What are your best depth results for a 4500 with a 16inch coil?

My prospecting mate and I have similar setups with our 4500''s using monos ranging in size up to the NF 16inch round coil. Most of our detecting is done over mildly to moderate mineralised ground. We are curious to hear from experienced 4500 users on the forum about any advice on greatest depth results and settings used for depth please. What are your best maximum settings available for maximum depth ? We are obviously in the hunt for deeper targets than what we are currently getting. I basically run in enhance/slow/gain 8/stab 10/sig bet 95-125 and run quiet most of time in the mineralised stuff.

Mal

G,day Mal , the 16inch NF mono is my favourite patch hunting coil . Fits in with my swing pace and step giving the best gnd coverage ...Found a lump of lead half the size of your fist at two feet ...Best nugget was a 5 grammer at 15 inches . A very quiet signal to start but very obvious with an inch of dirt scraped away ..I always run in enhanced ....Gain usually between 6 & 8 , stabiliser at around 6 to 8 , medium , deep ....This gives me good results ..Of late , I've had to switch to the 11inch commander in the arvos due to static ..Crank the gain up to 10/12 , go over the same area and pick up all the deeper shotgun pellets and small nugs { down to 0.15 gram at 2 inch } the 16inch missed ..Deepest nugget found was with the 11inch mono { 42 gram specimen at 18 or 20" } ...I auto tune the detector three or 4 times a day if she starts playing up with interference but smaller coils are more immune .......I also have a 20inch mono but with it's size and weight , I cover more gnd with the 16inch ....These 2 coils { 11 & 16 } cover 98% of my detecting ..I've tried detecting in normal instead of enhanced in the mineralised areas and the amount of time wasted digging gnd noises etc soon has me back to enhanced and only digging real targets ...cheers Paul ...

thanks Paul for your informative reply....I will take your advice on board and play with some alternative settings in the days ahead. The best we have done so far was down about 3 feet in old disturbed soil near some workings and found a 1800's half penny using the 16 incher NF in enhanced and close enough to the factory settings. We picked up this nice little 28 grammer sitting all alone all by itself in just 6 inches below using deep mode and near enough to factory settings as well. Yes, it was screaming out to be dug out of the ground but might swing the coil just a little bit slower around the area to see if we missed anything.

regards...Mal

gday mal Ive been having luck with this set up on mineralised ground : enhance, gain-10, stab-6, motion-very slow, audio- deep, tracking-slow. Evan2010

Gday Mal


I cant add much to what Paul has told you except that mostly I will crank the gain up as far as the ground conditions will allow, usually just to about the point where the machine sounds a tad unstable, as I mainly use the minelab 11" commander mono and the 14" Nuggetfinder advantage round mono I find this ok for both coils.

Also I use a nuggetfinder 18" advantage mono, but need to back the gain off a small amount with this, and I also dont bother too much with the normal setting, just enhance for the same reasons as Paul gave you, although I am led to believe that you will get more depth in the normal range than enhance.

Correct ground balancing, tuning and swing speed are critical as you know, so as soon as I recognise changes to the ground conditions I do two things, I slow down and then re ground balance the detector, slowing your swing speed and overlapping your sweeps is also vital to hunting deep gold, I have also found that any coils larger than 18" lose the benefit of their size against the added interference that you get with them, I dont think that there is really that much between the 16 or 18 inch coils but as I had the 14" I figured that the 18" was the way to go, I previously had the 20" nuggetfinder advantage mone but found it noisy.

cheers

stayyerAU

GREAT question and AWESOME answers.. thank you all for the great settings. Some great tips for my 20" Nugget Finder and 4500.

Jennifer