My experience with the ZED

Good day All, In 5 days I went over 5 patches where I had found over the years hundreds of pieces of gold, and nuggets up to 7oz. I had high hopes that the ZED would find a few crumbs, but no, I and other people had cleaned out the patches with the older machines, in desperation I went over old workings and finally I got 4 pieces of gold for a whopping 1.1gm and a small wheelbarrow full of small shotgun pellets. Now for something different, I was using these settings, auto tune - GB swing/walk thing - highyield - difficult - threshold 27 - volume 10 - sensitivity 14 - smoothing high. For my understanding I should hear my test nugget 0.6gm at 150mm deep, better with the smoothing off, however, with the smoothing high I get a better response. Now I am confused, should I do my normal detecting with smoothing off or smoothing high? Any clues? Cheers, Hermann.

hi hermann - i can relate to your confusion re smoothing off/low/high but as i am no expert i will just tell you my testing experience today.--

tried out the deep setting with difficult ground (in hot gold country that cant handle normal quiet ground setting).
auto GB, threshold 19 to 23, volume limit 10 to 12, target volume 16 and up to 19, sensitivy 15 and tried up to 20, (had the machine all warmed up and balanced for over half a hour in highyield).

with a .25g nug, a .7g nug and a small shot pellet, all on the surface and my 76gram nug down a 24 inch hole in a hot spot and a 5gram nug down a 18 inchhole.

results - WITH SMOOTHING OFF, with those high target volumes, and high sensitivy, my machine was running noisy at threshold 23, i could hear both deep targets, but probably wouldnt have stopped because of noise. with threshold at 19, i wouldnt have pulled up at the 5gram, and possibly might have missed the 76g nug also, as machine was still noisy and sensitivy had been lowered.
WITH SMOOTHING ON LOW, both targets became obvious, as machine was quiet, and SMOOTHING ON HIGH, very quiet, both targets were still available to find, but not quite as loud as on low smoothing.

with the small surface test pieces - they were always obvious, because i knew they were there, but overall noise, meant i wouldnt have stopped for the .25g without smoothing low. at low it screamed 150mm plus. same smoothing high a bit softer.
the .7nug similar with several extra inches clearance.
AND THE BIG SURPRISE --- DRUM ROLL --- THE BLOODY SHOT PELLET NEARLY DISAPPEARED the signal from the two gold pieces screamed at me, loud high/low signals, and the shot would not have pulled me up a non-event response.

got me very interested to remember those settings when i can next get into some deep gold country, because i had extremely good sensitivy to smalls on the surface gold, but not shot pellets, and the best quiet setting in smooth low, to chase deep down nugs.

something to keep your grey matter ticking over, hope you get some benefit out of all this ... kev

Hi Kev, Thank you for your report of your experiences. I think I learned a bit and will keep it in mind. Goodbye shotgun pellets, they are such a waste of time. Cheers, Hermann.

Hi Kevlorraine2,
I was very interested in your report on settings to maintain sensitivity to gold, but to pass on the shotty pellets. I have sworn a thousand times that I won't dig anything that sounds remotely like a shotty pellet - but still do!!!! I have a magnificent collection of pellets. Until now I have been determined to find the most aggressive settings - which I have felt meant that I would operate with smoothing off. Your report has got me thinking otherwise. If you are right, I see it as a big step forward with our getting the best out of the detector. Unfortunately I won't get to test your settings until next month.
Cheers,
bowy

hi bowy,

sent you a pm ... kev

Hi Kev,
Gave the settings a quick trial last Saturday. So far I have only been successful in making the 7000 more sensitive to shotty pellets!!!! Not what I was hoping for. The gold signal stayed about the same. Will continue to experiment in about three weeks time when I will have longer to look into it.
Cheers,
bowy

g'day all, and in particular hermann and bowy -- am back from a two week trip to clermont qld, interesting trip with some answers and even more questions in my head.

revisiting three main patches that have been flogged by me and everybody else for at least eight years, produced most of the 114 small pieces i found for a total of 43 grams.

patch 1. had produced dozens of small pieces up to 1.5grams to 12 inchs depth previously. this time about 60 smalls down to less than .1 of gram. but also two over two grams down about 15 inches. the z definately outperformed my efforts with the 4500 and 5000 (with a NF 17x11 mono coil, and no i had not used any other coil) and because some of them were so small and long shaped, i was only able to hear some from one angle only. this patch was riddled with hot rocks on surface and deep, i had to finish each dig before i knew if it was a nug or hot rock, bugger of a problem. smallest piece was so small i have to buy more accurate scales as it is probably less than .05gram, and was 4 to 6 inches in the ground in charcoal soil. also noted the z quickly balances out the charcoal and it presented no further problems, in fact i found myself deliberately detecting any burnt logs that hadnt been disturbed as it was virgin ground, on one charcoal patch i got three smalls. i left some nuggets for the next fella as i didnt pick up all the rotten wire fence which no doubt hides some more gold.

patch 2. was where i had found a 20gram sunbaker, 16grammer down a foot a couple of other better sizes and lots of smalls down to about .3 or .4 with the same 17x11 NF coil. no hot rocks here and no rubbish either, so every signal was gold. i apparently had done a pretty good job here previously, as i only found ten very small pieces down to less than .1gram and three of them were under fallen timber that was still virgin ground to me. this is where i learnt about the z being great in charcoal, as a very small area of charcoal and soil had been a hot spot, and blow me if i didnt get a small piece in a previously filled in dig hole. i also have to admit that by this time i was fed up with very faint signals which, after digging them out, told me the gold had to be minute in size, or a small shot pellet, and after a few frustrations loosing them in the pile, i adopted the attitude "stuff it, it cant stay there" anything above about .08 of a gram gives such a loud signal, i for one will be happy to leave them there to grow bigger.

patch 3. brings me back to the opening discussion of this thread, shotgun pellets. -- i learnt something new. when i visited victoria about 12 years back, the lead was a big problem (and obviously still is today), i remember finding musket balls down over a foot, and all sizes of lead less than that as well.
a trip to warwick recently, reminded me how big a problem lead pellets are, as i found many. this time at clermont, i only found a few pellets, and several were very hard to extract from the soil, i had to practically scrape them on the coil to confirm that was the target i had dug out. i am pretty confident if the lead was a few inches in the soil i would not hear them even with the z. apparently the weather conditions at clermont qld make the lead corrode? or undergo a chemical reaction that makes them give a much less signal then the recently found lead from warwick, which i had been useing as a tester. so bowy and hermann, there is your answer, go to clermont to get away from the shot????
i might add, i still dug them up, as "when in gold country, dig up everything until you know what it is"still applies.
a mate that was with me, had that printed into his mind forever, when i found a good size piece that just had to be"rubbish" but turned out to be a good size nugget, but thats another story, i will get to later ... kev

Hi all,
Here are my thoughts so far (mainly compared to the 4500) in the triangle, in winter-
* the 7 is a more stable machine and better able to find all targets - from small through to large
* using the 45 in the afternoon, with the machine becoming increasingly ratty, you quite often had to go down to a small coil - or go home. With the 7, it just keeps motoring (a good thing as there is no smaller coil to go to!) - we have noticed some rattiness in the arvo, it will be interesting to see what happens in summer
* going over old patches only produced crumbs - the 45 didn't leave much behind - the suggestion from others to seek out new and deeper ground seems to be good advice - we are still looking for this ground
* finding small gold - will find smaller gold than the 45, with very small shotty pellets giving a clear signal - it was interesting to note that the SDC signal on similar targets was nothing short of amazing - if anyone was after an easy to operate machine to find shallow gold, this is the machine to go for - a beginning prospector friend bought one and found his first gold in no time at all
* finding deeper targets - will give clear signals on deep targets - if you have a 7, you need to have invested in a large pick - and even then you are in for a workout - unfortunately for us, these targets have turned out to be junk - waiting for our luck to change on these ones - we also got caught out on what we expect was a deep clay dome (not exactly sure what a clay dome is - but the target was red and clay) - our eyes had lit up when we went through good gravel - but dimmed when we hit the clay - it was a strong signal with the 7 - the 45 was less impressed
* we still run with smoothing off to have aggressive settings for most targets - especially bigger and deeper - will be interested to see anyones thoughts re variations on settings to target deep, large gold
* I must admit that I am well over the shotty pellets - If the target moves in the loose stuff, then I move on - I know that I WILL miss some small gold - but that is not what I am after (I still get caught by the pellets in the good soil though)
cheers,
bowy