jasong

The first week the GPZ came out I was posting here about the importance of running in Normal anytime you can. Before Steve's ultra hot settings I was advocating very similar things for quite some time prior - only difference being I prefer to run as hot as possible while still remaining stable because I think EMI is the #1 largest reason targets are missed.

I got told also here among other things back then the first few months the GPZ was released...I believe the phrase was..."running hot is a young man's game". This was in AZ, in soils people want to insist require really conservative timings, but IMO often do not. 🙄 But it's a struggle to get people to listen if you are younger than them, it seems sometimes.

Anyways - in my experience the CCs aren't quieting the soil down for me, but they aren't making it worse either. They definitely are quite a bit deeper. This 22CC + GPZ is by far the deepest setup I've ever run, and I am wondering if it's actually deeper than something like those Mothership drag coil setups people are considering. 

I could detect my Hermit pick at the top of my head (I'm 6ft), and it's quite a lot less metal than a standard pick. I think I could hit it at about bellybutton level or slightly above with the stock coil. This this coil is substantially deeper than the stock, and still very sensitive to crumbs. The next time I use it I am going to have to strip all the metal off my pack (leatherman, crevice screwdriver, etc), not carry my pick around, and see if a bit of the salt signal might actually have been metal on my body.

I tried contacting Chet to see if I could compare to his drag coil setup while I'm in the field but no luck. But my feeling is this may actually be a better option than a drag coil unless a person was using something much larger than the Mothership coil to drag. In salt I'm not confident of that statement though, as it's like night and day going between the GPZ and 6000, the 6000 slays salt and so using a machine like a 4500 or 5000 with the Salt Coarse setting on a drag coil may be interesting in NNV, where I think COBill may be interested in using the drag coil setup? Just using PI in general over ZVT probably deals with salt better.

This is the problem with just going with advice like "SD is better for drags", you really have to tailor your equipment for your individual environment. Australia is not Northern Nevada, etc. Just take stuff out, experiment, and figure out what works best for the environment is always a win.

Knowledge of where big gold was found, and access to it is more important than any detecting equipment IMO.

Because you can always just use a mini excavator...

Anyways I finally used the 22" CC today. It's not as heavy as it looks, feels about like the stock coil. I used it in NNV, and the soil is moist here about 3" down, making the GPZ kinda difficult to use since there is heavy salt here. This coil being large makes the salt, as expected, even worse. It's not easy to use, but neither is the 15" CC.

That said, I took it down a wash that once had the nicest crystalline nugget I've ever found. I stupidly sold it for spot, and for years I've taken every single new coil and detector here hoping to find its brother. There are no targets left with any other coil combos.

I found a 0.4 grammer with the 22cc here, but that was all I found. It was 7" deep, an ok target, repeatable but weak. I thought that was crazy good, so I measured in air and it's getting at least 10" on this little crumb in air, but honestly maybe as much as 11 or even 12"?

This thing is crazy sensitive for being that large. I didn't get this coil sent to me for free, I traded for it. This thing would clean up in AZ, its a bit of a struggle in heavy salt in NNV though. 

Saw this WM09 coming down the pike, I'm out of the loop, not even sure what the WM08 was for, let alone this one. Maybe it's old news? Or for some entry level machine? Or the 08 needed some kind of upgrade like lower latency?

I know a lot of people can't hear the latency in BT headphones but I definitely can and it drives me crazy, so maybe just updating that?

But really, I just wanted to hope it means a new detector is coming. 😄

5 hours ago, cobill said:

@jrbeatty I've been thinking about finding bigger deep gold in the US and recently heard about a 6 ouncer found with the GPX 6000 in NV. The old timers found alot of big deep gold in AZ and NV using analog SD 2100s, GPs and 18" coils, but they never had access to larger coils like we have today. I keep reading your exciting big lunker posts and those from @Reg Wilson, lots of good stuff! I'm planning for 2024 and wanted your insights before taking the X Coil CC large coil leap. This post is now over 2 years old, any thoughts you guys can share or updates from Australia?

 @jasong I was wondering about using the 22" X Coil CC in NNV, since the RX coil would limit searching in tight rocky/brush areas. I also read on X Coils FB page that you have to overlap swings alot to insure good ground coverage. I was also curious about it's ability to locate big deep gold and would you be able to run in General or Extra Deep with Normal Ground type(for  max depth). Definitely a BIG investment ($2,100 AUS plus a Western Union transaction) for one heavy 1300 gram coil!😁

Have you had a chance to run your coil in NV or AZ yet?

@1515Art 

I haven't run the 22" CC yet but I will very soon. 

My feeling is the 17"CC was deeper than my 4500 w/25" NF. On everything up to half Oz anyways, never found anything bigger with the CC, and my experience with the 25" was not extensive. 

The 17" CC did ok in NNV. It did awesome in AZ. I think the 22" may be slow going in NNV but I will see.

Simon, you should ask Garrett if they'd either sell you an Axiom for a reasonable price in NZ, or send you one to use at least.

I'm curious how these coils do, how the discrim works compared to the stock, etc. Seems like many that bought Axioms are either not very active posters, or mostly newer people though so I'm not sure if there will be much to read, at least not in depth WRT nugget shooting like I know you'd write.

It's gneiss. In particular that sort of texture is called "augen gneiss". 

Streak test those crystals. 

Looks to me like a mishmash (ore, if you prefer). Something like an altered chlorite or greenschist for the gangue maybe, the colors seem congruent with hematite and limonite staining. Crystals my first guess would be pseudomorphs. Hex being either hematite coated quartz, or something after quartz. Cubics being hematite after pyrite/magnetite. 

Other minerals like chalcocite, sphalerite, etc readily form pseudomorphs after things like galena or whatever, if there are other metal ions available, so the mishmash can be even more complex to ID just from a photo as some of them can be cubics too or any shape really as a result. So in these cases, you really need to research the mineralogy of the specific area to get a good idea what things might be, and that would be up to you to do. But my first thought looking at it is some sort of mishmash ore, and since a lot of mineralized zones in Australia are old greenstone belts, greenstone of some sort would be my first thought for gangue rock.

Almost looks like an eclogite, but I don't think it is, still check and see if that kind of thing is found there maybe?

Everything I've said is 100% guess.

Looks like melted (and then broken) glass to me. 

That looks natural to me too, for many of the reasons already stated by Geologyhound. Also agree it's something metamorphic, and appears to be a crack filling, but that I'm not certain of, especially if it's a gneiss or mylonite. 

 Not sure if the "slots" are differential weathering or some sort of cracking due to stresses (physical deformation, differential cooling effects, etc).

Leaning towards cracking though, and would guess from heat/cooling where the whole thing was heated and the central "vein" part cooled at a different rate than the outer material and caused internal stresses and thus the cracks. Potentially in unison with existing physical stresses already existent during cooling, causing the cracks to follow a vague pattern perpendicular to the principal stress direction. As a result, I'd guess that rock probably came from an area with mountain building or tectonically active at some point long ago in the past. 

2 hours ago, dig4gold said:

I wonder if the 17" on the 6000 is a bit like the 19" 'dog' coil was on the 7000. Hasn't lived up to expectation. I can imagine what a nightmare the 17" would be like on the 6000 with the shaft twisting. I think I would be scared of breaking the shaft.

D4G

An apt comparison IMO. 🙂

Difference is that it was assumed or said the GPZ couldn't really benefit from larger coils since it was just so ultra sensitive to begin with - and that was not true as X Coils showed. However, I do wonder if it's true with the 6000 to some degree. 

2 hours ago, Jürgen Beyer said:

So it's aluminium?

If you did the specific gravity test accurately then yes - it's almost certainly aluminum. Streak color matches too.

Probably some melted piece of some junk that got water tumbled/worn later. 

For nuggets of mostly native metal the most important test is specific gravity. 

Volume via displacement is too inaccurate and prone to error by laypeople. Much better is weighing the displacement of water with a scale accurate to 1/10th gram. 

Place a container with water on the scale, and zero it. Then dangle the nuggets on a thin string in the water. The weight on the scale is the weight of the water displaced. Water is 1 qg/cc so the number on the scale is your exact volume in cubic centimeters. 

Divide your nugget weight by the volume and that is your specific gravity. Do it accurately and your mystery should be solved. 

Looks like calcite or barite. Barite would be noticeably heavy, calcite would feel like a normal rock weight.

Where you can see your finger through the crystal on the 1st pic, place that part over a book or newspaper and see if the text doubles. Calcite is bifringent. Calcite also should react with acid whereas I don't think barite will.

I had to look twice at that pic, I think there is some forced perspective happening making that snake look bigger than it is. I see prairie rattlers 5-10 a day some places here and I've never seen one half the size it looks in that pic.

Still a big one for sure either way though! 

Not interested. My time and experience are valuable. If they want to pay me a reasonable wage for my time, gas, and experience then I'd be interested. Otherwise no thanks, and I already know what companies pay because I've declined a few of them already. 🙂

They want to pay a reasonable rate in return for time, experience, and gas, I might take those "opportunities" more seriously. But I'm not retired, my savings are not large, and that's only an opportunity to a person who has the means to essentially pay a company to work for them.

The thing I'm curious about moving forward, if we are still going to get new machines, is who exactly they are going to get to field test them now.

Steve has retired from testing. And these companies have made zero effort to try to contact any of the younger set of experienced detectorists, at least none that I know of, and most the detectorists I actively work with are under 50 years old now so I figured I'd have heard something by now. Maybe it's different in Australia? Or maybe they just have part timers testing? But it seems like Minelab is pretty much completely ignoring the needs/desires of the age set of users in the US that are going to soon become their prime demographic, as if intentionally. The only company that has really ever not felt like they were ignoring people under 50 was X Coils, who to me just seemed eager to get their products in anyone's hands that wanted to use them. 

I guess there is still JP but his silent absence leaves questions, no clue if he's testing machines or just lost patience with forums. I know in my case I've lost pretty much all my desire to post to the gold specific forum, but for my own reasons. 

My worry is that we are going to start seeing new releases from companies with little input from actual experienced field users. Who's Nokta getting to test? Maybe for an under $2k PI then whatever, but if it's for premium machines then this will be a massive let down to me if they start releasing pro-grade machines without putting them in the hands of people that know what they need for daily use, and are capable of identifying the quirks and errors that might seem tiny to an engineer but can be make or break for a daily prospector. Last thing I want is to drop big $ on another ML machine just to get some EMI crap that makes it literally unusable, despite less experienced people insisting it's normal or fine. If that happens again, I'm done and gone. 

53 minutes ago, phrunt said:

It's sad to see the 5000 go if it does, that ends the mainstream aftermarket coil market for Minelab detectors except for sanctioned limited in shape, size and type of coil designs, in other words Minelab has full control of what can hit the market to suit their agenda. 

 

That market ended in 2015 when the GPZ was released.

Wether the 5000 is sold new or used doesn't make much difference now in terms of coils, no one has given serious effort to develop novel new coils for it since the spiral wound coils came out, 8 years or so ago. In any case - anyone who wants to make 5000 coils can still do it wether ML sells them new or not though, so nothing is changing there by axing the 5000.

I would have a hard time believing after the X Coils thing that Minelab wouldn't release an 8000 with a stock sufficient range of coils, or a 3rd party manufacturer already in the wings. Because really all they need to do to make a significantly better machine is two things: 1.) Concentric coils and smaller coils 2.) Lighter. 

I think they'll have some kind of coil selection. Unless it's a new type of detector again, using new types of coils. Really just a GPZ with a 15" concentric is enough improvement to be a new model, performance wise. Make it lighter, bam, GPZ 8000. So, I have to guess they'd include coils. Update the electronics to modern stuff, reduce EMI, got a good machine I'd buy.

The 6000 doesn't have a lot of coil selection, but it doesn't really need it. Honestly, I could probably never truly need anything more than one coil on it, personally. Similarly, 90% of my detecting with the GPZ is with an 8" and a 15" CC. The 4500 I hauled 6 or 8 coils around with me everywhere, thankfully no longer need to do that. The model/idea of needing tons of extra coils itself I think is getting outdated.

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

Well it looks like at least part of this is coming to pass.  At least one reputable MD equipment dealer is announcing the imminent discontinuation of the GPX 5000 (and taking the opportunity to put out a buy 'em while you can pitch). 

Best thing I've heard all day, if true. Hope they axe the 7000 next. 😉

Will be interesting to see if they are able to exceed the performance of the 7000+X. Given how much time they've had, and how seemingly easy it was for those guys to make good coils, I'm personally expecting great things. JP has been missing so long online too that I'm guessing they have been doing some seriously extensive field testing. I'm not ready to jump on the "detecting tech is at a dead end" boat myself yet like a lot of others are, and I still want to see what else we can get. At least one more time anyways.

If we have to cut a few old trees down to make light in the forest for the new growth, I'm all for it. 

Thought slag at first glance, but it appears to have some silicification occuring in the pore spaces. 2nd thought would be something volcanic, but zooming in I'm not sure about that either.

Looks more like something which had some mineral oxidize/erode out of it. Then water deposited that silicified/agate-y looking banded substance? Not sure what the rock itself is since it's so vuggy, porous, stained, and covered with secondary mineralization that it's hard to guess. 

Not sure if ore-type mineral, or something sedimentary. Could still be something volcanic too, with secondary mineralization. The geology of the area it was found in would probably lend clues.

I suspect an error in one of your tests. Describe your specific gravity testing methodology. Do you mean 10.5g/cc? There is no single mineral that meets the criteria of all your tests that I'm aware of if so. 

Despite being extremely rare, and even rarer yet in that size, it can't be sperrylite because it's streak is black/gray and that's a test that can't really be messed up, yours had no streak. It's also usually disseminated, or displays crystaline structure when not. Someone would almost certainly know what they had and where it came from (or was purchased for big $) if it was something like that too.

54g does seem heavy for the size it appears in the photo though. But I still suspect something, somewhere is wrong. I still think it's silicon. It lacks cleavage and crystalline structure, it's macro amorphous. It appears to lack oxidization. There isn't much else out there that meets the observable properties, at least not stuff that I wouldn't have to look up and figure out, which would be pretty rare and unlikely the original owner didn't know what it was, where it came from, or purchase it to begin with.

I've watched people try the Archimedes method with specific gravity tests and come up with 5x error due to bad measurements, math, or improper method. I would start with verifying that and then redo/verify other tests from there if 10.5g/cc is correct. 

Ever seen all the "broken down chip readers" on card machines in gas stations, etc that have a hand written note saying to scan your card because the chip reader is broken? After 3 credit card #'s getting stolen I got suspicious about those and started wondering how it is that so many chip readers seem to break down yet the swiper part magically never breaks.

It's because they don't. The easy to buy card skimmers work by taping over the existing swiper. The chip reader requires you to insert your card into the machine and it can't be faked without faking the entire machine. So they say the chip is broken and tell you to use the swiper instead, where you CC is stolen. 

Sure enough, I went back to the Loaf N Jug where I strongly suspected my last CC was stolen, and I used the chip reader despite the "broken sign". And lo and behold - it wasn't broken. 

It's these ones, here's a vid I found showing basically the same thing. I refuse to use any machine that says "broken chip reader" now. It's almost certainly employees stealing #'s. Something to be aware of today.

If there is no sulfur smell, no streak, and it can scratch glass then I'd say it's probably synthetic and likely to be silicon, google "silicon metal". It's not a real metal, it's a metalloid.

The fact that you said it conducts electricity "poorly" and was dense made me think galena since galena is a semiconductor. But pure silicon is actually a semiconductor too. And will conduct heat poorly as well. It's not particularly dense, but usually people say a rock/mineral is heavy when it's really about average density. 

Do a specific gravity test. Did it smell like sulfur when you drilled it? Hardness? Streak color?

I'd guess galena offhand but it seems to lack the typical cleavage planes, but you know how to do the basic tests to ID it, need those results otherwise it could be a lot of things based off the info/pics here. 

An RV is a game changer for that lifestyle, even a small lightweight one like 14-17ft. The shower/heat/ac/fridge/toilet make it so much more comfortable, especially since you are out working all day. You can get one for like $2500 down in AZ if you look around for deals. I can't remember what you are driving for tow capacity, but I had a Tacoma back then and it hauled a 20 footer ok in AZ/NV (2x leaf pack plus airbags). The Rockies passes were a bit tough, but doable. 

You are detecting a lot of the same places I spent time in when I was doing it full time. It's going to be a grind man. It was a grind 10 years ago and it was still possible to have 1-2 ounce days occasionally back then and find patches that could pay for a season of gas/food in one punch. Commerical mineral exploration (ie, extending outside of just gold) is the only feasible way I see to make a semi-comfortable living as a prospector today, and is the inevitable end game for anyone seriously trying to pursue field exploration as a job. Unless you own or have access to some primo land with an excavator to mine on. Just my view having spent the better part of 7 years doing the same thing, in the same places, and learning a lot from the experience. Might want to start expanding out from nugget detecting only, grab an RV, get good cell data and a computer, and start a mineral exploration business. You can make more with 1 good discovery you sell than 10 years of detecting.

*also wanted to say: yes NNV gold has a lot of silver. But find the right places and some of that gold sells for many times over spot, so it's actually worth more. GB/LB gold has horrible refinery returns, grab a good 20x loupe and look at some "solid slugs" of it and you'll see why. A lot of it has tiny grains of quartz imbedded all through it. More often with GB than LB, but seen it on both. It also has a lot of quartz/limonite inclusions in general. I sold almost all mine for spot or 5% under spot because the refinery returns were poor on it and it was easy to saturate the collector market demand. 

BTW, here is a piece of massive epidote from Wyoming. This one isn't water polished on the outside like your unknown sample is. This is a face cut on a rock saw. 

But it's very similar to what you have. I know this particular piece is epidote (and quartz+limonite, the "gold" bits) because I got it XRD'ed. 4 company geologists didn't believe me but I was positive, so I sent it to a lab on my own dime.  The company paid me back after the results came in. 

It looks pitch black. But flake a thin enough piece off and the very tips of the edges will will be dark spinach green under intense light. A cell phone flashlight isn't sufficient, it needs strong, direct light and a thin edge, I used a gemologist flashlight. 

These massive epidotes also have "imposter" cobbles that look identical via all macroscopic tests, still a mystery to me. They are something else...haven't XRD'ed them yet but they are some partially metamorphosed epidote, quartzite, or amphibole. Metamorphism can leave stuff as a total mishmash. This is why I say these sorts of cobbles can be mysteries forever unless you get a real XRD analysis, even XRF won't help. 

If your sample doesn't scratch with a knife (scratch the outside where it's polished a bit and not rotten), then I still think this is the most likely answer. But I'm not 100%. Maybe something else in the Epidote Group minerals (clinozoisite, etc)? Potentially serpentine/amphibole groups if scratches easily with a knife. 

There is also the somewhat less interesting option that it's just some kind of chert. But it's fracture is what led me away from that at first.