Steve Herschbach

Hi Steve, Good to hear from you again. Be nice to catch up, been awhile. Now that I am wandering the western US maybe I can catch up with you. That is a superb description of all metal detecting with the Bug is hot ground. In low mineral ground it can actually be dry quiet, but get in the hot rocks and it gets to be a very noisy exercise, with lots of mental work going on. It can be tiring so needs to be taken in small steps. I like getting down and dirty with a small location at times, very focused, but most often like wandering far and wide. It all jest depends on my mood. The Bug can also be use in disc mode which although it loses depth and sensitivity is a good way to cover lots of ground without getting distracted by ground noise. It knocks out most hot rocks. Pure silent search and more effective than people believe. I found almost all the gold I found with the Gold Bug 2 at Moore Creek running in disc mode. A Gold Bug 2 in disc mode is still hotter on small gold than most detectors. I have more Gold Bug 2 tips to relate but am on the road today, be home tonight, so more tomorrow. Thanks for joining the forum Steve!

Ha, that makes me sound like Yoda with a metal detector! I do like the Gold Bug 2 a lot, so much I have two of them. One to use and one "just in case". It is my go to metal detector if I am desperate to find gold, any gold at all. If everything else fails, break out the Gold Bug 2 with 6" coil. Excellent finds there Condor! Thanks for sharing.

Hi Skip, Thanks for reminding me. I edited the original post to add: You can find this and many more useful free books on this website at the Metal Detecting & Prospecting Library As new books are posted about here on the forum by myself and others the best get added to the library for future reference.

Well, the forum is off to such a nice start I took a leap of faith this morning and put in a request to upgrade my shared hosting account to a virtual private server account. This will vastly boost the available RAM, disk space, and throughput to way beyond anything I am likely to run into. Honestly overkill but it means a very fast running forum and almost no limits on files, photos, etc going forward. Also quadrupled the cost but I think it is a worthwhile investment and the Google Ads are doing well enough to cover it all so why not? Anybody has ideas or suggestions please let me know. The main focus is for this forum to provide information people can really use. Anything that furthers that goal I will seriously consider.

Hi Paul, It is superb contributions like yours that will help make the forum useful to people. That is my main goal and what I am trying to focus on - information that people can use. I thought of just mating a standard lower rod assembly to the ATX with a sleeve at the control box. Something where the cable would just wrap around the rod but slot the cable in at the last second to make the connection. I hate that inner coil connection area though, in that it is such a pain to swap coils I avoid doing it. It would be nice if a short coil "dongle" could be fashioned, maybe only 6-8 inches in length, to allow coils to be hooked up outside of the inner control box area. What I would really like to see is a dry land light weight ATX less all the waterproof connectors. I am not nearly into mods as much as you are but I want that detector so much I may just get another ATX and strip it down and put the guts in something much lighter, like a White's SL box. In any case, thanks for the photos and extra information. A very sharp looking setup. I am heading to Hawaii in January for a couple weeks of hunting with the ATX so by the end of next month I hope to have a lot more time on the unit and hopefully more tidbits to offer myself. I do like the ATX a lot overall.

I have added a new page with various charts and tables about how to select the proper timings on the Minelab GPX 4000, 4500, 4800, and 5000 model detectors. There is also a set of quick links to owners manuals and more. I have enhanced the charts with excerpts from the manuals where possible and will tweak this page as I have time. If anybody has any tips to add they would be appreciated by myself and others, I am sure. Minelab GPX 4000-5000 Manuals & Timings Charts

The Garrett ATX is a pulse induction detector, make no mistake about it. Experienced detectorists can certainly use the ATX for just about any type of metal detecting, but I always caution people new to PI detectors to think of them first and foremost as "dig it all" type detectors. Any thought that you are getting VLF type discrimination is likely to lead to disappointment. You are going to dig junk, and lots of it, with a PI. They are usually used as niche machines, not all around detectors. I am in a very, very small group of people that use PI detectors for more than just one use.Can I look you in the eye as new to metal detecting and tell you spending three times the money on the ATX as a first detector is a wise idea? Honestly, no. First off, you have no idea if you even like metal detecting at this point! Believe me, many people get detectors and after digging junk for a few days decide the whole concept is a huge waste of time. You say you only have a bit of small gold in your vial. That makes it real hard to recommend you go out and spend over $2000 on a detector that will not even find the gold in that vial. I suggest you hold off and make those club meetings. Learn more about finding gold with a gold pan and a sluice box. If you cannot find a decent nugget with a gold pan then you have to question whether you can with a metal detector either. It really is all about finding good locations and having good gold finding skills. The particular recovery tool involved is not as important as those skills. Go to those meeting, talk to everyone possible, and be honest about the areas you have access to and the likelihood that a detector is a good tool for those areas. At some point you have to decide if you really want to get a detector or not, but do it with all the appropriate information at hand. I still believe a good VLF is a smart place to start for most people in the United States, as they offer a low entry price point and you can find gold with them if you know what you are doing. I can go out this very day, and I have almost 100% certainty that I can use a $700 VLF and be home tonight with gold in my pocket. That is including an hour or two drive each direction to get to a gold location. If I can do that, anyone that is good with a detector can also, if they have access to decent ground. The reason you get a PI is simple. In low mineral ground a good VLF in all metal mode does much better than people think. Where they fall short is when the ground minerals get intense and especially where hot rocks are producing lots of false signals. If the ground you are likely to detect in is very mineralized and has many hot rocks going right to a PI can be a smart move as a VLF will drive you crazy in places like that unless you really know your detecting. Remember gold was found everywhere with VLFs before modern PI detectors came on the scene. But a PI is a huge advantage in many of the worst mineralized locations. There is a school of thought of course in many areas, like the southwest US or in Australia, that would say you should just jump right in and spring for a top dollar PI. The idea is nugget detecting is hard enough, and if you do not give yourself your best shot out of the starting gate you will be hurting your chances of having any success at all, and therefore be more likely to just fail at metal detecting. There is some validity to that idea, but I have to look at myself and what I can do personally, and I have no problem finding gold with VLF detectors. In fact, I have no problem finding gold with VLF detectors where PI detectors fall on their faces and fail. The reality is small gold is far more common than big gold. The best operators can pound areas with PI detectors until they would all agree there is no gold left. Than I can wander in with a White's GMT or Fisher Gold Bug 2 and find hundreds or even thousands of small nuggets they missed. The truth is big nuggets are depleting fast, and even the PI detector people are chasing smaller and smaller nuggets. We are coming full circle and going back to VLF in many places to clean up the common small gold that PI detectors miss. There are very many locations where a new detector owner has a far better chance finding gold with a hot VLF than a PI. I gave myself lots of wiggle room in that long answer. The sad fact is there is no hard and fast answer, no right or wrong in this. If you want to get into detecting for gold, you have to bite the bullet and start somewhere. The quickest way to success is to seek out locals, and clubs are a great place to start. See what they are doing and what they are using. If they all use PI detectors because the ground is bad, and I know the northwest does have very bad ground, then maybe a PI is a good way to go for you. But I suspect you will find successful people in your area using one of the detectors discussed in this thread, in fact I would bet on it. I would be very interested in hearing what you finally decide to do and how it works out for you. I do promise the key to your success will be researching and accessing good locations. No detector made will do well if you can't get it into a good location, so make that a real focus no matter what you do. Good luck!

Hi Paul, That is a very professional looking setup. Would you mind offering any details on the parts used and how you made the shaft assembly?

Thank you JP! Another year older - "sigh". Best wishes to all for a safe and prosperous New Year!

I wrote an article on the subject in March 2013 for the ICMJ Prospecting & Mining Journal at http://www.icmj.com/article.php?id=2349 Gold is not income until sold. Once sold for money, you have income to deal with for tax purposes. You can run as a regular business with profits and losses, or as a hobby, which allows you to offset income with expenses up to the point where you might show a loss. A hobby business is not allowed to show losses, only profits. My prospecting is a for profit enterprise, one that has made me a surprising amount of money over the years. As such I run it as a business. I have a business license and file a schedule C yearly. Been a going concern under a couple different names for over 30 years now. The key is to be serious about running things in a businesslike fashion. I have a business checking account and keep my business spending separate from my personal spending. If you are someone who is actually finding any quantity of gold it is something well worth learning about. Business or Hobby? http://www.irs.gov/uac/Business-or-Hobby%3F-Answer-Has-Implications-for-Deductions Hobby Deductions. http://www.irs.gov/uac/Is-Your-Hobby-a-For-Profit-Endeavor%3F Placer Mining Business http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-mssp/placer.pdf Now that I have retired from my regular day job my prospecting business is now my primary source of income so I am being more serious than ever about keeping a good set of books. When in doubt do consult with a tax expert, which I am not. I used to do my own taxes but things got so complicated the last ten years I just got a good tax guy to keep me out of trouble. Well worth the money, and it is tax deductible!

You will find computer files offer the benefit of being searchable, and you can pack an entire library into the field on a tablet device or even a phone.

You have to love the internet. This book was a rare gem only to be found in libraries or used book stores. Now you can download this classic for free. Anyone with an interest in California gold should download this invaluable reference and study it. The Tertiary Gravels of the Sierra Nevada of California, 1911, by Waldemar Lindgren USGS Professional Paper 73 Download the pdf file here You can find this and many more useful free books on this website at the Metal Detecting & Prospecting Library

Hi Greg, Thanks for visiting and posting that. I think that is just an awesome find. I have found quite a few half dollars but only one dollar coin in all my years of detecting. They have been harder to find than one ounce gold nuggets for me! A beach is the spot however, and punching deep like you did is the way to find that old stuff everyone else has passed over. I have had good luck with old coins at beaches with PI detectors. Anyway, good on you making that find! You have to be patient with the ATX but if you are it will reward you with rare finds like that.

I will be surprised to see any response on that Keith. I doubt many nugget hunters have even heard of the 10.7 kHz Outlaw, let alone used one. Good detector though, should work at least as well as a hundred other detectors. In theory any good detector can find gold. The Outlaw would probably do just fine in tailing piles chasing larger gold. But you know all that already! I would be inclined more towards the higher frequency Vaquero myself. I used it once at Ganes Creek, worked just fine. I did find a nugget with it but most of the trip my F75 SE was getting the use. My buddy George also toted a Tejon to Ganes Creek, also seemed to work fine. In lower mineral ground with lots of ferrous stuff lots of decent coin detectors can work fine. The Vaquero and Tejon at running at the higher 14 kHz though making them a tad hotter on gold.

I visited Ganes Creek, Alaska many times over the years. This was always to metal detect for gold in my case. However, there were others who wanted to suction dredge while at Ganes Creek. My friend Brian Berkhahn was one of them. Brian just loves dredging. Detecting he is good at but has less patience for. So in 2002 while we were at Ganes on a nugget hunt Brian talked Doug into letting him use a 5" Keene dredge they had at the mine. There was a drainage ditch upstream where several large nuggets had been found in the pile of material dug out of the ditch. I was a bit skeptical as the nuggets in the tailings are few and far between, but Brian wanted to give it a go. As I recall he did not find much here, but he does have the distinction of being one of the few guys who have done some dredging at Ganes Creek. He is on the forum so maybe he will chime in with his recollections on this photo.

The MX5 weighs 3.9 lbs and the MXT 4.3 lbs. The MX5 is locked in full time ground tracking and you lose the full range discriminate knob instead having 20 notch discriminate settings. This makes it very hard if not impossible to fine tune the spot where ferrous targets are rejected and non-ferrous (gold) accepted. Just my opinion but the loss in capability as a nugget detector would not be worth the small weight savings. Stick with what you know best and works well until something dramatically better floats your boat. It is interesting that nugget engineer guru Dave Johnson has said he is not fond of automatic ground tracking and has avoided offering it on new Fisher products. And at the same time White's has produced two models recently, the MX5 and Sierra Gold Trac, that can only be operated in full time ground track mode. I rarely use ground tracking myself, but I do like having it there in case I need it, as long as it can be shut off. I was at a Minelab conference where the engineers highly recommended the X-Terra 705 be left in ground tracking mode. Their contention was that most detector owners do not know how to properly ground balance a detector, and more importantly, keep it properly ground balanced. They may get it right at first, but then the ground changes when the operator is not paying attention, and now the unit is not in proper tune. Therefore in their opinion most people were better off in track mode. When teaching newbies, I usually tell them to run in tracking until they learn the business, as it removes a possibility for error. So the case can certainly be made that running in tracking is better than using manual but not being on top of it. White's is probably just aiming to keep the detectors easy to run and less able to be affected by operator error.

The larger of the two is a perfect pendant nugget. And the other one really interesting. Good going Ray!

ATX, TDI, GPX. What is it with detector companies and three letter acronyms? I liked it more when they were called Coinmaster or Goldmaster. At least that gave you a clue about what the detector was supposed to do. The three detectors representing the state of the art in ground balancing pulse induction (GBPI) metal detectors. The Garrett ATX, White's TDI, and Minelab GPX 5000. You rarely see them all pictured together so I thought I would post one. Garrett ATX, White's TDI, Minelab GPX 5000 These three detectors are all very good at what they are basically made for, which is dealing with ground mineralization and hot rocks that make using VLF detectors very difficult. In particular VLF performance is severely impeded in extremely mineralized ground. In low mineral ground a good VLF prospecting detector running in all metal mode can deliver results rivaling PI detectors with the added benefit of having good discrimination options. Anybody doing much prospecting, however, will eventually run into locations where ground mineralization and hot rocks makes using a VLF such a challenge that a good ground balancing pulse induction detector is the only real option. The GPX 5000 represents the current state of the art, and is the easy option if money is no object. It is well designed for long hours of prospecting, has an incredible variety of optional coils, and can handle most any ground conditions with many tuning options. The Garrett ATX provides performance that comes close to the GPX at a much lower price, with the added benefit of being waterproof to ten feet. Actually, this is only a benefit if you need it. Otherwise it makes the detector heavier than need be and limits the available coil options. Still, if the GPX is not an option the ATX would be my next choice in a new detector with a warranty. For those needed waterproof it is the only real option along with its predecessor, the Garrett Infinium. The White's TDI is an older design but still very capable. It costs less than the other two options, and unlike the Garrett it has light weight versions and models that can be hip or chest mounted. It is a good option to explore for those on a budget or needing the most ergonomic solution. The TDI is also a very respected beach detector, like the ATX above, but it has no waterproof option.

The Garrett ATX and the Minelab CTX 3030. Are they an odd couple, or a perfect couple? Here is a side by side photo for your consideration. Minelab CTX 3030 and Garrett ATX The Garrett ATX and Minelab CTX 3030 share a certain similarity of design with coil cables hid inside the lower rod assembly and controls on the end of the handle. Both are waterproof to 10 feet. Yet they are also exact opposites in that the CTX is one of the best discriminating VLF detectors you can buy, whereas the ATX is a dig it all PI detector designed for maximum depth in very difficult ground. They actually do make a really good pairing as they complement each other very well. I am an avid prospector and also a very avid jewelry hunter who needs to be able to hunt in the water. It would be a very hard thing for me to do, but if I had to narrow it all the way down to only two metal detectors, you are probably looking at the two I would choose. I would be making quite a few compromises but the bottom line is I can do just about anything I need to do with these two detectors together, and do it quite well. As it is when looking at the two it really boils down to whether you need good discrimination or not. The CTX has it, the ATX does not.

The only way the White's bolt would work on my Minelab coils is if I drilled the ears out.

No, the White's lower end is narrower and bolt size much larger. It is easier to use a Minelab lower rod, but they are pretty expensive. The rod diameter is the same so they both fit the same in the upper rod assembly. The little locking tabs for White's are on each side of the rod, and Minelab uses one on the bottom of the rod, but you can just ignore them and use the twist lock system.

For those of us interested in large gold a US nickel makes a good standardized test item. It reads more or less the same as a 1/4 oz gold nugget though of course nuggets vary considerably. The advantage to a nickle is anyone can obtain one and they all read the same.

I was really heavy into very late fall and very early spring dredging in the late 90's time frame. This photo is from 1996 and was taken by my friend Rich Lampright. I worked a lot at Crow Creek Mine, which is glacial fed. It runs very high and fast in the summer when the glacier is melting. The best time to dredge is in the winter months when freezing temps bring the water levels down by over 50% and the water starts running crystal clear. It also made for some very cold dredging at times, but properly outfitted with a good drysuit you can stay surprisingly comfortable. Usually. Funny how some days I really was cozy and others it was just plain cold. I could operate well down to about 15 degrees. Below that, and the water literally froze in the sluice box while it was running. I resorted to subsurface dredges for the coldest spells as the box being underwater did not freeze up. But even then you see weird stuff. Ice crystals floating in the water build like snow drifts of slush behind rocks on the bottom, and giant balls of slush form on the pump intakes, eventually plugging them. Why suffer this you ask? I was seeing multi-ounce days working by myself. I took a lot of gold out of Crow Creek; even after paying a percentage to the owners it was good. In fact the best dredging I ever did. My best day in there working a 6" by myself was over 8 ounces of gold. This was my favorite dredge, my old Keene 6" with twin Honda 6HP pumps. This model was made with a molded marlex powerjet in two pieces - the jet and the flare. The jet and flare assembled was about six feet long but I could just toss it over my shoulder and carry it in one piece it was so light. The dredge had a stout frame with a lever handle leveling system, far superior to the later slide the box back and forth nonsense. The box was a well built single run sluice that I preferred over later double-decker designs. I never should have sold it. I did however, to Brian Berkhahn, and he also got a lot of gold with it. And I know he now also regrets selling it. It was the best Keene dredge I ever owned. Mark Keene told me they stopped making the marlex jets due to a high failure rate with the process but they should have either fixed the process or just charged more to make up for the failures. It was an incredible advance in the technology, and amazingly after all the years of use the inside of that jet never showed more than light scuffing. I think it was actually more durable than steel jets. This photo is first thing in the morning, breaking away all the ice that has formed around the dredge overnight.

My first gold dredge! After seeing a guy running a suction dredge at Crow Creek Mine south of Anchorage, Alaska I ordered my first dredge in early 1973. I had never seen a dredge before, and this guy was wearing a wetsuit running a 4" dredge about chest deep in the water. He saw my interest and shut the dredge down, pointed at the first riffle, and there was more chunky gold than I had ever found. I was hooked! I got the dredge direct from Keene, only way I could get one back then. Knowing nothing about dredges I saw no reason why I should spend extra money to get floats. I figured 2.5" was too small and 4" too big so a 3" must be just right. I learned a lot with that dredge. The first thing I learned is when you put it on bank with powerjet way above water it is nearly impossible to prime. And that when you finally get it primed, the entire hose will fill with gravel, then everything stops. Once I took the 15 feet of hose off to shake all the gravel out, and did this maybe three times in a row, I realized the dredge cannot be operated more than a couple feet above water. In fact, keep the place where hose and jet meet at or below water level for best results. Which made finding a place to use it quite a challenge. You need something like in this photo - a nice rock or pile of rocks or sawhorses next to water. This basically eliminated almost all the places I wanted to use the dredge, so this photo was the last time I ever dredged without floats, way back in 1973. You pretty much have to have them as a suction dredge that does not float is very limited. I did not find a lot of gold here but found my biggest nugget to that date. I think it was only like a pennyweight but it seemed huge at the time. Photo taken in Wrangell Mountains, Alaska on Skookum Gulch.

SPOT is owned by Globalstar and operates on their satellite network. It is a very popular and inexpensive device. I believe they are one way communications only - you can only send messages but not receive. inReach is on the Iridium network, which has better coverage, but the main thing is the Delorme device offers two way texting. I found a good review/comparison here http://www.wildsnow.com/8245/spot-inreach-satphone-review-delorme/ For what it is worth I had zero luck with the Globalstar network in Alaska. I tried one of their phones and never got a signal at Moore Creek, so went with Iridium and have never regretted it. I hear Globalstar is rebuilding their network though so maybe it is better now.