X Coils In The Q

[Jonathan Porter]

54 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

One of the most balanced posts I’ve seen on the X Coil. Thanks Jason. 

Agreed Steve, well written and factual with some excellent pictures. The country looks so similar to the Pilbara in WA without the red of course but still strikingly beautiful, although it must get extremely hot during summer!

15 hours ago, jasong said:

The 17x12 ran even quieter here than in Gold Basin, no problem running at 20 gain, HY, Normal. Though I run in low smoothing because I like a stabler threshold than most so I can move faster and concentrate

Jasong if its OK to discuss this subject? Audio Smoothing is a noise floor filter that raises and lowers the target signal acceptance, the problem with it is once raised anything that does not reach the acceptable level of signal strength to break through the filter will never be heard no matter how much other settings are tweaked. Might I suggest as an experiment to open up the filter by using Audio Smoothing OFF then lower the Sensitivity till the threshold sounds OK to your ears relative to the ground signal,  you can also in conjunction with this adjust the first page bottom right Volume control to get the balance right so there is an acceptable amount of feedback from the unit in your quiet ground types. 

On the very edge of detection targets, adding Smoothing really does kill the outright depth and I have found that testing on in-situ known targets gives a false impression of what is actually going on because the general wandering around listening to the threshold without any knowledge of a target is not taken fully into consideration with this testing method. Familiarising yourself with the localised ground conditions plays a huge role in depth detection as your brain does a lot of averaging and is primed for that slight break or pitch change. IMHO increasing sensitivity then having to use filtering is counterintuitive, filtering kills the lead in and tail out information reducing the effectiveness of using a full Range of Motion on the deeper iffy targets.

Not trying to tell anyone how to suck eggs just suggesting a different approach, I hope its OK to mention this without seeming contentious??

JP

[Condor]

I for one have always paid attention to JP's advice and genuinely appreciate the new kinder, gentler version of his approach.  Thanks JP, you're a gem.

[Chris Ben]

Great finds, and great info, for people trying to learn!!

Chris

[flakmagnet]

Great add-on to Jason's post, JP. I too appreciate you guys taking the time to educate and share.

[jasong]

Bill - regarding salt in wet soils in NNV, I haven't run this coil up there yet. But my feeling after running it over a patch of heavily alkaline soil in Gold Basin which I also ran the Z14 over is that it's more or less equal with regards to salt response, if not a little noisier on salt. But it's also more sensitive to tiny bits of gold. Sort of the snake eating it's tail, we can't have more sensitivity to gold without gaining sensitivity to salt since they are both conductive. I have business in Wyoming which requires me to cut my trip short, but if that changes then I will try to stop in NNV for a week on my drive home, and I have the 17x12, 10", and 17" round with me which I can test out. I'd be curious how the 10" does up there.

JP - I definitely agree with regards to smoothing. However, I'll be the first to admit I detect lazily in general, I usually sacrifice a bit of accuracy in order to improve speed, especially in cases like this trip where I only have a few hours to detect. I can bump up sensitivity in this mild soil with zero ill effects so it was no prob running 20, I mostly just want to smooth out any noise because my brain gets easily distracted and wants to slow down and investigate every single subtle break in the t-hold. I'd have to kick back gain to like 5 or something to get a similar smooth threshold and I feel I get better performance by using low smoothing instead. If filtering out all of that noise means I miss a couple extremely subtle or complex gold signals then I generally accept those losses in return for being able to cover more ground. 

I'm definitely not recommending this for anyone, I just use it when the losses are acceptable to me.

I know patch cleaning requires running with no smoothing to really pick up the subtle signals, and there is definitely a time for that. For some, that time is always. But in the case of a long stretch of wash and small amounts of time, often I just want to hear the absolute, unmistakable signals in order to spend my usually limited time wisely.  

To me the perfect detector is just entirely silent, always, on everything except gold. You would hate me if you heard how low I run my threshold sometimes in conjunction with low smoothing, by choice.  I know it goes against everything I should be doing, but that's my general style I guess - I also rarely keep my coil absolutely flat, I'm often poking, prodding, angling, and doing anything I can to get a signal to change in some fashion so I can hear if it's worth digging or not. I'm sure that causes me to lose gold as well as I ignore some signals I should dig. I am the opposite of textbook detecting in many respects, but somehow it works for me.

However, I do fully agree with what you are saying that some nice, subtle gold signals will never break through the threshold at all if one is running smoothing, no matter how high the gain. When I'm really working a patch and not just out and about or exploring, even though it tests my patience, my threshold rarely goes below 24 and I run in no smoothing. Largely a result of reading your posts early on during the release of the GPZ in 2015, going out and trying to replicate what you said, and seeing the difference in front of me.

[Glenn in CO]

Nice gold! Great information and technique, thanks for sharing!

[mn90403]

Well stated from all.

[Andyy]

Just catching up on posts.  And then I see you made it to the Q!  HA!!  I could tell you were going to be heading out there soon.  I'm glad you pegged some of those you missed with other machines.

It is funny how spoiled we can get with the GPZ.  It really finds a lot of gold with crystal clear sounds.   !!BAM!!  not doubt … garbage or gold. !!BAM!! garbage or gold.  And then every once in a while only with the tiniest of gold tid bit patches, do you really have to listen.  ….gold or ground noise … And then you get grain and sub grainers.  But I have to admit, I spend most of my time as a spoiled little prospector, listening for the !!BAM!! noisy signals.   Gotta love the machine no matter the coil.

 

[flakmagnet]

Andyy, I mostly agree but sometimes, all too rarely for sure, those little teasing maybe breaks in the Threshold can be a deep one. But as you said the GPZ is pretty easy to get spoiled on.