Back To Small Gold And Patience

[Gold Catcher]

After being spoiled by my last patch in the Sierras that yielded >100g in gold nuggets, including a 1.5 oz nugget, I went back to the new patch in the Mojave Desert (Southern California) that I discovered the last time I was there. You guys probably know by now that I am a desert fan, and the breathtaking landscape there never stops inspiring me.

This general area has significant placer gold deposits (also lode), and one of the biggest nuggets ever found in California was recovered in this greater area (“Mojave Nugget”, 156 troy oz). I am sure many of you will know this area very well, it is a popular prospecting site with the LDMA camp Duisenburg not far away. I highly recommend this camp by the way, and I stay there frequently when driving down to the desert. You can also get day passes if you are not a LDMA member. I hiked back to my patch and began detecting. Unfortunately, this place is littered with BBs and other bullets and lead debris. So, I rigorously adopted the "boot scrape" method, by which I disregarded any signals that would go away after a couple of scrapes. If the target remained, I would apply another light scrape with my Hermit pick (this pick really comes in handy!) and then only dig if the signal would still persist. This avoided a lot of BBs, but as you will later see, for sure not all of them! With the 6000 at manual max in normal mode and wearing the ML headset, I heard a faint whisper that gradually got louder as I removed the top layer. It turned out to be 0.08 g flake about 7 inches deep.

This is another good example of the excellent performance of the 6000, and I don’t think many other detectors would have been able to register such a small flake that deep. Of note, reducing the gain from max 10 two clicks down to 8 made the signal completely disappear! We often talk about how reducing gain with the 6000 would not reduce sensitivity to small gold. That certainly is true, but only for very shallow gold. Deeper small gold will be missed by reducing gain, and I have experienced that many times. The ground of this patch is not only plagued by tons of lead trash, but also by countless hot rocks (shallow and deep ones). The geology is dominated by a mixture of tertiary gravel, volcanic tuff and basalt.  

So, certainly not the easiest place to hunt, but who wants it to be easy, right? 😊 After several trash targets, I came to another similar faint whisper, that turned out to be a 0.12 g flake about 9 inches down. Again, an astounding performance of the 6000 at max gain!

In total, I recovered 9 small flakes totaling 0.84 g. This certainly brought me back down from my “Cloud 9 experience” that I had a few weeks back at my Sierra Nevada patch. But nevertheless, I enjoyed my day in the desert and finding gold is always great, small or big!

The next pic is a stark reminder of how tough it can be to recover gold in trashy areas, and how patient and persistent one needs to be when detecting.

On the top left are the 9 gold flakes, in the middle are 42 BBs and on the right 62 pieces of various other lead trash that I dug in one day. And this was despite my boot scrape method which eliminated a whole lot more trash targets. Perhaps this is a picture worthwhile showing to beginners to give them a good reality check and understanding of how tough finding gold with a metal detector can be. Most YouTube videos don’t really convey that reality. 😁 

I will leave you with 2 more pictures of this beautiful area.

GC

[phrunt]

9 minutes ago, Gold Catcher said:

Of note, reducing the gain from max 10 two clicks down to 8 made the signal completely disappear! We often talk about how reducing gain with the 6000 would not reduce sensitivity to small gold. That certainly is true, but only for very shallow gold. Deeper small gold will be missed by reducing gain, and I have experienced that many times.

I couldn't agree more, I'm always puzzled when people say they run low sensitivity and don't lose small targets with the 6000, it's just wrong, they don't lose audio signal strength on shallow small targets but they lose a lot of depth for every notch they drop down.  It's a bit deceptive though as the signal volume of those tiny targets close to the coil doesn't fall away with lowering the sensitivity, so someone can easily be fooled into thinking lowering sensitivity doesn't affect small gold performance.

I always thought the 6000 has adopted the CTX 3030's Volume Gain of 30 feature whereby small target signals will be amplified to a loud audio response.  From the CTX manual, 

Volume Gain Range: 1–30
Factory Preset: 24

Volume Gain controls the amplification of a target’s audio response, relative to the target signal strength. This audio setting is most similar to volume adjustments in other devices (e.g. radio or television volume controls).

With a setting of 1 the target signal will not be amplified. Weak target signals will sound quiet, medium target signals will sound mid-range and strong target signals will sound loud. There will be greater differentiation between target signal strengths; however, weak signals will be harder to hear.

With a setting of 30, all target signals will be amplified to a loud audio response. At this setting there will be less differentiation between medium and strong signals, but weak target signals will be easier to hear

Congratulations on your recent success on the gold though, you've been doing great, and even this day was a highly successful one although may not feel like it after your super patch spot 🙂  I think you're probably right too, no other standard detector package on the market would likely hit these little bits you were finding and that's where the 6000 excels out of the box for sure.

[Gold Catcher]

Many thanks, Phrunt. It is the passion for our hobby that we share. And your comments are spot on! I wish the 6000 would have the volume control adjustable, for the exact reason you mentioned. I use that feature on the 7000 quite often. 

GC

[fourtyniner]

Why does the 7000 have 2 volume controls on it? The lower set of icons on the screen has  Volume on it. And the top set of icons has Volume Limit on it.

.

[Gold Catcher]

3 hours ago, fourtyniner said:

Why does the 7000 have 2 volume controls on it? The lower set of icons on the screen has  Volume on it. And the top set of icons has Volume Limit on it.

.

Hi Fourtyniner,

Volume controls the amplification of a target’s audio response, relative to the target signal strength, whereas Volume limit will simply cap how loud it will get (so your ears won't blow off :))

Hope this helps.

GC

[Dutchman4]

20 hours ago, Gold Catcher said:

Of note, reducing the gain from max 10 two clicks down to 8 made the signal completely disappear! We often talk about how reducing gain with the 6000 would not reduce sensitivity to small gold. That certainly is true, but only for very shallow gold. Deeper small gold will be missed by reducing gain, and I have experienced that many times.

Volume vs Gain/Sensitivity and interaction on the 6000 for those small deep nuggets?

I have the same 6000+NF 12x7 combo for my primary prospecting detector.  I normally also use Max-Manual-10 gain but another fellow prospector recently suggested that I should try Manual-7 gain to achieve a more stable threshold which in your case would have probably missed those nuggets.

I wonder what you run your volume controls at on your detector and also on the ML headphones and whether running a lower gain with a louder volume would hear those nuggets?  The way I see it is that Gain is the amplification of the target response and volume is the amplification of that response but an increased volume wont help if there is no response to amplify.  I think my volume settings are the lowest setting on the detector and around mid (6 out of 12) on the ML headphones.  I like a soft hum from my threshold that is barely audible so any change will be easily detected and also a bonus of still hearing any ambient noises of my surroundings.

Regards,  Ceril 

[beatup]

good on you

[Gold Catcher]

4 hours ago, Dutchman4 said:

Volume vs Gain/Sensitivity and interaction on the 6000 for those small deep nuggets?

I have the same 6000+NF 12x7 combo for my primary prospecting detector.  I normally also use Max-Manual-10 gain but another fellow prospector recently suggested that I should try Manual-7 gain to achieve a more stable threshold which in your case would have probably missed those nuggets.

I wonder what you run your volume controls at on your detector and also on the ML headphones and whether running a lower gain with a louder volume would hear those nuggets?  The way I see it is that Gain is the amplification of the target response and volume is the amplification of that response but an increased volume wont help if there is no response to amplify.  I think my volume settings are the lowest setting on the detector and around mid (6 out of 12) on the ML headphones.  I like a soft hum from my threshold that is barely audible so any change will be easily detected and also a bonus of still hearing any ambient noises of my surroundings.

Hi Ceril, good points. I always try to maximize gain, assuming the treshold is stable enough for my brain to process and detect subtle changes. Where that comfort zone is, is highly user dependent. My first line of defense is to lower the volume on the detector and to increase the headset volume, but keep maximum gain whenever feasible. If after repeated noise cancelling (with machine already warmed up) I still can't keep the treshold stable enough, I either switch to auto or I reduce gain as little as possible. If I am in a high(er) EMI zone or if bad weather is coming this is often the only option. Of course, there is then also the 14 DD option. But I generally don't think that on the 6000 ramping up the volume will make up for reduced gain, at least this has not been my experience. The threshold loudness is also a tricky subject in general. Some like it bearly audible, some others prefer to have it not too quiet to still hear faint warbles that could otherwise easily been missed. Also, if I keep the treshold volume bearly audible my brain tends to focus more on high/low zip type signals, whereas the real good stuff often only gives very faint whispers. But this might just be me. Re treshold stability, IMO a too smooth and rock stable treshold is often a sign of a tuned down detector, although most would wish an absolute stable treshold all the times. Key however will be to be able to detect subtle changes, and at times increasing gain too much will make you miss targets as well. So, the best thing to do IMO is to train your brain as much as possible to tolerate unstable tresholds without loosing focus on changes, even just really small ones. This is a fine balance act and can lead to insanity quickly. 🤪The other question is whether you even want to hear a 0.1 g nugget 9 inches deep. Some might not want to bother picking up small flakes at that depth and settle for lower gain. But I certainly do :). Also, you might miss a big nugget 2 feet deep.

Just my (long) 2c. Lots of personal choices here.

GC

[dig4gold]

Awesome line of posts re 6000 behaviour. It is a sneaky, sensitive & deadly little beast. We will all have our settings, & coil options, that we think do it for us. But I agree, full max sensitivity is the ticket, even when it is running a bit ratty as the good signals are often just a very faint whisper or hiccup in the threshold that do make themselves known. Knock back the sensitivity & you most likely won't hear those very faint ones.The rattyness kind of becomes part of the threshold. Depends how you mentally deal with & cope with that rattyness. It can become fatiguing at which point you may need to make some changes, or stop detecting. Coming back to that area when conditions may be better with less noise.

It is very surprising how deep it will get small gold.

D4G