X Coils In Salty Northern Nevada

[jasong]

I have been itching to try the 10" X Coil out in Nevada salt for almost 2 years now, but life has always prevented me from making it to Nevada until now. And luckily, I also now have an 8" to try as well, plus a 15" and 17" concentric.

Welcome to salt country! Sodium, even lithium salts here, all kinds. Salt everywhere, just ask Elon Musk!

The 8" kills salt. I can't be more plain than that, it does great in places the stock coil is utterly unworkable. And it kills salt while retaining a good bit of sensitivity and depth too. The 10" definitely cuts salt down too, but the 8" takes it down another level again. Patches I had laboriously, slowly struggled to detect with the stock coil in bone dry dirt in July were almost silent with this 8", even though the soil was slightly damp past 2 or 3 inches in many places. 

That said, what I'm discovering is something Steve has mentioned in the past - the gold out here in a lot of cases is simply just not very deep. This is largely due to soil deflation, or what is sometimes called lag deposits. It just means that the light dirt blows away or otherwise erodes away, leaving behind the heavies fairly close to the surface. You know how when you drywash you can lightly blow the blonde sands out from behind the riffles and expose gold and other heavies? Similar thing, except over and over and over for eons. 

Anyways, my point is this: even though this 8" is an absolute pleasure to run in places that caused me a lot of frustration from salt response in the past, I managed to get most of the gold with the stock coil years back. I am finding a few dinks in each patch now, and it's because the gold just isn't there anymore. But this 8" is definitely the cheapest way to get 6000-like performance in salt for current GPZ owners, in my opinion. Actually, having run both machines, I believe this 8" may actually be more sensitive than the 11" mono on the 6000, but that just a guess since I didn't get a chance to compare them before the patch lead broke.

The response on this coil is crisp and sharp. It goes from 0 to 60 on targets, often skipping all the steps in between, and it's a perfect compliment for running settings like I do with low threshold (around 13) and low smoothing.

Here's 3 I got today at an old dink patch. The big flat one was 9" under a basketball size rock, which means the coil heard it from the edge. Which to me was impressive as hell at that depth. The tiny bit of iron was at 1" and a great target. It's literally verging on pen ball size, and that I'm slamming it with a GPZ is just kinda impressive to me. The 3 nuggets might weigh 0.3 grams combined.

I had no illusion the concentrics would work any kind of magic in the salt, but this is simply the first time I've been able to get into the field to try them since they were sent to me, so I'm making the best of it. That said, I've run them enough now to say that I do feel they do slightly better in salt than the stock coil. I don't know if it has to do with the smaller TX or what. The improvement is slight though. What I can say is these concentrics are definitely a lot deeper than the stock coil. I pulled a 1 grammer up from what is easily my most gridded spot in NNV, and I know it had zero diggable or even questionable signals left in it. The nicest, most museum quality piece of gold I've ever found came from about 6 feet away so I had hopes, but this one turned out to be average. This crystalline gold is stealth gold, it's very hard to detect. It was a very obvious signal on the 15" concentric though.

Unfortunately, the concentric doesn't only struggle in salt but it also struggles in bushy areas since the sensitive part of the coil is well inside the rim of the coil. So if you have areas that look like this:

Then this is not the proper place for a concentric, even if you do a bit of weedwacking with the coil. So, I switched to the 8". However, what I wanted to mention is that the concentrics actually are sensitive enough on the edges to pinpoint with on the coil edge. It's not easy, and you really need to be close to the target, but it is doable, which surprised me.

I wandered around the brush haphazardly and more or less randomly for a few more hours and got two more little crystalline pieces. Here they are all cleaned up, including the bigger piece I got with the concentric. A drastic difference between the flatter type gold, and you can see why it's harder to detect.

Before cleaning:

After cleaning:

In summary: 8" is a great coil for NNV salt. And the concentric is definitely deep seeking, as AraratGold had posted in the past, I very much agree. But I'm unsure if the restricted sensitivity towards the outer edge which limits the coil's use in rocks and heavy bush cover will mean I end up going back to my 17" spiral, or if the depth gain makes these concentrics worth running outside of wide open fields. Since I'm getting a 6000 I probably won't be using the 8" as much, but the whole reason I'm keeping my 7000 is because I still see a use for these bigger X Coils and I believe these concentrics are going to do great next winter in AZ for me if I get them in the right terrain, and I definitely am not ready to lose the ability to run the 17" round spiral yet either, which I also didn't get to test against the 6000, but I definitely feel is outperforming the 17" elliptical on the 6000 at depth. But that's a 100% guess right now, and something I can test later.

One thing to add on from my Arizona 8" post: this coil ran dead stable with zero knock sensitivity here in Nevada. There is something either with the ground or the vegetation causing this 8" to have knock sensitivity down there in Arizona, but not here in Nevada. It happened daily in AZ, it wasn't a mirage. It felt like the machine was trying hard to stay balanced, then when I'd knock it against a rock or just slightly rub against a branch it'd go crazy, then back to normal. I mean 80 or 90 times a day, not my imagination. I'd have to go out of my way detecting not to touch anything. But here in Nevada, not once did it happen with either my pre-repair or post-repair patch lead, and I could knock the coil against anything, no problem. So whatever is happening there in AZ has to be related to either the ground or vegetation. Most of the knock sensitivity was against vegetation, not rocks. It felt like the machine would go out of balance a bit when hitting the vegetation, but that doesn't make sense, and I'm really not sure what the deal was.

Part II: the adapter failure next. 

[geof_junk]

Jasong how do you think they would go in these spots many 100 of miles from the nearest sea 😀

 

 

[beatup]

great report on hunting salty areas with an assortment of coils 

 

[LuckyLundy]

Keep swinging!  You know there’s patches to find out there.   Good luck

Rick

[Gerry in Idaho]

So you have hit a few patches out there in the flats off Jungo Road too.  I really cleaned up at a few yrs back on one of those.  Funny, nothing was very deep 10" and less.

My question for those with a GPZ-7000.  Do you spend a few thousand dollars more in coils to get a few more nuggets, or do you just purchase a GPX-6000 and have 2 machines ready at your disposal?  I myself feel 2 detectors is smarter than 1, just in case 1 goes down and or a friend wants to hunt.

Thanks for spending the time to share some of you findings/knowledge of the coils in semi salty ground.

[Condor]

If I was rich like Gerry, 2 machines would be the cat's meow.  I better get out and find some more gold tomorrow.  Where was that patch again Gerry?

[Steve Herschbach]

As a past dealer I can assure you all people need at least six metal detectors!

Avoid the drama, quit trying to make a GPZ as good as a 6K on small gold. Ditch the Z, get a 6K, move on..... 

[jasong]

6 hours ago, geof_junk said:

Jasong how do you think they would go in these spots many 100 of miles from the nearest sea 😀

I think that looks like a great spot to prospect for table salt for dinner. 😀 Actually, I bet you could run that 8" out there to some degree. I definitely bet the DD on the 6000 could run there. 

 

1 hour ago, Gerry in Idaho said:

So you have hit a few patches out there in the flats off Jungo Road too.  I really cleaned up at a few yrs back on one of those.  Funny, nothing was very deep 10" and less.

My question for those with a GPZ-7000.  Do you spend a few thousand dollars more in coils to get a few more nuggets, or do you just purchase a GPX-6000 and have 2 machines ready at your disposal?  I myself feel 2 detectors is smarter than 1, just in case 1 goes down and or a friend wants to hunt.

Thanks for spending the time to share some of you findings/knowledge of the coils in semi salty ground.

I probably whirlwinded through a place or two you are familiar with. 😀

That is the question. With the added consideration of needing to make an adapter. $1kish for a coil, $6kish for a detector with 3 coils. The 6k/DD is better even still in salt w/DD, but the 8" is likely deeper and cheaper (relative to the 14" DD on the 6k) from my limited testing (TBD still).

I feel the 6000 is tailor made for Nevada detecting. But this 8" is the cheapest way for a GPZ owner to get some good salt performance right away in Nevada. So like everything, there are multiple considerations. If I was a person who lived here, and primarily detected Nevada then 6000 all the way. However, for the Arizona guys who come up here 2 weeks a year, I feel there is a real case to be made for keeping the 7000 and getting an 8" or 10" X Coil for up here, and a 15 or 17" concentric or spiral coil for AZ. 

Certainly though if a person does not currently own a 7000, then a 6000 would be the way to go. Same goes for anyone who does not have the need or concern to eek out a few extra inches of depth here and there. It seems to cover all bases really well. And it does it while feeling crazy lightweight on the arm.

If Minelab lets X Coils make aftermarket coils for the 6000, then I'm selling my 7000 and one detector will be all I need.

[jasong]

 I'd mention NF and Coiltek, but they are in danger of becoming irrelevant in my eyes since they only make 1 coil combined for any machine I actively use today, or plan to use in the future.

[Steve Herschbach]

42 minutes ago, jasong said:

If Minelab lets X Coils make aftermarket coils for the 6000, then I'm selling my 7000 and one detector will be all I need.

Minelab does not let X coil do anything. You just know the X coil folks are going to do it, as soon as they can reverse engineer the coils. Unless Minelab has embedded the coil directly in the coil this time, as they did with Equinox. That would make the adapter trick all but impossible, as you would genuinely have to destroy a coil to get the chip.

I've arranged it so you and Steve F can continue to explore and report on these types of GPZ x coil and 6K comparisons for the next couple weeks. Have fun, and looking forward to hearing more from you guys. I'll be going fairly quiet for the summer as I am up to my neck in alligators and adventure. But I'll have a lot to write up later, as I am going all in on GPX 6000 gold finding this year. Gotta beat the crowd.

There are salt flats here as bad or worse than any in Australia. The salt crusting seen in the photos is very common. But the worst salt flats are not usually in the gold areas, which tend to hilly country here, with the worst salt in the flats, which tend to be lake bottom deposits, and not good gold areas.