Lanny

I have a lightweight telescoping aluminum wand with a super-magnet on the end that saves me lots of time and energy in trashy areas. I'm so used to it now that I always have it with me and wouldn't detect an area without it. I've got picks with magnets on them (and I used them for years to weed out ferrous trash), but the wand is so light and easy to use, the only time I swing my pick now is when I have to dig into or scrape down to something. If you're backpacking in (hiked into lots of tough locations myself), the aluminum wand is the answer. All the best, Lanny

Stephen, I found a pile of gold with that little sniper coil with no issues whatsoever, so perhaps you do have a bad coil. All the best with trouble-shooting whatever it is, Lanny

Thanks for dropping in, and as for making multiple runs with different detectors, I have no doubts anymore but that it's a sound strategy, truly. All the best, Lanny

Thanks Steve. Lots of fun, and I had my family with me as well which made the weekend that much more enjoyable. All the best, Lanny

It was an incredible long weekend! All of the gold to the left side of the coin (a dime) was found with the Gold Racer. The gold to the right, was found with the Gold Bug Pro and the Minelab 5000. (I can't underestimate the value of a one-two punch with a high-quality VLF followed up with the technology of a supreme PI! This is a shot of the last pieces I found with the Gold Racer, all found while hunting whispers after previously sweeping the bedrock with the same small sniper coil, and all of the finds combined on the left side of the pan were found with the Makro Gold Racer while using the little sniper coil. I will say that the small sniper coil is not good for any depth (and that's not what it's designed for either), but it's super-hot on shallow gold, especially the small stuff (that is why I bought it); moreover, it loves to sound off on the chunky stuff too! Some of the bigger stuff found that day. (Raw, uncleaned gold [clay, surface stains, etc.], pictures shot while in the field, looks much prettier now all cleaned-up.)So, the story will have to follow when I find the time as this is a busy gold-getting opportunity now that the weather's nice, but it was an incredible weekend hunt with lots of nuggets recovered, but perhaps the best (as far as the little sniper coil for the Gold Racer goes), I was able to capture well over thirty grams of small gold. The Gold Racer has turned out to be a sound investment indeed as has the little coil. (The detector has paid for itself many times already after only a few hunts, and the little coil paid for itself in the first hour.)All the best,Lanny

Thanks, and if I find something larger with that little sniper coil, there'll be no catch and release philosophy in effect.? All the best, Lanny

Heading out this weekend to try the little sniper coil to see how effective it is at sniffing out the tiny stuff. All the best, Lanny

Those sure are some sweet finds! Nicely done, and all the best, Lanny

Great to hear that it's working for you so well. I'll be trying mine out too in the not too distant future, and I hope it's a winner. All the best, Lanny

Nicely done Terry. Good to hear how the machine is treating you, and glad to know you struck pay in a pounded area. All the best, Lanny

JW, so goo to hear from you again, and many thanks for your kind words about the gold and coin-chasing tales. I would love to throw my dredge in anywhere, but it's getting almost impossible to get a permit these days, so that's why I've been doing so much specializing with the detectors. So far there's been no effort to banish their use from the goldfields . . . Great to hear from you again, and all the best, Lanny

Thanks for dropping in to say you enjoyed the story Rodd. It means a lot, and I'm glad you enjoyed hearing about the day. I had no idea a rookie would wander over on that day, so it kind of changed my plans a bit, but I've always had fun giving back as lots of others have certainly helped me along the way in my detecting journey. All the best, Lanny

Hi Northeast, and thanks for dropping in to leave some kind words. To answer your question, yes the write up belongs to the 2nd Saturday's (two consecutive Saturday hunts) finds, and the finds from both weekends (Friday coin hunts and Saturday nugget hunts) are combined in the pans, but the pan does not include the fine gold from the gold bottle.) As for the newbie, I'd say he has a glorious case of gold fever, and I certainly hope he's addicted as we all know how much fun it is to chase the gold. All the best, Lanny

Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink . . . (I apologize in advance for the length of this post. You super-pros will want to skip the first part of the story as it's written for the rookies.)Last Saturday was an interesting day indeed.The weather certainly was interesting. Mother Nature truly had dealt a mixed hand of cards: one minute the weather was sunny and warm; then it would cloud up and get cranky; the sky would darken like the face of some angry ancient god; heavy clouds, pregnant with the promise of rain would swirl overhead, releasing giant drops of icy water and sticky wet snow; then the wind would fill its lungs and blow a mighty series of gusts to clear the sky yet again. Spring, the season that imitates all other seasons, but imitates them only briefly; spring, the season that is the great imposter and yet the great bringer of hoped for change.As the weather cleared, I broke out my detecting gear. I'd packed the Gold Bug Pro and the Makro Gold Racer for the day; however, before I could head to the spot I'd chosen, I was approached by a young rookie that noticed what I was up to, and he wanted me to show him how to run a metal detector. He'd bought one for himself, but that day he was out without it, and he wondered if I could give him a few tips on what to do to set up a detector and how to go about finding gold.So, I set up the Gold Bug Pro for him, showed him how to ensure the coil wire connection was tight at the box to avoid falsing, how to secure the coil wire above the coil so it wouldn't false either, and how to ensure the connections on the coil rods were snug. Then I spent some time showing him how to ground balance. I spent a while on that subject with him so he understood how to do it properly, how to check to ensure there were no targets under the coil where he wanted to ground balance, some quick tips on EMI, etc. I gave him tips on keeping the coil level on his sweeps to avoid rising on the ends of the sweeps, how to overlap his sweeps for better coverage, how to keep the coil as close to the ground as possible to maximize detecting and target response, how to pinpoint by moving the coil 90 degrees to the original target response, and I also showed him how to do the coil "wiggle" to get the nose of the coil in the sweet zone for target recovery. Furthermore, I showed him how to properly set the threshold and sensitivity, how to adjust for EMI, and I walked him through the all-important aspect of investigating any slight break in the threshold as most of my targets are initially detected in that manner. As well, I instructed him on how to use a scoop, how to sift and sort a target in the scoop properly while using the coil to verify that the target was still in the scoop and how to use the coil to isolate the target by dropping material onto the coil. I also talked to him about the advantages of using a plastic pan for capturing multiple targets for later speed panning. In addition, I gave him my telescoping aluminum rod with the super-magnet on the end, and I went over the advantages of using it first, if he hit on a shallow signal, to quickly check if the target was ferrous or not.I turned him loose on the road and he soon had a signal. So, I went over everything with him again as he started on his target recovery, and he quickly had the target out of the hole. Well, it was a nail, not one from the 1800's, but a modern nail; regardless, he was a quick study, so I let him keep the detector to work the road for a bit, and he soon recovered several shavings of track and bucket steel.Because he was doing things exactly the way I'd instructed him to do, I was impressed (Lots of people I've tried to help learn to detect in the past have either misunderstood or ignored many of the tips I've given them, but not this guy: he was dialed-in and there to learn! It was easy to see his keen desire passion.). I watched him for a bit more, and he was ground balancing properly, using good sweep technique, slowing when he got a response, checking 90 degrees to the original signal, using the scoop properly for target recovery, and he'd really caught on how to use my extendable super-magnet-wand to eliminate shallow, ferrous targets.In fact, he was doing so well, that I invited him to check some bedrock. He soon had several more signals, all ferrous, but he was really doing great. So I said to him, "This section with the hump, the small area completely surrounded by water is virgin. Have at it." So, he went to detecting, and I went to setting up my Gold Racer. He'd call me over every once in a while to check some strange signals he was getting (hot rocks and cold rocks, so I instructed him on their various target ID aspects), and then he'd tear into detecting again. I fired up the Gold Racer and started checking a spot where an old crevice had once bottomed out.The rookie gave a shout and came a running! Now, as I've stated in other posts, "You can't make this stuff up!", he had his hand tightly closed around something, and that something was a nugget that was close to a gram in weight!! Well, I'll tell the world, he was some excited for sure. And, who wouldn't be! Rookie luck? Did he have a natural knack for it? Good questions, but regardless, he'd done it on his first outing ever. Quite remarkable actually, even if you factor in that I'd put him into a target rich environment, still remarkable as I've put others into similar settings in the past, and they've flown right over the nuggets and left disappointed.Do you think he's going to get out and give his detector a good run first chance he gets? Well, wild horses won't be able to stop him I'd say, because he had that dreamy look in his eye as he left, and all of us that chase the gold know what that look does to a person; it keeps the fires lit!I detected that little hump, with water, water everywhere, and got no gold. (I did however wade out into a couple of feet of water just beyond the hump and recover another small nugget.) So, the rookie got the only nugget in residence on that hump, but my day was just beginning.The spot I was working could best be described as small bedrock islands, water, water everywhere (and as it says in The Rime of The Ancient Mariner), Nor any drop to drink! (I certainly would never drink any of that standing water, so that's why I always pack a bunch along in my five-gallon multi-purpose mining bucket.Those plastic buckets are such handy items for toting all manner of prospecting items to a site!)Well, I carefully waded through a couple of feet of icy water and hit a bedrock rise. I slowly started working the bedrock with the Gold Racer. I soon had a soft signal that sounded like small gold. Just to be sure, I worked that spot carefully with the wand, but no ferrous. Then I took my small pick and scraped the surface, and sure enough, there was some clay riding on top. More scraping revealed some little rounded stones, iron-stained sand, and small bits of ironstone. I swept the spot again, and still the same soft, yet sweet tone. I then worked out material from all of the little cracks and crevices, tossed the material into my plastic pan, then swept the spot again. Still a soft tone, but not as loud, so more scraping with the pick and checking with the detector's coil until the area was completely silent.By this time, I had quite a collection of material in the pan. So, I waded into a deeper spot and panned it out. Well, lots of golden goodies in the pan were peeking out of the super-heavies, and as you can tell from the previous pictures, lots of small stuff, but pretty nonetheless. (Please remember that the purpose of the last two outings has been to deliberately target areas that I've either already swept with the Gold Bug Pro or to check virgin areas just to see what the Gold Racer can find.)To make a long story short, I kept at it for several hours while working those little bedrock islands, and I had many similar encounters with soft signals (with some of them broad in nature [some had great concentrations of fine gold!]) that had me doing lots of pick work to worry material from the bedrock until the detector went silent over the areas the Gold Racer had so expertly sniffed out. As I was about ready to pack up, I looked out at the water and noticed a boulder, about the size of a laundry basket, and thought, "What the heck, why not try to wade out to it if the water's not too deep?" So, I did.Well, the water was getting deep fast, and the tops of my boots just held the deluge at bay. Very careful not to swamp my boots, I slid the coil of the Gold Racer around the boulder, and eeep!, eeep! I had a solid tone, not a quiet signal like all of the others from earlier. Well, immediately the brain thinks ferrous, but the meter said gold. So, I wanded (hit it with my super-magnet wand [making up my own word?]) the area, no ferrous! Tiptoeing around the boulder to keep my feet dry, I started to work the signal underwater. (I've posted about the frustrating nature of trying to capture underwater targets before, and this outing was no exception.) However, after multiple failures, I finally had the target in the scoop along with a whack of clay and broken bedrock.I tiptoed back to shallower water, then hit the bedrock rise where I'd left my pan. I threw the material into the pan, worked the clay and bedrock material until it cooperated, then panned it down. Bam! A sassy nugget was revealed. A 3.5 gram little beauty! A keeper for sure, no catch-and-release with that one.I packed everything up and hiked or waded back to where I'd left my snacks and water. After a refreshing break, and because the sun was beginning to head west behind the mountain peaks, I broke down the Gold Racer and packed it away. I loaded my tools back into one of my buckets but noticed that my wand was missing! What the?!?Well, the last place I'd used it was way back where I'd found the nugget, so I fired up the Bug Pro and headed back across the bedrock wetlands to find my wand. On the way, I kept the Gold Bug Pro lit, and I let it sniff around underwater every time I had to wade. Three small nuggets later, I hit the bedrock rise adjacent to where I'd found the 3.5 gram nugget. There was my wand, right where I'd put it down when I'd panned out the contents from the scoop.Now, I find it curious how on a return trip to the exact same place I've already detected, the brain sharpens the eye's focus somehow and the eye notices details I've missed the first time around. This time was no exception.There was a small ledge, just above the water's edge, that held some iron-stained gravel and dark material. I couldn't remember having seen it on the first visit, but this time a switch had flipped for sure, and the old brain was screaming, "Run a coil over that spot you dummy!"So, I did, and EEEP!, EEEP!! Now, the Bug Pro really yells (unlike the Gold Racer) when it sinks its teeth into a meaty signal, and I'll tell you what, it surely had my attention. I scraped off all of the loose material, no target in the scoop, but I threw it in the pan just in case. I scanned again, and EEEP! Now, here was a bit of an enigma, wrapped in a bit of a mystery to boot. I was staring at solid black bedrock. So, just for the heck of it, I wanded the spot, but no friends.After I'd swept the area again and the meter was pinning close to 60, I carefully went to work with the pick and broke out some material. I grabbed it with my hand to put it in the pan, and the weight was more than the small amount of material should have been. A very black 4.7 gram nugget was resting in my palm.As for the material I'd tossed into my pan, there was good flake gold in it. I swept the edge of the bedrock and was rewarded with some nice soft signals, so I broke more bedrock until it went quiet, and then I panned it out: more pickers and flake gold, a nice catch.Well, darkness was not becoming "my old friend", especially as I had to wade to get out, so I abandoned my workings and headed back to the truck.What a great day! (For me and the rookie.)All the best,Lanny These pictures are of the combined find from both Saturday gold hunts, with the Friday coin hunts of both weekends added in:

Thanks for dropping in Stephen. I've got to go pick my little sniper coil up so I can see how it performs. I'll let you know what I think of it. (I look at the fact that Makro manufactured one as a great example of a company that listens to the wishes of its consumers!) As you can see from the picture of the gold in the pan, there sure are a lot of small pieces that the Gold Racer was able to sniff out. The largest piece is 4.7 grams. All the best, Lanny

Incredible haul Lunk! It's great to know you're finding gold in your old patches with new technology. What a great advantage to have. Nicely done, and all the best,Lanny

Sweet finds indeed! Nicely done, and all the best,Lanny

Thanks for the info. on the spoon; it's nice to know what to look for when and if I ever find another one. As for the coins, I'll be checking the dates. The oldest is the 1916 large cent, and the silvers were fun finds too. In reference to the gold, there's still lots of places left to look as Canada is a great big country with not a lot of people in it, so it hasn't been hammered as hard as some other places. Thanks for dropping in, and thanks for the information on the spoon too. All the best, Lanny

Posted the finds. All the best, Lanny

Took the Gold Racer out this Saturday (April 28), and struck gold again! I've already rounded up over 15 grams of the sweet stuff with it, and of that total amount, about 3.5 grams of the small stuff that would still be there without the Racer's sensitive nose for fine gold. (I also ordered the tiny elliptical sniper coil to see how sensitive it is. I like how Makro listens to their customer's wishes. Fisher used to make a tiny sniper coil for the Gold Bug 2, and I hear they're still highly sought after, and I have a friend that sure loves his, so I hope the Racer's coil is a good little sniper coil as well.) I'm still learning the sounds the Racer emits, and I found out on Saturday that when I get it over chunks of ironstone, it sings a tune that sounds rather like a good tone, but one mixed with a warble that sounds almost like EMI, and that's very different from the sound the Bug Pro gives on the same targets. The Pro makes a sweet sound, but the iron bars jump way up; the iron reads high on the Racer as well, but that distinctive sound the Racer makes when the coil is over ironstone is now filed in my brain, and I believe it will help me out quite a bit because where I'm currently hunting, there are lots of rounded pieces of ironstone from golfball size to pea size. So, the Racer has just given me a new audio-target ID tool. Of course, I'll still need more time in the field to test my early observations, but the results look promising so far. As for ID'ing the fine gold, I'm finding that when I get the coil over some bedrock, and there's any kind of a positive response, there's often small gold there. (Of course, sometimes it's ground noise when there's a high concentration of oxidized iron in bedrock.) So, I just keep digging until I'm no longer getting a positive response (I throw all of the dirt from the bedrock digs into a large gold pan to save time locating the small stuff.). Another note, when I get the coil over a concentration of fine gold, it gives a broad signal kind of like the sound of high ground mineralization, so that's why I'm now investigating the source of the sound, and it's paying off. As for the Gold Bug Pro, I still like the target response sounds it makes better than the Racer, but maybe that will change with time. Moreover, I don't plan on not using the Pro either. It's a great machine that's paid for itself many, many times over. All the best, and thanks again Steve for your write-up on your site about the Makro Gold Racer. Years ago I started to read your field tests about detectors of all makes, and I know you have always been impartial and simply tried to report only what you've found during your tests without bias, and I really appreciate that as well. All the best, Lanny

Steve, I took a look at the info. on the Kruzer, and I wondered the same thing about whether it would find the gold any better than the Gold Racer. One thing I do like about the Kruzer though is the fact that the entire unit is waterproof. I've got a long, steep and deep bedrock canyon with some nice runs and pools where a detector like that might be a great thing to have to sniff out the gold in some of those underwater crevices. I've got gold there before while wearing my mask and snorkel as I was sniping, so I know the gold's there. (Only problem, that water is always so cold you get brain freeze in no time if you don't wear a dive hood!) I'm finding out over the last two days that the sweet spot on the Racer isn't the same as the sweet spot on my Bug Pro, so I'm having to make a few changes when it comes to narrowing down the location of the target signal, but luckily the Garrett Carrot is getting a good workout, and by using it, I'm quickly learning where to look in relation to the signal under the coil vs. my Bug Pro, so that's a plus. Once again, I was quite surprised at how deep I was digging to get the pennies from WWII years (1939-1945), some of them down as much as eight inches, but the silver dimes (from 1960, both of them!) were only down about four inches with both signals nice and crisp from the get go). Once I get a high tone, I'm finding that the target ID quickly goes active and then locks on if I move off some dirt to get the coil closer to the target. I found it did the same thing with the pickers I detected with it last weekend. I'm taking advantage of the coin-shooting at the old home site to learn all of the differences in the make up of the Gold Racer as it gives me the opportunity to dig lots and lots of targets in a short amount of time so I can tune my ear to the different sounds the Racer makes as well. In addition, I'm learning what small targets sound like (found some 22-short blanks, and tiny bits of copper and lead which gave nice, soft signals, much like gold did when I was hunting it last weekend). All the best, Lanny

Took the Gold Racer out for a coin shoot last night. Found a handful of pennies from the 1940 war years, all the way back to 1932. Also found a very old silver spoon (late 1800's/early 1900's Rogers Brothers) that looks like it was in a fire. That's the first time I've ever found a silver spoon, but I have no idea if it's plate or sterling, doing a little research on that, (no copper showing through, and I scratched it pretty good when I hit it with the pick). I had permission to detect an old home site that's being repurposed for a new business, so while the whole area is torn up, I'm using it as a test bed. The Gold Racer ran well, and it took a while to get used to using the discrimination modes, and I played around with the tone break after I learned the digital ID's of a few trash targets and some highly conductive ones too, so that helped. In addition, I was surprised at the depth it hit some of those coins, no ID digital display numbers, but a sweet tone to guide my ears. Furthermore, when I'd dug down five or six inches, I'd get a digital readout, and then it read solid and pinned at 84. Then I used the Garrett Carrot to pinpoint. Newer pennies were hitting at 80. The silver spoon, much higher of course. I have other machines I like better for coins, but I thought I'd see what there was in the Gold Racer tank anyway, and I wasn't disappointed. Not a coin machine for sure as that's not its purpose, but it will lead to the goodies regardless. (Still a lot to learn about the machine for me yet.) All the best, Lanny P.S. Took it out again tonight, 10 more pennies from WWII, two silver dimes, 1927 penny, 1916 large cent, old pocket knife and a cool toy gun!

Sounds very interesting Reg. I wonder, does it have a good discriminator with a digital readout for ID'ing target responses? With a combination like that, and a nice selection of coils, it would be a dream machine indeed! But, perhaps it will take a while to incorporate wish list items like that. All the best, and thanks for your response, Lanny

Thanks for dropping in Tom. I'm located in Western Canada, and I chase most of my gold in Montana, and British Columbia, though I have chased a few nuggets in Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Alaska, so I still have a lot of places yet to try. Where I live, glacial gold is tiny, hammered flat, and it floats very easily in the pan if it gets any chance to do so. This is due to the hammer-mill or roller-ball effect of the slow but continuous grinding motion of the gigantic glaciers of long ago. Imagine a sheet of ice miles thick pressing down on everything underneath it with titanic pressures and you'll understand why any chunks of gold were ground to a powder. When I find nuggets, some of them are hammered flat as well, but they often still have character (lumps and bumps, crystalline structures, sometimes attached quartz, etc. that won't survive an extended period of hammering action by rocks). So, if you find any pieces of any size with character, you'll have a much better chance of being close to a deposit of some sort. One of the best ways to get an idea is to check the government geological reports for your area as many are quite comprehensive in their reports on any precious metals found around your location. All the best, Lanny

Thanks Steve for all of your write-ups on detectors. You've done the detecting world a great service by providing such concise reviews of such a wide range of detectors over the years. You sir are a study in excellence! I plan on giving the Gold Racer a hard run this season to see what it's capable of. All the best, Lanny