1515Art

Thanks Chuck, I was wondering a little bit about the numbers and such they weren't making much sense to me. my ear was tuned pretty good for the whites, but the Deus tones i'm not used to yet and today i was finding myself focusing more on the sweetness of the tone and repeatability of what i believed to be nonferrous targets of interest. Not that different really from the Whites, great at ID'ing coins, but everything else a guess anyways and I'm told you could call the GPZ a dig it all machine , so I imagine I can live with some extra digging since I don't seem to know no better anyways. just having the chance to find a good coin or something else of interest out in the bush and trash infested ground will be fun. The SST is a great detector and super easy to use, but I'm really enjoying this dainty little french cutie. clark

the house sits right in the middle of town, it was one of the early farm houses in the city. the guy who built it back in the 1920's came here from italy, his last name was Harris and his family had a couple of farms in town. he also had some connection to friends or family in France and used to travel there occasionally, so I would imagine that there is pretty good odds he was the one who lost the coin. there also used to be a service station years ago next door so I find all kinds of junk in the lot on the side of the property. between the farm and service station along with 90 plus years of trash the property has been tough to hunt, but the Deus seems to handle things pretty well, I never saw that coin, or picked out the signal with my SST.

Well here I am in good ol Santa Clara, my first hunt with my new Deus... And what pops up as my first coin ever with my new detector????????? In my front yard????? LOL... A 1916 French coin!!! Figures, hope this is a great sign of things to come.

being patient isn't one of my strong points, I think its the ADD... last year was good except for the severe drought conditions and all, but great for being outdoors doing stuff. guess I've got no choice, time is passing very slow, got back late last night spent the last few days hunting the area around forrest hill in some amazing looking ground, I found a little old trash, round balls, boot tacks and stuff, sadly no nuggets this trip. the signals were fairly far apart for this part of gold country, so I have to guess their is still something to find, but its been hit pretty hard as well. Gold lake area is the place my grand parents used to have a cabin when i was a kid, the cabin is still there right off gold lake highway its the first cabin in a little group just past the salmon lake turnoff in the area called lusk meadows. I guess these were used during the gold rush hay day in the area. we would out there for a couple of weeks to fish the salmon lakes every year in June when school let out and there was still always some snow on the ground, some snow on the buttes remained year round. I love the Deus, the package they put this thing in is one of the main reasons i picked it... so stealth. the combination I started with is the 11 inch coil and the smaller wireless headphones, figuring the new high frequency coil would be my small coil and then the 11 would be more useful later on. if everything else about this detector is even just on par with the average good unit I'm going to be very happy, but it is so much more adaptable than my SST (one knob one switch), that it will take me a little time to completely understand this machine, but in the little I've used it so far i think this learning journey is going to be fun.

Went to the gold show in Placerville and have to say, if you have not had the chance to attend one of these you must place this on your bucket list... Really informative, as expected Chris's and Steve programs were fantastic and well worth the investment in just their presentations alone and all the other programs were excellent as well. One word of caution, the vendors can't be trusted... When I first went into the show my bank account was in good order, after only two short days my wallet was several thousand dollars lighter, I did at least manage to procure a new Deus in the struggle and later on Pat Keene gave me a hand dragging the remainder of my booty to the car. thats the other great thing, lots and lots of cool stuff... And all the vendors are actually great, they took all my money and I thanked them very much as the deals at the show were good and everyone was very helpful. for those who like to hunt in the high Sierra, I took a chance and drove up into the high country to see how the snow was melting, I know it was a long shot this year but I had other places to check out so I took the drive anyway. Just past the sardine lake turnoff the highway was covered in snow drifts, after just making it through the second drift and seeing much more ahead l gave up and turned around for other country.

yep, could have been lunk, lucky, californiagold... or any of the other skilled users on this forum of which I don't yet consider myself part, that will take much more time in the saddle. Still a guy can dream and while I don't really want the big coil and like using the 14 just fine, if this larger coil runs significantly quieter while covering more ground interesting things may be revealed, hope it can pinpoint as well.

it will be interesting to see Minelab's pricing strategy on this new coil in light of the recent significant price drop within only one year of release of the flagship GPZ. For me the drop in price was a bitter pill, the GPZ is a love hate relationship, but the love runs deep and the hate quickly forgotten... the drop in value an unwanted intruder... extra baggage introduced into a somewhat difficult and at times a strained relationship. There was some rumor of a discount in the price of the new coil for those that paid full initial price on the GPZ, hope this had some substance to it, would be a little sugar after the bad taste left by the quick drop in the value of my detector. 30% deeper than 40%... the earth is golden everywhere and i'm feeling light headed, the grey is creeping in and all resistance is fading. Darkness all around except for the faint glow of sunlight shimmering in the distance from far above. Muscles burn and tendons strain to the call to go deeper as stinging sweat mixed with earth and organic debris rain back down from above the rim of my hole. and then in front of me, a beacon... blindingly bright in the dim light creeping towards my direction is the shine from Steve's headlamp as he cleans the last nugget from from the patch we were all feverishly digging towards from different directions, if i'd only bought that coil one day sooner?

this is the thread, I'm not sure how to post the link on my ipad

I had experienced a small audio issue just after the update, it happened only a couple of times and I have not had any problems for some time now. When the problem did happen the sound went away after making some settings changes, I did a quick reset and everything returned to normal... I think this happened twice. There was a short thread on this issue about a month after the update started by another member if my memory serves me right.

Chuck, thank you... as soon as i hit the mountains and my lungs get that first scent of the sweet wilderness, it's as if life suddenly changes and the world opens up... a great weight is lifted and despite the sting of sweat dripping into my eyes and the strain on my back, the hole just evolves as time quickly slides by, in the faint shine of yellow all else is forgotten, except perhaps for the new gnawing sensation of the need for a hot meal and some well deserved rest... one of my next favorite things. rumblefish, the picture from up on the hill looking down on the river, is just below the lip of the hole I was digging in about 45 feet from the river. it's actually a little down stream from where I think the likely high water sweet spot is located, but the amount of earth that is needed to be moved first to get down to bedrock is daunting, so everyone has been working this spot and it is fairly close on. also some of this gold may have come down from the old workings above the river so it would be difficult to know for sure with out more info from others and digging. Ray, I love those videos and enjoy watching Shannon's victims twist in the wind, quite a show. Thanks Lanny, we are so lucky we get to do this...

Hi Ray, yes, i joined AMRA a few months ago and have been having a blast exploring their claims, I was looking for land access below the snow level to soothe my withdrawal pains and calm the cabin fever and AMRA has a bunch, more than I can get to this year. Also, they are fighting some important battles and need all the support they can get. They have put up access to some very nice claims and every club member I've met so far has been really nice, its a great organization to be involved with and I would encourage everyone to join, as you know better than me having been involved much longer than I have.

beatup, thanks... ya, it's the most fun I've ever had beating myself up. I think I got ruffie'd by the first spec of color after that things are still a little hazy and now my body hurts in places whenever i try and move... it was a ruff date, most fun I have ever had digging a hole and I'm sitting here thinking (longing almost... pinning if you will) about the next trip out. I've dug a couple of outhouse holes when I was a kid and one time I had to hand dig the foundation for a house I was building because the soil around the construction site was to soft to bring in equipment, something we found out after sinking two excavators in the clay and mud, hand digging is never on my wish list. That is unless as we all know, you add in the adventure of the hunt and then it's possible to forget how hard it really is. I had some help with that dig luckily, as the other club members have been hacking away at the hill for some time... but don't get me wrong I moved a lot of dirt down to bedrock and also winched an 900 pound rock out of the hole that fell in on the dig a couple of nights previously. I had been to this claim a couple of weeks before and was concerned enough about that 900 pound rock hanging in mid air with almost nothing under holding it up, just a little soil around the edges that I had planned on bringing it down and winching it from the hole. When I arrived at the claim on Tuesday there was another claim member working the spot, he'd been there for a couple of days. We got to chatting and I asked him about about the big rock that was now sitting in the middle of the hole. He said he had been working the hole and was concerned about the big rock hanging 4 feet over his head, so he gave it a shove and it was solid. He was camping in his van and worked late into the evening, next morning when he got up and started to work he found the rock in the hole, it had fallen on its own that night while he was sleeping. Lucky for him and he must have found a lot of gold because luck was with him that day and lucky for me cause I've seen stuff like that thousands of times and I really don't want to come on to something like that again if I don't have to, not while i'm out trying to have fun anyways. everyone...be safe, have fun, don't loose money.

I've been hunting up around the Sonora area and hitting a bunch of different gold claims in the southern mother load with out much success other than the pure enjoyment of the great outdoors and some needed exercise, but it's nice to occasionally see a little new yellow. so this trip I only ran the GPZ for about half a day on some hillsides and spent the remaining 21/2 days running a sluice on the river just off Highway 49, the little bit of gold represents more 5 gallon buckets of dirt than i care to remember but a great workout none the less and a bit of color in my pan also my first picker in the sluice, i would have liked to see a few more pickers in the sluice, but was thrilled to see this one land on the black matt.

i wonder just how sensitive the larger coil will be to very tiny ferris trash like the small window screen stuff that is blowing around in the desert and hits so hard on the standard coil, be interesting to see if things balance out with the give and take. by picking up large deep gold and not being as hot on the smaller surface trash we might find some added advantage, realistically the zeee is so hot that the large coil will probably still hit hard on everything.

I pretty new to most of this mining stuff also, so this may be completely wrong way to go about crushing rock and it took a few times using it before it stopped shedding zinc particles in the crushed rock powder. it's also not particularly fast, but the crushed rock eventually ends up in a fine powder and all stays in one place. i crush, screen, crush, screen... until it is all to a fine powder and then pan it out.

Comstock gold prospectors have claims in the blue wing area wonder if this will affect their claims also?

Wow, great story and cool finds from the past and some of those old buttons can be pretty valuable. I'll bet the old guy has a few more stories waiting for you, you need to put a detector in his hands so you can hunt more undistracted when he's around.

This was my day here in beautiful Sonora, the weather was perfect, so nice in fact I decided to Leave the gold in the ground for tomorrow.

looks like a scene from "honey I shrunk the kids, while metal detecting"

"The bike looked electric to me....needs fat tires..and a shade" and a cup holder...

I'm in the market for a new machine, should take a look at one of those "Lark Models"if they made it in 4 wheel drive with a turbo... my oldest son was visiting from Colorado for a couple of days and i've been getting him excited about doing a little nugget shooting while he's living there, so as he was getting ready to head to the airport I gave him my "Whites "SST" to take with him back to Colorado. He had no problem getting through airport security with the control box and coil, upper shaft in his backpack and he used the extra long lower shaft as a cane and TSA paid no attention to it. He had it all put together this morning and was hunting some spots that were clear of snow in his back yard when I talked to him today.

That's a serious beach machine, all he needs is a little back hoe attachment that'll work off the pedal pto...

Alex, those are beauties great job, soon you will be the teacher!

Ray, very way cool... Hooked for life and in another 10 years he will be the the star of some discovery channel treasure hunting show for sure. Great job on that one...

I can only repeat what I was told by the guy who sold it to me, his name was Greg and he was a longtime buddy of Jimmy Sierra and helped with input of the design. he said they borrowed circuitry and programing aspects from the MXT, MX5 (M6? I'm not sure) and GMT and although it has very few features the ones that it has are optimized for mineralized conditions. Turn it on and go, the ground balance is super fast also and can be locked to prevent tracking out a target with a switch flip, this feature also lets you use the detector as a broad large target deep searching detector by ground balancing with the pinpoint mode and then locking the GB, hits deep water pipes really well this way.