SDC Cannot Detect Small Nugget

[Alex Waddell]

I am new to metal detecting with my new to me SDC 2300. I attended a gold prospecting club meeting last night and won a small nugget in a raffle. When I got home, I tried to see if the SDC 2300 could detect it. I was surprised that the SDC 2300 couldn't detect it at all. I weighed the nugget at work and found that it was lighter than I thought at .08 grams. But I have read online that some people were able to detect nuggets that small.

What is the minimum nugget size that the SDC 2300 can typically find. And does anyone have any advice for how to detect these smaller nuggets?

[Alex Waddell]

Steve, Thanks for getting back to me. You may be right about the emi interference around my house. Can carrying a cell phone while detecting cause problems too?

I will try again when go out to a club claim.

I went out to one last weekend, and was impressed when I found a very thin piece of wire 5-6 inches down.

[phrunt]

Mobile phones can cause problems, although I haven't experienced an issue with the SDC but make sure you noise cancel with it near to the control box.  You just need to keep it away from the control box and coil when using the detector.

You can switch it to airplane mode also to help lower the EMI emitted by the phone, this often works well with the GPX if you use the phone for photos and don't want to have to keep turning it off and on.  

It could be interference causing the lack of sensitivity to that bit of gold, or it could be that bit falls within the detectors weak spot.  Different models of PI detector have different holes in their detection and it's where VLF's shine as they hit on it all but don't handle the ground near as well athough the new GM2000 handles it better than previous VLF's.  Some bits of gold are just harder for some detectors to find, you may find if it's a very difficult bit and you're not in a high EMI spot it may get a signal when touching the coil, or it may get no signal at all.

The SDC can detect smaller bits than that, but they tend to be nice solid lumps, the smallest bit I've been able to get a signal on is 0.03 of a gram much like many other highly sensitive PI's, bits this small tend to need to touch the coil and are solid flat lumps for their size.

It's very easy to use and great for a new to detecting person, a highly successful detector over the years you just have to put it where nobody else already has.  

[Alex Waddell]

Thanks Phrunt. I had not heard about "holes" in detectors capabilities before. Iam learning a lot about this detector.

I am mostly detecting on gold club claims so it may be hard to find places that haven't been detected before. I was hoping that the PI technology would let me go over ground and find what others missed. But that may not be the case.

I bought my detector used which is an interesting story. I found it on ebay and it turns out that the seller lived 20 minutes from my house. I went over to pick it up and met the owner who is an archeologist that used the detector for her work. She said that she had found a piece of chain mail from Coronado's 1540 expedition with it. She had also found a cannon from the same period and area. She found another one as well but it had blown up during a battle with the Indians. She directed me to some videos on YouTube which were fascinating. Apparently, the Indians won that battle and kept Europeans out of the area for another 150 years.

[phrunt]

Well, this is where these gaps in detection can pay off, it just takes someone to go over the ground before you that their model detector misses the gold yours finds.  The earlier GPX 5000 and below models missed a lot of gold the SDC can find but they had the depth on the bigger stuff the SDC lacks.

The VLF's although they hit hard just about everything lack the depth the PI's can achieve in more mineralized soils.

The wife of @mn90403 loves the SDC, finds gold on club claims in the Us with it I believe, he may chime in for some advice.

 

[mn90403]

Simon,

My wife did/does like the 2300 and many others also.  Used properly and in the right places it was a go to detector for small gold compared to others available at the time.  That will not change because there are a few VLFs that can find tiny gold.

Norvic liked his so much he modded it to make it more friendly to carry.  I have a prospecting friend who I went out with one time a couple of years back to take a lesson on the 2300.  He found 4 nuggets in the range of .1g and I found none!  At the end of the day he said his foot was sore.  I asked him why and he said it was sore from 'kicking my ass' at finding gold!!!!

There really are some people who are better at this game than others.  They hear ghosts and whispers.  Most of the time that is not me.  Give me a bigger nugget or I go home empty handed.

He kept my 2300 for a few days and others used it and they found gold with it during that time.  It wasn't a detector error.  I found gold with it but it was just not my preferred detector.  My wife has found more with it than any other detector.

Here is an older (5 years ago) video from some of JP's detector friends in Clermont searching for gold with an SDC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-xxzJWAOtY

(96) Hunting Gold In Bedrock with the SDC 2300 - YouTube

[Alex Waddell]

Thanks for your advice mn90403. And the video was informative as well.

[Aureous]

The SDC was once a great detector but is now largely overtaken by newer machines. It excelled on bits of gold that had some 'body' or thickness at .1gm or even half that if thick'ish. It loves #4 shot but can struggle on many #6. As stated by everyone else here, the composition of the gold (size, shape, purity etc) can have a big hand in how the SDC reacts to it.

[Mike C...]

I had a over hyped - noisy as hell and and vey over priced 2300 for a short time to see what my other beepers left on a few beatup patches and it did  find a couple- wasn't impressed at all and not enough to keep it 🤐