12x7" Nugget Finder Xceed First Use Impression

[phrunt]

I've had this coil for a couple of months now but hadn't got around to using it until today.  JW asked if I wanted to go for a detect this afternoon, I was having a day off skiing as the weather wasn't going to be all that great so it worked out well, perfect time to test out the coil.

JW also has the coil, he's used it a bit recently at this spot but not overly had any success with it, in saying that it's going over ground that's been done by the GPZ and X-coils along with the 6000 and 11" and I've had my 6000 and Coiltek 10x5" there a few times too so it's a big ask to do well.  We discussed his experience with the his 12x7" on the drive to the spot, he's found his is a bit bump sensitive and doesn't have edge sensitivity with small targets, I was a bit worried at this point I'd wasted my money buying one.

This time he took his GM1000 and GPZ and 15"CC and I took my 6000 with the 12x7" NF.

JW started off using the GM and popped up a tiny nugget pretty quickly, he brought it over to me and put it down on a rock and we ran my coil over it to see if it behaves any different to his, and nope, edge sensitivity is non-existent on small targets, mine is the same.

The area of the coil outside of the red line marked with the X is completely dead on very small targets, the target needs to get beyond the windings to the inner area of the coil to respond.  I maybe a bit generous with my red line as it seemed with the nose of the coil the gold was under the sticker before it would respond.

This is a bit of a typical spiral coil thing, my 14x9" NF EVO was where I first experienced this with the centre of the coil being the most sensitive area, but I was a little surprised as I hadn't noticed the same on the stock 11" nor the Coiltek 10x5", I'll have to check that now but it means it's not an ideal coil for rocky areas for me with no edge sensitivity on small gold.

Throughout the afternoon finding shot pellets I was able to verify this and indeed the edge lacks sensitivity.  Tilting the coil on edge to locate tiny targets just can't work like it does with a bundle mono on the older GPX series.

It's not the end of the world but something to be aware of, especially for those that hunt tiny targets.

Now with the negative out of the way the coil behaved brilliantly, absolutely no bump sensitivity like JW is experiencing with his, I made sure of that by being quite aggressive with it on rocky areas and I ran in normal with maximum sensitivity all afternoon and it was fine except when really close to the power lines where I dropped down to about half sensitivity but didn't need to if I wanted to put up with a bit more instability.  In both below videos I was in maximum sensitivity even though I was near powerlines.    I think it did very well with hot rocks, I only encountered one hot rock all day, quite unusual for this area as it has a lot of them but it had me going, such a faint target from the surface, I dug down and the target was well below the depth I'd expect to find a pellet and still a faint signal so I was hoping it was a little nugget, but after messing around trying to find it for some time it turned out a small hot rock, the size of a reasonable sized coin.  Damn!  I thought it was going to be my first bit of Xceed gold.

I don't use auto or auto +, I don't believe that auto+ can give higher sensitivity than maximum manual like has been said, if anyone would experience that it would be me in my very mild soils but I've never once found auto+ to be more sensitive than manual, the same was said about the GM 1000, I find it not correct, manual is always more sensitive.

The NF appears to like pellets, responds nicely on them, near surface tiny targets give a great signal.   

The pellet to the right is a #9 bird shot, the pellet on the left was the smallest size I was finding, pretty small and a great response on them, I'm confident it will find smaller if there.

Here was my first nugget of the afternoon, it was on a bit of a cliff ledge I climbed down onto hoping I was the first to ever detect it, turns out I probably was, pretty easy target, quite a small bit but had a good response

The rest of the afternoon consisted of trying to find other ground I personally hadn't detected before while also trying to think of spots others are less likely to have been over before too, detecting the hard to get to spots basically, and lifting and flipping big rocks over to check under them, areas others had yet detected seeing it's such a hard-hit spot.

Then, after some time and no success I ventured down onto a little cliff ledge that I found a couple of nuggets with my Coiltek 10x5" when I first got it, figured I may as well try that spot again as I don't think anyone else had detected it so I climbed down and starting going at it, I found 2 pellets down there which was a surprise as I surely would have dug them previously with the 10x5" and the 8" X-coil on the GPZ that have both been there, I doubt they were new but always possible I guess, they were just near surface targets.

Then I hit a big boomer of a target, I couldn't remember ignoring any targets here but I must have and I do tend to get lazy with boomer signals especially if I'm tired from the heat in summer, today being winter I was full of beans and ready to dig it all, even my Equinox would have found this one with ease though so I'm pretty confident I was lazy the other times and ignored it, silly me.

Quite a meaty bit.

I decided I'd keep checking out this ledge after that, and nothing more, I even climbed down lower and risked being stabbed to death by the thorned plants to reach another bit lower down but unfortunately the only target turned out junk, I was able to benefit from the discrimination on my Sphinx 03 pinpointer to not have to keep battling the rocks and recovering this target, it told me it was ferrous so I passed.    I used the Sphinx to help recover the previous two gold nuggets and a heap of pellets and its discrimination was accurate, always a green light on the gold and lead pellets and a red light on the junk.

For those interested, the Sphinx worked perfectly with the GPX, I noticed no issues at all having it on my belt with its holster and liked it turned itself on when I removed it from the holster and off again when I put it back in, no need to press any buttons.   At the start of the afternoon, I did notice I needed to do a noise cancel with it turned on and the GPX sounded like a Police Siren every time I turned the Sphinx on, once noise cancelled with it turned on it was all good.

Now the weather was starting to turn and JW's head popped out over the top of the ledge I was on seeing how I've been going, he saw the weather coming in over the mountains and thought we should bail out, wise idea as we only just got back to my car when the rain really hit.  Unfortunately, he only ended up with the tiny bit with his Gold Monster that he got right at the start.

So, overall happy with the 12x7", ran really well, worked under and around the power lines OK, no issues with stability tilting it and using it on rock ledges, sensitivity seemed great on small targets except for the noticeable lack of edge sensitivity on small targets.  No bump sensitivity unlike Jw's 12x7" and overall, a good coil by the looks of it.  I still think I prefer my Coiltek 10x5", similar sensitivity but I didn't notice any edge sensitivity issues, both run nice and stable although it's quite possible the NF ran quieter over all, more time will tell there.

As for the Sphinx 03, quite possibly my favourite pin pointer over-taking my Garrett Carrot AT, just need to make sure it doesn't interfere with the GPZ now.

Here was my junk, not bad considering 2 bits of gold.

On my drive home I drove past the ski field entrance I go to the most and the cars were all coming down covered in snow, good call not to go today in the end but great to get more snow for my next time up! Yay! 

[mn90403]

Ah, some nuggets to break up the skiing.  

That was a great little report.  Is JW going to send his coil back?

[Wendell Clark]

I have been waiting to read your take on the NF coil, thanks for taking the time to post in detail. I use my 10 x 5 more than the stock 11. Looking forward to reading about further use but in the meantime you have cured my FOMO.

[phrunt]

10 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Ah, some nuggets to break up the skiing.  

That was a great little report.  Is JW going to send his coil back?

Yea, first time gold detecting in a while, Skiing takes over my winter and I've been building a little cabin to store my detecting stuff in, it's almost finished now though just painting and flooring left and that has taken me ages as I'm just no builder so every step took 5 times longer than it would a builder i guess 🙂

I didn't ask if he's going to send it back, I guess now he knows mine isn't bump sensitive in the same spot and same settings he may consider it.

8 hours ago, Wendell Clark said:

I have been waiting to read your take on the NF coil, thanks for taking the time to post in detail. I use my 10 x 5 more than the stock 11. Looking forward to reading about further use but in the meantime you have cured my FOMO.

It's a really good coil, but so is the Coiltek, someone with the Coiltek doesn't overly need to rush out and buy the 12x7" I think, and someone with the 12x7" doesn't need to rush out and buy the Coiltek unless they want the smaller size and are tired of waiting on NF to release their small coil.  

I found I was leaving my 10x5" on almost all the time too, then swinging the 6000 feels no different to a VLF 🙂

I should add I ran the speaker all day, no issues at all, love the EMI fix.

[Aureous]

16 hours ago, phrunt said:

The area of the coil outside of the red line marked with the X is completely dead on very small targets, the target needs to get beyond the windings to the inner area of the coil to respond.  I maybe a bit generous with my red line as it seemed with the nose of the coil the gold was under the sticker before it would respond.

This is a bit of a typical spiral coil thing, my 14x9" NF EVO was where I first experienced this with the centre of the coil being the most sensitive area, but I was a little surprised as I hadn't noticed the same on the stock 11" nor the Coiltek 10x5", I'll have to check that now but it means it's not an ideal coil for rocky areas for me with no edge sensitivity on small gold.

The Exceed is a multi-layer rectangular winding....squarish if you like. Its set about an inch into the cel-foam former from the coil shell edge. On mine, the pinpoint ability with tiny targets starts at the inch (25mm) from the edge...roughly where your 'X' is shown. I still think the Exceed is better at EMI rejection than any Coiltek coil. I can get closer to powerlines with perhaps a 25% improvement over all other mono 6000 coils Ive tried. For rocky areas or old diggings, the 10x5 Goldhawk is currently the only coil I use. The Exceed 12x7 is used for ALL other detecting options. This will no doubt change when the 15x10 Exceed becomes available.

[phrunt]

11 minutes ago, Aureous said:

The Exceed is a multi-layer rectangular winding....squarish if you like. Its set about an inch into the cel-foam former from the coil shell edge. On mine, the pinpoint ability with tiny targets starts at the inch (25mm) from the edge...roughly where your 'X' is shown.

Yup, the bigger the target gets the better the edge sensitivity gets, as the target is seen at a greater distance from the windings when it gets bigger.  It's just very small gold the coil is dead on the edges.  

I did find my detector ran stable all day, my threshold was mostly good except when too close to the power lines it got a bit wild of course, unfortunately both of my videos were right near the powerlines so my threshold sounds a bit wild in them as I'm in maximum sensitivity too.  I found it a very stable coil. 

I hope the Sadie size windings are slightly different to give edge sensitivity as that's a key attribute to a small coil for me and people with small coils like it are generally chasing the smaller gold.

I'm happy with my purchase, although I only bought it as I was sick of waiting on the Sadie 🙂

[Gold Catcher]

I am glad you like the coil, Phrunt, and nice finds! I have not heard anyone not loving it, and it is the most stable one in my coil selection (agreed with Aureous). The reduced edge sensitivity is not a show-stopper IMO and the somewhat off-set windings pick up any small gold at the edge without problem, albeit with a short gradient, as you are pointing out. But yes, the hotspot is about where your X is, all around. It does appear to help a bit with edge-bump sensitivity, perhaps this is why it was designed that way. For me, In full bore (Manual Max/Normal) the Exceed is more stable than the 9 Coiltek and the 11 inch stock comes last. I only go to A+/A if I can't run in high manual, and I noticed that the machine is then throttling down a bit and also gets slightly more erratic (independent of selected coil). It must have to do with the auto-algorithms that kick in, not something that always provides good stability. But at full bore the GPX/NF12x7 combo is almost magic and will find gold where others don't. My Pro-Find 35 will set the machine off every time, and yes it sounds like a police siren, like I got caught claim jumping (I never do...!😉). 

GC

[phrunt]

I think I'll soon record a video to demonstrate what I'm seeing just to clarify when it comes to edge sensitivity.

The Police Siren sound gave me a bit of a fright when it first started 🙂

 

[phrunt]

A little update, JW may have found the solution to his bump sensitivity, his coil cable was wrapped so the cable was under the shaft near to the coil, so it's possible the detector was picking up the coil cable, today he went back using it and wound the cable differently so the cable was up above the shaft and he didn't get the bump sensitivity.   Fingers crossed the problem is solved.

You can see by habit with VLF's and chance more than anything my coil cable was well away from my coil, so this may explain it.

Anyway, today he did very well considering the spot is hard to get anything at all, he was only there a few hours and came away with this using his 6000 and 12x7"

The .06 bit at the bottom was the bit he found yesterday using the GM1000 that we tested on my NF coil to see the lack of edge sensitivity.  I'll do a video demonstrating that soon as I think what I am saying maybe slightly misunderstood.

 

[dig4gold]

It appears that your cable too is wound under the shaft, but maybe further back from the coil. If it was wound over the top of the shaft the cable would be even further from the coil. More so when you lay the detector down, flattening the coil to the shaft & cable as in your photo. This can lead to false signals as you lay your detector down.

That is some pretty tiny gold your friend got. Do you know what settings he was running? Thanks.

D4G