8” X Coil On The Zed. First Day Out

[Lesgold]

Hi Folks,

Just thought I’d give a bit of feedback on the 8” X Coil that I pinned to the 7000. Yesterday was its maiden voyage into our local gold country and Joe and I were keen to see how it performed in the field. We decided to go back to a creek bed that was mainly dry to see if we could scratch out a few targets and do some comparison work between this coil and the 10x5 Coiltek that was swinging on the end of Joes 6000. After burying a few targets the day before and running both machines over them, we already had a bit of an idea as to how it would perform but nothing beats detecting in a real situation to see how a machine/ coil combination works. I purchased this coil so that I could give my daughter the 6000 when she comes out detecting and I could then use the zed with a small coil to work through old workings or around rock bars. The 12” ZSearch is a great coil but is a bit too large for this type of work (especially with the thick undergrowth that now exists in our gold fields.) The first thing I noticed was the weight of the coil. It is reasonably heavy for its size. It is of a similar weight to the 12” coil and I’m guessing it is full to the brim with wire. On the Zed it is well balanced and it swings nicely with minimal effort. External build quality looks quite good and it appears that it should be able to cope with a good workout. Joe and I decided to walk the gully well past where we detected on the last trip and see if there was any gold present higher upstream. The first issue with the X Coil is that it’s not waterproof so I was restricted to dry rock bars and banks. Joe was able to do the shallow pools and submerged bars to ensure that we had all bases covered. The area where we started  to detect was highly mineralised with hot rocks and noisy ground upsetting both machines. Threshold was stable but false signals due to the ground were an issue until we moved downstream. Apart from a couple of bits of rubbish, nothing of any real interest turned up. We slowly worked our way down stream until we got to an area that had produced some gold on a previous trip. The zed was behaving a bit like a hyperactive kid that had been fed a handful of red lollies. In other words, it was running like a 6000. In a funny, twisted sort of way, it was a good feeling as I knew the coil was right on the edge and was super sensitive. As we had detected this area before, we knew that we had to make a bigger effort to reach difficult spots, move a few rocks and fallen vegetation etc to see if we could uncover something of interest. Joe started detecting a yellow clay bank as it was a good trap for gold during a flood. I decided to try an steep area that was well above the stream bed where there was evidence of past working by the old timers. At the base of a cliff face, I noticed a couple of undercut areas which were gouged out by last years floods. I was able to get my detector coil into one of these holes by lying flat on the ground and reaching forward through some flood debris in order to swing the detector. A very faint moan hit the headphones which wasn’t surprising at all as the hole had a lot of red mineralised soil in the cavity. It sounded just like every other broad, false signal that I’d been getting during the morning from similar material but as per usual, a check was in order. The pick was used to drag out about 6” of this dirt. It was soft and not compacted in any way which indicated it was recently deposited. When the detector was placed back into the hole, the signal had sharpened up and I knew that I had something metallic. I wish now that I’d called Joe over before any material was moved so that we could have done a bit of a comparison between the machines. My gut feeling is that the 6 would not have heard anything at all but we will never know for sure. Eventually I dragged out a nice little nugget of about 3/4 gram. When I ran the machine over the spoils, a signal was detected and another small piece was recovered. Joe picked up a couple of small pieces that were barely a signal so he didn’t call me over to check. You know the ones I’m talking about. “Is that a signal?” One small scratch with the pick and then it screams at you. The typical 6000 small gold scenario. I started detecting a high vertical bank that had washed away badly last year. When I placed the coil under a tree root, the machine screamed loudly in protest. I knew it had to be junk or a shallow piece of gold. One careful scrape with the pick and it fell into the scoop. Couldn’t believe my luck when a nice little half grammer winked at me. No skill in that one. A kids detector could have found it. But in saying that, no one had put a coil in that location before so I took it with a smile. After a brief stop for lunch, we continued to slowly move towards our starting point. I picked up the zed and took one step forward before getting a nice little double “bleep”. It was pointless getting the 6000 to run over that target as it was quite a shallow, dig me signal. Turned out to be a 0.08g piece at a depth of about 1.5”. It was good to see that the coil could pick up bits of fluff with ease. I decided to follow Joe and work the same clay bank that he had just detected to see if there was a deeper target to find. Normally, that wouldn’t be a good idea as Joe is very good on the detector and rarely leaves even a scrap for his mate. About 3 metres from where I picked up the little nugget, I ran the X Coil over some vegetation that had been partially washed away by flood water. I could see the clay bank was about 5 inches under the exposed roots of a small bush. To my surprise, I picked up a signal when the coil passed over the area. The vegetation was pulled out of the way and this is what I saw:

Before it was moved, I called Joe over for a look. It was a beautiful little sunbaker. Joe passed his coil over the top of the nugget and lost the signal at about 4”. The process was repeated with the X Coil. It still gave a faint signal at about 5.5”. That was the first bit of information that demonstrated some of the X Coils potential. The piece weighed in at 0.095 grams which is pretty small. Joe picked up a couple of micro bits on a bank during our walk towards the car. He finally found a slight but repeatable signal that he thought might be a good test for the new coil. He put back the scrape of material that the pick had removed and the X Coil was then directed across the area. In all honesty, there was very little evidence of a signal at all. There may have been something but under normal detecting conditions, it would not have stopped me. When the scrape material was removed, a faint signal was heard.  It ended up being a really small piece of shot and showed how good the 10x5 coil attached to the 6000 is when the gold size gets really small. It was a day that was hard work and didn’t prove anything much at all except that the X Coil is capable of finding small gold at good depth. Will it compete with the 6000? In some situations depending on gold size and depth, it may do well. In others where the gold is really small and shallow, the situation may be different. From yesterdays trip I could say with confidence that the zed/ X Coil combination is one that I will use in many of our future adventures. Will try updating comparisons as we test over time. Here is a pic of the gold that it found on its first outing.

And our tally for the day.

[phrunt]

That's pretty cool, you've got some nice hunting grounds, it's good looking gold too.

The weights are pretty close, the 8" being about 835 grams with skid plate and the 12" Z-Search being about 950 grams.  You must be like me, I have two weights my arm notices, light and heavy, no in-between 🙂  I can't tell the difference in weighs of lots of coils on the end of my stick, some people are very sensitive to even a few grams.

I'm very fortunate I can cruise around with my GPZ in normal all the time so I really enjoy using the GPZ, it has a much more dramatic performance increase in normal vs difficult than the GPX does between its normal and difficult settings for some reason.

You wrote a very detailed good usage report.   Hopefully the coil helps you in the future finding some more bits you'd miss with a bigger coil.

[Lesgold]

Thanks Phrunt. I wish I could run in normal. The difference is quite pronounced but you can only do what you can do. I forgot to mention that the sensitivity was knocked back to about 15 after starting in 18. The variation in mineralisation was quite pronounced over a relatively short distance and made a significant difference in how both machines coped with the ground. As always, the 7000 in the morning is a bit like me, we both need a coffee and a bit of time to warm up before we can operate properly.