Lunk

Great find Steve, looks like you are really getting to know the Gold Monster...congrats on a fantastic day!

Thanks for posting that article, Steve. I've been fascinated with particle physics ever since being shown a film about the atom in my 6th grade class. It would be interesting to know how much gold will be in all that rock that is going to be removed.

Haven't weighed them yet, but since most of the nuggets are flaky-thin, I'm guessing closer to 3 grams at the most.

Summertime just doesn't get any better than swinging a beat-up nugget patch with old friends and new detectors. Shout out to Steve in Idaho and Shane; let's do it again soon.

Looking forward to it, Steve.

JW, I was flipping back and forth between manual sensitivity 10 and auto+ sensitivity (12), since the falsing wasn't that bad.

Decided to take the Monster out from under the bed and up into the hills for a couple hours today. Used JP's recommended procedures outlined in his Minelab blog and it worked very well. Also taped the coil lead of the 5-inch coil to the shaft very close to the the coil as posted elsewhere on the forum. While it didn't completely eliminate the falsing that occurs in max sensitivity when bumping the coil, it was greatly improved. Altogether, the Monster located a dozen flakes of gold this time out. The total weight is 2.5 grains, or 0.2 of a gram.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I feel your pain, JW; I once dug 4 ft (1.2 m) only to find an old tin pail waiting for me at the bottom of the hole...or was it a shaft? In all the excitement I nearly forgot to turn my device's location services off before snapping some pics, lol.

I managed to get the mighty Zed out to the hills today for a short hunt in some old Tertiary bench gravels. The ground proved a little too troublesome for the Locate Patch Ground Smoothing in High Yield / Normal, but by turning the Ground Smoothing off and changing to Difficult Ground Type I was able to nullify the ground response. It was only a short time before the WM-12 alerted me to a warble of moderate intensity. Switching back to Normal Ground Type, the signal became a solid, strong hi-low response which led me to believe that a respectable gold nugget was hiding below, but more likely it was just another piece of corroded square nail like the countless others I've dug at this particular location...only one way to find out! After blasting nearly a foot into the ancient gravels with my pick, I struck bedrock and the target was now screaming off the edge of the coil; definitely a promising sign. One final strike of the pick and the target was out - a chunky nine gram bit - in my book, a fat quarter ouncer. As an added bonus, there was a smaller, point seven of a gram piece in the dig pile. Happy Hunting!

Can't miss that hint of yellow! Nice find LipCa.

Got out to the hills for a couple hours today to have a play with the new software update on the GPZ 7000. Straightaway went to a spot that has variable hot ground that is noisy in the Normal Ground Type setting. The new Ground Smoothing with the Locate Patch option selected almost completely eliminated the ground noise, while still retaining really good sensitivity. It wasn't long before the first target revealed itself with a crisp, obvious response. Only an inch or so into the weathered quartzite bedrock, out popped a small, thin nugget: Next I hit a patch of variable ground that was really noisy; in fact it proved to be too noisy even in Locate Patch, so I turned the Ground Smoothing off and switched the Ground Type from Normal to Difficult, increasing the Sensitivity to compensate. The noisy ground completely disappeared, and within a few swings I had a nice solid target. Three inches down was a chunky, ragged little piece of gold: The new Semi-Auto Ground Balance Mode didn't seem to have much effect in the variable ground that I was hunting. Since this Mode fixes the X-balance, I assume it's meant more for uniformly hot mineralized ground types. The new Salty Soil Ground Smoothing mode was very chattery, even at low sensitivity levels and with Audio Smoothing set to High, so it's very susceptible to EMI, but to be fair I was in close proximity to power lines. All in all, a great update that provides more tools for the GPZ 7000 toolbox.

Mitchel, while I'm assuming your question is rhetorical, I can think of a lot of places the new upgrade will come in handy, chief among them being the damp alkali soils of the Rye Patch region. I'll be testing the new functionality of the Zed tomorrow in some hot spots.

Upgrade complete...thanks for the post Steve!

I should add here that the hot rock elimination seems to work best at the auto sensitivity setting of 11.

Thanks Randy, Even the tiniest pieces give a crisp response close to the coil, however at the edge of detection depth targets give a weaker response and many times only in one direction of the coil swing. These kinds of targets won't activate the gold chance indicator until the coil gets closer to the target.

Mitchel, when the Monster is swamped it gives a distinct overload alarm so that you know to back off. And the iron discrim is excellent. As far as how the Monster copes with hot rocks and ironstones in particular, see my previous post on the subject here:

Thanks JW, Yes, coil falsing is an issue at max sensitivity. I believe that the sensitivity boost of the Monster is so great that current coil technology simply can't handle it; I hope that Minelab are working on a new coil design that can. In the meantime, using the Monster helps one to develop excellent coil control, which never hurt anyone's detecting success. ?

Thanks Mitchel. I cut my prospecting teeth using a Gold Bug 2 back in the day, so the Monster is a pleasant and user friendly vlf blast from the past in a futuristic kind of way for me.

After taking delivery of my new Gold Monster 1000 a few days ago, I was finally able to get out into the hills with it this afternoon. Most of the ground I detected was mild enough to use the deep all metal search mode and a manual sensitivity of 10; other areas were pretty mineralized but tolerable using the sensitivity plus setting. Pictured are 3 nugglets and 3 flakes recovered with the 5-inch coil.

I'm using the GPX shaft and coil mounting hardware on my Gold Monster. The telescoping shaft has always been a favorite of mine; since I'm a shorty, I can adjust it to just the right length. And instantly collapsing it to easily fit in the truck cab is a plus.

Hey that's exactly what I thought too!?

Minelab sent one to me after I purchased a GPX detector a while back - was a total surprise. I use mine at the soils and aggregates lab here at Allwest Testing & Engineering, where I work during the summer months.

Ditto.

Great finds Randy, congrats!

I should also add that when up close and personal with a large metal object, the Monster emits an overload alarm similar to that of the Fisher F75...a surprising feature that I was not expecting.