Nokta Impact Versus Minelab Gold Monster In Australia

[Steve Herschbach]

Welcome to the forum! There are plenty of people using VLF detectors to find gold. I have found several ounces of gold with the F75 myself http://www.fisherlab.com/hobby/finds-Steve-Herschbach.htm The F75 is a close relative of the Teknetics T2, which has been sucessfully used to find gold nuggets around the world, especially in Africa. The fact is I can find gold quite well with any modern VLF detector running at over 12 kHz that has a ground balance setting. "This VLF versus that VLF detector" is not as important as learning the VLF you have well and putting yourself on gold bearing ground - and getting in the hours.

I have found significant amounts of gold with the following VLF detectors: Compass Gold Scanner Pro, Fisher Gold Bug, Fisher Gold Bug 2, Fisher F75, Makro Gold Racer, Minelab XT 17000, Minelab Gold Monster 1000, Nokta FORS Gold, Tesoro Lobo, White's Goldmasters/GMT, White's MXT

I suppose I should go find some gold nuggets with the Nokta Impact and post them just to show it can be done. Maybe next trip. Anyone choosing to use a detector not made and marketed specifically for nugget detecting has to get used to being lonely on the forums. It's not that the machines are not capable, but that people are just naturally going to tend to use detectors made for coin hunting to hunt coins and detectors made for nugget detecting to hunt gold nuggets. In general however you will get an edge gold prospecting by using detectors made specifically for the task. The most important function on most coin, jewelry, and relic detectors is some sort of discrimination capability. Nugget detectors focus purely on finding low conductive targets in highly mineralized ground. What discrimination they offer, if any, is usually a secondary consideration.

[Mike Dawson]

Hi Paul, I think the Impact is much better than the 705 or Eureka simply because it has far more modern features being released in 2017.Its really funny some people prefer the Gold Bug 2 over the Impact although It is 20 years old.The Impact is a general purpose detector much like the utility first manufactured in Australia.You could go to church on Sundays with the whole family and on Monday take the pigs to market.Better than a sedan. I can go detecting all year round and to the beach looking for coins in summer then go for a dip. The general mode is for nuggets ( with one or two tones ) and the discrimination modes for coins.Building a specific detector just to hunt nuggets is ok but it will be useless if it cant handle the very hot ground where I go.I find I have no one to talk about the Impact and its performance on goldfields. It is really embarrassing being the only person who has tested it in harsh mineralisation goldfields as no one has done it and havent a clue what I am talking about. If they have they are keeping their mouth shut I suspect not to upset Minelab or some other politically motivated reason. So thanks for your considerate words but I may just be a bystander on these forums in future.

Best of luck.

[auminesweeper]

Mike, I think you will find that anyone here who has used the GM or the Nokta will have no reservations about speaking their minds albeit in a constructive way and they will rip in to it if they are not satisfied with the end product, There is a big difference in expressing the short comings of a product than just getting stuck in to the company, Have no fear if anyone is P'd off with ML they will let them know it,

It is a shame that you don't have another machine like a 45/5k to run in the hot areas, But as you know VLF/LF's are not made to be used in such places, Being an LF they do suffer where mineralization is very high to extreme where even a 705 or an F-75 or Goldbug Pro would be a safer choice because the lower frequencies handle the hot ground a little better Not much but a little just the same. But If you knew that you wanted to detect there I am wondering why you bought the Nokta instead of a second hand PI, even the Whites TDI SL would work in the areas that you are trying to detect,

I can't help feeling that either you were led astray by a dealer or someone gave you the wrong info, either way it is the wrong machine for the areas you want to work.

John.

[auminesweeper]

47 minutes ago, Mike Dawson said:

Hi Paul, I think the Impact is much better than the 705 or Eureka simply because it has far more modern features being released in 2017.Its really funny some people prefer the Gold Bug 2 over the Impact although It is 20 years old.The Impact is a general purpose detector much like the utility first manufactured in Australia.You could go to church on Sundays with the whole family and on Monday take the pigs to market.Better than a sedan. I can go detecting all year round and to the beach looking for coins in summer then go for a dip. The general mode is for nuggets ( with one or two tones ) and the discrimination modes for coins.Building a specific detector just to hunt nuggets is ok but it will be useless if it cant handle the very hot ground where I go.I find I have no one to talk about the Impact and its performance on goldfields. It is really embarrassing being the only person who has tested it in harsh mineralisation goldfields as no one has done it and havent a clue what I am talking about. If they have they are keeping their mouth shut I suspect not to upset Minelab or some other politically motivated reason. So thanks for your considerate words but I may just be a bystander on these forums in future.

Best of luck.

You need to talk to Nenad ( PhaseTech ) he would be the man to ask in OZ,

As for the GB 2, most people prefer it because it is a dedicated prospecting machine and like the GMT they have a proven history, and so have many of the multi-purpose machines, Your impact on the other hand is an unproven multi-purpose, multi frequency machine, which is why folks still go for the GB2.

[Mike Dawson]

Hi Robbie, I find 20 Khz is the best all round frequency for gold.With it I found a extremely tiny 0.1 bit of steel at 4 inches with an 11 inch coil. I have 14 Khz (but never needed to use it to compensate for hotter ground) but the 20 picked up a 1 gram piece of gold much deeper.The 20 will go deeper on large gold compared to a high freq.( 56 Khz) VLF machine.In very high mineralisation depths are halved compared to low mineralisation, so that tiny piece would have registered at only 2 inches depth.I see your GM 1000 is very basic,it only has volume level and sensitivity meters on the display.If you are on goldfields you need a mineralisation level meter and a display to show you how to adjust all the different settings like Fe vol, threshold vol., disc. level, front light on/off, display light level, ground tracking on/off,and even isat. I also have a vol. enhancer and pinpointer,depth target finder controls.

[Mike Dawson]

What????  The GM 1000 is also unproven and been released a lot later than the Impact,but plenty of people are talking about it on this Forum versus the Impact which is largely ignored. Do I really care though? just find it curious/suspicious. 

[Steve Herschbach]

Mike, I was using a Nokta detector before you ever heard of the brand, and have certainly found more gold with Nokta detectors than you have. I have done vastly more to promote the company and its products than you could ever dream of doing. The fact is nobody on any forums anywhere are talking much about the Impact for prospecting. Why? Because it is a new model that few people own, and 99% of those are coin and relic people. So if you want to think it is a grand conspiracy and that I am somehow suppressing talk of the Impact on this forum you are way, way off base.

[auminesweeper]

1 hour ago, Mike Dawson said:

What????  The GM 1000 is also unproven and been released a lot later than the Impact,but plenty of people are talking about it on this Forum versus the Impact which is largely ignored. Do I really care though? just find it curious/suspicious. 

Yes the GM is unproven but because it is a Gold based machine people are more likely to buy that for prospecting, and being a prospecting machine it will grab the most attention on prospecting forums, You know just as well as I do that in Australia that ML will get all the attention over any other brand regardless, Whites make a couple of machines that have found way more Gold than any of ML's VLF's could dream of but Aussie's love their Minelabs, The Impact is not a Gold machine, Yes it can find gold but where VLF's end up wanting is when the ground hots up you have to reduce the Gain or they overload, and where they fall short is that in hot ground when you reduce the gain they loose their ability to see small gold, I can make my MXT A/P see bits that weigh only 0.003 grams on the surface but when the mineralization goes up and I have to reduce the gain then those small bits start to vanish,

With the GM because it runs at 45khz when you reduce the gain they still have the ability to see very small bits because of the frequency the run at, Your impact would have been better if it had the frequencies of 5khz and 15khz and lastly 50khz,  20khz is barely any better than 14khz,

99% of prospectors are going to pick the GM over the Impact simply because of the frequency because they know they will have to turn it down but it will still retain most of it's sensitivity, Classic example of this is the Whites GMT, I have some test pieces that weigh less than 0.0001oz and the GMT can see them, That is about the limits for any detector, After that you need to pan any thing smaller, You are not likely to see many if at all any reviews of people using the Impact for prospecting unless someone just takes theirs along for the ride along with their 5k/Zed,

Take me for instance, I love the MXT's which was invented 1999/2000 now in it's 4th revision, Your Impact performs exactly the same as my MXT, I was thinking about getting the impact but apart from a few extras it does not perform any better than my MXT All Pro, The Impact has manual GB which I would like but to be honest I have gotten by without it for over 7 years so I don't think that I really need it to be honest so it is really a matter of want than need. Plus there are over 40 Coils made for the MXT and it has a proven Gold history, and so have many other VLF's.

One thing to bare in mind is that since around 1997/2000, VLF detectors have stood still since then and some have even gone backwards when detectors went digital, I have an old White's machine that will smoke any VLF and all but the 45/5k PI's when it comes to depth and it was made in 1987, the only ground breaking things we have seen is BBS, FBS, and the ultra lightweight Deus, Apart from that every detector is just a rehash of what came out 20 years ago.

I don't know why you appear to be so offended because no one is using the Impact for prospecting, Just because companies say it can do it does not make it the right machine for the job, Most people would pick the V3i over the MXT for prospecting because the V3i can run at 22khz, And yes it can see tiny bits in Air tests and back yard tests but it lacks the ground balance system that the MXT's have which is the same/similar sort of setup that is in the GMT which is designed to handle higher mineralization that is in areas where Gold is found,

The Impact is a modern masterpiece, but people have already had machines that your Impact was based upon, and for all out prospecting VLF's Nokta/Makro already make 2 very fine machines that excel at prospecting, and if that was your goal then I think you bought the wrong machine.

hope this helps.

John.   

[Steve Herschbach]

Well, you really can't say the Impact is the wrong machine for Mike. It runs at up to 20 khz and Mike has stated it handles his ground well without overloading or needing to reduce gain, etc. I guess that being the case I am puzzled over what all the fuss is about. If the Impact is the machine for Mike, great. My hope is he goes out, finds gold with it, and shares information about how he did it. I have been that guy doing it first and passing information onto others for ages. It has never bothered me being the only guy using something, in fact I enjoy it. That is why I have always been game to try new machines and give an underdog a chance. I love competition as I think it is the best way for good machines to eventually reach our hands. That's why I have gone out of my way over the years to maintain ties to all brands. I personally think brand name loyalty is counterproductive. We should all be open to new things and that includes new brands and models. No matter what though there will be early adopters and that can be a lonely road sometimes, as Mike is discovering.

Here is where most of the Nokta Impact people are hiding Link deleted since Findmall Forum update broke all old links