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Reno Chris

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Everything posted by Reno Chris

  1. With the GB2, you get shot half the size of what you posted Phoenix - that opens up a whole new level of little lead targets that the SDC does not see well. The SDC has no problem with the shot you posted, but the real small bird shot is half that size or smaller and the the GB2 really hits those hard. I suspect the GM1000 will also hit the tiny bird shot pretty well too. As Steve says, there is no discriminating out lead without also discriminating out gold.
  2. On the second part - This was filmed at the Phoenix gold show several weeks ago. They did do a question and answer session later that day but apparently that was not filmed. The following week in Puyallup (Seattle area) Bill was not there so for grins I took Bill's place and Kevin and I did a similar presentation which was fun. It wasn't filmed, but probably covered more different materials just because the presenters were 50 percent different. At the Vegas gold show in a couple weeks Bill will be back and I will be doing a separate presentation on dry washing.
  3. The very first published independent review of the GM1000. Yet another first occurring right here on Steve's forum. Yah, so what if its a bogus April fools joke - its still the first published independent review of the GM1000
  4. Who did you purchase your detector from? In Africa there are many fake detectors made in China which do not work and it is a very big problem. When first in Africa I saw a Minelab GPX detector that looked exactly like the real thing. It was fake and did not work. The African man who bought it paid thousands for it and was assured it was genuine. The seller lied to him as it was a fake and not genuine. It would not detect even very large pieces of metal like a cell phone. It is a sad thing, but thousands of African people are being robbed of their money by other Africans selling fake detectors from China which do not work. It is not the fault of the makers like Garrett, Minelab or Fisher that thieves are selling fake Chinese metal detectors that do not work - the fakes are made to look exactly like the real thing so African miners will be fooled by them. I saw many of these fake detectors when I was in Africa - they were everywhere. Some of the fakes work, but work only very poorly - not even close to as good as the genuine detector. Nearly every detector I saw in Africa which was not working was one of the fakes. The fakes cannot be fixed - as the false electronics inside them are all wrong. The Chinese who make these fakes are also thieves and liars.
  5. I only was able to meet him once, but he seemed like a great guy.
  6. Why didn't you fill in the trench behind you as you dug?
  7. Interesting. I'd like to hear how the mono performs on some of the more hot rock infested areas too.
  8. They time ads to go together with the release of the product, but every once in a while the ads proceed the release like you saw for the SDC, but its not the intended result. Its happened in the ICMJ mining Journal in the past too. Part of the confusion in making arrangements with a magazine is cutoff dates for ads and magazines released way in front of their published dates like the May issue of LT coming out even before April 1st. I bet you see a bunch of ads in magazines like the ICMJ and the GPAA magazine after the GM1000 has been released. I just got my March - April GPAA magazine, but no GM1000. The minelab ad for this issue of the GPAA is about the 19 inch coil for the GPZ. I have no idea what will be in the ICMJ for April as I dont normally see all the ads before publication. The fact they have been displaying the GM1000 detector at shows, telling their dealers to take orders and put a couple videos and bunch of specification info on their website makes it a sure thing that the GM1000 is coming. Just a matter of waiting a bit for more info.
  9. Of course there are people who speak English in Africa and even countries where English is spoken widely, but in the part of Africa I visited (West Africa) there were very, very few people who spoke English and many in the rural parts where the mining takes place spoke only their tribal languages and very little French - the common language of West Africa.
  10. There will be plenty of info, reviews and comments AFTER the detector is on the market. That's just how it always works - there is limited info before the detector actually hits the market. Many detectors have come on the market in the past with no pre-announcement at all - they just arrive and suddenly are on sale. Actually for a yet-to-be-released detector, its pretty well known. There is quite a bit of info available on the GM1000 right now on the internet. Its been seen by thousands of prospectors at GPAA gold shows across the west coast from Phoenix to Seattle. Dealers are saying they will have them in April. I am sure there will be plenty of everything you wanted to know about it, but all that info and the official release of the detector is still a few weeks off.
  11. Debbie the Mine lab representative at the recent GPAA Shows has said April repeatedly and a lot of the dealers are saying the same. I think you can rely that it will be April. I don't know what day but even April 30 is only a little more than a month away. Africa is not a place for prospector tourism. You will find almost no one who speaks English. However I can heartily recommend Australia as a fine country with great people and good gold. They have services and cities much the same as those in the US. Plus in Australia they speak a language that is almost English.
  12. 36 C = 97 F Ninety seven is still plenty warm but not unbearable like 110F 110F = 43C
  13. Sounds like a new product is on the way.... If you liked Gold Rush before, you are going to LOVE our new show, Gold Rush:California - now with 300% more idiots!
  14. Exactly what I would recommend. There has always been some sensationalism in the news, but it just seems like they have thrown news and factual reporting into the dumpster for nothing but sensationalism and hype. There will be some good gold found and I expect I will do a good amount of sniping and that I will use my SDC fully underwater in a way that I've not used it yet, but I don't expect to see nuggets lying all over the ground everywhere.
  15. I keep reading stuff printed in papers or on other media that is perhaps at best on the verge of sort of true. They are getting desperate for readers / viewers and seem to want to say dang near anything for eyeballs. I heard some funny stories at the GPAA show of folks trying to sneak into the construction area below the Oroville dam spillway - convinced there will be gobs of gold all around because they saw it on TV or in a newspaper. Here are a few recent story lines: "Gold hunters in the area tell the Chico Enterprise-Record the floods have "rearranged the rivers" and "move things around." That means gold veins that have been hidden for 200 years are suddenly exposed." "According to CBS San Francisco, the floods also swept gold out of abandoned mines and washed it downriver. " "While KCRA reports that gold can simply be picked off the ground following major flooding, the best prospecting will come in the summer months when the water has receded." C'mon gents! We need to head off to those hills if the gold can now just be picked up off the ground. No doubt gravels have been moved around, gold deposited into crevices and new paystreaks formed. But gold veins hidden since before the 49ers arrived now revealed? I'd guess there are not many. Gold washed out of abandoned mines? I'd guess not much. Gold can just be picked up off the ground? I am sure there are a few new sunbakers sitting around here and there, but not many. I do agree that the best prospecting will come in the summer months when the water levels go down and some good gold will be found, but the media is gone bonkers about saying anything to attract attention.
  16. OK, but you are asking detailed opinions about a detector none of us have ever seen and employing a technology that the engineer wont go into exact detail about (for good reason to protect proprietary information). I guess the only answer that can be offered for sure is that we will have to wait and see.
  17. Well, I spent the weekend in Arizona representing the ICMJ Prospecting and Mining Journal at the GPAA's gold show. For those of you who have never attended one of these shows, they can be fun and lots of people to talk with and new stuff to see. I'd guess around 1500 people attended over the two days the show was there. There are all different types of people who range in experience from old hands to rank beginners. I always end up visiting with a lot of different folks - this show was like it was Chicken, AK week in Phoenix. I must have had half a dozen people come by that wanted to talk about Chicken, including a guy who has spent a lot of time dredging on the south Fork and had a bunch of pictures of his gold. Additionally, there was another guy and his wife who own a bunch of patented ground up there and then also Mike Busby and his wife Lou, they specifically said to say "Hi" to Steve. I visited with most of the folks I usually see in AZ, however there were a few missing like Rob Allison and Mr. Barry "Clay Diggings". Lots of interesting prospecting discussions though and nice to see everyone. To give forum members a feel for the event, here are some pictures I took: The GPAA offers free panning lessons to anyone who wants to try - You pay like $2.50 to pan and they give you a free snuffer bottle to collect your gold. Sometimes there were 40 people around these tubs. My booth was across the way from them. They sprinkled gold in every once in a while, and when they did there was a mad rush, kind of like when the plant fish in the local lakes. Steve was there if only in spirit. The American Mining Rights folks were there. As were loads of vendors. This is Jim McCollough's booth - he represents Whites Electronics. Minelab was well represented by many dealers. There was even a rare detector not yet available to the public on display to be seen. There were even fabulous gold gettin' Gizmos aplenty - this is the gold claw pan, a new gold pan design, and the first pan I have ever seen offered in clear transparent plastic. Maybe it was actually transparent aluminum - I didn't look that closely. And of course the ICMJ was there giving away free magazine samples and taking subscriptions for anyone who wanted to sign up. My father went with me and sat in the booth. Next week the show moves to Puyallup, WA in the Seattle area, so I will be up there representing the magazine at the show. If you are in the Seattle area, its well worth coming by.
  18. Reminds me of some of the stuff Steve and I dug towards the end of the summer last year.
  19. Even new stuff that isn't totally new tech can take a while. I seem to remember that Minelab's African focused gold machine (which turns out to be the GM1000) was originally announced for 2016. Accomplishing the changes that get the last 10 percent working right as Steve says is the difference between a marginal detector and a great one.
  20. I can think of a few places where I got small gold with the SDC and would like to try a GM1000. I even have a few spots in mind where the gold is small and I've not found anything with PIs before. I'm also thinking hard rock mine dumps where the gold is often small and wiry, and are commonly filled with bits of nails and other iron trash so that the discrimination would be helpful. I think the GM1000 will be a useful tool for a lot of prospectors, even ones with experience. However Steve is totally right that more experienced prospectors will still be using the GPZ, GPX and SDC for most prospecting - depending on what equipment you own. For me it will be a mix of the GPZ and SDC - with the GPZ still getting the majority, the SDC taking a big part and the GM1000 taking the lead at some specialty spots where its advantages will shine.
  21. It does have a volume control. Even if the threshold is factory set, you can still turn up the volume until you can hear it.
  22. Right - if you look at the chart and not pay close attention, it does kind of look like the curves means that the GM1000 will not see larger gold. After all, on the tiny end of things there is a size so small that it wont see tiny bits - every detector has that sort of limitation. If you read it that way too literally, you'd almost think no VLF could detect a large multi-ounce nugget - but that is not the case. Instead, I think the chart is more to indicate the sizes for which the detector is optimized for. The concept being that the GM1000 is optimized for a wider range of targets in the small gold end of nugget sizes. Like Steve says, there are always choices to be made and trade offs in the design of metal detectors. The engineers who design metal detectors always have certain product goals in mind - different goals result in different kinds of detectors. I think the chart is showing that optimizing over a wide range was an important goal. I am sure that the GM1000 will see larger gold just like other VLFs - no problem there.
  23. I'm sure that down at the river level there were some river gravels that were washed down to bedrock, but I wonder how much gold the hillside above held. The 49ers didn't wash away every hill in the gold country, just the ones with gold. It doesn't matter if you washed away a hillside if its a hillside that has little or no gold.
  24. OK, so there larger coils that I was not aware of. I guess that I spend so much time in moderate to heavy mineralization that I tend to ignore that there are some mild gold locations. With larger coils on high frequency VLFs, you need to be choosy - many locations will have mineralization great enough that you may not gain any depth with the large coils, and its possible to even lose depth with them. However in spots with real mild mineralization they can be useful.
  25. One of the things about VLFs (not just the GM1000, but the VLF technology as a whole) is that VLFs are very affected by ground mineralization. If you have moderate to high mineralization and throw on a large coil, you end up seeing a lot of mineralization and you may find you need to turn the gain way down to stabilize it and as a result, you may not be gaining any depth with your Big Coil (it possible you may even lose depth). High frequency VLFs maximize this effect and make it worse. This is a part of why there is not a 14 or 15 inch coil for the GB2 - even though it is popular and has been around for 20+ years. (Steve maybe knows of a really big coil for the GB2 - not the standard larger one - but I've never heard of a really big coil for the GB2 or the GMT either). I've know guys who have strapped a 15 inch coil on a mid frequency machine like the GB Pro and were disappointed with how much ground noise they heard. Normally to use a big coil effectively, you need to be running a coin machine with a low frequency like 3 khz - fine for coins but not too good for gold. I don't know Minelab's plans with respect for a big coil (like some you see for the CTX 3030) for the GM 1000, but for the reasons above, it would not surprise me if there was no larger coil forthcoming. PI detectors and ZVT like the GPZ are not affected in the same way by the ground mineralization and since mineralization is so common in the gold fields, Thats why I do most of my detecting with a PI (the SDC 2300) or a ZVT machine (the GPZ 7000). There are certainly applications for a VLF gold machine and I've used my GB2 for years. I have some good things in mind for the GM1000 when it comes out, but its not going to replace my GPZ or the SDC.
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