Hard Prospector

Sure is nice to have "mining friendly" people running our government again........its been a while.

Painful paying full price for a detector only to see it come out at 1/3 to 1/2 price not too far down the road.........ouch!

I have a couple friends that I mine or detect with. Been hunting and fishing with these fellas for decades and trust them like brothers. When detecting we head out different directions. We meet back at camp or the truck at a given time. Finders/keepers on this one and as they swing the best available GPX/GPZ series while me with my TDI.......Oh well suppose I'll always be a drywasher first and speaking of that; Drywashing is hard work as the more dirt gets processed generally the more gold in the box. Nuggets found in the header/tailing piles are shared (as is everything in the tray). Usually we do the gold split at the end of the day before chow. All expenses split accordingly and camp chores shared except that I do all of the cooking and they do dishes. This is only so because neither one can cook worth a damn.

Hey Rod, its basicly the Jimmy Sierra "Digger" coil with different decal. Good for relics, beach swinging etc. and totally different from the MJ 8.5x11

This summer my GMZ has been a real jewelry producer at the beach finding even a couple of tiny gold bracelets and earrings. Been using the standard 6x10 loop but had been eye-balling the large 8x14 for a while. Unfortunately, that $250 price tag kept scarring me away. Glad to pay $65 for it..........Thanks Tom! Rob

A good buddy of mine scuba dives/detects just past the surf line at a very busy beach. His best morning ever; seven gold and two platinum rings!

Nice web site upgrades Steve. BTW, how about writing a detector/prospecting book (if not already working on one)....?

All that scrub was intended to: sprout, grow and BURN....then repeat. Good for the critters and prospectors.

Great guy and what a loss, went to Chatsworth (Keene Engineering) just last month to buy a new blower and hung out with Jerry for a good half hour listening to his stories. He truely was one of the few "old timers" left among us.....amazing man who lived and talked prospecting. A story that really stood out was one he told of a friend, one of the first dredgers to work the east fork of the San Gabriel river back in the early 1960's. This guy averaged at least a POUND of gold every day on the river for several years back in the day........ very cool indeed.

10 posts minimum......that should help weed the skeemers out!

I've used the GB Pro and F19 for years now and came up with my own routine for maintaining ground balance. When detecting in mineralized ground (most gold districts) I got into the habit of every 10 or so swings, hitting the GG while pumping the coil a couple times, 10 more swings and then repeat. After a while you don't even have to think about it and it works well for me. If the ground is super hot and nasty you would have to ground balance much more often but at that point I just go and get the PI. Good luck!..........Rob

Unfortunately, the TDI series isn't even "splash proof" let alone water proof and this I learned the hard way, let me explain. For several months I was taking my TDI to the beach and all seemed well as I was very careful to stay above the water line. Then the detector started having issues with static and stability. So sent it off to Whites and several days later got a call from the Tec with the bad news. The circuit board was corroded and even a couple of pots (knobs) were shot. He asked if I had dropped it in water and I replied no, but had been using it a lot at the beach and many of those days it had been over-cast and somewhat damp. Well that did it alright , expensive lesson learned (about a $400 repair) so I bought a Sand Shark which has worked quite well for this type of detecting and also considering buying an ATX for my next shoreline detector. Until White's makes a waterproof housing for it, there will be no more "days on the beach" for my TDI

If looking for a good PI machine on a budget, the Tesoro Sand Shark has done me good on rings in wet beach sand (and underwater) However it should be considered a "dedicated" beach machine though and not really suited for nugget shooting. Another reasonably priced PI for prospecting is the Whites TDI SL, the nuggets it has found me over the years have paid for the detector 5X over Looking for gold in trashy tailing piles, my Fisher F19 has also done a great job. Good luck! Rob

I wonder how the GM1000 would compare to the White's GMT on small gold/quartz specimen pieces?

I've always tried to patronize small business as my folks were SBO's and I grew up seeing the ups and downs of that way to make a living. Bought all of my new detectors from a mom n' pop prospecting shop and glad I did because they were proud of their old school customer service and always did me good should there be a problem with the machine. Unfortunately, these upstanding folks have been the exception to most of my recent dealings with small business operations over the last several years. From boat and rv dealers to gun shops, I could go on and on about the crappy customer service and outright lying I have experienced with many these people. Especially in regard to any warranty issues, once they have your money your the last person they ever want to see again. I really think customer service in general has tanked in recent years no matter the business or venue and its really too bad.

I believe good things are happening concerning the SL these days at White's.......just a bit of patience

That was big of you to help that older couple even though your efforts/sacrifices should have been appreciated just a bit more. I do believe in karma and in my book your good deed just scored a pile of points on that one.

Hey Rod, like we discussed a while ago, the SL has never had the power input to effectively use the larger coils for practical nugget shooting in most conditions. Whites, Coil Tech, Minelab whatever, any coil larger than a 6x10 and the SL becomes unstable and noisy in mineralized hot ground typical of most gold fields. Using larger coils on the SL in these circumstances usually results in backing way down on the sensitivity while turning the ground balance up substantially to stabilize threshold. This results in poor performance at depth especially searching for small nuggets. Good performance with this machine is achieved by using the smaller coils allowing for sensitivity to be turned way up and ground balance setting kept low...... often turned off completely. Larger loops can work quite well (on the SL) in more mild ground conditions like finding 50 cal mini balls on old battle fields or gold rings at the beach. The stock 12" spider works well in these areas. I've spent a lot of money trying the larger coils on the TDI SL and while I have found some gold with them, 90% of my nuggets with this machine have come from using the ;TDI 6x10 DF, Miner John 5x9 FOM, and TDI 4x6 Mono Shooter coils. Two of these coils were made by the late White's Chief Engineer Dan Geyer and are sadly no longer available. It is said that Dan Geyer understood the Eric Foster design and potential better than most anybody. It would have been interesting to see where Dan would have taken the TDI series by now had he not passed so suddenly several years ago.

Tried it out at the Vegas gold show this weekend, feels great with the little round puck coil but somewhat front nose heavy with the larger stock coil......for sure lite for a Minelab. Rep assured everyone it would be out very soon, I for sure want one. Kevin Hoagland has been field testing it for some time and is supposed to have a story/report out in GPAA magizine in the near future (I was told by the GPAA staff at the show)

I believe White's is in the process designing a new battery pack for the SL to increase input to 14-16 volts (from the existing 12volts.) which by itself will substantially increase performance..... especially on small gold. There may be other mods the engineers at White's are considering to improve the SL's performance as well. You might want to sit back and wait a bit.........Rob

I've seen Jim around Randsberg a few times, once he gave me some good drywashing tips. Nice guy and a real prospecting legend. Glad to hear he's doing well.

I heard this at a club meeting a few months ago and took it as fact.......I must be mistaken and stand corrected.

Does anyone know what Kevin is working on these days (since he left GPAA) ?

The Falcon has worked great for me to check a quick sample of the drywasher cons.

I'll check it out....thanks Steve