X Coils In The Q

[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. 

[jasong]

Today I spent 7 hours of detecting with smoothing off, threshold at 24, bumped my gain back to 16 and slowed down to a glacial crawl and scraped or dug every single subtle, semi-repeatable tiny warble in the threshold I could pick up in 2 patches which I had just run the 17x12" and 17" round over. I started thinking all those barely there signals I got tired of messing with previously might have been nuggets after reading JP's thread so it was worth a go with brighter, non processed audio, to see what I missed. I've flogged these spots with the Z14 at least 6-8 times each too, plus a GB2. Originally ran with a thold of 12 and low smoothing on the Z14, as it was my go-to for Gold Basin. I knew there were some iffy signals to investigate.

I got about 30 or 40 hotrocks (mostly BIF and magnetite clusters buried 3"+ deep), a lot of small lenses of hot ground and black sand concentrations, a lot of disappearing signals, and I found one 0.17 grammer with quartz in it. That nugget was not audible in the ground on Difficult and I would have missed it if I tried tamping down the hotrock response by moving out of Normal, it sounded just like a barely audible buried BIF chunk. 

One thing I still know for certain is that kind of detecting still isn't for me. I know it's next level to find the almost non-existant signals and turn them into gold, and I know I could if I wanted to spend the time doing it. But, I believe I can get 95% of the gold in 10% of the time running low smoothing, 8-12 threshold, 18-20 gain, HY, Normal, out here generally and that lets me enjoy the time outdoors more, just my personal preference. The Z really does make signals pop and if you are on the gold and running hot settings, it's going to tell you without much effort or scrutiny required, the X Coils really do seem to sharpen up the responses even more on top of that too. A 10" or 17" X with low smoothing will hit stuff a Z14 with no smoothing can't hear even faintly. No equivocation. 

I am liking the 17x12 less and less and the 17" spiral round more and more. The 17x12 has a real problem with desensitivity at the ends, to the point that the 17" round is actually easier for me to pinpoint with and covers a ton more ground at greater sensitivity, paradoxically. The form factor of the 17x12 is greatly preferable, but I don't feel as if it's a lot of use when the coil isn't very hot at the ends. Maybe it's just my coil, dunno. I'll post a video tomorrow or sometime to show what I mean.

One thing - I cannot for the life of me run in Semi Auto with these X Coils out here, only full Auto. Otherwise I'm digging hot rocks every 2-5 feet. This is ground that I wouldn't call it exactly normal to dig more than 4 or 5 hotrocks a day in detecting normally. Ground is quiet though and it will balance fine. Another observation -  I haven't had a single "zed warble" target with the X Coils yet, not even trash, which is just an oddity and not a bug. Might just be my targets.

[Chet]

Jason, thank you for the hours of effort and the great report.

Have a good day,
Chet