goldbrick

To be honest I could never compare to Klunker with a gold detector. My excuse was I had a good day job so who cares about a couple lousy nuggets? Now that I have recently retired that excuse won't wash. I will either have to admit defeat (which I am loathe to do) or come out on top using techniques that don't call for the use of a detector. After my big find we will have to call Norman "Klinker " instead of "klunker ". LOL

It had been a year since I had a chance to hunt with my friend Strick. We finally were able to get together for 4 days of relic/coin/ring detecting. On day 1 we went to an old standby location (ghost town) we had visited many times in the past. Strick found 2 silver coins, an 1876 and 1877 Seated Liberty dimes in the space of 1 hour. I found a few buttons. Day 2 we took his boat up the Delta to a party beach where I hunted in the water for the first time ever. I had a blast using my CTX 3030 just wading up to my waist. I found 2 silver rings which beat the costume jewelry Strick got so I was the king that day. On day 3 of my visit with him, we were off to a private property in the low Sierra foothills of California to meet up with Strick's friend, the ranch owner, and detect an early gold camp. We have been hunting this area for a few years when our schedules will allow. The last time I was here with Strick he had found a Quarter Eagle and some seated coins while I had only found buttons. On this day things were not looking so great for me as I had only found one nice button and the usual assortment of period trash while Strick had scored a nice cast buckle wreath. We had just taken a break and had compared finds with the ranch owner, discussing the "whatizits" we had found. It was getting later in the day so we went back to detecting. I had earlier got into an area with quite a bit of scattered iron which developed into a nail bed which was obviously the remains of an old structure. So I returned to the heaviest area of nails which was about 250' away from the location of Strick's gold coin, and was carefully searching through the machine gun iron signals when I hear a definite signal but scratchy signal on my Deus. It was jumping around depending on which direction I swung but was repeatable. Just another bullet or cartridge I think as I pop the plug. Then I see about a quarter of a gold coin sticking out of the plug as it crumbles. I didn't stop to savor the moment or reflect on my find like you hear so many times. I started screaming like a 14 year old Valley Girl, " I found a gold coin" and waving my arms at my friends who were a short distance away. The coin was an 1849 Half Eagle. It has been my fondest detecting desire to find a gold coin and now I had realized it. On the journey back to Stricks I looked up the value of the coin as people always ask. I didn't much care as I did not plan to sell it but that is usually the first question from family and friends. I had not cleaned it well or looked at it too closely but I knew it had some wear so I figured a ball park figure of $500? It wasn't until we returned to Strick's place that he was looking at it through a low power microscope and he says" Her headband doesn't say liberty it says Moffat". I had never in a million years ever dreamed I may find a Territorial coin but I knew in an instant that I had just scored the find of my life. On Day 4 we went to a location of an old military base. Strick has taken buckets of military paraphernalia from there and he scored again. I found 2 pieces but they were severely corroded. I would say this has been the best detecting trip I have ever been on due to finding the Territorial Half Eagle. All the thanks go to my buddy, Strick and the ranch owner for getting me on that location. I will ask Strick to post his pics of his finds.

That is interesting. Some detectorists have come down with Equinox derangement syndrome, much to their detriment I think (hint,hint,Strick. LOL). That elliptical coil on the Deus is deadly in pitch mode in relic scenarios.

It looks to use way less water than a sluice which may have some utility in certain scenarios.

I like the Utah tag. I find it interesting that it has the Beehive which was the state symbol and a Seagull which is the state bird but other than that it is very plain with only the embellishments on the corners. Maybe it is home made rather than mass produced? I tried to research this tag but so far failed miserably.

Maybe Mr.Ed.........

Great find. Thanks for posting.

Looks like a fun hunt. The chauffeur's badge is awesome. Congrats to the lady.

I enjoy finding unusual items such as this. Thanks for posting it.

That is a primo button. What an excellent find.

An interesting story. Thanks for posting.

Cool find.

Hi Paul. Congratulations on your Tarsacci purchase. My limited experience with this detector closely mirrors your own. While not my number one choice for either relic or gold nugget hunting I think this detector will be used on a regular basis by me in scenarios that utilize the strong points of the Tarsacci. I don't have enough experience in iron infested relic scenarios to have a definitive opinion about it's performance there. I do think it has much better separation than many may think but depth wise in iron no detector does well so I think I will stick with my Deus in the nail beds. Near the end of May I hope to have the Tarsacci in that hell hole of mineralization, Plumas County, LOL. It will be interesting to see how the Tarsacci performs on steep, blasting cap infested tailings. The ones a GPX will work you to death on. Also in hydraulic mines and in areas hot rocks may be bothersome.

Chuck, you have really been tearing it up lately. My only thought is what magnificent finds you may have produced if you had only been swinging the best detector, the Deus? Signed, Deus fan boy

Hi Steve, I did get a Tarsacci. I posted the following on this forum on February 6th in a different thread- "I pulled the trigger and bought a Tarsacci MDT 8000. Like in the Johnny Cash song I drove right down to the factory and picked it up. Well, not quite, but close. I was only about 100 miles away from Merced vacationing so I made arrangements and drove down and met with Dimitar, the designer. I spent a couple hours with him. First, learning About the Tarsacci, then discussing its mineral handling capabilities and prospecting possibilities, then trying it out. We did some air tests on coins and nuggets and detected some test bed targets. I had my Deus with me so we did some comparison testing. The weather sucked and I needed to haul my carcass up to Oregon pronto so we did not do exhaustive testing but we did enough that I felt confident buying the machine. Dimitar did not pressure me to buy his detector. The detector sold itself. A week previous to this I was looking to buy an Equinox which I am no longer interested in at this time. In the interest of full disclosure I do not intend to use this machine only for gold nugget prospecting. I also enjoy relic hunting so the capabilities I witnessed that applied to both types of detecting made my decision for me. This machine has been marketed as a beach machine. I had about one hour of beach detecting experience up until yesterday. Now I have about 3. I played around with it on a beach in Oregon with a fair amount of black sand and see some decent performance( I think). What I am seeing on the beach is making me all itchy to go some where there is some bad dirt instead of sand. The Tarsacci is an interesting machine. The build quality of the rod is the best I have ever seen, top notch. I hope the rest of the machine lives up to that standard. I don't want to say much more as I just have so little time on the machine. And of course there is the human factor. I just paid a fair amount of coin for this detector so I must have liked it. Not being perfect I am likely wearing rose colored glasses now when it comes to my new toy. If some of you guys are like me where you have just reached that point in life where you have no interest or physically can not dig every target on God's green earth then this machine may be one to follow its journey through the gold and relic fields." Since I posted that I have not been out detecting with the Tarsacci very much. When I have I was at "bed of nails" locations doing some relic hunting, which is not exactly the Tarsacci's forte but it actually does fairly well in that circumstance. Once, I did take it to a pounded nugget location for a couple hours. I would classify the mineralization as medium at that site. I did not find any gold but neither did my partner with his GBII. The Tarsacci seemed to run good at this location. It will be interesting to see it's performance in some really hot ground. I did do some testing of the Tarsacci against the Equinox at Stricks' test bed site. We recently planted this test bed. The soil is medium mineralization in an area of bad EMI. Strick and I planted a half dozen coins at depths which are challenging for the Equinox at this location. We also planted another half dozen coins at shallow depths in co-located with iron scenarios. On every coin that was planted with out iron co-located the Tarsacci was able to generate a better response to the signal versus the Equinox. On every co-located target the Equinox did a better job of separating the targets. I am not saying the Tarsacci could not detect the majority of the co-located targets. Just that the Equinox generated better signals when coins were co-located with iron. I know this post is very sparse in content about gold hunting with the Tarsacci and I don't anticipate having much more to contribute for a few months due to demands of work, and continuing education. One of you retired gents should pull the trigger on a Tarsacci and really work it over in a review.

Redneck, thanks for the link. I appreciate it. While Daniel recommends using a GPX or TDI in hot soil that is not what I am trying to accomplish. I already own both of those machines and will not run them in many areas due to the amount of trash dug because of their lack of discrimination.

Redneck, can you post a link? I can not find this conversation.

Chuck, respectfully I feel the need to say that your theory does not hold water. Take for instance the cost of a CTX at North of $2000. It's pretty much acknowledged the Equinox gets more depth than the CTX. Are you saying that all the people that bought one of those machines got screwed? And as my esteemed colleague Klunker has pointed out it only takes one good find to blow your math all to hell. But I do admire you for having the balls to post an alternate theory. Good day to you sir!

Strick, your killin me.

Gerry, that is quite the coincidence you should happen to run into Dimitar in Mexico. Too bad he had to leave so soon as he is an interesting conversationalist. I wish I would have been able to spend more time learning the intricacies of the MDT 8000 from him as I think there is a lot to learn that is not in the manual. I was impressed that he actually detects for a hobby so he really does "get it" when you discuss detecting with him. I agree with you that a lot of people will likely want to stay in the sub-$1000 bracket when purchasing a machine. That's totally understandable when you have a detector such as the Equinox available. Of course just as a small percentage of people will pay for the performance of a GPZ 7000 I think the MDT 8000 will have it's own niche market eventually if it performs as well as it has at first blush.

Klunker, I probably won't ask you to drive my RZR when I have my Tarsacci in it so we should be OK. LOL p.s. did you buy an Equinox? Signed, An early adopter......

I am copying part of a post by Badger in NH on the Dankowski forum. Will this beach performance transfer over to hot dirt and more nuggets? I don't know but this guys results are certainly interesting. “For the depth testing I had a silver quarter, a silver dime and a medium sized mans 14k gold ring. I had drilled tiny holes in the center of the coins, ran a nylon string through each one and tied a knot on the end. This is to ensure that coins stay flat when buried. I would bury the coin at 15 inches and slowly pull the coin towards the surface a little at a time until it just came into detection range. When I reached the edge of the max depth that the coin could be detected, I grabbed the string where it came out of the sand, pulled up the coin and measured the length of the string. It worked perfectly. The gold ring is attached to the end of a fabric measuring tape. I tested the Tarsacci MDT 8000 against the Minelab Equinox 800. Settings were - Tarsacci - GB 600, SB 26-30 depending on Freq, Sense 7, Threshold 0, Disc 0, Mix mode. Equinox - Beach 1, Sense 23, 2 tones, AM on, recovery 6. To achieve a max depth designation, the detector must have a clear repeatable non-ferrous tone and reasonably accurate numerical ID. Tarsacci max depth on the silver Quarter was 13". Equinox was 10". Tarsacci max depth on the silver Dime was 12.5". Equinox was 9". (All the Tarsacci frequencies picked up the coins at max depth but 6.4 kHz sounded best.) Tarsacci max depth on the gold ring was 13". (All freqs picked it up but 18 kHz sounded best) Equinox had an iffy signal at 11" and 10" but only got a decent tone and ID at 9". I tried radically changing the GB number on the Tarsacci to see what that would do but came back to 600 because it got the best depth. I forgot to test Black Sand mode but will do that another time. So the Tarsacci wins the depth test by a large margin. I am extremely happy with it.” Tarsacci MDT 8000 Data & Reviews

I pulled the trigger and bought a Tarsacci MDT 8000. Like in the Johnny Cash song I drove right down to the factory and picked it up. Well, not quite, but close. I was only about 100 miles away from Merced vacationing so I made arrangements and drove down and met with Dimitar, the designer. I spent a couple hours with him. First, learning About the Tarsacci, then discussing its mineral handling capabilities and prospecting possibilities, then trying it out. We did some air tests on coins and nuggets and detected some test bed targets. I had my Deus with me so we did some comparison testing. The weather sucked and I needed to haul my carcass up to Oregon pronto so we did not do exhaustive testing but we did enough that I felt confident buying the machine. Dimitar did not pressure me to buy his detector. The detector sold itself. A week previous to this I was looking to buy an Equinox which I am no longer interested in at this time. In the interest of full disclosure I do not intend to use this machine only for gold nugget prospecting. I also enjoy relic hunting so the capabilities I witnessed that applied to both types of detecting made my decision for me. This machine has been marketed as a beach machine. I had about one hour of beach detecting experience up until yesterday. Now I have about 3. I played around with it on a beach in Oregon with a fair amount of black sand and see some decent performance( I think). What I am seeing on the beach is making me all itchy to go some where there is some bad dirt instead of sand. The Tarsacci is an interesting machine. The build quality of the rod is the best I have ever seen, top notch. I hope the rest of the machine lives up to that standard. I don't want to say much more as I just have so little time on the machine. And of course there is the human factor. I just paid a fair amount of coin for this detector so I must have liked it. Not being perfect I am likely wearing rose colored glasses now when it comes to my new toy. If some of you guys are like me where you have just reached that point in life where you have no interest or physically can not dig every target on God's green earth then this machine may be one to follow its journey through the gold and relic fields.

Good morning Steve. I was replying to Northeast as you were posting. I did use the search function on this and other forums to access the info you posted above. But thank you for collecting all threads into one easy access list. I may decide to be an early adopter of this technology and if I do I will report on this forum.

Hello Northeast. Thanks for posting, I am aware of the info on the detector advice and comparison forum and I follow Davids posts and videos closely as I respect his opinion. On the Dankowski forum there is one post with 25 pages of discussion, mainly concentrating on the Tarsacci's attributes as a beach hunter but some guys are interested in using it for relic hunting. There may be a software upgrade to make it work better in extremely hot ground such as relic hunters encounter at Culpepper VA. The point of my post here was there is zero discussion I can find relating to it's possible capabilities as a nugget hunter. Where I sometimes hunt in the Sierra Nevada the ground is wickedly hot for the most part. On my Deus the mineral meter is usually at max or very close to it. This just kills the depth on a VLF. That is why when I read about this detector with good discrimination, Black Sand Mode, hot rock elimination, and supposed depth capabilities it piqued my interest. I don't think it is a VLF as NASA Tom stated on his forum the following "The new MD8000 Tarsacci is neither VLF or PI. It is a Multi Domain based platform." I only hope to spark some discussion and learn what I can as I am considering purchasing this detector.