4500 stock coil

The stock coil supplied with the 4500 is obviously meant to be of use for a wide variety of situations. I never see it mentioned in many posts though. What sort of conditions or ground do you find it useful for?

Thanks

Dan

Hi Dan
The 11DD that comes with Gpx4500 is an all purpose coil .Quiet and sensitive.The WA goldfields are vast.You might consider getting a larger Mono search coil.Your new machine is made to run and handle Mono coils.This year Ill be running a 14 x 9 mono and a 16 round mono.
Cheers Dig

Hi Dan,

The standard Double-D coil is as Dig just pointed out - an 'All-Purpose' coil that can be used in ANY soil conditions. For this reason, it is a very useful coil and probably the best coil to supply with the detectors since they ship to locations all over the world.

Whilst it is not a specialized coil (ie. a coil designed for a specific condition or task) a lot of gold has been won with it simply because many people use the default coil that comes with the detector. Again, as Dig has already pointed out to you, the GPX 4500 is going to run a monoloop easily compared to the majority of the earlier models. Since the monos go deep and are considered sensitive coils, the only downside is they cannot offer discrimination like the DD coils can.

For this reason, always hang onto your DD coil. It may be very useful to you someday if you start finding highly mineralized areas that you can't handle with the monoloop... and you may want to complete the detector as a package for a new owner should you sell it or upgrade in future. Remember that the field emitted by the DD coil takes on a different shape (more blade-shaped) compared to the cone-shape emitted by a monoloop coil. This means that approaching objects like trees and large rocks requires a sightly different approach by comparison when detecting around their circumference. It appears that Dig and I use the same range of coils! Whilst we have a use for the larger 16" Round Monos, they are probably not as suited to you if you are new to monoloops - partly because they are more prone to interference. I would personally recommend the 14x9 for you as this is my favourite coil size for general detecting. I'd probably suggest that you try to get to know the DD first and then consider a monoloop. You will be amazed at the differences between the two and a good prospector probably needs to keep at least one backup coil on hand. All the best.

Cheers,


Marco

Thanks Dig, Marco, that's very helpful info and I'm glad to say I already have a 14x9 coiltec mono bought and waiting for me in kal.
Like you say, I think a bigger mono would be a bit of a handful for a beginner. I'll leave that to the experts for now. I'll be quite happy finding small gold, any gold in fact

Cheers

Dan

Hi Dan
The 14 x9 will do you fine.There are a couple of prominent prospectors that Go ReAlly Nicely In wa.ThEy have used them there for the past 2 season with excellent results.
Cheers Dig

Hi Dan, The advice you have been given by posters is all good. But a different angle is....

I and most of my friends (bar one) who own 4500's have never used our standard DD coil. They stay in the delivery box ready for when we sell/upgrade our detectors.

The 4500 is so good at filtering out ground noise that a mono coil works well in nearly all situations. The standard DD coil is very limited in its depth penetration and the amount of ground coverage you can get from it in a detecting session. The standard DD coil was needed often with earlier pre 4000 models, but not the 4500.
I wish Minelab would start offering a mono coil as standard on their detector package.

I do use a 14 inch DD on the very rare occassion where the swamping ground noise is very bad (14 has reasonable depth) however i often will persist with a mono (and the noise ) and will get more gold with a mono.

I recommend you start and persist (in WA) with your elip mono and research, watch JP DVD's, learn off friends and practice methods and settings to determine quickly when a signal is a hot rock or ground noise. It can be a steep learning curve but i believe your 14 mono (or bigger) will be your weapon of choice in no time.

In WA you usually want to cover alot of ground with the aim of finding just one nugget that may indicate a run of gold. Then you can slow down and try different coils (maybe small 8-11 inch monos to check for the presence of very small gold.)

Tributer

Thanks Tributer, again, very good advice. I'm happy now that i've got the right tools for the job. The rest is up to me to get the best out of it (with some luck thrown in). I've been doing lots of armchair prospecting and research,can't wait to get out there for real.

Cheers

Dan.