Coils soil timings and depth

Hi all,
On my last outing in North Qld I went out with an old friend of my fathers. He is a very experienced detector operator with older model detectors. He took me into a gully that he had pulled good gold off with a sd3500 and a GP extreme. We spent a few hours there both with GPX5000's. We were finding small gram and sub gram stuff at about 4 to 6 inches and plenty of it. He has gone back since and got stacks more, but I have not had the opportunity to. I will be going back in a few weeks. Seeing as though he has more than likely cleaned up most of the shallow stuff (he uses a 12x 7 elliptical), I was going to go back with a 16 inch round coiltek and see if I can find deeper stuff that he may have missed. The ground is heavily mineralised and I was wondering what the sensitivity and depth difference would be between using the general timing as opposed to the fine gold timing. I tend to use fine gold as it is quieter on that ground (less false digs). Also will general cause me to walk over smaller pieces of gold.

G'day mlee76

The small gold can get lost in the noise, if the ground is very mineralised, this is where fine gold and enhance shine.

When you get a target in fine gold or enhance, then switch to normal, (I dont know where you get a general timing, as there are only "enhance", "normal", and "special" in the timings switch,) anyhow when you find a target try the different timings, and when in normal you will most likely here it better, but, and this is where the catch is, can you detect all around the area using this timing, if you can and it's not to noisy then use it, as that means the ground is not as mineralized as you think.

If it's way noisy the just use fine gold or enhance, that's what there there for.

cheers dave

Thanks Dave,
When I said general timing I really meant normal on the front switch as opposed to the special timings provided in the back panel once special is selected on the front. But say the ground is relatively noisy and to give you an idea, the other chap was using the sensitive extra timing with that small elliptical coil and was digging about 6 false digs to my one when I was using a 14x9 blitz on fine gold. It didn't appear as though he had any depth advantage over my settings. Would I be better putting up with the noise (be just like using my dads old sd2000) in the knowledge that I will detect deeper nuggets or would the depth difference be not that great and I should just stick with fine gold. The reason I'm asking this is I saw a video of a guy depth testing on a large nugget and he got a definite sound in normal timing but no sound at all in fine gold. Makes me wonder if I'm walking over gold and leaving it behind. But then I suppose as it has been said, you might miss faint signals with a noisy machine. I just wonder if there are guys out there been using these detectors so much that can decipher the noise from the targets and is it something I should endeavour to learn.

Hey Mate
What part of NQ do you detect, I use an SD2200 & find that it is not to hot to detect the area's I hunt.

One day I would like to see a sub grammer dug from 4" to 6" deep in mineralised ground.

rc62bourke I detect around the gilbert river area. Nightjar is that a hint of scepticism I detect in your reply? I suppose I could show you a picture of a small hand full of tiny nuggets most of them about three to four match heads in size. But then you would question the depth I actually dug them from. As a tradesman that measures every day of my life you will just have to take my word for it that I know what 4 to 6 inches is. I run the coiltek blitz coil with all the usual settings that you see people post up when in the fine gold timing. The only question is that maybe what I think is mineralised ground is not really that mineralised. I am quite a novice when it come to gold areas as I have never detected anywhere else. I gauge my opinion based on how terribly noisy the old sd2000 I was using was and the 5gram or so nuggets I have found with the GPX5000 in areas I have been over real slow with the old 2000. And not very deep either. Where I go the soil is red, and the old 2000 gave good signals over old ant bed plenty of sandstoney looking rocks (I believe you call these hot rocks) and countless other things. But that's the reason I have joined this forum because I realise there are a lot of experienced detector operators out there whose advice is well worth listening to, and this will help me climb the learning curve. So tell me what should I expect from the 16"coiltek round mono over the same ground these small nuggets came from, compared to the 14x9 blitz I have been using?

G'day mlee76

If your talking gram and sub gram nuggets at 4" to 6" in depth and quite a few of them in this area I would be using the Minelab Commander 11" mono for the job (this coil came with th machine when new).  These coils are very good in these conditions.

Just a suggestion but thats what I would do.

The 16" round mono, use it in deeper more open type ground where you think there is a possibility of larger gold at depth.

Settings for the 11" commander would be something like, front switch in special, and rear menu in fine gold, (if this is a bit noisy try enhance on the front switch), High RX gain 15 plus on the 5000 and low stabilizer numbers like 4 or 6 and run the audio in boost, tracking in fixed and make sure you ground balance manually as often as necessary, also have the motion set in slow on the rear menu, and either auto tune at the start or manual tune if you are able to understand what is required, and set the threshold to just stable, by this I mean wind the dial up until is is to loud and then back it off until is is gone then just slowly wind it back up till it is stable, a bit of practice you will understand where it needs to be.

With ground balance, it is important, with tracking in fixed pump coil up and down while holding in the green button, then when ground balance is stable, release the green button with the coil at the height you are going to be detecting at.  If for example the ground is clear of objects, you can detect very close to the ground, so set the ground balance as close to the ground as you can.  If there are plenty of rocks around, then set the ground balance to just above the height of the rocks you are going to be detecting over.

Hope some of this is of help to you.

cheers dave

PS: I would not worry to much about the Youtube videos at this stage. They can make black look white and visa versa, get some practice in with your machine learning the basic things first, the rest will come as you you learn.

mlee76 wrote: Nightjar is that a hint of scepticism I detect in your reply? I suppose I could show you a picture of a small hand full of tiny nuggets most of them about three to four match heads in size. But then you would question the depth I actually dug them from. As a tradesman that measures every day of my life you will just have to take my word for it that I know what 4 to 6 inches is. I run the coiltek blitz coil with all the usual settings that you see people post up when in the fine gold timing. The only question is that maybe what I think is mineralised ground is not really that mineralised. But that's the reason I have joined this forum because I realise there are a lot of experienced detector operators out there whose advice is well worth listening to, and this will help me climb the learning curve. So tell me what should I expect from the 16"coiltek round mono over the same ground these small nuggets came from, compared to the 14x9 blitz I have been using?

Don't take it personally mlee, gold detecting is a bit like fishing, the tape measure tends to be stretched a little. You mention three to four match head size, they are not a sub grammers.
As Dave has mentioned the 11" Commander is the coil to use for small gold, if you are finding handfuls with a 14x9 you'll get bucket fulls with a 11".
Until I'm proven wrong, do believe the stories about sub-grammers found at 6" in mineralised ground are false.
They fall from a shallow depth into a deeper hole due to incorrect pin pointing.


Cheers

You may be right about the nuggets falling into a miss dug hole. Its something I had not considered. I was under the impression that the blitz was a better coil to use from the reviews it has got, but your comments leave me to think that I could go over this ground with the blitz, then the 11" commander, then the 16" mono round. Is there any way to determine how deep the ground might be or do I just try a bigger coil and see what turns up.

Nightjar wrote:One day I would like to see a sub grammer dug from 4" to 6" deep in mineralised ground.

Does a golden ants ball from 6" deep in clay mullock  count, Nightjar? But I did cheat, I was using a 4500.

mlee76 wrote:You may be right about the nuggets falling into a miss dug hole. Its something I had not considered. I was under the impression that the blitz was a better coil to use from the reviews it has got, but your comments leave me to think that I could go over this ground with the blitz, then the 11" commander, then the 16" mono round. Is there any way to determine how deep the ground might be or do I just try a bigger coil and see what turns up.

G'day mlee76

You can tell by the holes your digging, is the bottom of the hole solid bedrock or still broken down alluvial wash dirt and that type of material. Or are you working on flattish alluvial plains, or the tops and sides of hills where the exposed rock tell you that this is hard solid ground because its higher than the surrounding area, and the top material has been eroded away. If this is the case and your getting gold on the hard eroded areas then you have to wonder where the top material has been deposited because there could be big gold buried deeper in it.

Anyhow good luck out there, and I hope some of the answers here are helping.

cheers dave

I'll tell you what. In three weeks time I'll be back out there. I'll be home about a week and a bit after that, and I'll let you all know how I went. I'll see if I can get some pics and maybe my young fella will take some video as well. I'll try a few things and hopefully climb that bit further up the learning curve. I do know one thing though. I found very little gold with my dads old sd2000, and each time I go out with the GPX5000 I find a bit more than the last time. So its happy days for me.

Watch this spot.

Hi all, joined because ive been reading about settings for the 5000 for over 2 weeks and nothing is working for me. I've come to the conclusion that i either have a dud 5000 or i had a freaky good 3500. I'm using the 17x11 NF. after experimenting for weeks on my new 5000 with every setting recommended by everyone here, and actually now understanding what the settings are actually doing, I have come to the conclusion that my 3500 is WAY more sensitive to sub grammars at depth. This year i got lucky and found some good gold along a 3km stretch with the 3500. got 794 bits from 0.1 to 170 grams. heavily mineralized ground with some areas in lovely deep loam. I know the gold is there!!, but the 5000 got only surface pingers that i grew tied of digging. I only got them by running high gain and putting up with the chatter over the richest ground. I also found the 0.2-0.5 sizes were less detectable at depth. I thought i was getting nice little 2 inch deep 0.3 size targets and they would turn out to be 0.1 sub surface or surface targets. maybe my 17x11 has seen its day? maybe my detector is faulty?

maybe i should start a topic of this as its off this topic

My suggestion is to use the Minelab 11" Commander mono that came with your 5000, make sure that you have the front switch on special and fine gold in the back menu, start of with all the other settings in the back menu in FP and go from there.

Also make sure that you have the ground balance set correctly, and use the auto tune if you are unsure about how to manual tune.

cheers dave

Until I'm proven wrong, do believe the stories about sub-grammers found at 6" in mineralised ground are false.
They fall from a shallow depth into a deeper hole due to incorrect pin pointing.

Are you saying we are "all"  liars.? Hmmmm???
Falling from the sidewall??...perhaps some do this, but what of those that are in situ at the bottom of the hole.??

Agree, youtube vids do not do justice to many a dig, nor does it matter how good you are at photography as pics can also be a little deceptive.
Not all of us use the rubber ruler to make ourselves look good tho. Digging nuggets from those depths in mineralized ground is not a big achievement with the GPX range, after all, this was the prime reason for the Smooth timings. And i certainly have dug nuggets of those weights and from those depths, and deeper in mineralized soil.?

is there any good youtube vids i can watch to boost my confidence?

Rodger.W wrote:is there any good youtube vids i can watch to boost my confidence?

Youtubes vids wont boost your confidence....just cause envy.

To boost your confidence, you need time on the ground learning the detector. Understanding what each setting doe's and when to apply adjustments = confidence. Start off in FP adjusting only the Audio Tone and Auto/Manual tune as needed. There is no " perfect settings ", however, FP come the closest.

there was some interesting results found by some apla members during some testing they did a while back on this subject.
from memory the best results they got was using the 11inch dd coil in sharp.
if you are a member of apla you should have received the monthly newsletter as it was in this.
the testing was done by a few very respected prospectors so should be spot on.

hoolahoopa wrote:there was some interesting results found by some apla members during some testing they did a while back on this subject.
from memory the best results they got was using the 11inch dd coil in sharp.
if you are a member of apla you should have received the monthly newsletter as it was in this.
the testing was done by a few very respected prospectors so should be spot on.

Here is a snippet from the APLA news letter........to me they used a Coiltek 14x9 mono & a Coiltek 11" mono, why the never used an 11" minelab commander mono I have no idea as in my opinion it is a terrific coil.

So they did do a test in the Sharp timing but it doesn't seem to be with a DD coil on any of the charts/grahps that I could see.

There is a reference to DD coil in Sharp: "DD coils on sharp perform better overall, and have a useful ferrous discriminator and although look heavier are the same weight" make of this what you will.

Here is one of the charts which shows some of the comparisions, there is quite a few pages of charts/graphs and a heap of numbers that will make your head hurt just trying to read and understand them.

This chart is from the APLA news letter for 15th Sept 2014 Issue No.20


cheers dave

Hi all, I'm back from a week out in the scrub in North Queensland with my son and I have some interesting results to report. All up 52 nuggets totalling approximately 3 and a half ounces. Plenty of small gram and smaller, some several grams with the largest being just shy of an ounce. Firstly to address the reason I started this thread. I could not use my 5000 successfully in the normal timing mode as it was as unstable as my old sd2000. Even with balancing and winding gain down I was getting heaps more false signals on ant bed, charcoal and hot rocks. So I can only assume that Fine Gold is the timing to use in mineralised ground. Over an undug 1 gram nugget I tried two coils. A commander 17x12 mono and a coiltek 16 round. Got pretty much the same response from both but started winding the gain down to see how low I could go before I could not detect it. This nugget only at about 2 inches and I could detect it with gain at 1 and stabiliser at 1. I could also detect it in both normal and fine gold timing. How ever a sub gram nugget at 4 to 6 inches I could not confidently detect it in normal timing as I would not confidently pick the target signal out from amongst the noise and it was very weak to say the least. In Fine Gold I could detect it no problems at all. When I stared winding the gain down I started losing the signal below 4 on the rx gain. I found that I had to keep my Rx gain down below 11 and stabiliser 2 below that for the detector to be stable enough to operate. Some days the Rx gain was as low as 6. I was getting the faintest peeps off some small nuggets but was confidently able to detect them. From what I've seen and heard, normal timing is better for detecting deep nuggets but you would have to be in ground that would allow you to use it. The larger nuggets I dug went off like metal trash but were no deeper than 12 inches, so dig every target is the moto because an old mate of mine had been over the area and I believe got sick of digging horse shoe nails in one particular area and missed a 12 grammer and 20 grammer. On another note, I have two batteries and a booster made by a prominent detector modder out there and when using them in conjunction with my new 16 inch coiltek mono it was unusably unstable. Soon as I changed to the minelab battery it was as quiet as a mouse. I will be having a conversation with him as the detector was not that noisy last time I was out, but I was using smaller coils. I swapped back and for the batteries a few times and positioned the booster differently but got the same noisy result. So what have I learnt from this trip? Don't be frightened to turn your gain down to make your detector more stable as you will hear the small targets better. Gain settings will vary from day to day and soil types so know your detector and adjust it regularly. If I had to choose an all rounder coil for the areas I work, the coiltek 16 inch mono would be a good choice, my other go to coil is the 14x9 blitz. So there you go guys. Pick that to pieces.

Dave top of pg 17

"The best two performers in the tests conducted were the 11” MineLab DD in sharp (65% of targets), & Nugget Finder 14”X9” mono coil (60% of targets). "

lots more info in the write up than just in the graphs. didnt want to copy and paste cause the last time i did that i got some nasty pms from a person from the forum.
cheers

G'day hoolahoopa

Yes there is plenty or reading there to go through, it will take a bit of time to sort through the test results and make sense out of it all.

There is no problem to copy bits and pieces from an article as long as it is stated where the quotes were obtained from and put in quotation marks, none of management here will give you a hard time if you do it like that.

cheers dave

mlee76 wrote: So there you go guys. Pick that to pieces.

G'day mlee

No need to pick that to pieces at all, it's a mighty fine effort mate, good gold and some testing of various coils and settings and reporting what you noticed with various settings etc, all excellent.

Thanks for taking the time to post your report.

cheers dave