Is it all coming to an end?

I agree Kon, I don't see detecting technology getting too much more depth, the iron and salts in the ground will not allow it. Improvements in filtering out noise, frequencies and power output will see only minor improvements.

Micro gold and SDC type machines do not interest me at all....although if I was confined by family or work and could only detect weekends in the diggings on leads in VIC' I probably would be into it, especially after seeing the success of some getting hundreds of nuggets a month.

But all is not lost. I will use whatever the best detector is on offer and try to increase gold finds by improving my research and how and where I detect.

Getting a few kilometres away from the nearest rough track can give good gold and patches...mainly in remote areas of OZ. Plenty of spots in VIC away from the diggings have gold as well. It just takes time and hard work to find spots.

There is plenty of ground where slow methodical use of big coils will produce the goods...plenty of subtle signals left out there...but lots of digging and time needed.

Beyond detecting and if you have the time you can find some spots in WA and eventually you will find an area where you can take out a lease or two and look at moving some ground and getting to deeper gold...or onselling..or optioning out.

Detecting with a friend and going halves can really help find patches and runs in remoter areas where two or three people spreading out will dramatically increase the odds.

So I know I moved the conversation sideways a bit, but I believe that detectors will increase in detecting ability only slightly, but you can always improve your chances much much more by the way you research and learn and where you choose to detect.

end of rant..Tributer

I think that there are still many surprises to come with metal detector technology and we will hopefully see minelab heed what the metal detecting fraternity says about its products, don't get me wrong minelab do a first class job of getting very capable detectors on to the market and will continue to do so for some time to come I hope, but what I don't understand is that there seems to me that there is little consideration for the fact that some machines are not very user friendly and are far too heavy or too clumsy for comfortable use.

Maybe we will see some refinement in the way the technology in the gpz7000 can be made more compact and lighter so that it becomes more attractive and user friendly to a higher percentage of people than it is currently, facts are facts and a very high percentage of people who I have spoken to about this have said that it is way too heavy for them to use and they have gone back to previous models, the feedback also seems to be either very positive about its performance from some users or a very lack lustre view on its performance coming from others, so its been very hard to gauge the real facts and so for me it does not inspire enough confidence to get one and give it a go.

It not always about massive depth improvements in detectors that is attractive to me, as in reality nothing produced now outperforms the depth ability of even the sd2000, but there's has been a huge improvement in the way the electronics can handle the ground so that's the upside, where I would like to see the next generation of detectors go is that I want them lighter and more ergonomic, with full depth discrimination and better emi handling capabilities, there is still plenty of gold to be found but much of it is in ground that has been badly polluted with ferrous trash.

And although I wont walk away from a deeply buried target, I would much rather be digging consistent shallow nuggets all day than digging trash and big deep holes, as even the small pieces add up and keep you interested as well, they are the bread and butter nuggets and what pay the bills at the end of the day.

au-fever

Hi All
Is it coming to an end , well yes it is .Detectable gold is a finite resource. Minelab (the worlds best gold detectors) has as corporations do milked the majority of timing and frequency combinations.To keep sales moving this drip feeding has gone on for years.They have had the ability to do a dialup frequency and timing machine for years, but theres more sales in drip feed.
The question is will they run the same line with the GPZ.If history is a guide they will.Problem is as mentioned above the top layers have been hammered over the years.
Ergonomics will come in with the next model, thats a gimmie, but will the general public shell out $12 to 15k to find smaller deeper.Of course they will.While were at it the "Millions of dollars spent on research and development" argument has never washed it with me.My younger brother builds avionics that bounces data off satellites to aircraft. Complicated as this info must not interfere with the aircrafts operating systems. That costs money, reprogramming a $100 motherboard doesnt.
Cheers Dig

I mentioned on this Forum a while back that I contacted a guy in the UK who was working on a detector that could pick up the "frequency" of the molecular/atomic structures of plastics to enable the landmines (the ones with no metal parts) to be found hence save people from having limbs blown off.
I asked him if was possible to do it with gold, he seemed to think the idea had merit but he was more interested spending time saving humanity than creating a "Gold Detector".

"Food for Thought"...............

Be lucky.

"MANY A TRUE WORD IS SPOKEN IN JEST".

My Comments to Kon’s thoughts below.
G'day fellow Prospectors.

I'm starting to wonder if that's as far as we go with metal detecting technology.
                                                                                                                                    Over the last 10 years or so, advancements in metal detector technology has been minimal/dismal to say the least.    ========================================================
****** Kon you are a little harsh saying that, there have been many advancements over the last 10 years, fair enough your talk on the extra depth question, this needs a little explaining.
But what about all the different timings, and new type coils developed that has bought in heaps more gold?  
Also, there are now these new detectors that find tiny gold in very mineralised ground, like the SDC and the GPZ 7000 do.                                                                                      
Mate it’s hard to have everything we all want, you just have to get smarter in your understanding of all things detecting and gold research.

Firstly, you will have noticed over the last 3 to 4 years how most operators now use smaller coils, well to my way of thinking, these people are only trying to keep up with what their mates are finding, and that is mostly tiny gold with these guys using new style detectors.

So, the blokes that still have their GPX models and don’t want to buy new machines, fit and use tiny coils too. Now we all know using these coils limits your chances of finding decent larger deeper gold, so thinking outside the square, these operators should have fitted larger coils instead.
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Even the best of them (such as that of the GPZ 7000), has been refined so as to attain greater depth on the sub gram to multi-gram gold, but all within & rarely below the 2-foot mark.  
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  ********** I agree we should have seen more big gold with the GPZ 7000, yet it still finds consistent gold, even if these are not quite the size we were hoping for. This detector is a little choosy on the type of gold it requires to excel on, and most owners now have found what sort of characteristics this entails.
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As for the larger multi-ounce gold, buried a few inches beyond that 2-foot mark, these seem to remain elusive to the metal detectors capabilities, or we would be seeing many a large slug of gold come to light over the last 2/3 years, but we are not.                                                                                                                    
What chance do us detectorists have at finding or scoring any new patches of gold, of which mainly lie in mineralized ground, some just beyond the 2 foot mark.
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********** With your thoughts on a 2’foot depth limit to get gold nuggets using today’s detectors, Kon that is a very conservative depth you have chosen there. Maybe you haven’t always used big coils like myself and many others, as there has been a lot of bigger nuggets found well below the 2’ft, mark.
Sure, most areas have had a caning over the years, but if set up for finding big deep gold with the right coil and settings, and a keen detecting attitude, there is still good gold to be found. Yes, lots of research is a must, and one can’t do enough of it.  
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We're already just a step away from what I call electronic panning for gold (sub 0.1gm in size), that surely not what some of the bigger metal detecting companies are aiming for, any more smaller gold than that?
                                                                                                                                    Even the current advancements by Minelab & their new GPZ 7000 detector technology, isn’t really surpassing that of the depths attainable by an old SD 2000 /18 inch mono coil, on the larger solid multi-ounce slugs of gold at depth.
                                                                                                                                    When I come to think about it, & in reading about some of the ”most shallowest”, gold bearing ground discovered by the old timers.  
“Their Shallow Ground”, was considered to start at between 2/3 feet deep, all the way down to 10 feet deep.
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I simply refuse to believe there's nothing more lying beyond these depths, in way of good colour to be found.                              ========================================================
******** Your spot-on there Kon, both you and most others know there is more gold to be found, just that little bit deeper, and perhaps a lot more than has already been pulled out over the last 30 years with detectors.
This detector will happen, but it is a worry if this will transpire before us old blokes are down below, where the big ones hide, before it all materializes.    ========================================================
                                                                                                                                   For whatever the reason fellas, I can only conclude, that the drip feed method of detector technology continues to get stronger/longer by every passing year.
                                                                                                                                    As far as I'm concerned, if within the next few years, detector technology does not surpass the 2- foot mark depth, on a 5-ounce slug of gold, lying within mineralized ground, I'll be asking Spec Savers for an increase my glasses in magnification, so as to see, what the newer upcoming detector technology, has found.
======================================================                                                                                                                                                                    **** There have been many 5-ounce slugs of gold found with detectors, and below that 2’foot mark you speak of Kon.  I think you are under estimating the ability of our current detectors, if they’re set up to find big gold they will find it alright. It is just that one has to know the correct way to go about it.   ========================================================
Minelab please, don't come up with some form of brilliant discriminating system for your GPZ 7000, most likely at the cost of halving its depth on gold.  
On the other hand, I do understand that many GPZ users are more than content with its current depth capabilities & wish no more depth on targets, &/or the introduction of incorporating a good reliable discriminating system, will help immensely.

But, I just can't help myself by asking for more depth on/over undisturbed buried gold nuggets.
Your thoughts on what I’ve posted kind people, would be appreciated?    Cheers Kon.  
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*********  Kon, you won’t have to worry about reliable discrimination for quite some years yet, that is a big ask even in today's modern tech World.

Regards Ozgold.
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I may only be a prospector with no tech knowledge,  but i have been told a couple times that minelab and other manufacturers have been hamstrung by government red tape. They are limited to how much power / whatts / radiowaves or what they use can not be increased so depth will not go much deeper without new power output being able to be used.
Where minelab will excell is if they bring there new technology into the next machine that workes as well as ths 7000 but discriminates or shows operater what it is seeing like the 3030.
We may just have to get these backyard electronics guys winding up the power like years ago with the cb radios (for the older set amongst us) and really get these machines humming.
We can but dream and just have to wait    wait    wait

Hi Kon, fellows, I think that Minelab still have another card to play. There is the posibility that a detector can be made that will pick up Kilo lumps at a couple of meters. There was a detector on u-tube a year or so ago that picked up a car radiator at 6 feet. I know this is not mineralized dirt but still it shows it can be done. It may well be that the Gov. reg.s prevent Minelab from making this happen but I hope not. When such a detector is avalable one would get a signal and pitch a tent over it then dig it up over the next cauple of days. If you only found one nugget with it it would still be worth it. That and a "Z" or a 5000 and a 2300 would be a good lineup of gear for us detecting types. Although we may need a bigger pick! Perhaps a 7 ft handle!!

I agree with your comments Kon. I think low and slow will become the most important thing - and don't give up on ground noise until you have investigated it at depth to make sure it is not a target. I am still trying to dig and find the elusive target on the so called threshold drop out - for me only an occasional visitor to the gold fields, its probably a mater of my competence.

Ian