Which is the best Small Coil?

There are quite a few small coils available,
I don't know what types NF has come out with in their advantage range but they would be a consideration as they're the latest.

Hi,

I like the 14 inch goldstalker mono coil that Coiltek has brought out.

Or even a joey another gem from Coiltek

Hope this helps

Cheers,

Tim

Gday I love my 250mm (10"x5") EL mono by coiltek its super sensitive.Cheers Dave

Cheers,
I know my 14"e goldstaker goes good on .2 - 2 grammers (3000), is there a coil that goes deeper?

Hi

So far I used the Minelab 8" mono coil on a 4000 and found my smallest piece yet. It was a 0.05 gram piece in approx. 10 cm depth and I also got quite a few pieces of 0.1 - 0.5 gram at approx. 20 cm depth.

Cheers
Ralph

Out4Fun wrote:Hi

So far I used the Minelab 8" mono coil on a 4000 and found my smallest piece yet. It was a 0.05 gram piece in approx. 10 cm depth and I also got quite a few pieces of 0.1 - 0.5 gram at approx. 20 cm depth.

Cheers
Ralph

Cheers,
I had assumed the 8" mono's good, those are good depths. That's one of the coils I've been looking at. Is it quiet out of smooth mode? I heard it's noisy. I wonder how it compares to a 12" elip.

Hi All, All the info I take on is from what I see being done , not second hand from around a fire after a can or two. This happened ,A new 4500 ,a coiltek 14+10? mono.The brown light weight one. This chap found a patch and worked it for a week. In that time 9 odd oz came off there. Minelab were or still are giveing away a small 8..or 10 inch mono with the new 4500. The guy had to go back to Kal. to pick it up..He went over the patch useing the small minelab mono just to see .. and pulled another 3 and half oz that the other coil had not seen..There is a lot to be said for the smaller mono coils...I saw the gold ...a lot of the gold was small on the second run...That tells me that there is a lot of small gold being left behind...All the gold is not gone..Its just harder to find now..Good luck ..Bob ..Im not knocking coiltek just the use of older type coils....

Hi

I just came back from 4 days in Dunolly tonight, testing my new "old" Nugget Finder 12" elliptical mono coil (it's the flat white one, not the new gray one). Unfortunately I did not find any gold, only the usual bullets and other rubbish.

I would say the 8" mono Minelab coil is slightly more noisy than the Nugget Finder coil, but hardly noticable. I bought the 12" coil, because on a trip to South Australia somebody gave me his coil on loan and that was the only coil I found some gold with (approx. 0.7-1 gram pieces), while the 8" inch was not successful. Here in Victoria I found my smallest piece with the 8" as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately I have not enough experience to make any sense out of those differences.

I was just recently on a field trip where somebody pulled some 14 nuggets (totaling 1.2 grams) out of the ground with the new 12" mono elliptical Nugget Finder when every experienced hand only had 2 or three of those little 0.1 gram or less nuggets. He was so pleased with the performance of that coil that he bought the 12" round mono coil as well. I have the new Nugget Finder coil on order but unfortunately those Nugget Finder coils don't seem to be available all the times.

Cheers
Ralph

10x5 coiltek mono coupled to a 4500 no wories..

8" minelab mono.. no wories.

its more about doing a close ground balance than the type of coil used, "ie" only lifting the coil
2 - 3" when pumping the coil for ground balancing that counts.

get that part wrong and it dont matter which coil you use.

pete









"

Gday

Petes right you have to be spot on with your ground balance tecnique, on the 4500 when you are doing the ground balance you have to pump the coil at the same height until it becomes quiet, and on the last pump hold the coil as steady as you can and as near to the ground as you can, without touching it, before you release the quik trak button.

If its not quiet then do it again, its very important that you get this right, you may have to move about to get a clear spot to do this, if you are doing it near a target or on a piece of ground thats mineralised then as soon as you move off it will become unstable again.

There is no doubt in my mind that the minelab 8" mono coil is a very capable coil, and when used in rocky areas or gullies etc it will not miss much, I have found quite a few patches with it also, as that first small piece is the indicator you need in some cases, my next favorite coil for the 4500 is the minelab 11" commander mono, and I now use this coil a lot, it has excellent sensitivity and very good depth, and is perfect for cleaning up.

Another coil that I have just started using, is the nuggetfinder 14x9 eliptical mono advantage coil, and as some of you would know I am not a big fan of eliptical coils, so I have had to learn to use this one, at first I found it to be a bit touchy but after getting used to it I can tell you that its an excellent coil and very very capable, both for very small pieces and it has excellent depth as well, if you are looking for a coil that you can use for general use and is capable enough to get the small pieces and any larger deeper bits then you really should consider this coil.

cheers

stayyerAU

3 votes for the CoilTek Joey 5x10" Mono BUT no votes for the NuggetFinder 5x10" Mono, why??

Also no votes for the CoilTek GoldStalker round 6" Mono. But someone bought a NuggetFinder Advantage round 12" Mono.

The Minelab Commander 8" Mono and 9x14" Mono's(toss up between CT GoldStalker and NF Advantage), rate very highly with 3 votes for each size.

Also the Minelab Commander 11" Mono and NuggetFinder 7x12" Mono are mentioned but no one mentioned the older white NuggetFinder 7x14" Mono.

No one mentioned a DD coil of any type for the most depth on .2/.3 gram gold.

NuggetFinder made a 9x14" DD also.

I did hear in a test that of coils of the same size, that DD's are hotter than Mono's up to about 5" deep, then Mono's are hotter than DD's from 5"+ on, and deeper.

I am thinking about buying a 5x10" DD. Should I get the CoilTek Joey 5x10" DD or Minelab Commander 5x10" DD?? Thanks!

David,
How are you??? Nothing wrong with a N/F 10 x 5 real sensitive and all.... I use one from time to time searching up creeks...

Ray

If there is lots of gold present that is sub 0.1 gram i would go with the Minelab 8 inch round mono.
They have incredible depth for 0.2-1.0 grammers and will whistle on the smallest pieces.

And they are a little cheaper then some of the other brands.

If some members have not experienced small coil detecting it can be quite a surprise how many hundreds of very small nuggets are out there on old patches and absolutely flogged areas.

While i like looking for deeper bigger gold it is fun picking up small bits every few minutes in shallow ground edging many of the Victorian and NSW reef line workings.

It may take 12 nuggets to get a couple grams but its great fun and you can always split your day and do some bigger coil hunting down slope.

Tributer

Hi beepinpete and stayyerAU, being a newby this may be a dumb question, but the finer points you raised re ground balancing a 4500, do these also apply to a gp3000? Thanks in advance,John

Hi John, the only dumb qestion is the one you don't ask.

Ground balance is critical no matter what model you're using. Get into the habit of ground balancing presicely and often if you run in fixed

I once had a dd joey and I didn't like it. It picks up every speck of dirt and they sound like good signals. I'm not sure if I tried it in mono mode but I wish I experimented with it a bit. It got rid of it.

How does the 8" commander do on hotrocks on a 3000? Would you loose much depth in enhance mode (4500)?

Shinegold, In the past i have used the 8 inch mono on a 3500 but not a 3000. Hot rocks were generally easy to distinguish after a few minutes of getting to know what the hot rocks sound like in any given spot.

The 8 inch commander will pick up hot rocks, however i have found that gold and metal signals always come through loud sharp and clear and give a good whistle sound.

The 8 inch coil can detect ounce sized targets at depths over 12 inches.
You will need to dig some of these broad signals at depth to check whether they are hot rocks or deep targets.
But the hot rocks can be quickly dug and checked and you can move on. You can usually learn to distinguish hot rocks easilly with an 8 inch coil compared to bigger coils in my experience.

I use enhance on my 4500 with an 8 inch mono alot. You can get the coil so quite that it lets you hear very faint murmurs from deep targets. You must loose some depth compared to normal settings however if you can get no chatter at all in enhance you make up the depth by being able to hear such faint noises. I was surprised how many mere murmurs were targets. I do a boot scape for any faint murmur with the 8 inch...and many of them are gold targets.
Tributer

Watched some seriously deep holes dug with the 8" mono...a very capable coil.

I use the 6" coiltek a lot but mainly for cleaning out a mullock heap of all the tiny bits or in a disgustingly trashy area where you can fit it in between all the junk and seperate targets.

One of my favourite coils is the NuggetFinder 14"x7" solid which I find is extremely sharp and still has good depth.

Saying that, I still like the 11" mono which will nail the small bits right through to the bigger ones from surface down to decent depth in most soils.

I'd hate to think I nailed myself a nice little .2 but missed the 1/2oz next to it because it was out of reach of the tiny coil I was using.