Andyy

That is interesting, Jason. I agree with you on the sharper response and to be quicker to go from 0 to screamer. But my 10" was nothing like a mono, at least on the smaller nuggets. I specifically, remember testing this on the 0.1 grammers and trying to find out where the gold was between the blade signals. Maybe that mono sound was more for the grammer plus sizes?? I know there are a ton of people interested in the SDC to 10" coil comparisons. I need to get my hands on someone with an SDC to test this. Maybe in the next couple weeks or so, I can do some convincing with a friend of mine. I believe testing should be done with sizes .25g and lower. This is the world of the SDC. (not that it can't go bigger..I know it can)

Jin - I guess I could see something like that working. But let's say someone could make a chip. You would still have to drill a hole in the housing of the ZED to have an alternate connector exit. Then you would have to create a bypass switch or board to switch between the coils. Possible for a good electrical engineer. Heck, look at what is done to the GPX modified units. They modify the housing. I guess the housing mod just seemed more hardcore to me. At least if I messed up my coil with this mod, I could buy another for much cheaper than my machine. But I still like the line of thinking. I was originally considering that you could just get the mating pins that connect to the GPZ for the ML connector (on the coil end) and insert the hot glue around them (when connected to the ZED unit) to make a poor man's connector. I have done this with Garmin GPS units and it works great. But Jason clued me in that for these connectors it probably would not work. After further investigation, I could see that there would not be a lot of material for the mold to hold structure/shape. So, I still don't see another workaround other than what the Russians are using. My .02. But it is fun to try to find other solutions to the puzzle.

I don't know how he could find anything without a working detector. Then again, do you really need a detector to find gold in Australia? It's just lying around everywhere. I am only joking, Mitchel. LOL. I know how hard you worked. Condor too, I am sure. You guys are both hardcore. I hope to get there some day.

I hear you. For the size of gold in my area and my limited time to get out, 5 oz is great. When I add up my yearly nuggets, I am aiming for 1.5 to 2 oz. Pitiful. But darn if it doesn't keep me trying harder. But, yes, I know the expense to get to Australia is great. And as the others have said, the experience is priceless. Besides, I never include gas costs in my weigh-ins. Condor shouldn't either. Hey... it's how you tell the story.

I'm backing off a bit, too, Rob. 105F, even at night, is draining. I just wanted to get some general testing done. Did you tell me you sold your SDC? Hope not, I was going lend you my Xcoil to compare to it.

No, I wouldn't touch it anymore. My folded back signal wire made it very snug for my case, as I probably used too low of gauge wire but I got it to work. You can add a piece of rubber under the clamp if you think there is too much room. But I just wanted to bring it to people's attention that are building the connector themselves. The final clamp has a very important strain relief purpose. This is not covered in the detailed instructions, but it should be. This has got to be tight.

I think that if you open the case, you void the warranty. You don't necessarily do that if you use the 19" coil to create your patch cord. After further thought, I believe I made an inaccurate statement earlier. The glue or any other potting compound does a good job at holding it tight and distributing tensile forces throughout the connector. I would double check the strain relief clamp on your connectors. That needs to be tight so that you won't get any pull on the pins. Really crank these down. I should have mentioned this earlier. When built properly, even a tight coil should not pull out pins. That is why these strain reliefs are put in place. If your strain relief (connector clamp) was tight, then the second most likely point at which damage can occur is when the soldered assembly gets crammed through the connector tube. It is tight. And there is no real way to check for an open circuit. All you can check for are shorts/continuity to other pins .. which you hope and pray you don't get after getting it all together.

Yeah, I made sure to tin the wires before and put flux on all connections. When you do this it will help prevent cold solder joints, remove oxides, and makes the solder job much cleaner as the solder kinda pulls everything into position. Also, I put flux in the cups and dropped in a short piece of solder wire. After doing this for each of the 5 positions, I went back and heated it to get a nice bead in each cup. If you do this, first, the tinned wire will drop in the puddle cleanly when you reheat the cup. As for doing the RX wire last, that is definitely a good tip. I started at pin 5 so I knew for sure where I was at and then worked around back to pin 1. So for my cable the RX shield and RX signal were done last. That was just dumb luck on my part. And getting to stretching the coil, I tried this over and over as well. It did not work. If it did, I would expect the manufacturer to add this to his step in the manufacturing, before shipping. If not monitored, this could definitely cause people to damage their patch cables.

Good tip, Norvic. When I ran into this, I looked all over for wire in my truck's tool box. Now If I were clever like you I probably would have just used my shoe laces!!

Jason - first off, I'm glad you added to this thread. It will be helpful to people who might later be interesting in getting coils to the US. But I am really glad you found that RX cable that came loose. That must have been a mess to fix. The wire being small was difficult. I practiced on a bit of coil I had to make sure I had a method to not damage too much of the fine wire, while removing the sheath. You will cut some fine wire as it is nearly impossible not to. For the fine wires, I ended up grooving the sheath with a Stanley razor knife, a little at a time. Then I could lightly pull on it to disengage it the rest of the way. This just worked for me. I found that my sheath cutters were not reliable. As for the fat coil cables, yes … very frustrating. But I eventually found I could twist the middle shaft to get it going. Every once in awhile I would need to break it into three pcs. But usually just the two. Norvic may have a good idea about pulling it up (which stretches it and minimizes the diameter). Pushing it through is a definite no-go. The whole changeover takes a little more time than it should. Expect more time wasted if you did not buy the lower arm to put on the coil.

Hey Flak, please don't get me wrong. I agree in part with you and hope I did not ruffle your feathers. My main opinion on this is that the SDC and GPZ are an unbeatable combo. Like everyone else, I would just like to know how much closer the 10" coil gets us to the SDC. I have seen what an SDC can do, for sure. I do believe the ZED technology would beat the SDC if there were an 8" coil. But 10" Xcoil on a ZED, I am not sure. I just want to get closer. And quality is a great concern of mine, as well. I just hope that when the one Russian carved everything out and wrapped the wire for my 10" Xcoil, that he was having a good day. The point about .. why pay a lot of money to get smaller and smaller gold? is definitely valid. The small coil is expensive and will take a while to pay off. I have been out twice and still would need about 9 more trips to come close. (at my current rate) But since when are we into prospecting for the money? My goal is only to more often have a glimmer of gold in my hands to show my family... maybe with the hope that I look a little less crazy at the end of the day. Andyy

You have a good arguement, but I know multiple people who own both the SDC and the GPZ. There are people paying for both. I was almost one of those people. ?

Mystified? Madtuna answers it right below your post … :) I don't know if it would compete with the SDC, but my guess is that it would be close enough. The 14x13 in my opinion gets the same size gold, just a little shallower. Now you give a smaller coil and that SDC has competition. Minelab probably doesn't want to compete with other products that are still going well. My .02. Andyy

Hey Coota, nice work!! I had to laugh a little bit because they looked like turds at a glance. But man, those are going to be gorgeous with a little scrubbing. Gorgeous gold turds. I'll dig turds like that all day and night. I digress.... Sweet work all around!

Nice gold, Norvic! I lost two picks before I learned to really keep tabs on it. I even put yellow reflective tape on it every other 2 inches so that I can measure depth more accurately. It can still be tough to find in the day time … but at night, o man …. it reflects the light like the eyes of a mountain lion. You'll always find it. Hmmm.... now that you mention it, I should put some on my WM12. I've almost lost it a few times.

Very nice, Rob. You're killing it!

Ditto. It really sucks if u don't get a lower shaft.

I clip mine to the handle with a plastic dring and a zip tie.

We know there can be problems with ferrite balance in some situations and we dont know if there is necessarily a cure for it yet... other than to use the std coil first to set ferrite and then switch over. Another option was proposed to try up and down QT over the ferrite but nobody said it cures the issue. Clear? Good. Let's move on please. I would like to keep this thread informative.

Now that is the little jewel I was looking for. I don't know why I have not heard of this before. Thank you for clarifying.

Yes. And you cannot press the QT button. Basically, when manual is put as the user button, and you select it, it just freezes everything. I don't think it could possibly get better depth unless we are missing some circuitry question, like you said. Thanks, Dave. I meant to try your method this weekend but the Saturation signal was not bad in this 3rd area. I did use this method but for this soil, any method would have balanced the ferrite. ---------------------- But getting back to the original point of my post, I do not think going to manual can get you better depth on future targets. Just my opinion. When digging targets, I go from Semi-Auto to manual, just like everyone else. But if there is an additional advantage to using manual, I would like to know.

To be honest, I have never used manual, other than to click over with the user button so that it stops tracking ground balance. If you left the unit in manual then I understand you have to press the button, in which case you are quick tracking every time you press the button, correct? Maybe your point in operating in manual is that you do not ever press the button. You just switch back to Semi Auto if you think ground balance is needed. If your X and G are calibrated properly, you believe that more depth is achievable? This is confusing to me as I would think the machine reading and balancing to the current changing conditions would give the best depth all of the time.

Maybe when it cools down. At 112F, not many people are getting out. Very few go out at night like me.

Well now, that would be interesting. You see, competition is a good thing. Even if people do or do not like the Xcoils, it forces Minelab to react. Everybody wins.

**** TRIP 2 **** The main purpose was actually to test ferrite balance in saturated ground, but I wasn't going to drive back to the first areas I spoke of. That is way too far for some simple testing. I have another area where I found my first gold patch. Strangely enough it was on a GPAA claim. Who would have thunk. Those claims are beaten down and squeezed dry, right? Me and a friend both laugh about this place. We very often go back to the general area to beat down the skunk. After getting out to the claim at midnight, I set up the detector. Surprisingly, ground balance was fine and so was the ferrite balance. So much for testing that. Next best goal for testing is to determine if the 10" coil gets gold missed by others. Well this place has been hit by every machine you can think of, including the VLF's. Well after checking the main hillside area, I had nothing. Only one boot tack I found that everyone missed. Then I headed down to the stream where I had found gold before. Lots of pieces had been found here. But the area had been worked hard by drywashers and detectors, too. My buddy with an SDC2300 basically cleaned this place out. Last time I was here, I got the skunk. It was starting to look the same this time. But then after hitting the sides of the wash, I got clear signal. And by the way my rule for this hunt was that I wasn't going to get down and dirty and make the gold appear by using the tricks of the trade like digging out areas and moving rocks. I wanted to see if got what other machines had missed, not what other techniques had missed. But nobody should have missed this signal. There actually seemed to be a couple signals. The first two signals were the biggest pieces. But I kept hearing more and more signals. I dug down another 4-5 inches through the schist and pulled out another 4pcs for a total of 6 (all of which in a 2'x2' area). I had hit this specific spot before and found gold about 10' away. But here I am with more. I am not really sure how the larger pieces were not heard with the GPX5000 I used previously down this wash. So I still have no conclusion on the ferrite ring other than I know I can use the other coil to lock in the ferrite balance, so I am not too concerned. Does this coil find what other machines cannot see, well that is hard to say. I know SDC,GPX and GPZ's have been over these areas. I think a lot of the gold on the hillside patch was gone over. I may have just been lucky on this spot. But it *is* strange that it was not far under the bush or hidden or difficult to reach. Anyways, not much to conclude with this test other than this coil operated smoothly at this location and still finds gold. I do really like the small pinpoint accuracy of this coil and how light it is. Not very big gold (total of 2 grams), but I am only showing it to give an idea of its capability in the states. It does seem to add an inch or two depth on the .1g pieces. This is what I would expect for a 10" coil.