Steve Herschbach

In Australia a specimen like that is often crushed and melted into an ingot. In the U.S. such specimens are far rarer, and this would command a premium over the gold value left as is or perhaps enhanced with acid treatment. It's a stunner for sure - thanks for sharing Gerry!

Wow, looking very sharp, quite professional. Good for you Reg, do let forum members know when you are ready. Looks like a prospecting “must have” book to me.

How is that book coming Reg? Better than mine I hope!

You question was unclear to me Mitchell, so I posted the link to the manual. Black Sand is a specific mode, on or off. The ground balance is adjustable from 0 - 999 and salinity range is 0 - 50. Salt Mode must be turned on to adjust salinity balance, but Black Sand mode need not be turned on to use the ground balance. Ground balance works if Black Sand Mode is on or off.

I have a set of battery clips with a 12V socket for exactly that reason. I usually just toss a deep cycle marine battery in my rig for charging in the field rather than mess with the vehicle battery, and clip to it with this cable. Supposedly 5 hours to charge the AQ battery from a dead start, though my cheapie convertor/charger setup may take longer.

Well, I’ve done a lot of water hunting and never used a pinpointer. It’s usually just scoop and sift, or scoop and dump in a sifter. Bending over to poke a pinpointer around would be a waste of time and remember, pinpointers do not have the range of the detector itself. In most beach situations the pinpointer is going to do nothing until the target is out of the hole anyway. I do have a Pulsedive on order, but it will get used more as an independent mini detector than a pinpointer. I really only have extreme need for a pinpointer when working in parks or other areas where digging must be limited as much as possible. Most other situations I just dig and use the tools to recover. Scoop or sifter for beach, nugget scoop for gold nuggets.

Back to if the transmit side pulses, it is a pulse, regardless of what the receive end is doing. But honestly it’s just word games, defining terms, and those definitions change all the time in the real world. Obviously you can design new ways of doing things, and then we try to come up with words to define them. It is one of our traits as humans - assigning labels. It does become important in communications though that we define terms, otherwise they get tossed around and confuse rather than enlighten. All I know is the marketers are going to turn this hybrid stuff into a meaningless muddled mess in the next few years. Ultra Maximum Mixed Mode Multifrequency Time Domain Technology With Super Phase Processing! Whatever. I think our skill set is different Keith. Give me a detector and I just turn it on and listen to it. They talk to me. Move this knob, they get happy, or they protest. They all have a language and you just have to learn it and listen. As you say, I can feel what they detector is trying to do, what it is saying to me. I do think though that having some basic grasp of how these things work matters from an operational perspective. It explains why certain things happen in the field, and what might be done to address those things. If people really understood what a Gain control does, for instance, they would be less likely to insist it always be on max. But many people think of a Gain control as a depth control, and refuse to “turn down the depth”, when in fact turning the Gain down could increase the useable depth. That is why so many people seek canned settings... they really do not have a clue what the controls are actually doing.

My solution, $24 on Amazon, I’ll let you all know how it works out. 280 watt peak Single 120 volt AC household outlet Head pivots for ideal positioning LED correct-connection indicator Surge protection protects against damaging current fluctuations Ideal for laptop computers, video games, radios and much more

You left out the most important information... what is it you need a pinpointer for? What are you expecting out of one? I really like the Carrott, but I like the F-Pulse just a little better in my ground. I have a Pulsedive on order.

All I can do is provide the spec as seen on the charger above. Might be trivial for some people, I do not know. Many detectors are designed such that off the shelf 12V chargers work. Others not so much. The Minelab SDC 2300 runs off 4 C cells, and finding 12V solutions like the one in my solar power picture was no simple task as there were few options and Minelab provided nothing. This is a similar situation.

I agree Mike. And it takes some doing to leave me speechless! I bow in the general direction of Australia in recognition of Gold Hound's amazing and no doubt hard earned detector success!

Well, maybe I am just being a purist. I want things to fit in tidy boxes. If the transmitting completely stops, how can the detector be considered a "continuous wave" detector? Conversely, if some part of the device never stops transmitting, how can it be a true PI? To me the gap in transmission is the defining factor in a pulse versus anything else. So if we remove that constraint... well all I can say is things are going to get really mushy, and the marketing boys are going to bury us in nonsense. If a detector had a pulse component and a constant component running in tandem I guess you could call it a hybrid, but with one component still transmitting continuously it seems to me that makes the entire thing, the totality, continuous wave. I am wanting to put pure PI off in a box by itself and everything else in the other box. But I can see how that is not reality... just my preference. So if you could narrow that just a hair somehow with a better way in your opinion to define this stuff, I am all ears Carl. Thankfully I always fall back on my default "all that matters is the real world performance, not the label" position!

Bummer about the flat tin. It is my Achilles Heel in many areas, where old tin cans have decomposed and litter the terrain. Not an issue so much as surface litter, but a real issue when they get in a gully and get some depth. So far Minelab BBS or FBS is the only solution I have found that really works on the stuff.

Hi Rick, My use of the MDT 8000 is quite specific. I am interested in how well it will do on around 1/4 gram or larger gold nuggets in highly mineralized ground littered with ferrous trash. Ground that would normally call for a PI, but where the ferrous is overwhelming. The Sierra Nevadas in particular are full of locations where these conditions exist. Many still have larger gold hiding due to all the junk. I currently have two detectors for this task. The Equinox and Goldmaster 24K. The Equinox is all I need really, but its issues with lack of good closed knock resistant coils for prospecting along with the inability to use replaceable batteries has me keeping the 24K as an option. My main trial will be a shootout with the MDT versus the 800 and 24K at a site that perfectly illustrates my problem. Larger gold hiding in very mineralized soils littered with ferrous trash. I am not exploring which detectors hit the tiniest gold. I already know the answer to that and it is not the MDT 8000 at 18 kHz. What I am most interested in is which detector offers the best alternative for depth on larger gold versus a PI detector... my normal tool of the trade. I will add a Time Ranger Pro, the 19 kHz F19 clone, to the mix as a control simply because I have one. At 19 kHz it is a good match for the MDT for this use and the MDT has to outshine the TRP at a minimum to pass. I am the ultimate in a practical detectorist. I will take these machines to a genuine location. Contrived tests simply waste my time and I don't bother. I will go find targets in the ground using all the machines, and then use the others to cross check. To pass my test the MDT 8000 must find something better than the other detectors. In other words, I will hunt with it, mark targets, and then cross check those targets before recovering. This is basically the only way I sort detectors out for myself, because at the end of the day I need to pick one and use it. So I do this only until one detector satisfies me enough that I put the others away and go look for gold. My number one goal is to find gold, not to test detectors, so I do not waste time documenting or filming video. I do not do this stuff to prove anything to anyone but myself, and as far as I am concerned all that other stuff is for proving things to other people. I prefer to simply offer my opinions to people who ask, and if they don't believe me... I don't care. I refuse to argue with or prove things to people anymore. I used to dive into that nonsense and finally realized it is a waste of time I'd rather spend doing other things. So I'll get it all sorted out to my satisfaction, but do not expect videos or charts or anything. But I'll be happy to share my conclusions or observations wherever I get to the point of having any. Tarsacci MDT 8000 User Manual

Nobody was making a case that there are gold only detectors. You are taking the title of the thread far too literally and kind of missing the entire subject of the thread. Which is for people to discuss their favorite gold getting detectors.

The Gold Bug Pro and Gold Bug 2 are still made and sold new. Read this.... https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/10993-list-of-legitimate-metal-detector-dealers/

More info here on similar coils.... https://www.detectorprospector.com/forums/topic/11568-nuggeteer-anti-inteference-12-x-4-on-tdi-pro/

Basically looks like a knockoff of the Jimmy Sierra T-Foot coil. As a long narrow coil you should expect a ton of depth. It is more to cover ground, like a huge beach. The price is not horrible at least.

I found this old ad from 2010: "Special Made coils for the Whites TDI Pulse detector”, you pick from list I will build. All coil's or hand made an super light, the 18 inch mono coil weight is only 1 pound and 3oz. Price depends on size. If interested E-Mail at lamarcannon@comcast.net, or phone me at 601-859-7576. Lamar Cannon the Duke "Special Made coils for the Whites TDI Pulse detector", you pick from list I will build. All coil's or hand made an super light, the 18 inch mono coil weight is only 1 pound and 3oz. Price depends on size. If interested E-Mail at lamarcannon@comcast.net, or phone me at 601-859-7576. 18" INCH ROUND MONO COIL 235.00 ----- 14"X18" INCH MONO COIL 235.00 ----- 6" INCH ROUND MONO COIL 125.00 (I CALL IT THE LITTLE BAD BOY.) All international shipping is $40.00 ------- $17.00 U.S. A: 11" O.D. Open search coil housing with liquid tight pigtail, for P.I. Detectors, color Black. B: 8" Closed coil with liquid tight pigtail, color White. C: 14"x10" open loop coil for DD PI Detector, , black. D: 5.25" Closed coil , liquid tight, color White. E: F: H: 11"x8.5" open loop coil for DD detectors, , black I: 7" Open coil , with liquid tight pigtail. Color White. J: K: 18"x14" D, PI Coil Black -------$235.00 L: 6" Spider Coil , Black ------------- $125.00 M: 12" Spider Coil Black N: 8" Spider Coil , Black O: 9 3/4" x 4 3/4" Gold Bug style coil housing P: 12" x 3 1/2" Coil Q: 15" x 3 1/2" Coil R: 18" x 5 1/2" Coil S: 18" Spider Coil ---------$235.00 T: 9.75" Spider Coil U: 12" Spider Coil (heavy duty) V: 11" Closed Loop Coil W: 8" Compass Style Closed Loop Coil X: 18" Open Coil Y: 17.5" X 8" Tappered, Bush Coil Z: 8 - 8" PI Coil White Z: 10 - 10 " PI Coil, White Z: 12 - 12" PI Coil , White Z: 13.5" PI Coil Housing, White All coil housings are formed from .062 black ABS plastic. All ears are .750 I.D. All ears are epoxy filled. All coil housings come complete with top and bottom. All items are vaccum formed with the exceptions of items B, D, F, and J, that are injection molded.

Sound legit, aftermarket coil, but not that great according to the thread above. Then again people may have been expecting too much from what is basically a stretched out 5” coil.

By older stock I meant the dealer had it on the shelf for a long time. I used to buy large volumes. The detector I sold you may have been on the shelf for up to a year. Probably no way for most people to know though. Some machines, like White’s, have a code built into the serial number that tells you date of manufacture.

Well, it is a coil. Is it made by White’s? No. But lots of people make aftermarket coils. That is not necessarily a bad thing. A link to the listing would provide more information then just the picture, like what models it’s supposedly for. Looks like maybe TDI?

I have to interject. VLF is a misnomer. It simply means Very Low Frequency. It almost always is used now however to apply to most Induction Balance metal detectors. We only have two basic technologies in use. Induction Balance (IB), and Pulse Induction (PI). Induction Balance continuously transmits and receives simultaneously. There must be a transmit coil (TX), and a receive coil (RX) that are in electronic balance. They induce a current into the target. Induction Balance. Pulse Induction alternately transmits and receives. A PI can even use a single coil that alternates between the transmit and receive modes. This is not possible with an induction balance metal detector. Each transmit phase is referred to as a pulse. A current is induced into the target. Pulse Induction. Induction Balance detectors normally employ frequency domain processing to collect phase information about a target, which is where the discrimination information comes from. Pulse Induction detectors employ time domain processing to measure the decay of the current induced in the target. A detector cannot be a pulse induction detector and an induction detector. It must be one or the other. There is no such thing and never will be a hybrid of the two. There detector either continuously transmits or it does not. Period. Pulse Induction detectors cannot determine phase and so cannot employ frequency domain processing. However, Induction Balance detectors can employ time domain processing. Minelab has done so starting with the BBS series multifrequency units. One might refer to these as hybrids. Induction balance detectors employing time domain processing. The MDT 8000 is not a pulse induction and cannot be compared directly to the GPX or ATX or other pulse induction metal detectors. That is a different class of detector. The MDT 8000 is an Induction Balance selectable single frequency detector employing time domain processing. It therefore compares more directly to the CTX 3030 and other Minelab multifrequency induction balance models that also employ time domain processing. So if VLF is a loose term referring to induction balance metal detectors, the MDT 8000 is indeed a what people commonly mean when they say VLF metal detector. It is not a pulse induction metal detector. Tarscacci MDT 8000 Patent Application None of that takes away from or diminishes what Dimitar is doing. It is unique and has the patent application above pending. I just hate when terms get tossed around in a confusing fashion. It is like how the manufacturers have screwed up what all metal mode means by labeling full accept discrimination modes as all metal. Or Nok/Mak calling selectable frequency multifrequency. Throw out all the marketing and just pay attention to what machines do and how they perform in the real world. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Been awhile since we have heard of one leaking. I thought they had a handle on it. Any chance yours was maybe older stock? Regardless, sorry to hear about that!

I agree if it was just a typical single frequency detector. But we are talking single frequency with time domain processing, a slightly different beast. Don't know yet, but I'll find out and let you know!