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I have an easy and maybe stupid question to present now... Observing my TDI Bh, with both of the coils I own (the original 12" and the aftermarket Detech 8"), I can clearly see way too long wire around the shaft and I'm forced to make several loops up to the control box near the handle. Supposing to measure the right lenght for the maximum extended shaft, and to cut away the hipmount mile long cable.....Am I doing a disaster or not? I actually can't remember the technical cable's specs in the amazing pdf Steve posted time ago, but if I'm correct it talked about to reduce some current resistance with a slight performance improvement too...Have I seen a mirage or what?... I'm not kidding 😜... It's just me, looking for something to play with, suffering for a missed AQ.

This is for novices and the things covered are basic, but very important. I even need to remind myself of this stuff now and then. We all take it so much for granted, that things like loose cable near coil rarely are mentioned on the forum. And coil control? Probably one of the most important factors in success for successful detectorists. People obsess over a detector getting another inch, when so many people could get that just with better coil control.

I live in Northern Idaho (Moscow) and bought a gold monster 1000. I can't really complain that it is hard to find gold, as I was warned by the Chris Ralph Fists Full of Gold book to not invest in a metal detector right away without prospecting experience. Frankly it was a bit of an impulse buy as the activity just looked like so much fun, and I read books you can detect outside of the desert I really want to make it work. I haven't had any luck so far despite being out roughly ten times. Went out for the first time this season to a placer mine dump. This time of year there is still snow in the mountains and the rivers and creeks are overflowing with snowmelt. So I think it is better to wait for awhile before hitting creeks and streams and just target old gold mines which have mine dumps. To research I use the site https://www.idahogeology.org/webmap to give me specific gps coordinates. I also use sites like thediggings.com to see if there is any mining activity in the area to make sure I don't go on someone's claim, but also that the area is known to have some gold. I haven't been able to find too many guys doing detecting in a heavily wooded area with a VLF. Which makes sense because VLF's can't get through the mulch and heavy vegetation layer. Today I went to a lode mine dump and although there were huge piles of dirt I wondered if I would be able to detect any missed nuggets in there unless I was to get the bottom of that huge pile as the heaviness of gold would sink to the bottom. My question is about the application of VLF's in heavily wooded areas. Is it limited to Creeks and Streams? How can the limited depth of VLF's deal with this heavy mulch layer in these placer/load mine dumps in the forest? I'm also curious if my approach is really bad in general. Thanks.

Does anyone know where Reg Sniff might be hanging out since Findmall removed the White's forum?

As someone that prefers to go when not many people are around, what times would you suggest? Also would rain/stormy weather be worse for plugging hole using digger tools?

Just received my NEW metal detector "anfibio multi" Is that the usual appearance of a new machine 🤷‍♂️ ? Also the pulse dive seems to make a small noise from the inside every time I rotate/shake it , like there is something small "floating" inside!! (+they were partially charged) 🙄 PS : it was bought from an official dealer!! Maybe I am overthinking about it 😅what do you think?! Thank you in advance

Hello all, I'm new to this and almost never do a lot of online forums. I currently have an old Goldmaster V-Sat and a MXT. Even with these I have very little experience actually using these. We have recently retired and now really wish to start detecting (and especially gold). I am at the point to of investing in some newer units, (specifically the Minelab Equinox 800 and the Gold Monster 1000). First, I would like to know if anyone thinks it is worth trying to compare the older units I have with the newer ones that I am considering to purchase. Second, if I do decide to buy the new ones, would I be better off buying 2 Equinox 800's or one Equinox 800 and one Gold Monster. My wife and I want to find gold but we also want to have at least one detector that can search for multiple targets (i.e. coins & jewelry, relics, beaches, etc. I look forward to hearing from you all, and hope I can find some goodies worth sharing pictures of with you. Best Regards, Walt

I have some questions about dredge tailings such as are found in California, Idaho, eastern Oregon and other places in the western US. This spring I would like to add dredge tailings to my selection of areas to hunt for gold and I am in need of some advice. As I understand the environment, one might find either nuggets or specie gold, and that the approach for finding each one is different. Is this a correct evaluation? When looking for specie gold in dredge tailings, where does one start: along a road, at the base of the piles, near the top, on the side, either near or away from vegetated areas, near the pond or away from the pond, or ? Are there specific characteristics one should note? How does the hunt for nuggets in this environment differ from the specie search? It appears that a large loop on a VLF would be better for specie gold and a small loop (VLF) would be better for nuggets, correct? I realize that there may be some "trade secrets" that you prefer not to share but any general help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

V = πr2d Volume of the material you dig out of a round hole (r=radius, d= depth) A = πr2 Area your coil covers on the ground. See, even prospecting needs π, and you can eat it too!

I had posted in another thread about how many prospectors do not take the time to accurately pinpoint and therefore spend a lot of unnecessary time chasing their target, resulting in less gold found. I thought it might be better to have a clean thread specifically on the topic. Its important because taking an extra 30 seconds to pinpoint a target carefully can save 5 minutes or more of digging and chasing. Multiply 5 minutes per target (more or less) by 20 or more targets a day and it really adds up. Plus the less time you spend digging and chasing your targets, the more time you spend actually searching for gold. This means you will be able to detect and find more targets in a day resulting in more gold produced. Geof_junk had suggested a method described by Garrett to make a 90 degree X It works, but even that is very rough. People swing over a target from one direction, then swing over it from another direction and where both lines that indicate the target cross, that is where the target is.... Sort of. The Garrett description says to use the line where the target is loudest, but often a target is pretty much the same intensity over the whole body of the coil. And a lot of prospectors just use the lines for anywhere the coil sounds, but depending on the size of your target, whether the target is sounding on the front edge or the back edge, or anywhere in between, your "imaginary line" can be almost twice the width of the coil. Then cross that with an "imaginary line" at 90 to the first one, you now have a circle roughly twice the diameter of the coil in which the target could be located. The smaller the coil, the smaller the circle of possibility - so pinpointing with a small coil is just naturally easier. On the other hand, if you are swinging the GPX with a standard coil, that circle is up to 28 inches, and because you need to swing the coil through the hole over the target, now you need a hole of about 42 inches and if its deep, that is going to be a real crater! This is why its important to step back of the target and swing forward to make sure you are hearing it on the front of the coil. Move the coil slowly forward as you swing it and where you first get a full target response, mark that line. Turn 90 degrees and do the same. That crossing should get you a more accurate pinpoint of the target location, allowing you to dig and recover the target more quickly. Any other thoughts about pinpointing?

Hello, I was in search for a hobby That takes me outside. I was a rock climber, kayaker, backpacker, Ect...... Bu know at 50 I had a heart attack, and a bad back so a lot of the extreme sports are done. Living near The great Lakes and spending a lot of time in/on/ and near them might be a good place to spend a day metal detecting. I was wondering if anyone has the time to share what is a good detector for around 1000.00-1500.00, All the reviews I have seen so far are trying to sell me something. So un-biased reviews and thoughts would be great. I would like to buy something that I would not have to upgrade for a while. But I know nothing about the brands, or coils, ect... Minlab seems to have a big following but I do not know if it is just hype. Thank You

Last season I started hunting with my SDC and would mark 10 targets with those construction flags, then fire up the Goldmonster, scrape off a couple inches and chase down the target with the Monster. I found this helped me PP faster and also be able to use the discrimination on the Monster and help speed things up for the way I hunt. Wash, rinse, repeat. I've actually lost sight of those construction flags laying on the ground a few times and wasted some precious time looking for my target marker(s). I found these packs of 10, in many colors, heavy duty markers, 7" diameter. Looking forward to using something I can see next season. I went with the "passionate pink"...lol If you mark targets before you dig check em out.....

Hello all, A number of years ago I was one of the the first people to come upon a motorcycle accident in which 3 people lost their lives. During the passing of one of the women she took her wedding ring off at some point which was found about a week later by someone who had come to see the wreck site. I thought it was strange that I didn’t see it since I was by her side at the time of passing but it was good that the ring was returned to her family. I also remembered seeing somewhere that apparently when someone passes quickly they will sometimes take off clothes and restrictive items. I then remembered that in the mountains where I live a mother and daughter got lost, their bodies were found 2 years later. Animals had strewn their bodies about. I’ve considered for the last 2 years or so to go up there with my metal detector to see if I couldn’t find any sentimental jewelry to return to the Father/husband, I would give it to the sheriff to return to the family if I found anything. My dilemma is this. By all accounts this could be considered a gravesite and should not be disturbed at all. Another part of me, the father/husband part of me, would relish to have any piece of my loved ones returned and if I knew I could get them nothing would stop me from having them back. since I’ve not been able to decide if this is right or wrong I haven’t even visited the site. I’d like to hear your thoughts if this is ethical and right to consider doing this. If it would affect your decision, there is a possibility that I would find small skeletal remains as well that were missed by the search and rescue crews.

I just recently got one of these Russian boards, which IMO looks like a good piece to work with. I read over the supplied build instructions which are fairly clear, but in a way are not totally, at the same time. I have worked with circuits quite a lot over several years, I went back to a site that discusses working with timer IC's of which in this build uses the 7555, a CMOS version of the vaunted 555 that uses 1/10th the power. This is where the MD transmitter freq. is produced. There are several ways to construct the oscillator and in the case of this design, I find one very small issue. Since as I mentioned, I just got this board and still working at putting it together, obviously I haven't tested it. Here is what I am here to discuss with anyone looking at this version, thinking about building one, or has one working. The 555 system has been know to experience unstable responses if there is no Capacitor connected from pin 5 to ground ! There is no Cap to pin 5 included in this circuit design and it uses a few other features that differ from the basic osc. circuits A .01ufd cap which on this board can be installed on the back side of the board from pin 5 to the nearest ground buss and should be some improvement to the function and stability of the circuit, it is 'optional' and it will work without it. It is a very small mod but in my experience sometimes that is all it take to work or not. I also suggest to use .100 inch header pins for connecting any of the peripheral parts. Doing this makes it easier to R&R the board for working on it, you will need to be extra diligent about connecting everything back in the proper place but if you have gone this far with this project, that is a no brainer. There are a couple of places the .100 header pins will not fit perfectly but you can get around that with the use of a single break away pin and just a tiny bit of force to re align so your connection will fit as you continue assembly. 3 pins on the right of the rough GB Pot on board are one place, another is the 2 holes just to the right and above the 4 large elect. caps around the Vreg, LM7808 or LM7809, also using a 7809 might give you a slight bit of bump in performance. Since the circuit uses a +12v supply battery, there is still a bit of margin left so that the dropout V is going to remain above the output V of the regulator until batteries are getting too low. Using a battery carrier that holds 8 AA cells, alk or even NiM rechargeables will or should work and you should still be able to get this inside the housing. The use of NiM may exhibit an issue with the 7809 so make the choice based on what battery V you plan on using. One could also use an extra bat pack in series to push the V higher for the input, as the 78xx can handle up to 30v input, this will give you a lot more operation time before the dropout V becomes an issue. I would also think installing some reverse polarity protection here, 'NEVER a bad addition to any circuit and simple, a couple of small diodes and a fuse added to the project, around a 200 milliamp mini fuse is a good rating, put some extras inside the case. The current draw of this unit is very low so you can run your batteries way down this way and still keep going, having a small solar setup would be a good thing to have with you to boost batteries also, you could make it to fit over your hat!!! I am in the U.S. and have considered doing assembly of projects in the future,,, if my board works out. The one good thing I like about this system is that it should work with several different coils out there and one can even construct their own coil if using careful attention. Coils are really not that hard to make if you have and follow the instructions. Making the casing is probably the worst part of it, using resins and hardeners. Shielding is a bit critical here. I will mention that it is almost essential that you have an oscilliscope to build one of these for adjusting the timer section freq. the 5k pot on the left side of the 7555 and also setting amplitude on the upper right of 7555, the one just left of the 14 pin IC spot.. If you don't have a scope, there are apps online that make your PC work as one and you will have to learn how to use it, or get someone that knows to help with it. Also a transistor tester is helpful and when working with these parts, you MUST know the pins and install them RIGHT if you intend to have it work but you already know this if you are thinking about assembling one.

Hello, New to the forum, just wanted to say hello before I started to ask questions here haha. Several years ago I bought a junker metal detector to test out the hobby, it died a couple years later now I'm back. Wondering how good Kellyco customer service is. Ordered a new MD from them and after 10 days of patiently waiting, I was sent what Is obviously a used machine. I paid for a new one so I'm a bit irritated about it. It's Sunday so I have to wait until tomorrow to call. I could have ordered one through Amazon, but thought I'd give them a try. Any issues with Kellyco before? Not looking to bad mouth anyone, just wondering if this is common business practice. They have been around a long time I see, so I guess I expected more from them.

Used Cherry Pick settings from the Handbook for a brief session in a local park. Found a penny, the handle of a spoon. If it ever was silver plated, that is long gone. Then found a quarter-sized disk, a token of some sort. It says "Where a kid can be a kid" on both sides and one side was stamped OTTS.ORG. I just tried that website and it is apparently closed. There was a message to the effect to leave your contact info if you have any business with this site. Question: is there something more than the Lesche Predator but less than a shovel -- a mini shovel, perhaps?

I was wondering if anyone has ordered anything from this company before. I'm assuming my headphones dies on the AQ, so I wanted to get the cable and have someone build me a new set of headphones. This company has the 5 pin M8 connector needed for the AQ I think. It also has the ones that are "L" shaped which would look to be a better way to have the cable come out of the battery. The video shown sounds promising and the price seems extremely reasonable. Let me know what you think. Will it work? https://www.automationdirect.com/videos/video?videoToPlay=gV0yX9qSAds

We’re heading over to the Hauser beds (near Blythe, CA) this week (11/25/20), has anyone been there recently? Any suggestions on good locations? 😁 I’ll post a collecting trip report with recommendations when we return. Thanks!

Hi everyone I have a troy X5 metal detector what is it worth if I sold it, Its in really good condition and still works fine would be very grateful for your views many thanks Clive

Here are a couple things I've run into detecting lately that I figured I could share here for some motivation! This first one comes from a patch where the trash is elusive and the hot rocks are warm at the worst. This one gram specimen is the first specimen I've ever found at this location. I found it detecting a small gully on a big hill sitting near the top of a cut bank about 2 feet above the surface of the bed of the gully. It was the first gold find on that particular outing and in an area near my main patch which I hadn't yet found gold, let alone detected much at all. What's more special about this little guy is that all I had found up to that point detecting new areas was trash (bullets and bits of steel). When I started detecting this gully, all was silent for about 20 minutes until I swung my coil over something that screamed really loud and sharp. After I moved it in one boot scrape into the gully, I knew it was going to be a .22 shell or some nice chunk of a bullet. But I gotta recover it right!? Whether it's just to remove the trash to clean the area up or to find out for sure if it's trash. Well, these finds are the most satisfying type! KNOWING I found trash and then somewhere along with all the nudging around I somehow managed to perform some alchemy and it turned the bullet into a nice little chunk of gold! So dig it all!!! Bringing me right into my next reality checker find! Back to a very old patch where there is a lot of old diggings, trash, and black hot-HOT rocks! Here I am on this trip, 13 hours of detecting, 0g of gold, 10oz of steel/aluminum/brass, and 50kg of HOT iron nodules kicked and/or tossed behind me until finally, I get back onto some gold missed by who knows how many enterprising prospectors. Now it's about enough to drive me mad and hopeless with that much skunk! Is my detector working? Yes, remember all the small bits of steel found at depth and how well the detector responds to air tests today. Is all the gold gone? No, you're still digging targets no one else has bothered with in old placer diggings that you've found gold in before. Should I stop digging at signals when I can see a hot rock sitting on the surface under my coil? No, what if it's masking a nugget! Well, it happened! I moved one of those hot rocks, still a signal... Another hot rock! I'll move it... Still a signal. Another hot rock!? ...finally 8 inches deeper into the hot rock hole and I'm dealing with a steady signal, no visible hot rocks, and not much hope. But out pops a little smooshed nugget! PERSISTENCE!!! Excitement, energy, and conversely, fatigue all culminating in this moment, I must still stick to SOP. Recheck the hole. STILL another steady signal. No way... YUP! Another gold find, same hole! I ask myself, "Can this hole go for three?" The hole responds with... well it doesn't respond... But if I wouldn't have moved those hot rocks, I would have never heard those little nuggets hanging out beneath them! And if I wouldn't have rechecked my hole, I would have left one behind. Could you imagine how it would have made that nugget feel, being unearthed for the first time in it's life and being left behind all alone! Stripped away from it's partner that got taken... Coulda been a shame. BUT IT WASN'T! Anyways! I'm looking at ~50 fun hours on my 14x9 Evo and I'm very happy with it! So here's a little Evo motto pic with about 3dwt of gold for everyone to enjoy!

Looking for tips on what to carry in the field for nugget hunting. I have a metal detector, skid plate for the coil, an Apex pick with super magnet, a plastic scoop, a plastic flat sided cup, a small plastic bottle for nuggets. Which is better, a back pack or finders pouch? Thanks in advance for your thoughts and suggestions.

A lot of interest around these new Equinox coils. The 10x5, like for many, is tempting. But darn that $219 price tag! So just for some fun discussion, what choice would you make if you hunt parks or lots for jewelry and coins mostly? Not talking hunting for gold nuggets, urban hunting : ) Coiltek 10x5 for you Equinox at $219? A whole Vanquish 340 that comes with a 10x7 at $199? If you already have a Simplex, pick up an SP24 coil AND a Pulsedive that connects to your headphones fIr around the same price? Wait for one to come up lightly used for nearly half the price?

I’m posting this due that we still have lots of detectors that have tuning knobs on them and just by bumping your detector they can get off. The first thing you do is take the knob off the pot you’re having trouble with. Then get you some O rings that fit tight around the pin of the pot and slide one over the pin .Now you take knob for it and push it back on so the knob will rub on the O ring . The O ring will drag on the detector housing and by magic you have fixed your problem of your settings getting off . I’m sure a lot of the old times knew about this little trick that can be a big problem. One friend had a detector that the pots was so worn that they would get off just swinging it . Chuck

Sounds like a simple question But I know it's not. Once this pandemic is over, I would like to take my wife and myself to the best place in the US to hunt for meteorites. She's a pretty tough women, But still likes the shopping/site seeing/quality time thing. I'm more into the rustic adventure. But I'll loose that battle. What are your best choices for a combo visit? My chances of finding the real thing I know are slim, But it's more about giving it a try and having fun. Are there any people out there that maybe do some guided trips or hunts? (meteor/relic/gold) or just plain fun. Please point me in the right direction.

any info or ideas on what would find more nuggets ?????