Steve Herschbach

Pics added to posts so people know what is being discussed....

Oh ok. I am pretty excited by the machine but until I or somebody else gets our hands on it.... well, it’s a discriminating PI and they all have a catch. At least every one made so far!

I understand. Please read the article link I just posted above. I have sent an email to Makro/Nokta directly to see if they will contact you via the forum.

This is because metal detectors do not work well except on solid continuous masses of gold. This is true of all metal detectors. The problem is the nature of the items you have, not the detector. I have been doing this 45 years and know exactly what these machines are capable of. I encourage you to try and find and detector that will detect those items before assuming the detector is bad. If it picks up a ball pen the detector is working.

Looks like mica flakes to me, not gold. When you find a detector that works on them let us know. The fact remains the Gold Racer works about as well as any of the top tier VLF units and so trashing the machine because it does not do what you want is pointless.

Hi Mike, How can the Aqua Manta be getting good reviews? It’s not on the market yet. I am not putting the machine down.... I’m interested in one myself. But all we know is what the developer is saying unless you can point me to reviews by somebody else. Yeah, lots of happy Tarsacci users from what I have seen.

Thin gold sheets in many layers are not gold nuggets. The Gold Racer is a proven gold nugget detector. The problem here is you do not understand the difference between a gold nugget and thin sheets of dispersed gold. You can blame the detector if you want but all detectors will struggle or fail on that type of target. So stop posting negative reviews on the database as I will just keep deleting them. You are making yourself look foolish because everyone here knows the facts that you are overlooking.

Thats the problem. If evidence builds people are pocketing finds then the archeologists push to change the law again and shut it all down. We won’t win that battle.

Should not surprise, the Deus is a great machine. At the end of the day there are dozens of machines I can use and do well with. Not one of them finds anything... I put the coil over the targets. I’m the one succeeding, not the metal detector. I proved that to myself countless times and I think it’s true of all the better detectorists. To the point where I think I will stop mentioning detectors when I post finds. It’s time we take the credit for our finds and quit giving the credit to the detector!

The property owners are very good and as a rule have not been greedy. Most gold finds get valued at melt price or a tad more. Remember it is a split. Let’s say the museums did not want my gold find. That means it is now a negotiation between me and the property owner. I either pay him half the negotiated value to keep the item, or they pay me half the value and they keep it. So the property owner says my piece is a million dollar piece and I say “wow, great deal for you, you get a million dollar piece by only paying me $500,000” If the value is fair both sides should feel like they can sell it later for about twice what got paid. So there is really no incentive to inflate the value. It’s the old “you split the gold in two piles, and I pick my half system”. It works for prospectors and works in this case normally also. My find is being called a Celtic votive offering but I have seen things that make me think it might also be a Roman cloak clasp. It weighs just under 8 grams. I might be willing to pay as much as the total gold value by weight, but that would be about it, and even then I would have to think it over. If the property owner thinks it’s worth a lot more than that he can have it and I’ll take the cash. At least that’s my understanding of it all... somebody can chime in if they have more to add or think I have it messed up. Luckily for me it’s not a big deal. I made the find and have the photos to prove it. Possession is kind of secondary for me.

I’m really happy you got find of the year with the club Tim. I voted for you because you deserved it. The whole thing with Minelab massively irritated me however. As you know I put you in touch with Minelab due to your incredible finds, and if anything it seems like they skipped a month just to ignore you. It left me very embarrassed and I will never refer anyone to them again because of that. It left me that much more pleased that you got rewarded via the club however. I got all my regular finds from September back after a few months, but I am unhappy that the museums are basically sitting on the treasure finds now and not processing anything. I am getting ready to send my email trying to light a fire under them. The entire system is built on trust. They trust we will turn in the treasure finds. We trust they will get processed in reasonable time. I was ok with a year, but some people are now on their third year and that’s completely unacceptable. It means people will not want to turn in their treasure finds and will pocket them. That in turn could cause the whole system to break down. I have to wonder if there are people in the archeology community there who are hoping for just that. I was expecting to either settle up or get my find back by the time I return this fall. If that does not happen it will likely be my last visit to the U.K. and I will be telling them just that in my email. It’s not my find so much as the principle of the thing. The club is doing a fantastic job, but the government is not holding up their end of the deal, and that’s just wrong.

It’s the new world now. If you are not on social media it’s almost like you don’t exist. Or so they would have us believe. I almost got sucked into all that but my introversion triggered three years ago and I have been in full retreat ever since. If I did not feel a responsibility to keep the forum going since I started it I would be completely gone from the Internet. So no Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Youtube for me.

Good to hear your coil is fine

It's tough Norm when they get on. I swore off any new dogs when we had four (three English Bulldogs and a Golden) go over the course of two years, and it just seemed like two years of heartbreak. My English Bulldog Teddy in particular was real hard on me. But my wife and I would come home and it was just way too quiet... no little happy herd at the door. And so back into the land of furry people we went. And never a regret as all the rest have been some of the best. This was probably my best behaved prospecting buddy. Actually my fathers pup back in 1979 but I would "borrow" him for prospecting trips. He was a purebred Golden Retriever registered as Autumn Blaze but we just called him Blaze. A perfect trail dog in bear country. He always went ahead on the trail, but never out of sight. He would stop at turns and such and wait. Just a great guy and like most Golden's a friend to everyone. I liked this photo I took on the trail into my old claims at Stetson Creek, Alaska. Autumn Blaze in the middle of autumn colors.

That really sucks and I am sorry to hear about your losses. My wife and I always have three or four pups which is a pile of joy but a real bummer when the time comes.

To this day I have never, despite very heavy lobbying efforts, been able to get anyone to recreate the Jim Karbowski Bigfoot coil. 3” x 18” figure 8 winding, highly EMI resistant and perhaps the best park and field jewelry coil ever made when paired with a DFX or V3i. Used ones over a decade later sell for twice what they did new. I keep a V3i for no other reason than that it will run a Bigfoot. But despite the fact they often sell for over $500 used nobody will make them. Why? Tedious hand built coils, every one a work of art. Nothing wrong with hand made at all as long as the maker takes care and has pride in the work.

How many of you have a non-human prospecting or detecting buddy? Dog, cat, burro, reconnaissance bird... whatever. Post a pic and tell us about them. Here is a chance to brag about our best friends!

Funny how people post stuff once and disappear.

When this is all over pay attention to what sources were reliable and which were just making stuff up as click bait. The same sites post fake stuff time and again, and yet they keep getting quoted as if they are reliable.

That is very true Norvic. What is also true is we are all human and failures occur whenever humans are in the mix. Not targeting X coil. All coil manufacturing efforts... well, I’ve seen it all and I will leave it at that. People genuinely have no real idea how many substandard coils are in use no matter who makes them. And foam filled coils in particular can degrade with use. Watching the two videos I posted above is enlightening.

The dirty secret for a long time in metal detector land is the variance in coil performance. I visited the Whites factory once. Basically all their coils and other manufacturer coils were hand built and most still are. Machines set up most of the components, but somebody has to lay the windings into the slots as seen in the photos above. There usually is a large amount of tuning via a few components in the coil to offset the inevitable variances in positioning, wire resistance... whatever. The coil can be perfect before the epoxy gets poured, then the epoxy hardens and shifts the winding slightly... coil out of tune again. The coil is assembled and tested multiple times and then one final check. If if falls within an acceptable range the coil ships. If the coil fails for some reason, it simply goes in a discard bin. The discard bin at Whites at that time had a lot of coils. Assembling them is as much art as science and the failure rate is/was pretty high though I have no statistics. And no way to fix economically after the fact, so rather than do that it was better to just make another one. The problem then is the ones that ship. They do vary, and nobody knows by how much since no manufacturer wants to say. I do know that nearly all the out of box failures I saw as a dealer were new coils that were dead on arrival, so that means some do slip though that are completely dead. That also means many must slip though that work but are substandard. To make it worse on a lot of older machines in particular each machine and coil are tuned to work as a matched set. How many people know that a Gold Bug 2 is tuned for the coil it ships with, and every time you change the coil you probably now have a slight mismatch? I have sent GB2 detectors back to Fisher just to have them tuned for a new coil. Fisher probably would prefer I did not post that! I have always wondered how many people out there think Machine XYZ that everyone else likes sucks simply because they got a substandard coil on theirs. I would think a major company like Minelab tries to make coils 100% by machine with almost no variance, but I honestly have no idea if that’s possible. Can a factory production line pop out coils with no human involved? I would love to know but I doubt it. No matter how you look at it, quality control standards must be all over the map, and most of us have no idea what those standards are, especially with aftermarket coil manufacturers. Looking at the X Coil I would say that each one is an individual work of art, with no two exactly the same. I’m not saying that in a bad way... it’s been like that more than people realize since day one with coils. The case could be made that quality hand made coils manufactured by a person with very high standards is a good thing. Right now though probably more so with the X coil than most. Each one is basically a custom made coil. Variance is inevitable. How much? Well if you ever get a bad coil that’s the answer. A lot of variance between good and dead on arrival. Check out this video around the 4:00 minute mark and notice how many times one coil gets tuned. All you need is a worker bee with a hangover or a fight with their spouse on their mind and.... And here is another, also start at 4:00 mark...

Steve’s Mining & Metal Detecting Journal Hi Josh and welcome to the forum. I don’t keep a diary in general, just notes when I am on trips. I have a pile of little notebooks... whatever was handy at the time. Sometimes it’s just notes on a piece of paper. It does not take much. When I got started at all this as a teenager I got in the habit of keeping a tiny notebook and making simple daily notes. Just reminders of key events of the day, note about weather, whatever. In some cases I would get more detailed in geology observations about where I was finding gold. I also have been a photography bug since early on, and simply taking lots of photos can be a trip journal. I normally did both and sure regret the times I did not. There are entire trips I know I made to Chisana but basically I don’t remember them at all since I took no notes or photos. That was revealed to me when I wrote up this thread. There was never a huge plan behind it all but in retrospect it is one of the best things I ever did. Forty years later what do we really have anyway? It’s either memories or nothing. Those notes and photos are far more valuable to me now than any gold I ever found. Sharing them on the internet is a way of insuring they get out there for posterity. Long after I am gone the stories will be archived on a server somewhere. These days it’s even easier. A cell phone can both take the photos and the daily notes, and that’s just what I did on my U.K. trip last fall I really encourage everyone to record any special events via a journal and photos. You will thank yourself years later and regret it if you don’t.

“This is only the 17th meteorite found in Victoria” Nice one, and just another reminder to prospectors that a “hot rock” may be worth more than the gold!

Well let me know your travel plans next year George and maybe we can hook up a bit either in Alaska or Tennessee. Anybody in the Bristol area should leap at a chance to hunt with George.

As to why no small coil from Minelab for the GPZ well it’s like why no 6 x 10 coil for the Equinox yet? Probably the most popular detector in the planet, and an obvious coil option. Coils simply are not a priority at Minelab for some reason. That being the case, if I were them I would help aftermarket people, not hinder them. Coiltek and Nugget Finder had a lot to do with the success of the Minelab PI machines by providing such a wide array of coils. Large coil selections help sell detectors, and that is obviously what Minelab would rather do. Car manufacturers count on tire companies to make tires so they can focus on cars for the same reason. But Minelab is like a car company that does not want anyone making tires for their cars.