Settings Help For Lode (free Or Float Also) Fine Gold With Gpx5000

[jasong]

Also might be worth mentioning that Sensitive Extra and Sharp timings are generally more sensitive on the smaller, speci type gold than Fine Gold is. Fine Gold is, to me anyways, more of a timing to be used to mitigate hot ground. My experience with the 5000 is limited though, as I stuck with my 4500 since I didn't find much use for Fine Gold in my conditions.

Not knowing your ground type, and if I went in blind with your equipment, my game plan would be something like this:

1.) Start with Sens Extra/Sharp with the 8" mono, run the gain up high until the ground gets too loud, then kick it back a notch. Out in the middle of nowhere and with a small coil, you may be able to get rid of some Stabilization and gain a bit of sensitivity to small signals, that setting works opposite how it seems to work when you turn the knob, check your manual. Stabilzation masks a lot more tiny/crystalline type targets on the GPX series than most realize.

2.) If ground is causing too much problem, back off gain to 8 or 10 and then if problems persist, switch to the 11" mono instead and fiddle with gain as needed.

3.) If ground is still too bad, try Fine Gold with the 11" mono. If that quiets things down, try it with the 8" mono now. You should be able to run higher gains in Fine Gold on both coils. You will be losing some depth now in this setting though. The smaller coil will have better sensitivity to smaller gold, the larger coil will have slightly better depth.

4.) If ground is still too bad, a last resort is the 11" DD.

It may sound complicated, but that is the routine I would go through to determine how to run that setup in a new place if I were trying to squeeze every ounce of sensitivity to that type of gold out of the 5000. Alternatively, for simplicity you could just put the 8" on and run in Fine Gold at default settings and be fairly safe, but if you want to squeeze performance out I would try a routine like this.

As Wes says, an 8x6 would be great for that type of gold and terrain if you can get such a coil up there, and if you can buy a new generation smaller coil then getting one with spiral (flat) windings will add some sensitivity to that crystalline/tiny stuff too.

[KrisDeVo]

10 minutes ago, jasong said:

 

Thanks for all that great info Jason! Will definitely get that a shot.

Some of the ground can have tons of iron, enough that the hole vein will be hot. That was at least at the lode. There is so much ground at the top of the mountain that maybe I wont have to deal with that very much. Would you suggest the DD at all for that? Thats the coil I had on when I found that one pictured.

Will also look at getting that other coil. 2hrs till go time

[jasong]

I ninja editted my post right before you replied to include your DD coil, I forgot you had it. 

Yeah, for real hot ground you will sometimes only be able to really use a DD coil. Especially, as you noted, in heavy iron areas. Try it in Sensitive Extra or Sharp first, then Fine Gold if you have to.

Alternatively, if you aren't going for ultra sensitivity and just want to spend some time detecting and getting the hang of everything and the gold is common and shallow, running in Fine Gold or with a DD in default settings can make it fairly easy as they both reduce the amount of noise your detector gives back, which people find easier to deal with when starting since you will mostly be hearing the good targets.

The advice I gave was the way I would do it, but I'm like the detecting version of a car guy who's trying to squeeze every extra horsepower out of an engine he can, in every available instance, even when unnecessary. So take with a grain of salt haha.

Also, don't forget that while detecting pocket/lode areas, if you get topographically above the source there may be no gold to detect at all. Unless there was some serious faulting after the gold began to erode, or another source higher up.

[mn90403]

Don't change your settings too much in an 'effort' to find magical settings.  Get to your destination, set up the detector, get some sample gold targets and get to hear them well.  Keep those settings as you get to learn your terrain.  You can always go back and tweak settings to get more out of the areas you find but you have to find them first.

As good as Jasong is with a detector I consider his superior knowledge to be in geology.

[KrisDeVo]

Really appreciate all the info!! Out the door...