Gold Catcher

Pretty cool Steve. I guess I can deal with the frustration if I every now and then go back to my old spots to convince me that I can still find gold. It’s the old saying: either one step away from a million dollars, or a million steps away from a dollar. I would be willing though to go a million steps for a million dollars 🙂

Guys, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the following: Old wisdom says that gold can be found where it has been found before by others. Following this "rule", I have mostly been hunting in areas that are well known for their gold deposits and that have been heavily mined by others. This has worked well for me and I have found decent gold over the years (although I always could use some more...;). However, lately I am more and more playing with the thought to explore areas where there are no known gold deposits recorded. Here in California there are many areas that are not explored by others that have the potential for gold. I am trying to locate these areas by for instance comparing the geological maps with those maps of known deposits. By inspecting these maps I sometimes see geological formations on public land that are virtually identical to those where gold mines are located, but they have never been mined or claimed before. This happens more often in desert areas where there is a lack of water and perhaps therefore the old timers where not all over it. I am sure this is not typical for California and the same potential for "undiscovered" bonanzas exist all over the world. So, what do you guys think about such adventurous new places? I would hate to be skunked every day for weeks and months while exploring potential new areas, but I can't help the thought that it is nearly impossible for the old timers to have caught every single gold bearing area.

Thanks, Steve. Perhaps I just got unlucky the first dozens of times or so when digging tailings piles. Amazing how much trash I found. But I just got my GM recently and was using only PI before, so starting with VLF with iron meter and then switching to PI is the smarter choice for tailings piles, as you suggest.

Agreed. I dont expect something major on the technoly front that is comparable to the PI>ZVT leap. However, I could imagine some major improvements in the versatility. A new ZVT that is foldable and water proof, with more coil options and iron probability meter. That would do it for me. I like to hike into remote areas and the SDC is the only option currently that fits into my backpack. Can't drag the Zed around for long difficult hikes.

Yes, I use the gold monster. Equinox is a good idea, unfortunately I don't have one. What I find mostly here is tons of iron trash, mostly tiny bits of screen wires (hair thin), drywasher nails, etc. Without meter and chasing down every bit of trash with the Zed is a complete nightmare. However, the GM has brought me look although not anywhere close to the pounds of gold that Steve found.

Steve, do you usually use a PI for tailing piles? I completely agree that tiling piles are worth while looking for, just not with a PI or ZVT in my experience given how trashy most of the piles are (at least where I hunt)

It's always being said that hunting tailing piles, and header piles, is so effective. I can't speak for others, but in my experience this has rarely paid off and mostly is a giant waste of time. With sensitive pi or zvt detectors you will spend most of your time digging out trash. Really fun to recover tiny screen wires with the Zed and the 14 in coil. VLF and iron meter with small coil is the only way to be productive here in my view. I know this may sound provocative to some 🙂

I usually use my VLF with iron meter for tailing pile hunting. Using the Zed will drive you crazy unless your hobby is junk digging 😉

Unless the new detector has the potential to find more gold than the Zed in its current configuration, I will not buy it. Weight alone is not worth another huge investment for me unless there would be a significant advsntage in the field.

And since the GPZ is not a PI it would not be a new ZVT replacement....

This is a great reference, thanks Steve!

In my view the sdc is designed for a smaller coil with the intent to find shallow gold in mineralized ground. In particular, in grounds where the standard VLF's fail. I don't think it was ever meant to be a "gpx type" machine that performs reasomably well accross many coils. It is a specialized machine that works just fine with the 8 inch round. If I move away from"sdc territory" I much rather switch to my GPZ as opposed to reformat the sdc to something that it would never be anyhow. Just my 2 cents

The SDC is a great machine and has found me a lot of gold over the years. I mostly use it in washes and to screen vertical walls (breccia, etc..). The signal response is decent once you get used to the noisiness. I run sensitivity usually at 2, sometimes at 3, rarely higher. I also use Nenad's Steelphase which works great for the SDC and gives me about 20-30% more target ID's. Pinpointing is easy, thanks to the 8 in round coil (just lift up and tilt). I also like to hike a lot to remote places, so having a detector that folds and fits into my backpack is great. The weight balance is not ideal and I end up using a bungee fairly quickly. Regarding the Zed, I still love this machine, even with the 14 inch that everybody seems to hate. I think more coil options would be beneficial, but I hesitate to believe that just switching coils (like on the GPX) is always leading to the same optimal ZVT performance overall. I am aware that ML is heavily criticized here, and I don't want to comment on that. However, I do believe they do have great engineers and I would hesitate to trust aftermarket solutions that may or may not be aligned with the overall engineering concept of the machine. Once ML comes up with something I will buy into it, not before. That is just my personal preference. Like I would never trust aftermarket tuning of a car to get 100 more HP if that would not be balanced with the rest of the engineering. The Zed still finds me gold after all.

I use both the sdc and the Zed. In high yield/normal/smothing off the Zed is an amazing machine that will find gold so small that even the sdc will hardly find ,especially in difficult ground. Note: you will need metal free boots!! Both machines have a different target profile with respect to the ground your hunting. In the open field the Zed is King by a large margin and superior over any other Gold Detector that's out there

We have several places like this in California. One example is part of the Anza-Borrego Desert. This was a training camp in World War 2 but also where the ancient Colorado River deposited the legendary Black Gold before it was diverted millions of years ago. But you have to be suicidal to swing the pick there.

Agreed and this problem will always remain, its part of the game. But a few less deep holes dug at 100 deg F would make the experience more enjoyable...😀

Magnets help only for surface trash. What I dont want is to dig 1-2 feet holes only to find iron trash. At this depth the gold is likely > 1g so a probability meter might perhaps work.

JP, exactly. Something like the ferrous indicator on the GM, just a more refined version perhaps. It's up to the operator to use the ferrous indicator wisely, and some might abuse it. However, I found that the indicator works well once the target is close. It has saved me countless hours, especially when hunting in super trashy areas. Without some sort of clue what you are digging hunting these places would be a waste of time. If the holes that I dig with the Z would only be half as deep as I dig them now, only to recover iron trash, this would be a huge time saving.

Perhaps not real discrimination, but how about a smart processor (supercharged version of whats in the GM) to make better bets? That, combined with more coil options and lighter weight, would make a nice "8000" However, I personally don't find the weight of the 7000 to be a problem, it's easier to handle than the SDC ( which I still love!) over a longer period of time. I also use the guide arm on the Z on a regular basis, that helps with the weigt and it's also good for coil control. Interesting would be how the 7000 would be positioned after a speculative "8000" launch. There would have to be some real differentiation to the 7000 to keep both flagship gold detectors on the market, unless they pull the plug on the 7000 which I can't really imagine. Oh well, the rumor mill will spin quite a bit on that topic

Steve, thanks for this topic. I would be willing to pay $12k (or more) for a machine that punches as deep as the GPZ and discriminates for iron (and lead...?) with little or no sensitivity loss for gold. I live in the motherlode country where most areas are so loaded with trash that the only remaining detecting option is to do VLF-bedrock hunting with ferrous indicator (not necessarily using discrimination though), i.e. GM1000. I am certain that so much more gold could be recovered here if such a detector would exist, and 12k would be paid off in no time. However, I do believe that this is an academic question. I am not an electronic expert, but I do not believe that identifying gold a foot deep in iron and lead-littered trash is possible at all without significant performance loss. Hopefully, I am proven wrong one day!

Very cool, thanks for sharing. I am in the Mojave Desert often. Fantastic landscape with many Placer deposits. Has brought me good gold over the years. Too bad that most of Death Valley is off-limits for prospecting.

Was even in his last you tube video, we were hunting together with James (another friend) after the outing. I was the only one not finding gold though that day, kind of embarrassing....;) But Bill only found one (beautiful) piece, so I did not look too bad 😉. Should have taken my SDC to that place. The 14 inch coil of the Zed killed me, digging out many of these 0.05 inch wires....But was a fantastic day on a private claim, the area around there was beautiful!

Bills outing was absolutely awesome! Was totally worth the 720 mile drive down from SF

Nice!

Nice finds, BillDean. Just picked up a Monster myself, to compliment my fleet (GPZ, SDC).I plan to use it over the weekend. A good VLF machine should be in the armamentum of everybody. For my VLF needs I thus far used the GB2, but the Monster seems to be a more modern version with good processor, albeit lower frequency. Did you use the little 5 inch coil?