Tortuga

Funny the detectors changed but they still sell people on those same hopes and dreams of finding buried treasure, lost riches etc.

On 10/26/2017 at 3:41 AM, desertpilot said:

Awesome Dos Cabezas gold! That's one of those can't get there from here places.  

 

Yeah that really jumped out at me too. Crazy...

On 9/22/2017 at 6:24 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

I think it's as simple as big gold having a hard time hiding from a decent operator of a SD/GP/GPX detector and a large coil. The GPZ exploits certain weaknesses in the older systems to find gold they missed, but I don't think big lunker nuggets generally fall into that category. Big specimen gold yes, but not so much the big solid stuff.

But hey, we have to take what we can get - nice finds!

Yes I found a nice 2 oz specimen with my GPZ that was deep. 

As far as the GPZ scoring big gold on old patches the only decent luck I’ve had with it is getting creative and hauling dead trees off, moving rocks, checking inside cactus and crawling under trees and brush. 

Around Rich Hill my favorite method is getting dirty and crawling deep inside brush and cactus and listening for those mellow signals that were too much work for others. Worked for me last year, found a nice 5 grammer standing on end about 18” down under a big tree.

Be a great spot for a GPZ, those are lethal on species.

And somebody get that guy with tennis shoes a pair of boots!

I saw a Youtube video awhile back from Australia with a guy with a CTX 3030 who had a large metal replacement stand on his control box.

Was always curious if that would fit the GPZ.

Can someone in the USA purchase this detector and if so from where?

Dammit!! 

I rarely ever find nuggets that are reverse signals. They're always seem to be iron rubbish. 

High low high signals that sing on my GPZ in a clear, high tone almost always turn out out be gold. 

I dug a loud chattery 2.5 gram nugget that was on the surface once that warbled like a .22 shell so you gotta be careful. I've also found deep nuggets with the famous GPZ threshold static sound that doesn't sound like a metal target but it's enough of a repeatable, interesting break in your threshold to make you pause and do a boot scrape. 

6 hours ago, fredmason said:

Tortuga;

I don't have a 19 inch, YET.  I don't like the open web design, ever!  However, I can't help thinking just a little more depth, a little more ground covered and a pot full of luck will bring me a real thumper...

But, I have not dug any big, deep ones with the 14 inch yet...it may be the dream is better than the cost reality. Or arm/wrist strain and disappointment.

torn between

fred

The one nice thing is you do cover more ground easier. It feels like you're sweeping around a trash can lid on the end of your stick but that's nothing new to guys who have experience with larger coils.

I've dug one big specimen that was almost two feet deep and under a buried boulder with my 14" coil. Besides that the deepest targets have been solid slugs around 18 inches deep. That's nothing for the GPZ and they were all fairly easy to hear. Just nice mellow tones missed by others because I'm sure they'd have been heard by a GPX as well. I tend to 'think outside the box' a little when I detect and bushwhack under trees and brush and sometimes it pays off.

A lot of those noises I would have disregarded as ground noise. I can think of a few I passed over yesterday that were just one-way signals.

It's tough to hunt in Arizona battling the terrain, rocks and grass with that huge 19" coil. It's not a flat, sterile test bed like the video above. I detect in a lot of old workings with sloped sides, rock piles, trees etc. and it's hard to not just listen for the obvious signals that jump out and only dig those.

I've only been out twice with the new coil but I can't say I've even been digging much trash the 14" coil missed. It's a quieter coil but it's a beast to swing. I can move around and maneuver the 14" coil better and get it under rocks and trees better and because of it's smaller size it seems "hotter" to me on targets.

I just have to decide if sucking the fun outta detecting and swinging the huge 19" coil is worth a few inches I may have gained in depth over the stock coil. The jury is still out. I've been back to 2-3 old patches with it already and haven't recovered any "big deep ones" yet although I'm fully aware of how truly rare that phenomenon is.

Looks pretty cool. 

Used the control arm today that came with the GPZ and was able to swing the 19" coil for about 8 hours today over some old spots. No gold yet tho. 

There's so much open ground and club claims out there I've never understood the attraction to owning/filing your own claim and dealing with all the hassles and expenses. It's probably a great learning experience but it also sends up a big red flag to everyone as a public record you're finding gold there.

Not super impressed with the results but I hope it's good on the big rare deep ones!

On 12/22/2016 at 0:57 PM, cobill said:

Maybe Steve or Chris  can contact Miner John to make a HD 19" coil cover, like the excellent covers he made for the 14" coil.

Merry Christmas,

Bill

It'll only be a matter of time until he comes out with one, I'm sure. 

It was mentioned that you can get the 19" coil to false if it's tapped on something hard. 

Now that I think about it maybe the rubber bumbers around the edges are to soften the blow and reduce falsing? I've never seen a coil or coil cover with little bumpers on it like that before. Maybe Minelab noticed the falsing and this was their bandaid for that?

It's an interesting design for sure and I noticed the first place sharp rocks would pierce the stock cover on my 14" coil was around the edges so I thought Minelab mighta gotten smarter by adding the rubber edges.

I haven't had any field time with the 19" coil yet so we'll see how the tupperware coil cover holds up 

I only got about two months out of the stock 14" coil cover on my replacement GPZ after a couple trips to Rich Hill recently. Pretty nasty place to detect with lots of sharps rocks around. 

Yes it is cold down there but I'd like to take advantage of it before the heat comes again. This is gonna be a really short winter, I know it. It's nice detecting down there with a little bit of snow left under the trees and bushes.

And yeah I saw some of those amethyst and gems he's been finding. I never realized those even existed in Arizona. The only gems I ever heard about were garnet, peridot (on the indian reservation) and turquoise. I even heard recently that there's aquamarine out here. I find that kinda stuff interesting but I don't know the first clue about finding it or even where to look. Then again I didn't know that much about gold either a few years ago..

Paul if you and Justin meet up in Gville lemme know. I've got my 19" coil and I've been trying to plan a hunt down there with Justin for awhile. 

On 12/12/2016 at 0:17 AM, Reno Chris said:

Definitely read the book. Gold virtually never moves downward through gravels via liquefaction. It just doesn't happen. A real big nugget may sink into clay soils an inch or two, but gold is on the bedrock in streams because the water flows there.

Gold moves down through gravels only when water is flowing sufficient to move the gravels. Gold resists movement because of its density, so while gravels are washed away in the flow, the gold works its way down to bedrock and even into crevices in the bedrock as the gravels flow on by.

Surface concentration placers in desert locations in Arizona and Nevada away from streams form by deflation - sand and gravel are removed by wind and rain, leaving gold nuggets concentrated near the surface. Gold wont sink down in these types of locations, which is why dozer scrapes quickly deplete the surface gold even though there is still many feet of soil until bedrock is reached.

This is interesting and is making me re-think digging out a gravel bench I found up high above an old stream. I found a nice nugget up there mixed in with the gravel and clay and was wondering if more nuggets were up there deeper beyond the reach of my detector. But that nugget could have been brought there by a flood a long time ago and that spot wasn't necessarily a place where gold accumulated. I've found a few more smaller nuggets in the surrounding area but didn't find any others in that gravel yet. 

A little big birdy said they're here 

Well that's different. 

5 hours ago, Hard Prospector said:

I seriously doubt any other metal detector company would make such an investment in the next greatest nugget finding machine. Especially since the nugget patches and gold fields have been plowed and plucked clean by 40 years of nugget shooters. Just think how many nugget shooting snow birds are pounding Arizona right now!

The other thread got me thinking that I've heard it over and over again about areas being "pounded to death" by hoards of detectorists over the years. But I've been doing this hobby for almost five years now in Arizona and I can count the number of detectorists I've ran into in the field on one hand. 99% of them have been forum members. It must have been different in the old days and a lot more people must have been into detecting. Or maybe I'm just hunting in the wrong places..

When I find one or two tiny dinks after a long day of detecting part of me says it's better than nothing. But the other half of me wishes I was back on some coarser gold. There's really no thrill to me like digging anything over 4-5 grams (and much bigger) and everytime I'm out detecting I'm praying that I'll find another big one.

I found a nice nugget once that wasn't very deep and I probably would've found it going fast and I dug another nice specimen once that was VERY deep and quiet that I would've only found going slow. As long as you're out there swinging and not sitting at home I think anything is possible.

I like to imagine that as the search pattern of a mono coil reduces down to a cone at depth, say a foot and a half deep, all you can cover is an area the size of a quarter at the end of the cone. If you think of a goldfield the size of a place like Greaterville and all anyone has searched at depth there is the size of a quarter, it's impossible that everywhere will get detected.

Yes I understand it can be found through the GPS but I never have it on. Just kinda seems like a no-brainer to have the time at the top next to the battery life (like a phone). 

I just wish Minelab would release a software update to show the time on the screen 

Hard to find and easy to lose. Even the big ones apparently.