Pulse Detector Results and VLF vs PI

[Tom Harris]

Hi goldenoldie

 

Your right,I'm in British Columbia. We have desert hear in the interior of the province were we grow all our fruit. I worked in the 

orchards years ago in 43 -44 degrees. Worked out in that for 8-10 hours a day. After you get use to it, it's not that bad.

We have lots of gold history here, but all the gold in my area is flour gold, nothing detectable.

I'd love to find 164 pieces of gold.

Just a side note. Do you visit the Australianelectronicgoldprospectors forum.

 

Tom

[goldenoldie]

In regards to your side note Tom I have on an occasion but too much controversy with that forum and its administrator for me.

 

However recently thanks to Steve opening this thread " Garrett ATX Backpack Modification" on another Australian forum Finders I was able to follow a link to his new forum here. Throughout the years I have followed Steve's postings over there and I have much respect for his views, knowledge and experience.

 

[Hobo]

I started detecting seriously for nuggets  in 1983 with a Garret Groundhog and found quite a bit  then switched to the original Gold Bug when it came out and my nugget finds went way up. Moved up to the 2100 and continued to find nuggets, BUT I think I have found more wt . over the years with the GB & GB2 than with the M.L.s, not because the GB is better, but because there was a lot more gold to find back then and a lot of shallow gold.  Wish that I would have kept a record of my finds with the various detectors.

[goldenoldie]

I wonder if over there in your part of the world when the Pulse Detector hit the market did your grounds produce the amount of nuggets beneath the VLF’s range that seemed to occur in Australia, although if the ground was less mineralised maybe not such a deciding factor in favour of the Pulse machine.

[Hobo]

Steve ; I agree. If I absolutely had to find a PIECE of gold in a short period of time I would grab my GB2. Wouldn't even think about it..

[Steve Herschbach]

I wonder if over there in your part of the world when the Pulse Detector hit the market did your grounds produce the amount of nuggets beneath the VLF’s range that seemed to occur in Australia, although if the ground was less mineralised maybe not such a deciding factor in favour of the Pulse machine.

The disparity between Australia and other places is so extreme it really is as if people are detecting on different planets. It is obvious to me this is where a lot of arguments about detectors arise - people forgetting what is true in one place is not true everywhere, and what works best in one place does not work best in another. I have a long story that perfectly illustrates this but will save it for a new thread.

Alaska is very low mineral ground by comparison to Australia. In fact, my old stomping grounds near Anchorage are on one of the largest continuous areas of slate, shale, and graywacke on earth. Extremely low iron content sedimentary or low grade metamorphic rock. A 6" gold dredge run all day will produce about a tablespoon of magnetic black sand. The nuggets average under a gram and the big ones weigh a quarter ounce. Nuggets over an ounce exist but are almost unheard of. I only found one right at an ounce in over 30 years of dredging and metal detecting south of Anchorage. And that was with a dredge. My largest nugget ever found detecting south of Anchorage weighed about 8 pennyweight. With a VLF.

I owned one of the largest detector dealerships in the country, selling over 500 metal detectors a year for decades. Over 99% of those detectors were VLFs. It is not because Alaskans lack money or are stupid. The fact is a PI not only offers no advantage it puts one at a disadvantage in many locations in Alaska. The detectors that produce are the Gold Bug 2 and White's Goldmaster series. They can be run at full gain and run well at that. Air test one of those detectors sometime, and that is the depth you generally get south of Anchorage. Time and again visitors from other places would show up with their high priced Minelabs looking to show the locals up and we just ran circles around them. In tailing piles, detectors like the White's MXT or a host of other mid-frequency detectors rule. PI detectors have had almost no impact in Alaska.

Now, it is a huge state, and there are areas that warrant a PI. My own Moore Creek mine was one of those. It had a couple nasty hot rocks buried in mild soil that gave VLF detectors fits. The vast majority of the gold found at Moore Creek was found with PI detectors. There are other examples. But those locations are not the rule in Alaska, they are the exception.

What I found interesting is people who have never used anything but a Minelab PI in bad ground often get almost religious about it, and refuse to believe what I have just relayed to you. I must be making it up.

That said, because of my use of the Minelabs at Moore Creek I have found more gold with a Minelab than any other person in Alaska I know of. Even in low mineral ground, a Minelab with an 18" mono is going to hit a larger nugget deeper than a VLF mainly because VLFs do got get any real bonus from larger coils. These days I target areas in Alaska where large nuggets lurk and tend to rely on my Minelab PI but I honestly must say most of the gold I find I still would have found with a good VLF. In much of Alaska it still really is just a matter of being first over the nugget, not having the deepest machine.

Better wrap this up, but in the western US there is a huge variation in ground from stuff to rival Australia to extreme low mineral ground. On average most is far less difficult than Australian ground and so many areas still produce well with VLF detectors but in the southwest in particular PI detectors are the real producers. Overall the western US is in between with Alaska and Australia as the extreme opposites.

Jonathan Porter told me once he thought I had an anti-Minelab bias, mostly relating no doubt to my reports from Ganes Creek, Alaska and my advice to people there not to us a PI. I can see how it would appear that way, though in later years the Minelab X-Terra 705 became very popular at Ganes Creek. Not a detector that normally gets raves from nugget hunters but it performs very well at Ganes Creek. Yet when I got to Australia to hunt with JP I think he saw that I love my GPX 5000. I think it is one of the finest pieces of metal detecting technology ever produced, and I feel almost privileged to own one and use it. It was a real joy seeing what it could do in the ground it was made for. But if I was headed south of Anchorage tomorrow I would grab my Gold Bug 2 or GMT.

[Search and Recovery]

Great thread and great information Steve. Really good perspective on the use of PI and VLF versus location and mineralization. Good reason to have one of each type whenever going to some place new. Conditions could be far different than you may expect.