Smigo

6 hours ago, blackjack said:

Having more than one coil for my new Equinox 800 I'd like spare lower shaft. I've upgraded from an X-Terra 705, I carry it as a spare detector, so I thought, great I will use the lower shaft from that. Different size of course, it would be reasonable to assume that an X-Terra owner would, when upgrading, be buying a nox. So this situation to me is disappointing, to my mind Minelab have deliberately changed the size of the shaft in order to sell me another shaft. As buyers we we tend to be brand loyal, but increasingly for me that is becoming trite, they clearly don't care about us so why should we remain loyal ? My Equinox is made in Malaysia so Minelab don't even employ Australians to make the Equinox at least. Some may say big deal just buy a new shaft and get on with it. If that's what you think then big business has you exactly where they want you and the future is grim for consumers { remember when we used to be Customers }

I have always wondered why Minelab didn't make longer shafts for the detectors given there are so many taller people that detect like Aussies and USA detectorists. There was a shaft maker here who made lower shafts and complete shafts here for Minelab detectors, Otto. Im not sure they do anymore. I always found Minelab shafts too short for me. But, whites Tall Man stems, shafts, did, do, fit Minelab PI detectors and many earlier ones like the XTerra. I do still have a Whites Tall man stem which I swap over from my XTerra to my Garrett 24k depending on which I take out. I used to use it on my GPX 5000. I had 2 but stupidly let one go when I sold my 5000 due to health issues and just kept 1. I regret the decision. But to this day dont get why Minelab never after all these years made a longer lower shaft for tall people as I know from yrs of detecting others who complained about it. They dont care and dont listen. 

Take the handles from the SD2000 all the way through to the 5000. They break and are utter crap. Thats why I got wooden jarrha handles that were made by guys with a brain that lasted and never broke for my GPXs. Break smake think Minelab, they'll buy another, another, another...kaching.. kaching...ka..... Bucks!$$$$ 

4 hours ago, Deep Beeps said:

Couple more trash and relic finds from this trip. Only the pulley was from the water and Im sure it moved many a rocks back in it's day. It was found right in front of some 20' tall rock piles on an inside bend of the river. That day, the rock won, broke the cable and the miners lost their pulley. Even more sad, there wasn't any gold with it in that crack!... Always amazes me.... Found 2 memorable cracks... both littered with square nails and fishing sinkers and not a single speck of gold. Go figure.

I'm sure you have all found a Prince Albert can before but those 2 little stars are also from tobacco... Star Tobacco. It was sold in hand cut lengths at the general store and had these tin stars every 2 inches fixed to it. 

Oldest is most likely the pick.... It was found in one of the hydraulic pits. Most likely made in the 1850's and has that "old iron" weight to it.

 

 

All finds are good finds detecting.. 👍👍

5 hours ago, geof_junk said:

 Christmas is near.

 

 

 

And that's why I threw my garrettt gold trap in the bin?

Stupid plastic crap!

40 minutes ago, jrbeatty said:

What's a skidplate? Never needed the unnecessary extra weight personally but sure used a lot of epoxy resin as "hardfacing" underneath coils over the years.

Must be the result of my early years operating and rebuilding ground contacting earthmoving equipment 

I often detect in quartz mining areas. With lots of broken out quartz thats like glass and cuts the bottom of coils out really fast. Razor blade stuff. After yrs of doing so I wear leather gloves. Not because im a sook, but because i have cut my hands on it seeing blood squirt out like from a water pistol. Some detect in areas like open ground , others have areas to there liking. Thats mine. Dig a hole or grab what I do where I go and see how long you last until you look for gloves and a skid plate to stop your coil getting destroyed in a ridiculously short amount of time or go to hospital. Nobody is immune from what I do unless you are superman! I wear sunglasses too. Not just for the sun, but to me they are my eye skid plates. A few times when not wise not wearing them cut my face from flying shards of glass sharp quartz. Baddly too at times. Once I had to go to hospital to get a bit removed from an eye. It aint fun that I can tell you. A bit sticking out of your eye, 2 hr drive to the hospital trying like insane not to blink. Ill tell you, you blink without trying over and over and over every minute, it was one of the most painful things I went through, then a thing holding your eye open as they remove it then 2 weeks with an eye patch on hoping you can see again. 

Chuckle away.....

18 minutes ago, blackjack said:

God bless America land of the free, and I'm not being sarcastic, I honestly mean it. Especially when you consider the Nanny state that Australia has become. But although I really believe the U.SA. is the land of the free, I'm with you Reg, they just don't get irony. Too late I've already ducked behind the parapet to avoid the return fire. 

Glad I live in a really small town here in Vic mate. 99% Old style Oz and not because its 99% westerners. We have people from all corners of the globe. But we live as 1 aussies . We get along and respect each other. Small yes, but great little place. 

I didn't want to come or be here as my last home was 8 times or more bigger. But covid work from home and stuff forced us out. 

Now, when travelling to shop there, last place, here has not much so its a big travel, I see the change of people. Now im glad I dont live there. Its stuffed up. 

We go to sleep here hearing nothing, no hoons, no burnouts like last town, no screaming, no violent fights, no police. 

Its like we stepped back in time when we first came to central Victoria in the early 1990's.

I think we'll hang here till we die. If it goes that well 😆

4 hours ago, oneguy said:

Thin peice of plexiglass cut to shape and some ShoeGoo can do wonders.....

Yes I saw recomdations of what to do. Im still here trying in Aus to find things. I appreciate your recommendation. 

I am still perplexed as to why Garrett released this here with no coil covers!?

But will for sure take on board your idea. Thanks for taking the time to reply 👍👍

I don't think I'll do the contact Garret thing. I swear this is true. I contacted them about 2 mths ago asking about getting a coil cover for the 10x6. I told them how I none are here in Aus and even though I can find some overseas nobody will sell or ship me one. The reply. Honestly was this.

Hi sorry to hear that. If you dont mind what shape you use as a skid plate you could get a pot plant drip tray bottom and glue it on and use something like that. 

15 hours ago, geof_junk said:

When I found a sunbaker over 5½ ounces I got on the 2way and said "Chicken to-night" Carol answered "I'm coming over to see how well you cooked it". That was one of our codes when detecting because a lot of EARS out there. It was hard to keep the WOW in.😂

Yep that is a winner winner chicken dinner bit 👍 

Once out with my misses I heard her scream something out in Italian and I thought she'd found a nugget so yelled back "good on you ill be there in a minute I just got a signal" she screamed something out again so I went to her saying how big is it? She had disturbed a bulldog ant nest and one stung her. 😂

Garrett send me an Axiom. If I find something with it then it must be good because im not! 😁

2 hours ago, blackjack said:

Yes Dick Stouts cartoon is incisive, but part of the problem as I see it it that the manufactures are coming up with better metal detectors, this is forcing people into the left hand side line. My budget is limited so therefore are my options, after many years using a Garrett Groundhog  [yes you read it right ] I decided to lash out and buy a X-terra 705, say no more. After moving to Tasmania from Western Australia my nugget hunting with a detector has been limited, Tasmania is not detector friendly. Last summer I stared sniping so was looking for a water proof detector so I bought an Equinox 800, I liked the X-terra but the nox blows it out of the water. To further illustrate my point, sorry I'll try not to labor it, I heard from my cousin in Western Australia recently, he had a dry blowing operation at Reedy and worked his lease professionally for many years, his wife myself and others  hammered the area with detectors for 30 years. He has detected the lease using a new generation Minelab P.I. machine each time they came out, He has since retired but recently with his wife went back to his old lease armed with GPX 6000's, !2 oz. in two weeks !

I think Tas is not detector friendly from footage and pictures iv seen. Not been there though. Hard hat time 😅

On the main topic I got zero interest in the new stuff coming out. Bit nowdays like fishing. Most lures are designed to catch fishermen not fish! 😉

23 hours ago, Aureous said:

Yeah I heard that...a mate has a Nox800 and uses it in 40khz only with a 6" coil and does well with it. Hunts reeflines and mullock only, which is what the VLF's 'shine' on anyway. Mineralization is not the HF-VLF's friend lol. Good finds and nice country BTW.

No it's not mate. But the 24k I have cruises pretty well in the hot ground with the DD, the DD does not in the Quiet stuff. The Concentric does though, quiet as a church mouse. Odd but im with it now.

You having any issues on the internet mate lately? Im having crazy issues. It took a few goes just to get right on this thread. 

Im on another forum, not gold, but as here Im struggling to get on an post! I don't go hardly anywhere else buy am struggling with everything, banking, ebay, forums...

My connected bars show part connect and an X left hand corner bottom. Im having serious issues. 

On 12/1/2022 at 9:20 AM, Aureous said:

Nice! I miss my 24K.... thinking about upgrading my coin/relic machine to a Nox800 so I still have a VLF unit capable of detecting tiny gold in mild soils. But the 24K still is in my mind, the best VLF gold prospecting detector ever built.

Hi mate. I had a Nox 800 about a yr ago maybe, I couldn't use it in gold mode other than in a single frequency. Was real unstable otherwise. I heard of a few others say the same thing here in Vic on the goldfields. But maybe Minelab sorted that out and you can use it now in multi. I don't know. The open web coil drove me insane, its screaming out for an enclosed round, but that's just my opinion others I dont think care. Maybe there is one for it now, but I don't know as I haven't kept up with stuff much these days other than what im interested in. On coins and relics though it was very good and impressed me. I found though that for me, the open web coil and instability in gold mode was a deal breaker and I sold it. Maybe that's fixed though now, one would hope so. I do like the 24k.

Had another go, 1 specie, read good 89, smashed it till one tiny bit left and id say around another .1 to .2 in pyrites. Crappy pic I couldn't get a focus lock on it.

All that for.......😆

Beautiful place though. Small diggers dam below where I was and a rock wall in the distance. Not sure what that was for, maybe an old dwelling was above it? Don't know, wasn't an ore paddock.

Big open cut. See up the higher section a tree across it, that's been there since I can recall. About 25 yrs ago when I was younger and I'd say stupid but I think I still am that, I once rather than go around the cut walked over it to get to the other side. Damn if you fell you'd be in serious trouble with all the jagged broken quartz at the bottom. Its about 30 feet deep in that section. You couldn't pay me enough to do that these days! 

Good luck out there mate 👍

Hey guys. Been waiting to get out for a while. Some health issues but finally out! Did a drive to a place I love from years ago. Awesome day weather wise. Loved it. I down graded due to my health but any day swinging a detector to me is bliss, especially where I went. See nobody, hear nobody and all alone. In my element. Used the Garrett 24k with the 6" and it cruised on half Sat, 7 sens Audio Boost 2. Dug heaps of targets, several surprised me up to about 8" deep for their size. Damn lead. 😆

Ended up with 2 Specimens, 1 id guess from experience has close to 1/2 a g, the other lucky to be .1 and a tiny .1 bit free gold. No record breaking but was a great day. Was really surprised though how the 6" handled the area. Expected to be running it around 5 to below. Tried above 7 and other settings but just a little too chattery and picking up too many real little hot rock chips. Its amazing with this just what 1 step down sens does. 80% vanished and it ran so much better than on 8!

Anyway, didn't get rich  😆 but was a ton of fun.

Drive in. Big drop off to the right.

Nearly there.

Arrived and the spot.

Good fun and happy I can still swing something. 👍

Note to self. Never buy a Bounty Hunter.

Tick....👍

7 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

In many LRL devices there is nothing physically driving the direction the unit points. No motor or gears. Just a free pivoting pointer on a handle, the direction it turns determined by how level you hold it. A LRL Disassembled. In other words, most are just dowsing devices, dressed up with electronics to make it look like something they are not.

That's even worse. At least the guy I knew his had a red and green led light on his 👍

6 hours ago, Rob Allison said:

I buried a 9+ ounce solid gold nugget and both "expert dowser's" (their words) walked right over the top of the nugget with less than 2 inches of top soil over it.  

Rob

😂 Classic!

On 11/27/2022 at 3:26 AM, Steve Herschbach said:

Stick with the companies discussed by the thousands of successful users on forums. Avoid anything making excessive claims.

 

I know a guy that got a long range detector 10 years back. It would point one way. Turn it off, turn it on it'd point another way. 😁  He payed over a grand Oz for it too. He took it to some guy that knew detectors repair wise to check it out. It was just simple circuits that chose random directions. 

Have a friend who has dug dozens of shafts with drives off of them on the goldfields here, he lives in the bush too old days style. Even looks like an olden days digger! 

3 hours ago, Valens Legacy said:

I noticed a lot of areas that were good for a detector, and also some of the creek/river would have been a great place to find some gold also.

I would have used the 800 to get me in the right place in the water and then set up a sluice.

Im probably too spoilt where I am comparing Tas to Central Victoria

On 11/26/2022 at 12:06 PM, Steve Herschbach said:

I have to admit I don't care that much. I think we are hitting a wall in various ways, and that a new model is not going to do a lot to change the facts on the ground. Those facts being diminishing returns. Sure, they could make a more ergonomic GPZ, but can they really make it find smaller gold better than what we have now? I don't think so. That leaves what some people want, which is more depth on 1/4 oz and larger nuggets. What can they bring to the table there, and how many of us have ground where that will pay off? Lots of Aussies I suppose. With things as they are now in my area, I would have a real hard time convincing myself I need to buy another $8000 - $10,000 metal detector. But that's just me. What sells detectors is not so much the reality, as the dream, and for lots of people the dream is alive. Going to get that super duper new machine, and go out and find a pile of gold. Yeah!!

I think you are right about hitting a wall and diminishing returns. There's a lot of places that dont have much more to give, many virtually nothing. I pay a lot of attention to all the good areas I know about from over the years. What I have noticed is less and less signs of any action. Many have had people there as you can tell but not much if anything had come out. Many nothing, no signs whatsoever of any digs. There was some good activity when the coiltek and Nf flat winds came out, I had some fun with those but thats had its run too. Nothing to date has had anywhere near the impact the SD2000 had. My 2 cents worth. 

5 hours ago, Aureous said:

People may be surprised to learn just how much 'noise' there is within a PI circuit, especially when dealing with mineralized ground. This 'noise' detracts a lot from the circuits ability to pluck a real target from the overall signal received from the coil. Couple this with the ability to increase the coil's power, pumping more energy into the soil and you have a very large window of electronic opportunity to improve upon. The improvements in circuitry and components which can function faster and more efficiently also add even more to the picture. Add a final couple of additions in coding (a-la Geo-sense) and coil type/s (CC and DOD etc) and.....you get the picture. Electronics boffins like Eric Foster (RIP), Bruce Candy, Don McCall and Dave Emery all had visions of just how incredible the apex of PI tech for gold prospecting could become, given further, incremental advances in technology. 

We all know that there is a lot of gold outside our reach, its always been the dream that a detector will come along one day that matches the huge 50% Advance that the SD2000 gave us back in 1995. Holding breath......

The 2000 was mind blowing wasn't it. Id never seen one and I was out with an FT16000. A guy wandered over with one to say g'day. Then he showed me it in action and we tested it against the 16000 with some bits he had. A week later I had a 2000 😁

Good one. First time I've seen any Tassie goldfields. Not very detector friendly is it.

11 hours ago, Aureous said:

Same, did it all the time until I got a recurring ulceration on my gums. Thousands of nuggets got the 'treatment' until it got so bad that I got a pathology report saying it was a certain soil bacteria. Only occurred in WA, nowhere else. But, I wised up and stopped gobbing my gold. Now only need a bottle with some water, shake it up....same result and no infections.

Yeah. I know one other that got an issue that was a horrid weird lump thing on his lip the size of a marble. Took several weeks of antibiotics to clear up. Yep, bit of water in my pill bottle I carry. Or just wait till back at the car if it don't fit. There's some seriously bad stuff in the ground. I knew a guy once that got real sick digging a shaft. Was he said exactly what the diggers in the trenches got in the wars, trench fever. Was real sick for quite a time. 

18 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Australia, where even the soil tries to kill you 🙂

 

Everything is out to get us mate. Mostly small other than ocean things, even then there's small jellyfish and octopus that have it in for us. Im thinking we were not very welcomed here and they have kept up the rage 😆

5 minutes ago, Northeast said:

Brother in law advised he saw a vid of a bloke warning the same thing.  Got a bacterial infection that ate away a lot of his mouth/cheek.  Good practice to avoid.  

Yes, you are correct, wasn't virus, was bacteria. I call everything I get sick from Virus.

Damn ill tell you what. For that 12 months I struggled to even add things up in my head. Before that I could do it within seconds. After I really had to think about it.