What Nugget Coils Are Your Most Used / Favorites?

[Rob Allison]

Hi Ron,

  Going back to early SD thru the GPX 5000, my favorite overall size was the 14x9 elliptical.  I found it was sensitive enough to small gold, covered a fair amount of ground per swing and still maintained decent depth.  Over the years this coil was either the Coiltek Goldstalker or Coiltek Elite or NF Advantage or EVO.  

On the GPZ 7000, my favorite overall coil for prospecting is the NF 12" Z Search Round.  This coil is much lighter than stock 14x13.  If I think their is potential for depth, then stock or NF 17x13 Z Search.  

On my GPX 6000, my favorite is the NF 12x7 Exceed Mono Searchcoil.  You can still find very small gold with the stock 11" Mono for sure, but you get a bit of an edge in my opinion on small gold with the NF 12x7.  

What most need to consider when purchasing any detector is not only looking at the unit itself, but what is also available out there for it, aftermarket coils and accessories.  Minelab has always been the main detector that everyone want to build stuff for, whether that is headphones, signal enhancers, speakers, control box covers, battery systems and a huge amount of searchcoils options that many other manufactures will not ever have.  

Just my thoughts,

Rob

[Swegin]

1 minute ago, Rob Allison said:

Going back to early SD thru the GPX 5000, my favorite overall size was the 14x9 elliptical. 

I would have thought for sure you would have said the 14 inch round.

 

[Redz]

15 inch evo rarely leaves my 5000

[phrunt]

7 hours ago, TE Gold said:

I have question for Phrunt, have you used 12"NF Z Search?

Are the equivalent X coils really noticallby better, not the CC just the spirals?

Yes, I have the 12" Z-Search, had it since it first came out, if we ignore the CC's as they're vastly different and we go 12' X-Coil vs 12' Z-Search the stand out factor is of course the 12" X-coil is a spiral coil, the Z-Search is a bundle wound coil the same as the stock GPZ coil, so that's the main difference.  It's also why I don't understand people saying the 12" NF is far more sensitive than the 14x13" stock coil, they're both the same windings, only slightly smaller coil and from all my testing they're very similar on small gold sensitivity just like jumping up a size on X-coil is, such as the 8" is very similar to the 10" X-coil for sensitivity, both bundle wound coils due to their smaller size.

If you have used a Spiral coil on the older GPX, and then used a bundle coil of the same size you would have a bit of an idea of the difference in sensitivity or you could use something like the 12' EVO vs the 11' Commander for an example.  The Commander being smaller should be more sensitive, yet it's nowhere near it.

Somewhere on Youtube I did a video showing the 12" Spiral detecting a small bit of gold under rocks, then I showed the Z-Search doing the same, the Z-Search was very disappointing compared to the 12" Spiral.   I also did a shotgun pellet test between the two in another video, again vast difference in performance.  This is only for someone that cares about small gold.  As gold gets bigger the two coils probably even out a bit...

Of course it's not all roses though, I'm sure there are tough soil situations the stock coil and Z-Search will handle bad ground better, being less sensitive.

[dig4gold]

5 hours ago, TE Gold said:

I have question for Phrunt, have you used 12"NF Z Search?

From my understanding he got one 2nd hand, considered it a lemon & chopped the chip end off it to make an adapter for his X coils. There was a long standing debate from JP that it may have been a faulty coil from production but Phrunt just roasted it & gave it no 2nd chances.

D4G

[phrunt]

11 minutes ago, dig4gold said:

From my understanding he got one 2nd hand, considered it a lemon & chopped the chip end off it to make an adapter for his X coils. There was a long standing debate from JP that it may have been a faulty coil from production but Phrunt just roasted it & gave it no 2nd chances.

D4G

Correct, I thought it was a lemon because it lacked performance compared to the 12" Spiral I was comparing it to, it works fine, but is virtually no more sensitive than the stock coil.   The previous owner had X-coils and bought it to compare, had it a couple of weeks and sold it to me as he didn't see a need to have it, it came with receipt I could have sent it in for warranty, he could have swapped it out at the dealer it was so new but neither of us think its faulty, we just think it's not as good for performance.  

It was a given that a shadow of doubt would be put over my coil being faulty as I was putting up videos showing it lacking performance compared to the competitors right as it first came out.  There is a story to go with this but I'll not put it here.

[dig4gold]

But.... what if it was faulty? You will never know now. I also wonder that the people that go on about the Z Search, have they tried any X coils? If not, then they will never know either. So, does it become an us & them thing?

D4G

[phrunt]

A fault that makes it run fine yet not be as sensitive as the competitor's coil 🙂

With the background of the story behind it they had the opportunity to replace it if they thought it was faulty, but how would that go when the replacement arrives and I put up videos of it in comparison again being no better? Better to leave that shadow of doubt in people's heads than take that path.

Anyway, old story, new story is people who have the same X-coil have since had the same results, you can check on the X-coils facebook group with the users if you like.

NF are excellent at making spiral coils, had they been able to make the Z-search a spiral I'm sure it would be different story.  

[Lesgold]

When the ZSearch came out, my detecting mate and I decided to do some testing. He was using the stock coil and I had the 12” attached. We both used the same settings and searched some old workings for gold. We both agreed that if either one of us had something that might develop into a signal, the other person would be called over before even a boot scrape was made to confirm it. The area had been recently raked and was therefore a pleasure to detect. After about 20 minutes, I picked up a soft but repeatable signal. I called Joe over and he had a listen and confirmed that it was a definite target. We then swapped machines and ran his stock coil over the target. There was absolutely nothing to be heard. The target was recovered from a depth of about 7”. It was a good dig for a .5g nugget. A second target about ten minutes later gave the same result. We were both impressed and amazed at the sensitivity of the coil. For the next month or so we continued to test on live targets on every trip. The results were so impressive that Joe ended up buying one for himself. There were times that the stock coil did really well on big, deeper targets but you would expect that due to its larger footprint. The Nuggetfinder coil will find much smaller pieces than the stock coil when the gold is shallow. Although we would prefer to only find big chunks, the small pieces do add up. A couple of years ago when detecting  in Western Australia, one member of the detecting group I was with offered me $1500 cash to sell him my 2 year old ZSearch. He and most of the group were impressed with how it consistently produced good number and deep, solid pieces of gold. 

[TE Gold]

Interesting. I had a gpx 4500 with 12" evo, 14x9 evo and 15" evo.

I now have a gpz and gpx 6000.

I have both NF Z search coils. 

The NF evos I found pretty noisy and difficult to tame, but never really gave the standard bundle wound coils a fair go. One of my mates in WA also used the Coiltek 14" and one of the Romainian coils and reverted back to the 11" bundle wound commander and swears by it.

I have had excellent results with the 12" NF, I don't need more sensitivity,  I have the 6k for that, I need stability. I find the 12" quieter than the standard 14x13 and of course lighter and better balanced. I often thought about going down the x coil path, but if it's really only going to give more sensitivity,  it's not what I'm looking for. Thanks for sharing Phrunt.