Gold Hound

I also use range of motion to filter out ground signals, by slowing or speeding my range of motion over suspicous targets I can test the target to see if its worth digging. Which saves me quite a lot of waisted time in digging false targets and allows me to run normal in some pretty trying ground.

I totaly agree with what you say about range of motion. This is the point I was trying to make earlier in the discussion. Over the years I have noticed that all good operators have mastered this skill. I solely focused on teaching my Wife Amber this skill in 2019 as she had never detected before. With careful guidence she was able to do very well, she found enough gold to make a decent living. By the end of season she ended up averaging 5g per day! this is very good for someone who had never touched a metal detector before. Credit to her though, she is very easy to teach and by the end of season she knew all the settings and was coming up with spots to go have a look at from my geology teachings. Im so greatful to have her😀 I focused on this because it is the core skill required to sucessfully use any metal detector. This really is what seperates the good operator from the average! Do you use Manual Ground Balance much Jp? I use it a fair bit, I've found in the right conditions that I can get a better target response on both long and short time constance targets using it. Here is a nice long time constance bit I carfully massaged out of 900mm hard packed cemented alluvium... nasty stuff as it has a ferrous upper layer and calcium rich lower layer.

Sorry mate I didnt mean to offend or belittle you in anyway if it came across that way. Im mearly trying to stress the importance of the other things I was talking about, my dry aussie sense of humor dosent help either, went back and read my posts and can see how you could take offence from them sorry mate. I forget about the differences in aussie and yank comunication etiquette. I thought from your post quoted above that you were compiling a revised more detailed form of manual. In my opinion injecting more detail and opinions into a manual just creates more confusion from any beginner who reads it. And after seeing your diagrams, that showed me you dont have a correct understanding of how the controls work. This prompted my post. And videos are a lot of work to produce, so i wouldnt hold my breath waiting for them. I have over 1000 hours of recorded video of me prospecting/ finding gold that will never see the light of day, as it is just to much work compiling and editing for no return for me to bother with. Hopfully others have more time and can produce one for you? Or maybe you could produce them yourself?

A tip for you mate. You really need to experiment with different swing speeds and heights and be very controlled with it. Perfecting your swing and undersanding its effect on targets and ground noise really is probably the most importaint part of becoming one with your detector. Detetctors are like nice ladys... you need to learn how she likes to be swung, her curves and how to press her buttons.

Im guessing that the clippers have a setting above the volume floor, it may start at say 5 who knows¿ the Ml tech that desighned the function obviously had the forsight to know that some one would run it at zero and wonder why the detector is not working lol. I can assure you that it dose not compress the sound in any way like you are thinking it might. You are way over thinking this mate... just get out there and put some field time on your machine! You probably need to do at least a full season detecting before you can write a manual, otherwise it is just ideas put together by some one who dose not have any field experince. I can guarantee you that JP, Jasong, Nenad, others and myself have gained our knowledge from our time in the field and willing ness to experiment! For example I detectct all day, clocking around 8 to 12 hours a day for 8 months of the year since 2 months before the official release of the detector. That is quite a lot of field time if you add it up😉 I wear through 4 pairs of military boots per year doing so. Please do not take this the wrong way mate, I like your enthusiasm... its a rare thing these days lol, but I just want you to understand how we earnd our knowledge. And if you want to aquire it for yourself there really is no subsitute. You just have to get out there and earn it for yourself!

Volume limit dose not modulate/compress the sound like your diagrams. It mearly clips off the lowdest part of a signal that exceeds your setting what ever that is. Just like the Manual describes in its diagram.

I do the opposite, I run max gain and use a combination of playing threshold against the smoothing options. The filters work great at clipping the eratic emi but keeping the target signal, you do however have to adjust the threshold up to compensate for the clipping. Lower your gain though and kiss those deep faint signals goodbye😘

I havent lowerd the sensitivity/gain below 20 for years😉 I adjust my swing speed to compensate for ground noise and emi is just music to my ears. If you watch my mountain goat gold vid or any vid of me detecting youll hear how noisy I run my detetctor. My philosopy is that since I own a ferrari Im going to drive a ferrari... and drive it HARD and push it to its limits and test mine 😍

Everything I learnt came from trying all of the settings in the field and reading the manual. If you want to find more gold you need to have an understanding of what every setting dose. They are described in the manual then you need to apply them for yourself. There is no substitute for field application and controlled testing when you get a new detector. I do things a fair bit different to most others as they work for me in my testing.

A lil advice mate... read the manual... then read it again... and again... then go detecting and then read it again... then detect some more and read it again! The manual is your new bible!

The Volume limit just caps off the loudest part of the signal. This is so you can set the base volume/treshold/taget signal at a levels that are easy to hear but you can limit the loudness peak of a large/loud response so that you do not blow your ears off every time you detect a 10oz sunbaker😃

They always have... Im predicting that when it first comes out there will be a fair bit of negative rhetoric. Just like when the 7k was released, a large percentage of operators were dissaponted (mainly due to operator inexperince) and many even sold their 7's within a couple of weeks of purchase. I was posting my reviews and finds on an australian forum and got ganged up on and accused of being a minelab stooge/liar so I stopped posting there and joined Steves good forum. I really cleaned up in the months following the release, my first trip of 10 days going over the local well known patches netted me 8oz of missed gold! Which payed for the detector and some. We then proceeded to clean all of the patches in the main areas before others eventually cottoned on to how good the Zed was. We spent the rest of the season cleaning old areas and it was a very productive season. While this was happening I pondered what the reason was for all of the dissapontment, I realised that barely any operators take the time to test the new tech in controlled conditions and experiment with the settings over detected targets to try and brighten or enhance them. In fact most just turn on the new detector and expect it to be better than their last machine which they had years to get used to! I suppose it is just human nature to blame the tool for ones inadequacy rather than looking at ones self for flaws in operation😕

Hi Gerry it's really simple for me... No other company has delivered a detector that I can make a living off! I have not bought a detector off minlab that did not meet or exceed my expectations. My first detector was a 3500 and I have owned every gold detector and high end coin detector since. And all have made me money. I agree with your summery except for the 5000, the introduction of the extra timings and more refined electronics which made it more stable in normal alowed me to find a lot of extra gold in areas previously gone over with the 4500. The Finegold timing in particular.

We can only hope its like the equinox vs ctx situation where as their second tier detector is better than their first tier detector. The nox obseleted the ctx Im hoping the 6000 stomps on the 7000 then they have to release an 8000 next year 🤣

All coils perform better in less mineralised ground😉 I was just giving you and the others an insight into the cause of ground noise for a lot of operators. It is wise to keep this in mind when talking about ground signals. Example... I can take you to areas where any time you lift the coil even slightly you will get a signal from the ground just like a target. But with careful coil control you can easily eliminate them and not loose depth on larger targets and sensitivity to small targets by swiching to a DD coil.

There are not many areas where I cannot use a monoloop on a gpx 4500 or newer detector and I live in Australia. I have noticed over the years that a lot of hobby operators do struggle in areas that I have no problem in. I observed that most of them were not swining the coil in an even slow mannor. Erattic movements or allowing the coil to move up and down, either from poor coil controll like one edge lifting heigher than the other, lifting then lowering to avoid obsticals or swinging to fast for the ground type.

Lol Yeah in west oz where its pretty flat its like you say... come on over to Queensland plenty of spots where you are hours even a days drive from phone reception. Same in western NSW and parts of the northern NSW blue mountains. What a great technology as long as they dont use it to spy on you, Im definitly going to look into installing it in my prospecting rig.

Im there with you Vic! After a hard days work you need a good feed or you loose condition very quickly. And who wants to eat tins for dinner when you've eaten them for lunch... Mmm one of my fav's is Roo schnitzel crumbed with multi grain, parmasen, sage and onion.... yummo! Or sezchuan pork belly rashes sloooow grilled over cyprus pine coals until crunchy mmmm!

It's free in Australia unless you are a complete moron and press your beacon because you have a flat tyre or similar... Not many people realise that the average recovery time in Australia is 12hrs for EPERB's which = death if your badly injured or bitten by one of our snakes. Satphones are way better, average recovery time of an hour and you can talk with emergency services to coordinate rescue and they can advise you on first aid.

I always carry as little as possible. I have 3 different modular systems that I deploy depending on where I'm working and how far I'm travelling. For general work I have a battle belt that I carry 6L of water, navigation tablet, satphone, nugget jar, small knife, lighter, snake bandage, and food. For a longer day trek I have a small backpack that attaches to my battle belt via molly webbing this basically alows me to carry more water and can hold my pick if I need to climb. Then my last rig is a large framed eberlestock modular backpack I can comfortably camp for 3 days out of if there is water available in the area.

Is it seriously 50k if you get rescued in America?

Hi Steve For a number of years I posted in a couple of Australian forums, but after a while I got sick of defending myself and being accused of being a 'Minelab Man'. Then I found your forum Steve and it has been for me a haven of good uptodate information. Now I don't even look at other forums! Even though I dont show my finds, comment or post much anymore, I still regularly visit to stay upto date with changes Thank you for providing a place for information to be shared in a fair and engaging manor.

I use the wm8 most of the time. Either with high quality senheiser ear buds or a small speaker mounted on my hat. I do like the external speaker for its convenience if I'm only picking the detector up for a quick swing.

I bought the nox 800 mainly for gold prospecting but it gets minor use for historic artifacts or old coins. I use the Fe settings dependant on trash density and ground mineralisation.

Awesome thanks for the info Steve! Im definitly buying the 5x10! Like you I never could understand why minelab made the nox with prospecting mode but never made a prospecting coil to go with it... they have the housings from other models how hard could it have been🤔