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  1. So I have had two very experienced older prospectors tell me that they don't like the 2300 because the threshold warbles. In other words it is not stable. It does not really matter which setting you use it still has a slight warble to it. Since I am new to prospecting I just kinda figured this was normal for the Minelab PI's They tell me that their 4500 and 5000 have a nice stable threshold which allows them to hear the faint signal's better. Therefore they don't have to use as much gray matter trying to figure out a target. I have sometimes wondered if I am missing small pieces of gold because of this. But then again I have found some very small pieces with the 2300. So my question is....is this normal for the SDC 2300 or is something wrong with both of my machines? I'm guessing normal. A few nuggets found during the last couple weeks. Biggest is .52 grams strick
  2. Hi all, I am curious just how you guys that use a bungee on the new Minelab SDC 2300 have rigged your bungee,for your own use. I know you knuckle draggers:) will say "it isn't heavy to me, so I don't need to use one", but you may not spend as many hours in the field as some of us. Even a Gold Bug II will get heavy over a long swing time, day in and day out... So, if you have one, let's see what how you did it. It doesn't need to be complicated nor expensive. I made one for my SDC, I can leave it on, even when it is folded up, is made of 4 items. A piece of parachute cord, a parachute cord clamp you can buy wherever that cord is found, and either a rectangular or triangular piece of plastic to run your cord through, as well as to hook your bungee to, all of which can be found at the same location stated above. A short piece of flexible plastic gas line, left over from some motorcycle repairs completes the unit. I used the plastic gas line to minimize wear on the carbon fiber lower shaft, but your method could be a whole lot more imaginative. Thanks for looking! Gary/Largo
  3. Wow Minelab SDC2300 It makes you really want one. Ivan
  4. I just purchased a SDC 2300 and own a GPX 5000. Have not taken the sdc 2300 out yet due to snow and work. But was wondering how many detectorists here go detecting on salt? Lakes, Beaches or Ocean area's? Do you have any success ? I never seem to ever hear of anyone finding gold in these area's. But Minelab makes settings for them.
  5. First off, thanks for the add to the forum Steve and secondly i wanna express my thanks for your willingness to do real world tests of all these detectors--that's what means the most to me...how they react on the same undisturbed target. I am looking forward to the comparisons. If you get tired of your FrankenATX i wanna be the first to have a shot at buying it--i love the idea of the weight loss program you have it on. I may have one question---what is your normal set up of the 2300 here in NV?--- [Mine is not as quiet as I expected, of course i run it on 5 sensitivity if i can get away with it and about 2 on the threshold---it almost reminds me of the 2200v2 i had...a little warbly.....I am afraid to run it on the lower sensitivity settings because i am afraid i lose too much depth]--- What say you? Chris you can chime in too--or anyone else for that matter---- i really like his forum---it is educational for me...
  6. The place I've been river prospecting recently is only showing me very small flakes of gold (so far). They are so small in fact that even the SDC can't pick them up. Yesterday my Garret Pro Pointer arrived and that also sees nothing when I pass it across the vials. Even some of the quite big flakes that I found a while ago in Scotland. So I got to wondering, what is the minimum flake/nugget size that can be detected? Could anyone with an SDC (or even a Pro Pointer) post and tell me their results? Thank you!
  7. It's well known that the SDC is finding a lot of small gold, but the truth is that it can also be used to find some larger types of specimen gold where the SDC also has an advantage over other detectors, because the response of wiry, porous gold is much like that of small gold even when the overall amount of gold is fairly large. Metal detectors work by seeing the eddy currents created by a magnetic field coming out of the detector’s coil. The eddy currents which are created in porous, mossy or wiry pieces of gold decay and disappear much more quickly than those which are created in solid pieces of gold of the same weight. This type of specimen gold behaves much more like a very small nugget even though the amount of gold contained within the specimen is good sized. The new MPF technology found in the SDC 2300 allows it to begin searching for eddy currents much more quickly than previous pulse induction detectors. This accounts for its ability to find smaller gold, but also allows the SDC 2300 to be very hot on specimen gold, and that is why I am making this post. If you want to find larger pieces of gold with your SDC 2300 that have been missed by others or could not have been detected with previous detectors, you need to be looking in places where specimen gold abounds or the gold is of the mossy, prickly, porous or wiry variety. So the next time you are thinking about where to prospect with your SDC 2300, remember that if you choose places rich in specimen gold you may be finding some very nice specimens with your detector. These nuggets were all iron stained ugly specimens a few weeks back but spent a lot of time soaking in acid. The larger nugget I found a few weeks back - plus a few more found a couple weeks before that. The small one below the bigger one is from California, the others are from Nevada. Biggest piece is 0.57 ounces, total is 0.9 ounces.
  8. The folks Downunder are busy with the SDC-2300. Keep up with it here http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t20312-coil-size-used-on-gpx-before-the-2300-cleaned-up-old-patches#193870 For my part, I have a call in to ML in Chicago. Mine is falsing over green plants and there is the small matter of gross stupidity - MINE. REMEMBER MY BRILLIANT IDEA ABOUT PROTECTING THE BOTTOM WITH gorilla Tape. Worked great - when I peeled it off, off came the clever anti-counterfiet sticker on the bottom. After spending 20 minutes seperating it from the tape - I stuck ot back on. Hurray, except now - through the magic of holograms or something - it reads VOID - about ten times. Guess the FBI will be knocking soon!!!
  9. I went back to the deep canyon this morning. I found 2 that I missed the other day. It seems peculiar that I found 4 quality nuggets in there with a total weight of over 1/4 oz, but nothing deeper that about 8 inches. The canyon is all bedrock with overburden ranging from 0 to about 2 ft. I covered just shy of 2 miles of this good looking ground and obviously had decent success, but just wondering what I might be missing. I found no nuggets on the margins of the wash, everything would have been right in moving water during heavy rain runoff. Today's fatboy was smack in the middle of the wash, but found a hidey hole in jagged bedrock. Perhaps when that new Minelab Super detector comes around, this spot will give up its secrets. Today's take, 3.3, and .4 grams.
  10. I witnessed first hand the power of the SDC Detector on small gold. The SDC 2300 has has amazing sensitivity. Its true what they say about its ability to find small gold. I compared targets with my GP3500 and the SDC and to my surprise the SDC out performed on the small gold. I just want to say I wouldn't have believed it unless I saw it with my own eyes. Simply amazing.
  11. I'm currently trying to find something like that black ATX bag for my SDC 2300. Really a bit miffed that having paid so much for it, it doesn't even come with a bag to protect it. Don't need a hard case (Pelican make some very good ones if anyone is interested), just a durable bag to stop it getting scratched while I'm carrying it in the back pack. Think I may have found one designed for a Midi controller that would do the job. Just have to double check the sizes.
  12. Hey Steve, How would you like to follow behind Glenn with the SDC? I got out for a few hrs and dug a bunch of bird shot, but found this guy in a spot that screams gold. A bedrock bench with a foot of overburden. Based on the birdshot, I doubt it was ever detected. I need to pull off that overburden and give her another go. 3 grams, we're getting there.
  13. Can someone please tell me the correct term for the type of audio out socket (headphone socket) on the SDC 2300? Thanks!
  14. There is clear evidence that the SDC-2300 presents a new capability when it comes to finding small and specimen gold. However, given it's 8" coil and preference for slow sweep, it can't cover acres at a time. Since I'll be getting one soon, I'd appreciate it if everyone would kindly send me GPS coordinates for all their "worked out" patches. i would especially appreciate ones with high mineralization or EMI. OF COURSE i will give you full credit for putting me on to all that small and specimen gold which was undetectible with PI detectors or un "hearable" because of limitation of VLF machines. Sorry for the foolish tone of the above, but I for one will be scouring the forum archives for clues as to where gold has been found under circumstances which lend themselves to "clean up" by the SDC. After all, they say you should never "leave gold to find gold". Edit Note: I re-read this post and realized that the last paragraph basically said that I was going to figure out exactly where some forum members had found gold. Not so. What I am going to do is try and figure out (mostly from older posts on other forums) areas where a combination of mineralization, small gold size and maybe features like powerlines have made it likely that previously well known productive patches are candidates for what Steve has called the "patch vacuum".
  15. I went out to a new old spot from last year. I had taken a few pickers off an old bench with shallow bedrock using the Gold Bug II. The overburden is 8 to 10 inches with decomposing schist bedrock. The bedrock was almost too hot for the GBII, hard to separate the tones. I had raked down the overburden and went over it with the GPX 4000 with 16 inch NF round mono, no joy. I went back yesterday with the SDC and immediately got a faint tone. The bigger of the nuggets was right in that decomposed bedrock. With no more signals, I again pulled down the overburden as best I could with my short handled pick. Got another faint tone 8 inches from the first nugget. I opened up the hole and the signal just wouldn't improve. I kept opening the hole thinking the target must be in the side of the hole. Still no luck and the target just wouldn't improve. In frustration I used the pick to bust up the bedrock and pulled the whole mess out. Bang, now the target was blowing my ears off in the dig pile. That was the long looking nugget. I waved over the hole and got another faint tone. Same issue, I couldn't get the tone to improve until I got it out of the hole. My assumption is that the hot bedrock is somehow diffusing the quality of the signal, even when I'm right on the target. Once out of the hole, they sounded off like the quality of nuggets they are. 3.5 grams total. They must be fairly porous, awfully light for their overall size.
  16. I really enjoy this site. This discussion board has been very helpful with this new found hobby of mine. I played around with metal detectors briefly back in the 80's when my dad was into looking for relics around old home sites. However back then I was a lot younger and I preferred chasing critters that were able to run or swim away from me. So for the past 30 years my primary interests have been fishing and hunting and I have not picked up a metal detector since I was a kid hanging out with my dad. I have my wife to thank for giving me gold fever. I have no interest in panning or sluicing for gold. So whenever she would go out panning and sluicing, I went fishing. One day I was helping her look for tiny microscopic pieces of gold that she was recovering from a 5 gallon bucket of dirt she had trucked all the way back from Sonora. Along with the dirt she had also brought back a Garrett metal detector brochure with a picture of an ATX on the cover of it. The rugged look of the ATX got my attention right away and I decided that metal detecting for gold would be a great way for us to spend some time together. I bought her a AT gold and I got the ATX. As soon as I got the ATX in my hands I decided to try it out on my property. I turned it on and walked out to the dirt, started sweeping....and about got my ear drums blown out! The ATX was sounding off like a full symphony orchestra due to all the trash in the ground. This was when I decided that I had better read up a little more on the subject of metal detecting. I quickly learned the differences between a PI detector and a VLF detector. Being the stubborn type I carried on with the ATX for a while and started hunting the parks and a few old home sites. The day soon came when I decided that I dug enough old rusty pipes and bottle caps that were 3 feet deep. I went out and bought a ctx 3030 and life got much easier! About 6 months have went by since I bought my first detector and Lisa and I own a total of 5 detectors. The line up consists of AT Gold, SDC 2300, CTX 3030, and two XP Deus's. We have been having so much fun digging up old coins and artifacts. But we have not had much time to go searching for gold. Last weekend I had the opportunity to meet some very nice folks at Rye Patch. Gerry from "Gerry's Detectors" had a three day training session on a private claim. There were 11 of us there not counting Gerry and his helpers. I was using the SDC 2300. There was one Fisher Gold bug, two ATX's and 7 GPX 5000's I had to leave by noon on Sunday so I could get back to work in California so I dont know what happened after I left but the nugget count at my departure was SDC 2300 - 11 nuggets, Fisher Gold Bug - 1 nugget, ATX's - 0 nuggets and GPX 5000's - 0 nuggets. I am very happy with my machine. This was my first time in an actual known nugget producing area and since I know absolutly nothing about about gold or how to find it, it may be some time before I get to post nugget photos again! Once I learned the language of my machine it seemed that I was digging one nugget after another....this is VERY ADDICTIVE. Thanks to Gerry, Lunk, Ron, Spencer, Largo and a few other fellas that I cannot remember their names. strick
  17. I was out hunting some dredge tailings yesterday and did some testing with the SDC 2300 and the Gold Bug Pro on some specimens. I tested a variety of pieces but the one that is most interesting is in the pic below. I previous tested this with the GPX 5000 with standard 11” mono and it registered only very slightly when touching it to the coil. The GB pro with the 6x9 coil in all metal mode will easily pick this up at 8”-9” in an air test. The SDC in an air test was slightly less at 7”-8”. I then put this at the bottom of an 8” hole without covering it up and retested. No change on the SDC but the GB was now barely able to pick it up. After filling the hole the SDC still had no problem but I couldn’t pick it up at all with the GB. Further testing determined that the GB would pick this up at only about 4”-5” when buried. I actually found this specimen about 4” below the bottom of an 8”-10” hole where I dug out a large square nail. Other observations were that on the buried test the GB was only slightly deeper in all metal than in disc. mode but the target response area is far greater in all metal. In all metal I tested with the machine ground balanced neutral and with ground balance at + 10 and – 10 on the GB screen. Also if I put one of the numerous hot rocks from the tailings over the specimen it almost completely masked it. After this test I carefully covered over a 15’x20’ area with both detectors from 2 directions and marked all targets. I got 7 targets with the GB and 9 with the SDC. The 7 with the GB were all seen by the SDC but the GB could not see the other 2 SDC targets. 6 were square nails and one was a small piece of tin. The 2 the SDC saw that the GB did not were a small (about ½”) tip of a rusty square nail at 4” and the item in pic 2 below at a about 6 1/2 inches. Not certain what this item is. Looks like some kind of melted metal possibly solder. It reads on the GB screen about the same as gold or lead but too hard to be lead. This screamed on the SDC and once out of the ground hits very hard on the GB also. I reburied it at about the same depth and the GB hit it fine. It seems that there are certain situations or rocks that mask targets from the GB. Last observations are that the GB seems much more sensitive to iron targets than the SDC. The deeper nails were stronger signals on the GB but on the specimen in the pic and some heavier gold specimens I tested the SDC clearly had significantly more depth in the ground (at least 25% - 30%). Bottom line the SDC will clearly potentially find more specimens than the GB in tailings if you have the patience to dig every target but with the amount of trash in the area I was hunting it would be difficult to have the discipline to dig all targets. I have gone out many times with the intention of digging everything but after 3-4 hours of digging junk ever couple of feet I usually fall back to using the Disc. to try to determine if its trash. Given the random distribution of specimens in the tailings this is most likely gives the best overall odds but that being said I have found a couple of nice pieces that in ground read and sound just like nails on the GB pro (Target id only in the high 20’s in disc. and 3 or more bars on the iron indicator in all metal. Once out of the ground or reburied they read in the normal 48 to high 50’s range in disc and 0-1 bar on the iron scale in all metal.) I am trying to video as many digs as possible to try to catch one of these to post showing the sounds and readings. It would be great to get some of the groups opinions on the reason for this.
  18. I'm loving the performance on small gold below .3 gram of the new SDC 2300. So doing a bit of testing vs the ATX I got the ATX performing a bit closer to the SDC2300 performance on this small gold. Tested in the video is a .25 gram nugget. The dirt in the video will stick to my magnet on my digging pick. Check out the video to see what I did... Bonus video... How to use the Minelab SDC 2300 as a meat slicer:
  19. Last week Steve and I got out to a spot in Northern Nevada that is known for spongy specimen gold. This is the type most PI detectors have some difficulty with because the gold is not solid or well connected - its almost like a delicate jewelry chain formed into a ball. Stuff that is sparse enough in gold content can even be invisible to a PI. However, this is the kind of gold the SDC does really well with - and it doesn't have to be tiny gold either - some spongy, loose, hard to find specimen type gold even in larger sizes can show up poorly on many PI detectors. This is the first time I've had my SDC 2300 out specifically for specimen type gold (though I have found some specimen stuff with it). So I hunted this spot with my SDC 2300 which has been gone over time and time again with the GPX 5000, as well as high frequency VLFs like the GMT and the Fisher Gold Bug 2. I am guessing I was the first one here with an SDC. There were no trash targets at all because it had been so pounded, but right in the middle of the patch were these two specimens, both of spongy specimen gold. Both were about 6 inches deep. Total weight for the two is five pennyweight or a quarter ounce. Tested one of them on a TDI and it only responded weakly when touching the coil. The SDC has really done well for me this year - and has much more than paid for itself. Steve got some pieces of this spongy specimen gold on the same trip with his SDC as well.
  20. After leaving the skunkfest at Sawtooth I decided to detour on my way home and hit some old ground where I knew some small gold existed. Don't get me wrong, Sawtooth was a great outing with a great bunch of people, but except for one really nice nugget, the gold was pretty scarce. So, I drove to Riverside, CA where an old friend always has a spare room and a jaccuzi. I soaked my aching bones and tried to wash off the skunk, downed a few glasses of Cab. and got a decent nights sleep in a bed, not a camp cot. Yesterday I drove out to a zone near Palm Springs where Kaiser steel once mined iron ore. I got an early start knowing I had over an hour hike to the spot I wanted to try. The spot consists of a small ridge where the old timers had drywashed 2 small gullies. Bedrock on the ridge face is less than 8 inches. I had found a few nuggets in the past with the GPX, nothing over 1 gram, but the ironstone just plays hell with the GPX, especially when looking for small gold. Whisper targets are out of the question. Some of the golf ball sized ironstones are super dense and make a swinging a coil a hearing buster. The softball sized pieces are like swinging over a horse shoe and the GPX will find them real deep. I hiked in the long way much to my dismay later in the day. The temps were in the mid to high 80's and I miscalculated on my water supply. I had 3 1 ltr bottles, and drank the first one on the way in. I got to the tailings and within minutes had 3 small flakes of gold, right out of the tailings. I worked the entire hillside trying to find bigger pieces and clusters, but it wasn't to be. The SDC was a dream in that ironstone. It growled and groaned on probably 60 percent of the ironstones, but gold signals came through loud and clear with obvious dig me tones. The biggest piece of gold was just shy of 2 grams and blasted through with the low/high tone. I dug a fair amount of really dense ironstone, but the SDC purred along for the most part. I hunted that spot for about 2 hours and came away with 16 pieces for about 5 grams. I spent too much time searching the barren parts of the hillside instead of concentrating on a 30 meter zone that produced 90 percent of the gold. I ignored most of the faint threshold warbles because of the ironstone and only dug solid signals. I was short of time because of the my water situation and had to call it day after about 2 hours of detecting. My hike back was brutal. Hottest part of the day and my water reached the critical. I had abut 4 inches of water left in the last bottle and had to take a small sip and hold the water in my mouth to overcome the dry tongue and mouth sensation. I tried to take a shortcut and naturally missed the mark because of a sheer rock face. Thankfully, I had a cooler full of cold water and beer and that's all I could think of as I trudged around the rock face obstacle. Man, was I glad to see that truck in the distance and polished off the last of my water. I should have stayed another day, but my heart just wasn't in it after that hot, dry hike.
  21. When ground balancing with my previous metal detectors I am used to hearing the change in pitch of the threshold as the metal detector is being raised and lowered. With my SDC it barely makes any noise at all when ground balancing. Is there something wrong with my machine or is this normal for this unit? Chuck Strickland
  22. Hi Chris, This is all very interesting from all your travels and swing time on the SDC 2300! I have followed most of you and Steve's adventure's through out. As far as the supplied headphones, do you use them, or do you use the on board speaker? I found my cable could be long enough, but so tightly wound that it made target recovery difficult, or near impossible, without disconnecting the cable from the detector, and using the on board speaker to check out what the target might be. Kind of a goat rope, doing it that way, unless you have a second person on, as in a video I saw, showing one person detecting, and communicating verbally to another person, who would recover the target, a convenience most of us do not have. I have read that heating the coiled headphone wire with a hair dryer somewhat, and stretching it to help make the cable relax and extend, thus countering the memory effect, may help deal with the "headphone cable too short" complaint. I have not tried that yet, just curious if you have tried it. I found my headphone's ball bearing locking mechanism was not locking in properly, would fall off after a time, so I visited the local dealer, who checked the connector, and verified there was an issue, and was able to provide a replacement. Great service! Keep up the great work, your finds are growing, and I and others are enjoying vicariously going along with you on your adventures! Take care, as always, Gary/Largo
  23. I met up with forum member Condor on Thursday and as promised he took me for a heck of a hike in steep terrain. We got in and pitched camp and that was it for the day. Friday through Monday we shinnied up bedrock chutes and bushwacked through the hills trying to get to old mine workings. This high Sierra 1800's stuff is well grown over and I am learning just how impenetrable the vegetation can get here. Alaska it can get slow going but there is nothing that will actually stop you dead in your tracks. Looks like I need to get a mini chainsaw. We basically detected in the morning and evening with a little siesta in the main heat of the day. Those old pits can be like big dry, dusty ovens. Only real issue was that Condor had a new SDC 2300 and a new charger system and batteries and there seemed to be issues with the batteries. I had my three pre-charged sets of rechargeables and a couple sets of alkalines. Between what I had in extras plus what he could get charged off his solar panel we did just fine and had power to spare but he needs to sort out what is going on with his batteries. I found a set of my batteries easily got me through a day and maybe a little more so I see no need for me to deal with solar charging unless I am out for more than five days, which honestly I doubt I will be doing. The gold was sparse and scattered but I did finally hit a mini patch of a few chunky nuggets on the edge of a small pit where material looks to have sluiced over a small bedrock outcrop. My largest was a couple pennyweight and I ended up with 11.2 grams or 7.1 dwt for four days of detecting. I'm happy with a couple grams a day average so I am pleased with the result. Condor got a bit less due to my hitting that little patch. Main thing was hooking back up with old friends, seeing new terrain, and getting my gear sorted out. My boots, sufficient for normal terrain, let me down in hours of near vertical. My toes kept cramming into the ends and I will not be surprised if I loose both big toenails. I have good Alaska mountain boots but they are probably too hot for most of this stuff so a new pair of boots may be in order. Other than that I was fairly happy with my setup. The SDCs once again proved their worth. Man, this ground was hot!! Serpentine bedrock, with patches of red soil on it that must have been at least 50% magnetite by content. The SDC would want to groan if moved too fast but that was easily remedied by simply doing what we are supposed to and going slow. Worse was when getting what appeared to be a faint signal, and then after scratching off the surface the ground would light up with many faint signals in the disturbed magnetite. It was like it was magnetically aligned resting undisturbed in place but once disturbed the ground responses became mixed. A VLF would be totally dead in this stuff. It actually was a bit like what Chris Ralph and I ran into in a couple very small places and in this case it was more widespread. That all said, I generally was able to easily hunt in sensitivity level "3" very effectively and smoothly, with only small foot or two square areas making me slow way down and see what was up. Tons of bullets, piles of nails, and basically no sign of prior detecting to speak of. I can see why between the terrain and the ground conditions. It really was a kind of textbook case for having the SDC 2300. Thanks Condor!! Great little trip, great hanging out with you and catching up on our lives. See you again soon! My Minelab SDC 2300 takes a break A look at the ground My mini gold patch 11.2 grams or 7.1 pennyweight This post has been promoted to an article
  24. A guy I met at Moore Creek mentioned he was going to do some "arduous backpacking" looking for gold. It has been my goal to hit remote areas with the SDC 2300 so I asked if he could use a partner. It has been many years since I have lived out of a backpack for days on end, so this will be a good chance to tune my outfit. Got my little tent, sleeping bag, pad, food, emergency gear, SDC 2300, and related prospecting gear into a 45 lb pack. Not a lot of places to save weight there. Could leave the tent and go with my bivvy bag but no reason to go that hardcore on this trip since we are establishing a base camp then working out of it. A tent works better for that. The SDC is critical to keeping things manageable, not so much for the weight but in being nice and compact. My GPX 5000 with batteries and harness would pretty much fill my pack with no room for anything else. Anyway, I managed to stay in touch daily while in Alaska, but will probably be offline for this trip. There is almost never any need on this forum to take administrative actions, but by chance I did have to knock one of those guys trying to sell gold and diamonds off the classifieds a couple days ago. So I have made Chris Ralph a forum moderator, just in case anything really egregious occurs. Chris will be out doing his own prospecting but will be able to check in periodically from where he is. Other than that, good luck to anyone else who is out and about. I will report back next week. We head out this afternoon.
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