1515Art

Rail Dawg, I was on the preorder list and had one of the first US shipped GPZ's when they were first released. I'm not aware of any problems affecting a large number of units, I did have a screen issue where two thin dark streaks appeared across a part of the display screen although the unit had also been dropped hard enough to crack the case and bounced around in the back of my car on a few rough roads. MineLab gave me a new 7000 on warranty with no questions about the abuse, I think a few units had the screen issue and may have shown up in the ctx as well, but I don't think it was something widespread and the problem is obvious when the detector is powered up. GB was tough in some small percentage of conditions with the first software version but the software updates have made great improvements. That's my experience, it's a great detector only wish I was as good as my mineLab...

See, bad idea.

I looked for one with a detector...

Yea, congratulations!!! Great little nugget Tom.

I'm guessing Merton prime rib would put yak anything to shame. coincidentally my wife said Chinese news was covering a story on a crisis at Napa lake, seems the fish are to well fed and overcrowding is causing some big problems, to many big fish...probably don't want to swim there, you might not get very far.

I'll agree also with what has been said, I've used both the Deus ($$$) and whites SST and they both performed surprisingly similar taking into consideration the limited settings options on the SST. One super easy and one small light and complicated, I wish many times I still had the whites it was fun to use and performed great at my local parks and beach.

Deft, you will have a blast in China and if you can speak a little mandarin it'll be easy getting around and people will want to talk to you a lot, they are curious to learn as much about western culture as possible and take every opportunity to study English when they can. There are opportunities teaching English if you talk to the right people, I've met people over there that have supported themselves for a couple of years teaching English and some of them I know did not speak much Chinese. I've been to a bunch of different areas and one thing in common everywhere is how hospitable most everyone is, only downside to all the hospitality is I've had to eat stuff I hate and then of course try and pretend it's good, this in turn gets you a second helping...sometimes some for the road. We had lunch with a local family in a traditional farmhouse in Shangri-la, yak butter tea, samba, yak cheese, some bread that was like pita bread and fried pork. The bread, cheese and pork were pretty good although the cheese was very strong and bitter... the yak butter tea was another story, very spoiled tasting and greasy at the same time. The samba was a flour of some sort mixed at the table by hand and was a combination of this bland flour and yak butter tea. My wife, when are hosts aren't looking kindly slips her samba onto my plate, guess I'll have thirds. You being more aware than me in your study of Buddhism probably wouldn't make the same mistake as I did, we were heading to the farm house for lunch driving past Napa lake. This is a giant lake, no boats or people in sight anywhere around the water, I ask our friend if there are fish in the lake? Oh yes he says, but it turns out this lake is where you go after you die and the fish there eat the remains after the appropriate ritual, so fishing is kind of frowned on there as they are against the whole eating our ancestors thing...don't ask if you can fish there.

Deft, you seem pretty knowledgeable in this eastern stuff, interesting info you spent any time there? your little carved Buddha sounds cool, I've got something else similar carved out of olive pits a friend from Beijing gave me, not as unusual a location for this type of gift to come from as Branson.:)

Thanks Chuck, first thing I have to do is work on some communication issues, not uncommon in cross cultural relationships. Seems my new hunting friend is misunderstanding things a bit and when I say silver coin, hehe oh my, language barriers. Went back yesterday and little silver Buddha keeps thinking I'm saying torn up crumpled shredded aluminum. I tried different words thinking my accent was confusing my partner, clad quarter... must mean deep crushed aluminum can in his ancient dilalect. Guess I'm going to have to bust out the Rosetta Stone and try and sort this miscommunication thing out before this new threesome between the French girl, Buddha and me goes south.

Buddha (I'm a terrible speller, thanks Steve for the halp)... thanks Deft, Buddha is now my little lucky hunting buddy, we been chatting and he said he might show me a silver or two, just have to be careful not to be greedy or anything like that. If I behave myself when we get to gold country, no promises or such...just have to rub his belly good.

It's finally cooled down enough here to get out and hunt a little, temps have been up around 106 and staying in the high 60's overnight. Yesterday was warm and humid and most of the time the sun was hidden by the overcast, me and the French girl hit one of my regular parks late afternoon for a couple hours of trying to find the elusive silver coin I know is hiding someplace there. I've found a dozen wheat's and beaver tails are plentiful, to rub salt in the wound one of the neighbors has told me his story of finding a seated dime in his front yard next to the park, he keeps forgetting he's already told me the story...I'm sure I'll hear it again. I've been playing with a customized Deus fast program running the disc at factory preset GB slightly negative, sensitivity at 95, 14khz, reactivity at 2 1/2 silencer -1, iron vol 1, audio 4, 4 tones with the highest frequency threshold break point elevated to 89 and the frequency set at 800 as a set hunting program and an alternate same settings with full tones to switch back and forth to help with audio discrimination. I've been playing with multi-notch and only searching display numbers 50-78 and 87-99 I'm digging a higher percentage of targets and trying to limit some of the foil while still having a chance at a gold ring, although it seems to make the audio a little Chirpy, that's where switching to the unnotched full tones gives a better second look. The locals were showing up and I was working my way back to the car when I hit a very solid tight target locked on at 90 with the round hf coil 14 kHz, down about 6" out popped what I thought was an high voltage pg&E connector, when I rubbed the dirt off it was a little Buda. Thought it was a lead token/game piece at first but after a rinse and brush the metal is much to hard, weighed almost 28g and the specific gravity is around 10.14, almost silver? My guess based on where it was found it could have been made in something like a high school jewelry class, back when I was in high school we did stuff like this and everything was mixtures of what ever silver scraps the kids collected at home plus/or bought from the teacher at class. Almost everything all the work was cast or sheet silver it was cheep and easy to work with, we used nickel silver too but the SG is much lower I think. Hard to say how he wound up buried in this little park but I think it's has to be good luck to liberate him.

Hi Luca, I'm fairly new to the gold hunt and love the adventure too. Welcome to the hunt, great you are finding a little gold that's the first step. Is that the biggest gold anyone has found in the area you are looking? Have you any experience using a detector, or relic/coin hunted?

And I keep thinking it's tough out there and here you boys keep showing us how easy it is when you know what you are doing. Beautiful hunting and thanks, love seeing that gold!

The bottle caps can be found running from the low 80s to the high 90s...the other day in the park I hit a 1/2 chunk of dog choke chain with the rusted chain sitting in the center of the remaining loop, came in at 94 at 14khz with the round hf. Was a little scratchy sounding, but deeper coins anywhere near iron trash also sound scratchy depending on how things sit. I love the Deus for what it is, light and compact hits targets hard in iron trash a great hit and run handy to have on hand detector Im pretty sure will hit gold ok with the hf coil when used in its place. In any area with heavy aluminum slaw, wadded up foil wrapper, pull tabs and other small bits be ready to dig tons of trash if hunting for anything other than coins (round). so far I haven't found the secret to sorting out the lower reading vid targets except to dig them all. I'm thinking at some point a CTX type detector will be a good addition, just waiting to see what the new release has to offer from ML.

I've seen online where the gold plated coil charging pins on the Deus will corrode around the edges from exposure to salt water making charging the coil difficult or impossible. the recommendation to protect the pins is to cover the charging area with a strip of electric tape before going into the salt and removing the tape and rinse the coil in fresh water when you are done detecting at the beach.

Steve, thank you for yet another great informative thread. I struggle with a serious toy addiction I'm trying to curb, I want a ctx, a 2300, the GM would be nice to own and damn I was waiting for that elliptical. the Deus is perfect for me in so many ways, its nice to see the decision so difficult for you and I'm forcing myself to only have the Deus as my second detector after the 7000. For now until something really different comes up I think the Deus with the 11" and 9"hf will work for me and I'm better off trying to get as good as my little brain can get with the tools I have... so little difference exists among them increasing my confidence and skills with the one or two I now own will serve me better for now I'm seeing. Had the Deus over the yard of a friends new house, there were power lines everywhere and the emi was terrible. I was running the GM power program 14 and 28 were both struggling 54 was handling the emi pretty good, reactivity set to 2 1/2, 5 tones. I hit a nickel in the front yard down 5 inches...it was a tiny bit scratchy sounding, but still a good signal for me to dig. Numbers running at 54khz came in around 82, the Nickel range at that frequency and what I found was a nickel right next a big fat old rusty nail...both probably tumbled out of the pocket of one of the carpenters building the house in the 1950's. I did not really hear the nail until I'd plucked the nickel, then the scratchy sound I'd heard was transformed to iron wrap around and something in the high conductor numbers, but not really clean sounding. The Deus really locked onto the nickel at 54khz, seems a nugget in iron on the gold fields should act similar?

Mine (f ring) is wrapped in orange paracord that also has a 3/4" loop of extra cord I use to hang the ferrite off of my detector harness. The cord protects the ring and the bright orange color makes it easy to see on the ground.

Beautiful gold...

Starting out I followed the advice of my mentors (shofoo, master in Chinese...for fun if interested, I was at a party with a large group of friends and the conversation was directed towards me, I'm language isolated most of the time and was probably dreaming of looking for nuggets, it was something about our wives so I did the best I could on short notice with a compliment... I was dubbed holio shofoo, holio means very sweet saying sarcastically I think, we all had a good laugh and I still don't know what the conversation was about) anyway, Some time back discussions on here turned to which pinpointer played well with the GPZ and I gave it a shot with my trx. I seemed to have no issues with it in the off position as to affecting stability out running around, I don't know however if the trx adds to some other cumullitave impact with anything else on hand on the overall performance while hunting? After trying it I quickly gave up, because it seemed to much trouble, more to pack/forget, it false a lot around the Z so, I quickly gave it up. Lately however I've been trying to force my self to have a dig it all mentality and when I start to drop below say...90 % or so I quit hunting that location and move on or do something else. Finding all the tiny bit the z is able to see can be incredibly frustrating depending on the surface and how obstructed the coil. I gave the pinpointer a shot again and now find it handy mostly for getting the surface trash identified a little quicker. The 14 coil really pinpoints fairly well on either edge of the recieve coil, if I've got that right. Pinpointers also handy if I'm not giving too much up in the process in performance for narrowing down the dig as not to damage the gold. All is not perfect however, you need to get the coil of the 7000 as far as I can reach and that's not really enough to make the trx stable enough. so it's not always useful, sometimes it comes in handy, sometimes not...still like norvic's mod and think there is a place for a compact GM discriminating pinpointer with a 2 or 3 inch coil and make the whole thing water proof so you could use it in a river with head phones too, also I'd make the end recieve a paint roller extension...quick MineLab patent that.

Norvic, I love what you did...OK MineLab, we don't need a continuous 3 days of battery in a pinpointer. Take the gm1000, cut the battery time make an even smaller coil and bingo mineLab's next new hot must have accessory for the 7000... drum roll, the Norvic1000, pinpointer delux.

Klunker, nice, I love stories like this with a happy ending. Every time I'm out exploring and run across a new area with trees piled across yet another road or trail closed...well, it's just not a healthy thing for my already mild hypertension. Thank you

Steve, thank you for posting your early experience with this new hf elipitical, I've struggled with mine a little, but took the opposite approach and jumped right into some of our difficult ground. The flat pieces of rusted tin are bothersome, square nails and bits of square nail show numbers in the 98-05, but on the hot ground after gb if I throw a 1/2g nugget down it will sound off 4 to five inches, give iron numbers at around 3" and finally a nonferrous reading when the coil is right on the gold. A chunk of old lead (4g?) down in some river gravel sang out 4" deep with #'s in the 60's. I've been running pgm 10, sen 80-85, 54khz (29 is still very good, 14khz looses depth on the small gold a little as expected. Of course another huge difference is my results also exactly correlate to my experience level and are consistent with success ratios I'm accustomed to, so my results are based more on comparisons to typical targets found and one unscientific test of a couple of unburied nuggets. I've also hunted up there in the hot program, deep and Deus fast (v2, v3.2 and v4 filters) the discrimination cuts out the hot rocks and iron really well, I was still using similar settings as I used with pgm 10 (GF). Despite struggling in the early stages if feel (hope) with a lot of practice I'll get the hang of what the Deus is trying to tell me.

Thanks Steve, great story...I think all of us husbands understand our wives have first right of refusal to any nugget we find, if for nothing else and no other reason needed...just tolerating this obsession. My sweetie has been looking forward to this since my start at nugget hunting, she likes knowing how hard won these trophies are (at least for me) and has announced this will be her favorite bobble.

Mitchel, it's a good thing I love the thrill of the adventure and being out in nature, because my worst enemy is staying focused while digging bit after bit of rusted tin, it gets so I'm wishing for lead as it's slightly more interesting to me than the rusted tin and bits of square nail. When I hit gold (which is almost never) I'm shocked to see the color along with the feel of its weight, takes a few seconds for the disbelief to fade...I wish that feeling never goes away, it'd sure be nice to feel it more often. I've hunted the river area a few times and have never found anything good, I remember when you found that piece, it was the same time as the rye patch hunt, nice find. Good luck up there in the sierras and hope you find a nice fat one this trip. Chuck, I think I might have overdone it a little, just before finding the hanger I was contemplating giving up for the day, my left knee was swollen and stiff from climbing hills and getting down to retrieve junk was getting impossible. Only problem was the guy hunting near my car, pride was stopping me from ending early. Finally I was running out of determination and the long way around back to the jeep took me in the path of that nugget...you just never know. On the way home I gave a shot getting into another claim off the American river, the road was over grown and the brush hid a washout, the right side of my jeep dropped uncomfortably off the edge and even with the axels locked any attempt to move only wanted to scoot the jeep down hill in the wrong direction. Luckily I'm prepared and was able to winch myself back onto the trail and back the jeep out without any issues other than being covered in bugs and other crap from climbing through the brush trying to wrap my cable around a suitable tree. Swamp, I'm not overly optimistic, but they do keep showing up occasionally and by no strange coincidence to those who put in the time looking, that fact alone keeps zed out of the closet and my feet moving at least. Thanks everyone for the comments and for sharing your finds it keeps the long dry spells tolerable.

I have the light and the heavy, despite that I love swinging the light most times I'm swinging the heavy...