Gold Catcher

1 hour ago, Jonathan Porter said:

Normal has a much busier volume associated with the timings as such you will need to tweak the threshold and volumes dependant on your ground type. There is plenty of headroom to compensate for timing variability by using the Audio Smoothing as a control rather than going to the extreme of using Difficult.

Thanks, JP, another outstanding write up! Just to clarify, in cases where switching from normal/smoothing-off to difficult/smoothing-off is considered, you would try normal/smoothing-on first?

Thanks

Great video, Steve. I would also argue that the path to success can be made smoother by the rider learning how to better control and discipline the elephant so it stays on the path. A 6 ton advantage can melt away if the rider is able to overcome the force of gravity. 

Some time ago, I heard a story about a Siemens engineer somewhere in the Midwest who was tired of his job and wanted to make more money quickly. So, he and a few buddies decided to start a business in their spare time and announced they developed a device with which you could hear the voice of god. Within a few months they sold thousands of these devices to firm believers and made a few million dollars with it. It cost them their (real) jobs, but they could retire comfortably. As I said before, (some but not all) people are made to believe in mysterious things and create alternative realities without any desire to fact check. Even more, they get angry and upset if anyone questions their dogma's. Not to speak about politics here, but conspiracy theories and fact distortions are at an alarming rate. For me, it's all good and I enjoy reading these witchcraft stories at times.  

You don't need any rod, sometimes just a good pair of eyes is enoug. Like in this clip. By the way, does anybody know who that is?

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/water-dowsing?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

Read the paragraph: science behind dowsing.

Whether water dowsing or any other dowsing, none of this has any reality to it.

Advice: when posting links about a subject make sure the source is reputable. This one is from usgs.gov

Chet, if you prefer a GPX5000 type smooth treshold, then use Lunk's settings for the 7000. That's as close as it can get.

This is an amazing thread guys, considering that we are in the 21st century. I guess people are made to believe and this has not changed over the centuries. I went way too many years to university to take any of this nonsense seriously. That being said, I totally respect and understand everyone who believes in this sort of magic. The only divining I'm interested in is to figure out the exact specs of the 6000 because I just can't wait.🤣🤣

17 minutes ago, Lunk said:

It's already listed in my “Gear Used”, if that any clue.😎

Same here. Haven't seen one profile yet where the parenthesis "(soon)" is removed. Let's see who does it first! I suspect it will be Gerry... JP does'nt count, of course.

4 minutes ago, Erik Oostra said:

I'll be talking to the ranger boss on Monday to see if a compromise can be reached.. If not, too bad.. I guess I'll have to skirt around the outside instead..

Great plan, Erik. This is the best way to go. I had the same approach when moving up to Northern California and (perhaps naively) talked to the rangers in the state recreation areas. Very nice and polite guys, but as you can image there was 0 tolerance.

3 minutes ago, beatup said:

Yes Debbie did say to Steve and I she was coming back to the gold show in Quartzsite

She better hires security to not be run over by the horde of 6000 freaks...

12 minutes ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

Heck I might even bring a GPX-6000 down and do a little comparison.  Nice pics and thanks for sharing.

Already got one to play with? 😉

6000 is sure thing for me, just waiting for it now

31 minutes ago, Ridge Runner said:

It shows that Quartzsite will have a Gold and Treasure show February 12-14th . Something may have been said before but I’m wondering if there Minelab 6000 will show up again

Something tells me we will have a nice little 200 DP forum member presence there, given the popularity of the last thread...🤣

The 6000 will offer much more automation, hence these different techniques with the GPZ will not be that relevant anymore across operators. Now, the focus will all be on having fun with a light weight detector, enjoying ML's brilliant engineering, and most of all: make enough research about the area where you hunt so you can actually get the coil over gold. That has always been my most important task.

13 minutes ago, jasong said:

Completely disagree. In fact, somewhere at home I have a video showing this isn't the case on an undug/undisturbed 7 grammer that was a great signal at 20, and almost nothing at 10 sensitivity.

Pretty sure I also tested threshold levels and smoothing on or off on that one too. I will look for it when I get back.

I've tested my settings extensively in the areas I work, I am confident that for my area, my brain, and the type of ground and gold I find, I am running as near as efficiently as I can. If I thought differently, I would change the way I run.

That's the beauty of metal detecting. Every operator does it slightly differently but with some general rules that should be adhered to. Where I hunt I need to include small gold as well, 7 g's nuggets are rare. Hence, I focus on balancing different ground conditions mostly by adjusting sensitivity and volume/threshold settings without touching smoothing at all. Sometimes, switching to normal and also to difficult (if needed) helps as well. By the end of the day though the results matter the most, so I found this strategy works best for me where I usually hunt. That being said, in your grounds the way you run your machine delivers best results for you. That's great. You can't argue with having gold in the scoop! 🙂 

2 hours ago, strick said:

Thanks for that info as I'd never heard of it before...where does it come from? 

strick 

Here is a good explanation about the depth/signal strength relationship:

"an increase in depth of 12% will result in the signal halving in strength, and an increase of 47%, that is say 40cm to 59cm, results in the signal being 10 times smaller."

It's in Bruce Candy's "holy bible". I recommend memorizing the whole document like a poem.

😇😇😇😇👨‍🎓👨‍🎓

1 hour ago, geof_junk said:

The old rule you need 64 times the power to double the depth so a little power reductions will not reduce the depth much at all, but will get rid of the noise.

Complete agree. I can't recall a single time where a target that I heard at gain 18 would not be heard at gain 12 or even 10. In particular with HY/normal/ smoothing off. I hardly ever use smoothing.

25 minutes ago, Randy Lunn said:

The challenge of building a metal detector is optimizing signal to noise. The signal is usually improved by more power and different frequencies to “light up” the gold. Noise reduction is achieved through building “quiet” electronics so no noise is introduced into the system and managing the background noise. Minelab has been granted a patent for “modeling the ground”. The patent covers all possible mathematical algorithms  including several examples given in the patent. This is a clever way of prohibiting competitors from integrating the ground signals into a map of the ground and subtracting out this noise to improve S/N. Minelab will dominate noise reduction through software. Minelab has clearly left the competition in the tailings pile. 

And from what it appears, ML created some really interesting new coils too, exemplified with the 6000 and more probably to come. Who knows, perhaps they start engaging more in coil innovation going forward with the new 14DD being something really unique, to just name a recent example. I have no doubt they could be market leaders in that segment too, considering their expertise, resourcing and ability for mass production. I think Steve talked about that earlier already.  🙂

Stunning, thanks for sharing. These quartz veins look juicy. I would definitely crush some material up and pan out. How deep do these veins go do you know?

I might wait for the 1000 (and compare with the AT.....)

13 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

This thread was about Garrett

I should have included the AT for my comparison question, my bad 😁

31 minutes ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

I'm going to say they are pretty close (closer than most folks realize), but here is where the EQ-800 shines over the Monster.  NOX ID's hot rocks better, can handle mineralized soils better, easily ID's gold better and I know before I dig if it's a 22 shell, 30-06 casing, beer can or coin. 

Plus, here are some other things the NOX does and you can not with the Monster-.  Complete detector is 100% waterproof, not the Monster. NOX is blue tooth wireless, not the 1000, the NOX is software downloadable (very big deal for most of us), but not the Monster.  NOX is a great water detector and I have found ounces of gold rings in salt water.  Monster will puke itself in a salt water (but it was never designed for it).  NOX has adjustable tone pitch to suite ones ears of the sounds they don't hear well.  Not the Monster.  NOX has adjustable recovery Speed to pull nuggets from many hot rocks and the Monster does not.  The NOX has fine tune Ground Balance capability, not the Monster.

I could go on, but feel you get the point why all 9 of my Field Staff own the EQ-800 for Nugget Hunter and sold their GM-1000's.

Thanks a lot, Gerry! That really makes a strong case. I have never used/owned the NOX but I will definitely consider adding it to my fleet. Amazing that there is only such a small price difference, as you have said before.

27 minutes ago, Dan Smith said:

Hopefully this geosense can smooth out some of the noisy ground in my area as I find it hard to work the sdc any higher than  sensitivity 2.

Yes, 2 is usually my to go settings as well, on occasion 3. But the threshold is generally very chirpy above 3. On the 6000 the 14DD is supposed to have a superior ground (-or EMI) cancelling ability, but it will be interesting to compare the 11 in mono on the 6000 with the 8 in mono on the SDC with respect to threshold stability/sensitivity. It takes a while to get used to the SDC threshold.

JP, never been to the "famous" Rye Patch in NV? 🙂

Beautiful gold, Dan! 1/10th of that would be a good day for me with the SDC 🙂