronics.com/ In another sign that the company is not being revived, the forum has now been suspended. Findmall also killed off all their White’s forums due to non-sponsorship. Rest assured that since this is not a company funded or sponsored forum, it will not be going away. If anything I will pay extra attention to trying to lend aid and support to White’s owners via this website.

“The Great Basin has some of the most unusual natural history that's buried beneath its soil. Scientists say there was period either thousands to millions of years ago when woolly mammoths, giant sloths, and prehistoric bison would roam the area that we know today as Nevada. Recently, some of those animals from around and before the Ice Age have resurfaced. Tom Gordon lives in Carson City with his wife. He has plenty of space around his property and enjoys a good sweat from a home improvement project. He bought a couple of trees to plantand began digging holes around his fence. While digging these trenches, he hit some rocks but he also hit something that he'd never see before. "I had to take a step back and realize what I'm hitting is some bones from animal," says Gordon. "At first I thought it may have been some chicken bones or a deer but once I dug it out of the ground, I found a full jaw with teeth. My jaw even dropped."” Rest of the story with photos here

Grizzly bars are one of the most common, and least effective ways, of improvising recovery on a subsurface riffle. It eliminates riffle boil and contributes to riffle packing. Everything becomes a flat surface for gold, especially large nuggets, to slide out over. Older thread on this subject. The only mod I would do on a subsurface box is replace the original carpet with miners moss.

I just upgraded the forum to the next major release, 4.5.2. This time they did some changes to the overall look and feel. Most of the changes are improvements but the new high contrast colors and bold fonts are almost too bright, too sharp. The header went stark white so I dialed that back to blue. Anyway, I'll be tweaking the look and feel for a few days. A couple of the old add on modules are now out of date so need to deal with that also. For any nerds out there, here is the forum feature change list. One new thing is there will be a new mobile app. If you visit lots of Invision powered websites (like Chris', Bill's, and Rob's) it may be of interest. The old color scheme. Less bright colors, blue text instead of black and white, more of a gray background.....

Welcome to the forum. Yes, this was discussed at very great length in multiple threads back in June, like this one. Sadly, there is nothing now months later that indicates White’s is anything other than dead and gone.

Could be. Trying to integrate/correlate the old FE settings and new FE2 settings may be a waste of time. They could be using two different methodologies and are therefore just two different things. I'm sold on FE2, especially after EL NINO77s comments on separation effects. Assuming one is going to use Iron Bias, is there any reason at all to use the old original version? In theory it has a finer gradation of adjustment, but is that of any actual value?

Discrimination is always risky when nugget detecting, and should not be used unless it is physically impossible to dig everything. This is doubly true when learning a new detector. Weak non-ferrous reads as ferrous

The chart was originally posted here created from information Tom Dankowski posted based on what he thinks he knows about the control. I’d say based on my simple test that the information is now suspect. Tom said the new FE2 vastly expands the control range both higher and lower, with the original FE setting spanning the middle of the new range. Tom is equating Iron Bias 0 with the F2 setting of 4 and Iron Bias of 9 with F2 setting of 6. However, in my video you can see that a FE2 setting as low as 1 has more effect that a FE setting of 9. The FE2 setting of 2 makes it very obvious. Based on my simple test it looks like a FE setting of 9 is more like a FE2 setting of 0.9 So is FE2 setting of zero actually applying less bias than the FE setting of zero? Tom says so, but my current answer is “I don’t know” until I create a scenario that proves it. That would mean a FE2 setting of zero would have to produce a nonferrous reading on a target that the regular FE setting of zero called ferrous. Right now that seems a poor bet since all FE settings appear to fall in the FE2 region between 0 and 1. Based purely in my video the FE settings of 0 - 9 appear to equate to FE2 settings of 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, all the way to 0.9 Or another way to look at it is that if the original FE setting tops out at FE9, then the FE2 setting of 1 would be the equivalent of FE10. None of this information about how FE and FE2 relate to each other is anything other than speculative and should be taken with a huge grain of salt. The only thing I know for sure is the FE2 range is far more aggressive than the original and kicks in earlier than I thought based on what Tom had said.

Personally I’m looking more for real world stuff, not contrived mixes. There was the stacked nickel thing.... I’m not worried about missing stacks of nickels. For me specifically I will be looking to locate a gold nugget in the clear, no adjacent targets. Just the nugget and the ground. If the nugget is found using my normal zero setting, how high a setting will flip it to a ferrous reading? Or a nickel buried to where it barely reads non-ferrous at a setting of zero. How much if any iron bias must be applied, if any, to flip it to ferrous? If a nugget reads nonferrous at a FE2 setting of zero and flips to ferrous at a FE2 setting of 2, that’s something worth knowing. Virtually all the statements I have seen regarding this control, mineralization effects, and depth, seem speculative, based on what common sense would imply. Actual data on real world targets in mineralized ground is very thin to non-existent.