First Gold Nugget Finds With The AlgoForce E1500

[phrunt]

6 hours ago, Aureous said:

Watch sales of used and new SDC2300's fall dramatically now....and possibly 6000's too. Not everyone will like the E1500 as an alternative coz the 2300 and 6000 are almost 'automatic' and easy to learn for beginners. But a significant number of buyers are now gonna look at the E1500 as a 1st option now.

I think ML left the price gap open out of disinterest, rather than intention. The gap between the GM1000 and the 2300 is very wide!

I think, if people were going to buy these high-priced units as that's all that was available but they're not overly serious about prospecting and just want to have fun with a decent detector and find some gold and all they had confidence in was Minelab, then yes, they may reconsider and buy an Algoforce instead especially once word of mouth starts to spread in their local areas if it suits them which I think it will. 

I hope to hear reports coming out of users in Australia soon, Nenad did a post somewhere in response to someone that was saying it's crap because it doesn't track the ground, and he pointed out how many people used tracking on the 4500 and 5000? Almost everyone I've ever heard of ran in fixed and pumped the coil every once in a while, and that's now primitive as the Algoforce is tracking the ground, and makes you well aware when you need to fix it by the screen display.  I've never hunted in highly variable ground to know what it's like, but if they used the legacy GPX with success for many years nothings stopping them using the Algoforce manual ground balance method with it tracking for you on the screen, after all its easier than the early GPX was for all those that used fixed.  A thing I don't like about the 6000 is the forced tracking.  

The other really great benefit is that the screen is awesome, the GPZ screen is very difficult to see in the sun, the 6000 isn't all that much better but you don't need to look it very often being fully auto (something I don't like about it) The Algoforce screen is weird in a very good way, the brighter the sun the easier it is to see.  In the shade you may need the backlight, in the sun its brilliant, and you can invert it to make it really nice for night or very low light detecting, it's a cool screen.

I think Minelab need to watch their back and sleep with one eye open, there is change coming and I very much look forward to seeing what's next from Algoforce.  Garrett now really needs to seriously reconsider their price point or they're a dead duck in the Au/NZ region, soon once the Algoforce lands in the US they may need to think about it there too even though its significantly cheaper than here, to many people the cost of a product is a very important factor in their purchase decision.

[Aureous]

2 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I hope to hear reports coming out of users in Australia soon, Nenad did a post somewhere in response to someone that was saying it's crap because it doesn't track the ground, and he pointed out how many people used tracking on the 4500 and 5000? Almost everyone I've ever heard of ran in fixed and pumped the coil every once in a while, and that's now primitive as the Algoforce is tracking the ground, and makes you well aware when you need to fix it by the screen display.  I've never hunted in highly variable ground to know what it's like, but if they used the legacy GPX with success for many years nothings stopping them using the Algoforce manual ground balance method with it tracking for you on the screen, after all its easier than the early GPX was.  A thing I don't like about the 6000 is the forced tracking.

The lack of tracking is what killed the QED to a large degree. From what Ive heard, the E1500 is far less dependent on accurate GB and somewhat self-tolerates moderate ground changes. Id need to handle one myself to see how factual that is though...

[phrunt]

8 minutes ago, Aureous said:

The lack of tracking is what killed the QED to a large degree. From what Ive heard, the E1500 is far less dependent on accurate GB and somewhat self-tolerates moderate ground changes. Id need to handle one myself to see how factual that is though...

The QED was an absolute pain in the backside to do the ground balance, you were doing it manually with plus and minus buttons with 200 numbers to deal with, the Algoforce you press down the ground balance button and pump the coil a few times, they're not even comparable. 

The Algoforce is the same as pressing the green button on the GPX handle and pumping the coil a few times, and as you see in my hot rock balance video it's pretty quick.  The Algoforce also has a clear display on the screen showing you when you should do a balance.  You can see the bars heading up and fix it before its even a problem, having the screen that loves the sun will be a big benefit in that regard.

[Aureous]

7 minutes ago, phrunt said:

The QED was an absolute pain in the backside to do the ground balance

Yes I remember that with 'fondness' lol. Glad to hear the E1500 has that issue totally and sensibly alleviated. 

[mn90403]

Simon,

Glad to know you recovered and will give it a go again under better conditions.

You found two little pieces in a flogged area.  How do you explain them?  (missed or unseen)

[phrunt]

26 minutes ago, mn90403 said:

Simon,

Glad to know you recovered and will give it a go again under better conditions.

You found two little pieces in a flogged area.  How do you explain them?  (missed or unseen)

Easy, first one I flipped a rock that's never been flipped before, second one I was stupid enough to climb down a cliff that had a lot of thorned briar rose bushes just waiting for their victim 🙂  In both instances I was the first to do something. 🙂 The point is being out there using any capable detector gets you in the game, you have a good chance of success, it doesn't take the best of the best to get a bulk of the finds, yes it helps, but it's not vital, I'd bank my money on someone putting in effort and covering miles more than someone with all the gear with no skill and no effort.

[Taz]

22 hours ago, phrunt said:

Today I took the Algoforce for a gold hunt, it wasn't the location I was wanting to go to as the one I wanted to go to I had more confidence of finding something, its temperature was going to be too hot, then I saw a closer spot right near JW's house was cooler when I checked its forecast, I couldn't resist and decided to go, although I had little hope of finding anything, being so close to home for JW and his uncanny ability to find all available gold he doesn't leave much behind.

The first thing I did seeing this area has powerlines right through it was to test the Algoforce under them, results can be seen here, I must say though, very impressed! I had a hunch it would be good, it's one of the few detectors and only PI that I have that I can use inside my house for testing.

I next found a 22 shell, pretty typical here and generally screamer targets, sometimes I'm lazy and reject them, risky move but I can get lazy in the heat.  Seeing I was digging it all, the general rule for a new detector I dug it up, pretty neat video, a 22 shell comes up with a Target ID of 22 😛  I later tested the same 22 shell on the Sadie, and was pleased to see it came up 22 on an entirely different coil, a 10" Spiral vs a 8x6" bundle wound.

 

You've probably heard me whinge about the green hot rocks in the past, so I wanted to see how it goes on them, the 6000 can't balance them out in normal but does to a degree in difficult, not completely gone but better than normal, The Algoforce on the other hand, bang.... gone! bye bye Green hot rock! To top it off once balanced out I put a little shotgun pellet I'd found on top of it, a giant big green hot rock and it still was able to detect the pellet as if the rock didn't exist.

I notified JW I was there seeing he lives very close nearby and he popped down for a detect and to catch up, he had his 6000 and 10x5" Coiltek with him, a good combination for the area.  He was also kind enough to bring along an assortment of GPX coils that I don't have to try including the Sadie (mine still hasn't arrived from the NZ Dealer) and a 6" Coiltek round mono.  Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to test out the mono which I'll explain later but quickly swapped over from my 10" X-coil to the Sadie to try it out, seeing it was the manufacturer tested coil on the detector I wanted to see how it goes. 

The Sadie is very light, quite nice to swing such a little coil in the rougher areas, knowing it has hot edges is a nice attribute too.   In my first video up the top with the 22 shell I explain about the coil cable and how the Algoforce detects it when you pick up and put down the detector with the 10" fitted, I even accidentally left pinpoint mode on when sitting it down and the detector screamed, it was sitting there pinpointing the coil cable and had an ID for it 🙂 Seeing the pinpoint mode doesn't need motion it just screamed on the cable.   I later discovered when switching to the Sadie the coil cable doesn't get detected near as much, those with a Sadie probably will barely notice when lifting up and putting down their detector, whereas with the 10" spiral it screams.  Pinpoint mode will obviously behave the same with the non-motion.  The 10" spiral is much more sensitive than the Sadie, but I already knew this, if someone's after maximum sensitivity to small targets size doesn't matter as much as windings do, the Coiltek 9", 10" X-coil or 12x8" EVO will likely be the most sensitive, never used the 12x8" EVO only owning the 14x9" Evo but I'd likely give it the tiny target sensitivity over the Sadie too.  That's not saying the Sadies a bad coil, its edge sensitivity will give it great benefit over the far less sensitive edges of the spiral coils so if golds up against rocks it will win, it's also good for poking and prodding with the sensitive edges and it may handle some bad ground better too.

I found a little bit of gold under a rock not long after putting the Sadie on, It wasn't detected from above the rock, I was just lucky enough to flip a rock that had a little nugget (flake) under it.

JW had also recovered a little nugget, one he had detected some time ago in the schist bedrock with the GPZ and I think it was the 15" CC, he ended up not being able to find it, thought it was lost and moved on, the coil was probably just too big and awkward for his little dug hole in the bedrock or something to get close enough to it, but it was gone, today he managed to get it with the 10x5" Coiltek on the 6000 smashing out more rock.  It was smaller than the one I'd just found, quite a bit smaller.

Time went by and nothing for either of us, so I explored further and climbed down a bit of a ledge and found a target, I was trying to get it out and it sank down into a hole in the rock of the ledge to the next layer below, I was trying to get it out learning right over hoping I don't fall into the prickly briar rose bushes below, I'd be in big trouble then, and I kept poking the Sadie in under the layer and it kept sounding off so I thought I was hitting the target, so I'd slowly slide out some soil and it would keep sounding off the same, it turned out it wasn't sounding off on the nugget, it was sounding off as the coil cable was getting crushed down and touching the coil.  It is vital with the Algoforce to have a nice secure coil cable that can't go near the coil, it just shows how sensitive it is, the GPZ with small coils like the 8" and 10" is the same especially lifting up and putting down the detector so I'm a bit used to it.

I gave up that method and risked climbing down to the bottom of the little ditch in among the prickles, sadly 3 of them stabbed into my hand, I plucked them out one by one but by the 3rd one I had a problem, it had stuck straight into a vein, when I pulled out the rose thorn a big squirt of blood shot out like a jet, then it swelled up rapidly like a balloon under the skin, it got quite big, about half a golf ball, then in a seconds the swelling went down a fair bit to a blackish lump, and its stayed that way.  I felt quite sick at this point, really dizzy, so I just used the Sadie from down there where I could get into the gap between the rocks better, retrieved the target and climbed back up the ledge leaving my detector and pick on the ledge to collect from half way down from the top, I climbed up with my scoop in hand with the target in it.  Once at the top I was so dizzy I just sat down for about 10 minutes with the scoop sitting next to me hoping it wasn't some junk.  Once I recovered enough, I climbed down and retrieved my detector and pick and climbed back up to recover the target from the scoop.  I was so pleased it was a piece of gold after all of that.

Here is the video of it all,

 

I quite big bit for what's left in this area, that's for sure.  

I felt really weird sort of dizzy sort of drunk but it could be a combination of heat exhaustion along with the weird injury so I walked back to JW and told him what happened and showed my nugget, he suggested I had a sit down which I had planned to do, I sat another 20 or so minutes and just felt worse so I call over to him that I'm going to head home cutting my day short, I stopped for a snack on some wild black berries on my walk to my car as I hadn't yet had lunch. 

I felt horrible the entire drive home, almost vomited half way home going around the lake which is a very bendy road for about 30 minutes along the side of the lake.  

I'm coming right now, no longer dizzy that I've cooled down and had a long cold shower and plenty to drink, I had run out of drink very early in the day too so perhaps I was dehydrated.  Next time more drink bottles coming than just the one little one.

So here is my hand now

A bit black and swollen still.

I really like the Algoforce, it's an incredible detector for the price, a real game changer for people that don't need the absolute best of the best yet still want a very high-performance PI machine with cool features and at a very cheap price.  The more I use it the more I like it. I really hope I'm the first paying customer that's found gold with the detector, that'd be pretty cool.

Very encouraging first run. Impressive little unit for sure. 👍

[Jin]

8 hours ago, phrunt said:

Someone may need to come up with a clip with a rubber on it too to close the gap and prevent them being ripped off 

I used to use these clips on my 4500 that my local hardware store sold. (Bunnings - Australia) They were a tight fit but held the cable tight. 

Cheap also 😀 

 
Bunnings: Products - Garden - Irrigation - Irrigation Supplies - Poly Pipe Fittings - 13mm Poly Fittings

 

[Luis]

2 hours ago, phrunt said:

Easy, first one I flipped a rock that's never been flipped before, second one I was stupid enough to climb down a cliff that had a lot of thorned briar rose bushes just waiting for their victim 🙂  In both instances I was the first to do something. 🙂 The point is being out there using any capable detector gets you in the game, you have a good chance of success, it doesn't take the best of the best to get a bulk of the finds, yes it helps, but it's not vital, I'd bank my money on someone putting in effort and covering miles more than someone with all the gear with no skill and no effort.

a lightweight detector helps to do those things.  I doubt you would have done it with the 7000😁.  I'm glad you're okay Simon.

[okara gold]

On 2/7/2024 at 1:07 AM, phrunt said:

In both instances I was the first to do something. 🙂 

My motto has always been... To go where no man has gone before. It can pay big dividends.