Jin

Ok, this is going to give away my lack of real-life gold hunting experience. I've heard two different responses to this question so I'm left a little confused and hoping someone can clear this up. My question is: In most cases would the larger pieces of gold travel less and be closer to the source and the smaller pieces travel further away? (this is what I would think would happen) On the few occasions if found patches I've found the larger bits were closer to the shedding reef but have sometimes experienced the complete opposite with some of my bigger finds a lot further down the slope. (maybe two different sheddings? ... they say that a reef at one time may have been a lot higher, so gold shed at different intervals may be in different spots) For those that have found patches what has been your observations? Cheers Jin

I did sort of enjoy my self. The beach was absolutely magnificent. Just digging 3-foot holes when your so weak from not eating enough was why I gave up so quickly. Plus i felt i was wasting my time because of not being able to discriminate properly with the GPX. Also, i would imagine if your digging 3-foot holes in the sand then a shovel would be better. My small size pick didn't really scrape out much so it felt like I was digging forever. I managed to find a thin strand of wire at reasonable depth so I was pretty happy knowing that I wouldn't miss much if it was there. As we try to get away with the caravan every 4 weeks I'm going to be alternating between the beach and gold-bearing country so ill have another crack at beach detecting another day. I would have loved to detect around the swings/toilet block and bbq area there but didn't bother because of EMI. I'm guessing the equinox would be good for that. Something I haven't done yet is actually read any of the forum posts about beach detecting so know very little about it. Time to read up I guess.

Yes, probably why I didn't enjoy it that much. Digging in the sand with a pick that's designed for digging hard ground didn't help. After 3 or 4 (3 foot) holes id had enough. Plus was on a diet for the last month and energy levels were nearly non-existent, so got really tired after digging a few deep holes. (lost 7kg in 3 weeks so far) Won't give up on the idea though and will try again when I have more energy and have a detector that has a proper way to discriminate rubbish.

Tried out beach detecting and didn't like it. The beach was pretty clean so not many targets. Found a few metal bottle tops down around 650mm and a can that was pretty deep. Decided to do the water line when the tide was out but the sand kept caving in and filling with water which drove me mad so I walked away not retrieving anything. Only spent about 3 hours at it then packed the detector away for the rest of the trip. Maybe a proper detector with discrimination would be better but for the moment I think gold hunting is what I prefer. Can't wait to get back to digging in real ground, not sand. Next time ill take fishing rods as there was plenty being caught off the beach.

Decided to offload all my gold. I've never sold gold before and not sure if you just approach a gold buyer and sell it for whatever they're prepared to pay. Obviously, it will be less than the gold price and also less to account for impurities. Now I don't have any wopper nuggets to sell but just curious if my two 16gram bits would be worth more if I sold them privately, say on eBay or on a gold prospecting facebook page? If so how do price them?

Gold Depth is always relative to Ground Noise - Minelab Treasure Talk- by JP https://www.minelab.com/anz/go-minelabbing/treasure-talk/gold-depth-is-always-relative-to-ground-noise

Thanks Mitchel, Not expecting anything great out of the gpx as its really built for gold but at least I know now that it works on sand.

Taking the misses away caravaning again and seeing that the last two trips were too gold-bearing spots I decided to take her to the coast instead. I've never detected beaches before and until I get the new equinox will have to settle on the 4500. I'm assuming the gpx will work on sand. Would I use the salt timings? And what about ground balancing? would you turn that off? The other question is coil choice. Go with a DD and use discrimination or don't bother and dig everything. Only got 2 DD's. the standard 11" and a coiltek 24" Would a mono coil work? I've got a 13"x17" nugget finder that's waterproof. The place where staying at isn't popular so I don't think the rubbish levels will be like most beaches. Of course, ill try and keep sand and moisture out of the gpx box.

Got to be happy with that.

Thanks for at least confirming my thoughts JR on the wash meeting the sea idea. Wonder why I was told people detect at certain levels if there is no particular contour level for prospectors to follow? Anyway, from now on I'm taking notes on the different contour levels i find gold at to see if some sort of pattern forms.

Something I heard recently, was many prospectors don't detect lower than a certain sea level in a given area. Well, that was news to me and I said to the guy that told me "at what level would that be?" He said different levels for different areas. ( he said around 260 meters above sea level for the particular area we were in at the time) I then meet someone else who said: "yes that's something that some people follow." He explained his theory but unfortunately, I only grasped half of what he was saying. I've been thinking about this and wonder why the levels one would detect at would matter. *Originally a lot of Victoria was underwater (ocean). I'm not sure if all the sea water had departed from the area before the period in which gold was being formed in. The only reason I can think of, is if the water was still present then as the gold got washed off the hills and came into contact with the water it slowed down immensely and the gold dropped out and stayed at that sea level. Just like when a river that's skinny widens out the flow slows down and the gold drops out. The other idea and along the lines of what the second guy thought was that gold cools at different temperatures than other metals and when it reached the level that was covered in water it cooled down at that level and formed in the host rocks. Anyway, hope this isn't a stupid question and someone could explain it a little better. (I asked someone else and never got a reply so I thought id ask here.)

In one of your videos JP, Bruce Candy said that when you get up over 20" that the magnet field in the ground starts to play havoc (or something like that)

So the outside wires are the Tx and the inside wires are the Rx? Was reading up on concentric coils and found this one. 41" and almost $4700 when converted to Aus dollars. Wonder if it could be made to fit the Gpx. Quote: Nexus Standard MP V2 equipped with the 41" (1.04 m) Carbon Fiber concentric search coil forms the deepest induction balance metal detector set on the market today. Many companies claims their detectors are the deepest, but when it comes to depth only one factor counts - absolute size of the search coil. Our 41” Carbon Fiber concentric search coil is by far the largest of all coils meant for use with hand held metal detectors.The 41” Carbon Fiber concentric search coil is extraordinarily light, in fact the lightest for its size –at only 1070 grams.

Hi Nenad, I do have a DD 24" and have tried it in sharp before just not on ground known for deep nuggets. Talking about a larger mono (22" coiltek) coil, reminded me of a video that showed the difference between Enhance and normal timings on big gold.

Well done. Brilliant all round coil. Pings the teeny ones, gets the bigger ones and covers lots of ground with each swing. I like your thinking on working the benches above the creek. Something I'm going to do more of myself. Thanks for sharing them pictures

I agree with Steve about the research and prospecting skills side of things. It's something I spend every day doing. I'm either researching or learning how the old timers looked for gold and how geology plays its part in understanding where to look. The thing I wanted to know was am I wasting my time detecting areas that were known for deep gold as newer detectors aren't really punching any deeper than the older ones, (sd2000) especially the detectors that were made or modified to get around the government emission laws. I think Reg has answered my question. Of course, there's the chance in those areas nobody got it all, but I think my time is better spent in areas of less attention as I just haven't had much success in the flogged areas running a large coil. Last week I was in the exact spot that the prototypes found good gold. Detected all around that immediate area for nothing. Got me thinking maybe there's no gold left, maybe my detecting skills are poor or maybe this gpz4500 just doesn't go as deep as their detectors did. When you don't have years of experience under your belt all you can do is ask, hence the reason for the original post.

I was reading the Australian Electronic Gold Prospecting Forum today and noticed a post about detector depth. I was wondering what others think about today's detectors compared to what was available 25 years ago. I read somewhere that (Woody) the guy that does mods to detectors thinks that for outright depth the sd2000 still goes the deepest. I wouldn't know as I've never owned a sd2000 or a gpz7000. Anyway, i found the comments at AEGPF interesting and wonder if anyone here has actually done a depth comparison between the zed and sd2000. Heres the snippet from AEGPF Quote from AEGPF: "The deepest Pi detector ever developed in my opinion was a prototype SD2000 that BC modified for the late Jim Stewart.BC slowed down the clock speed to give a very long pulse and made some other unknown changes to the circuit to cope with higher currents etc. At the time the SD2000 came out BC stated that it was at about 95% of the maximum potential depth that any handheld PI could ever achieve (and still pass emission standards). However, the deepest PI that has ever been made for gold was Corybns detector which detected a nugget of around 10oz? at 3 feet in depth in WA. Somewhere on the forum is a reference to it and I will try and find the link when I have time. "What is interesting is that the deepest nuggets ever detected by a Pi was by a detector used in the early 1980's in WA-Corbyn's wheeled detector! Pictures of it and the depths of some of nuggets he found with it can be seen in Mike Wattones book: Quest for gold.NO Pi detector today could match the depths Corby got on at least one nugget! (4cm nugget at over 36" in mineralized ground)"

Hi JP, Thanks for the advice regarding lowering the audio. [The key to using the B&Z with headphones is to lower the detectors audio so you can lift the B&Z volume above 2 1/2.] I think from memory I used to lower the audio to around 8 (GPX4500) when using the booster and headphones, maybe it should have been lower. I'll still be keeping my B&Z booster for my twin headphone setup. As I prefer one backpack to be set up with speakers permanently attached and one without which I use with headphones. I gave the SP a run this week but its probably best to leave any comparisons to more experienced people than me.

Oh, I hope your only joking and Jr isn't in trouble. I originally started my post with "Reg might be a little angry JR that you are giving away too many secrets" But thought id better not. I've read pretty much every post you have written on the internet and learned some pretty valuable things from you also as I have from others. I find when I come across people while detecting that are new to detecting I like to stop and help them if I can. A couple of times though I told them too much and they also found gold that I should of. Doesn't really bother me (would if it was over an ounce) but then again I don't rely on gold for my income.

Thanks JR, another bit of prospecting knowledge I learned today (pipeclay story).

A belt clip and charge light would be good.

Yes, I agree, I am becoming a bit soft, lol. I think I'll give the log a miss, actually the log and the lizard.

Hi Jim, Looking at your photos I don't think my wife will rough it that much. And she hates the cold. My daughter and I have only managed to get her to go skiing once and she said she'll never go again. We went camping once when we were first married but she didn't like that there were no toilets/showers and a powerpoint to plug in the hairdryer. Probably my fault I never set up the campsite properly. The next wife I'm going to make sure they like the outdoors first before marrying them. (only joking - lucky this one has stayed with me for 30 years) The new camper has all of the mod cons and she loves it. I'm just happy that i might be able to go prospecting a little more often now. When I find my next patch ill let her have detect and hopefully the thrill of finding a piece of gold on her own makes her want to do more prospecting. Either way, it's nice having your partner tag along.

Thought id do a little test in the front yard. We have power lines not far away so its Cancel mode or nothing with the 4500. Tried them with the Gog headphones and had to wind the audio right up. The Gogs are 150 ohms so need a little bit of extra drive power to get the best out of them compared to lower ohm headphones. The sound was pretty clear on a 1gm nugget (color). Next, i used a pair of Aldi noise-canceling headphones. They were louder and I didn't have to wind the volume up as much. Overall though if I was looking for gold the Gogs are crisper and in previous tests, against 3 other types of headphones, i found them slightly better by a margin at hearing targets the others didn't. My wireless receiver has a mono plug but I noticed that the cable supplied by Steelphase is a stereo plug. I'm not sure if this is making any kind of a difference until I read the manual or do some testing with the cable supplied. Its raining atm so i didn't compare the B&Z but I did plug the headphones directly into the 4500 and set target volume at 14. Could barely hear the target compared to using the Steelphase. So big thumbs up so far.

My sp01 Audio Enhancer arrived today in the post. I've been using a B&Z booster and have been happy when using it with the twin speakers setup. When using the headphones though I felt the quality of the sound wasn't quite good enough. Overall though the B&Z has been great. When I heard about the Steel phase I thought the extra audio features might make the signal clearer when used with headphones so I bought one. As always Nenad is a pleasure to buy from. Always polite, punctual and lets you know whats happening after you've purchased and waiting for delivery. I've included a few pictures of the Steelphase next to the B&Z just for size comparison. The other units you see in the picture are my wireless transmit/receive units. Hopefully, they work as well as the did when connected to the B&Z. All going well ill get to try it out next week.