GPX 4500 Strike Rate

Hi all,

I have just joined the site and have recently purchased a GPX4500 and am new to prospecting for gold using a metal detector. Can anyone give me an idea of the sort of strike rate you might expect when prospecting in an area known to produce the odd nugget. The reason I ask is because I have just returned from a day trip to Hill End and spent the day digging bullets and pieces of wire out of the ground in total I would say in around 8 hours I managed to retrieve 10 bullets of varying types and I lost count of the number of pieces of wire. All of these were retrieved from very shallow depth I think all were pretty much on the surface or very close. I am happy to know that the detector works it definetly does find metalic objects all I need to do now is figure out how to find some gold. Is there any way when detecting in an area such as this with lots of scrap to use a setting that will remove these unwanted signals. If not is the sound of the detector different when it picks up gold to when it picks up other metals. I was using the standard 11" comander DD coil that comes with the GPX4500 and the factory preset settings. I was surprised that I did not pick up any signals from anything below about 2cm depth which in a way was good because I wasn't digging massive holes to retrieve a piece or wire. I am looking forward to getting back out there again and am hoping next time I can improve my technique and maybe have some luck. Not knowing the area at all I chose a spot about 10km east of Hill End simply by finding a spot off road where I could park the car and there were no fences so I just wandered in and stumbled around for the day. Is this generally what you do when choosing a location to detect? Can you get into trouble wandering onto private property unknowingly?

Hi Nuggets, I prospect at Hill End and have done very well there.
Knowing the area is an advantage for sure, and knowing where nuggets have already come from is a big bonus.
The best place for a newbie like yourself to start off is around the old graveyard, which is about 3-4klm from the township of Hill End on the Mudgee road, turn left at the old chimney, and keep left through the creek till you come to a fork in the road about 200m from the creek, keep to the left fork for another 100m and turn right, graveyard is on your right and you can park anywhere around it and prospect/detect there till your hearts content.
There are many diggings around the back of the graveyard and many newbies have found there first bits of gold from the area.
Once through the creek you can detect anywhere that looks good to you, as many of us have done in the past, and you can camp anywhere you like also.

I use the 4500 there and never come home empty handed.

Hope this helps.

Nuggets a few questions to be answered. First of all I can not speak about a 4500 as I only have a 3000 but the princables are basically the same in finding gold. Yes you will dig "PLENTY" of bullets and wire and pretty well anything else that is made of metal. The "strike rate", between rubbish and gold, there isn't any. Once there was some sort of ratio 25 to 30 rubbish targets to 1 good target, that was about 20 yrs ago when good target were more plentifull, and if that's the case I'm owned about 2000 good targets by now I know people that were going out most weekends for 2 years digging up rubbish before their first nugget. But don't let this deter you, as the next time you go out you could be lucky and strike a big one. Most rubbish is only on the surface unless the ground has been turned over by the old timers and the rubbish was in it at the time. The sound of gold, the question that veryone would like to know. there isn't any definite sound, it depends on the ground you are detecting, the depth of the target, the way the target is sitting in the ground and many more. Don't discriminate any target, "dig them all". Many a person have walked away from a target thinking it was rubbish and someone else comes along and digs it and picks themselfs up a nice nugget. Remember any targget can be an nugget. And also remember if you are picking up lead bullets then that means no one else has swung their detector over that very same spot, because if they did they would have dug it as lead bullets sound the same as gold. I know that sounds contradictory to the above statement, "what does gold sounds like" but time, practice and experience will give you success. Now if someone with a 4500 can come to the party to answer the other questions you should be laughing I hope this will help you and keep you in a possitive mind. You WILL find a nugget one day, and after that if should become easier

Wombat

Good points wombat,
Another point is that many times the hits that indicate gold are incredibly subtle.
This comes as a surprise to most new detectorists -
especially after digging up large numbers of the inevitable booming hits from surface trash and bullets.
When you hear people say their nugget started out "as a whisper", that is almost literally true.

fwiw,

Flak

I have to agree Flakmagnet I too have had as you put it," as a whisper" and yes a nugget, but I've also had boomers to the extent that I thought that it was a bullet on the surface but at about 6" down out came a 7.7 grm nugget. That is why I say dig everything. I keep my machine mainly on Mono that way it won't then reject targets, and I also find that the signal comes through clearer. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing to keep it on Mono but it seems to work for me? A'm I missing out on more gold, who knows?

Wombat

Hi Nuggets,
Wombat summed it up pretty nicely.The first thing I would tell you is, not to accidently wonder onto private property. This is a big no,no and damages the reputation of us all.
Have an area already in mind before you go. There are great maps available from the Miners Den that will get you familier with the gold fields in your area and the places which are ok for prospectors.
Narrawa has just pointed you in the right direction which is very generous of him. You'll learn alot on this forum.
I have a 4500 and use monos all the time. I have found gold next to a tin can which no-one bothered to move. In high junk areas , you could cancel out a nugget lying near metal if you're discriminating with a DD.There are alot of lessons to be learnt. Take advantage of your enhanced feature and dig every target...
cheers, goldenbrown...

Hi Goldenbrown have you been out since Castlemaine? Next time for me will have to be Yackadanda in a couple of weeks time for 10 days.

Wombat

Hi nuggets,

I got 4 nuggets last weekend at hill end. One of them was under a rusty tin that had fragmented and left a thick trail of bits down the hill for a couple of feet. I cleaned them up first with the help of the magnet on my pick then did the area again and found a nugget. Another one of them sounded like loud surface trash. The other two were very much whispers.

Also there was lots of old filled in dig holes all over the place indicating the place had already been detected long ago.

Dicko..

Wombat wrote:Hi Goldenbrown have you been out since Castlemaine? Next time for me will have to be Yackadanda in a couple of weeks time for 10 days.

Wombat

Hi Wombat, no I haven't been out for over two weeks now. It hurts..... I'll be heading out this weekend. I'll give you a buz...
cheers g.b

Gday nuggets


Firstly welcome to the forum, it sounds as though you have learnt the first lesson in gold detecting, there are many more junk targets to be dug up than gold targets, if you are afraid of digging then this may not be the activity for you as it is what you will largely do if you want to get gold, that and of course walking about.

Many people detect for some time before they find their first piece of gold and in that time will learn that digging holes is a major part of the occupation , but believe me when you have had your first taste of gold you will be a lot more interested knowing that your reward could be a nugget, if you are trying to attach a mathematical probability to the amount of gold you should get as apposed to the amount of junk you will get or "strike rate" as you put it I wouldnt bother, it will make you despondant and cause you to loose interest more rapidly, just get out there have a go and value the fact that we are still able to do this and enjoy the experience.

There are too many variables in this occupation, and the ratio of gold to rubbish will vary from area to area as many times as the ground types and conditions that gold is found in will change as well, for the most part unlittered ground will yield little gold, sometimes you may be lucky to get a virgin patch in clean ground but from my experience unless you travel way out into the backblocks it is rare that you wont come on to some form of rubbish or another, the very reason for the most part that the rubbish is there is because the gold was there and the old boys lived where they worked, right on the gold bearing areas and thats where they left the most rubbish.

Generally speaking most of the loud and screechy signals you will get will be rubbish, but a small percentage can and will be nuggets so you still have to have a bit of a look and see, more often than not the signal that a nugget or a piece of lead will make is a lot more mellow, the best way to try this for yourself is to bury some lead targets or nuggets (if you can buy some even), and test out your detector settings and familiarise yourself with the signals that different things make, there is no way that I know of that you can be certain either way so the answer is to dig everything, sometimes you can be reasonably certain that what you have is a buried nugget but its easy to be caught out, just as easy as it is to be caught out with a loud screechy piece of gold that is just under the surface that you might dismiss as you are sick of digging rubbish.

If there is a lot of rubbish about then use a small coil rather than a big one, select an area that looks good to you and work it slowly and methodically, removing the rubbish as you go, if there are still buried rubbish targets, then there is also a fair chance that some gold is left too, concentrate your efforts on the subtle changes to the threshold and anything that does not give a distinct and solid signal, get the coil in and under bushes and around the bases of the trees, also if you are running a 4500 use a mono coil, or run your standard dd coil in mono mode.

Eventually your perserverence will be rewarded and you may find yourself as hooked as the rest of us are.

cheers


stayyerAU

I quickly read the replies above so forgive me if someone has already pointed this out.

Areas like Hill End are districts that have seen a lot of human activity. Therefore they are infested with junk and metal (scrap) targets. The general opinion 8 years ago was that there was "100 junk targets per nugget" in such high-activity areas. In areas to the far West of the country, where water and supplies were/are scarce, there's a much higher ratio of gold-to-junk due to the lack of human activity there. Hence all the people who migrate there every year when the weather cools down: They think it's easy pickings.

If you go where 10,000 people have walked before you in the last 10 years, you'll be picking up a lot of modern rubbish. If people have been visiting the region for 140 years, you'll have much more junk to worry about. Discrimination only works closer towards the Double-D coil and so deeper targets will all sound good... until you dig down to them with a Double-D coil and the discrimination kicks in. Monoloop coils can't discriminate so you'll have to dig it all. Also note that many of the nuggets in the Hill End region are associated with Ironstone. Hence, you might need to get used to the idea of hard work to find your nuggets in such areas. Plenty of LARGE multi-ounce nuggets sitting within a few inches of dirt have been ignored by dozens of detectorists who thought they were soda cans or something. A nice 80 ounce nugget lay on the same narrow strip of grass down in Victoria for decades before a local detectorist's mate visited and dug the target. All the other detectorists in the town had known of the target and all assumed it was a coke can. Some of them were rather bitter about failing to dig it. Especially the guy who lived next door to the strip it was found on because he's been intentionally ignoring the target for years. All it takes is a newbie with no preconceived notions to dig all targets in order to find it.

You know the drill: "Dig Everything". If you go to where everyone else goes, be prepared to dig A LOT of trash before you find nuggets.

Welcome Nuggets,
I don't think this point has been mentioned.
If you decide to switch to mono while still using your DD coil remember only one half of the coil operates so if you are swinging up against solid objects, rocks, trees etc remember which side is active otherwise you may miss a small target tucked up tight against this object.
From memory I think the RH side of the coil is active, no doubt another member can correct this if wrong.
Have always used Mono coils, as a matter of fact I do not own a DD so have limited knowledge. Needless to say because the descriminator doesn't work with mono coils I dig and have always dug every target.
Attached is a photo of a specie (308grams/50.7grams AU) I dug in an area where another prospector had dug many holes and walked away from this signal that was booming like a tin can.



Good luck, if you perservere with your 4500 you will undoubtably turn up gold. Apart from the SD2100 the 4500 would have to be the most usefull detector on the market.

Nightjar

Hi,
As stated above it is not possible to give a real strike rate, From my experience, in a "known gold area", in Victoria, I would be expecting to "dig" not counting anything I can move with my boot about 100 bits of junk to a bit of gold. Every area is diffrent of course. With experience a risk management approach is used, it is not fail safe of course thats why the word risk is used. You will be able to hear diffrent sounds that will help you decide. I for example will dig every thing in the ground but usually dont check anything I can move with my boot but again depending on the sound of the signal. Persistance is the name of the game, and a bit of luck is always welcome. The best advice I would give to any newbe is join a club, you will learn alot from other experienced people and do it in the field. I hope this helps. Cheers Mark

Hi Nuggets
Your question of strike rate of nuggets to junk was one of the first questions I put up on this forum too, yes it can be very frustrating when all you dig is junk and wondering what you are doing wrong.
Hang in there, I used to go around 200+ junk targets to a tiny gold piece of .2 or so of a gram, now finding gold at around 1 in 30 targets on average and sometimes even 3 to 4 pieces in a row.
It's all in knowing where to go and knowing your machine,the best piece of advice I was given to which I eventually acted upon was get yourself a mentor, someone who is a good operator and knows what he is doing.
Also read and listen to what the successful operators are saying on here and when your out in the field and having difficulties or not doing so well, you can pull information from memory and put into practice what has been posted by others.
On many occasions I have gone to an area, and spent hours and found nothing, and realized I was going too fast, taking the obvious easy path etc, simple slow down and change in mindset and a different approach to the area your working and bang you nail a piece of gold.
It's not easy but there is a reason other than the model detector you are using that 90% of the gold is found by 10% of the operators.
I by no means are in the top 10% but I'm a lot further up the ladder than I was a year or two ago
Cheers Mark

Hi all,

I have just returned from my first trip to Hill End over the weekend I spent 5 days and four nights. The first two days were spent wandering around making the same mistakes I had been making on my first day trip. I was very fortunate to meet up with Narrawa on my third day who was very generous with his time and offered a newbie a helping hand. After giving me a few pointers I was off and running again at least with a fighting chance of finding some gold. On this trip I didn't find any gold but I did at least witness others do it so I know it can be done and really enjoyed the location and meeting some great people. Many thanks to Narrawa and Will for having me at there camp site for a couple of nights and I hope we can do it again some time soon. Actually I am planning on getting back there not this weekend (going to the footy grand final) but the following weekend if any one else will be up there let me know maybe we can get together at some point.

Nuggets

Hi all. I have been in the game for 28 years and hate to think how many kilo's of junk I have dug over that time. I have heard in the early days of figures around 80:1 for junk to gold but have no way of correlating that ! I don't keep records of junk to gold but I do keep detailed records of nuggets against times out, average weight etc. I seem to always come back with a pouch with some junk in it so based on the pouch size I would probably quess at around 30 - 50 bits of junk (on average) per piece of gold. There have been days when it has been 6:1 (gold to junk) but you don't get them very often.

With my first 4500 (long story).
149 nuggets.
Number of nuggets per outing 3.31
Average hours per outing 4.77
Average depth 2.53 inches.
Finds to no finds (gold) 93.33%
Average weight .35g

With my second 4500
86 nuggets
Number of nuggets per outing 2.69
Average hours per outing 4.36
Average depth 3.36 inches
Finds to no finds (gold) 84.38 %
Average weight .8g



Chris.

Nuggets, It was my pleasure mate, nothing worse then seeing someone struggle with the language from a metal detector.
You learn fast so have no doubt your next trip may produce a little bit of color for you.

I managed a couple more nuggets after you left, but nothing as good as the 6.6g I got the other night when we were all out doing the night shift.

Very unselfish responses from all the members with directions and knowledge and welcome to the forum Nuggets, you have a top machine, just stick at it and dig everything you will do just fine...................

HueyDuck........

G'day Gents.

Gold strike rate of a GPX4500=Actual detecting time x No. of targets dug=Gold strike rate.

Cheers kon61.

bencld wrote:
Hi all. I have been in the game for 28 years and hate to think how many kilo's of junk I have dug over that time. I have heard in the early days of figures around 80:1 for junk to gold but have no way of correlating that ! I don't keep records of junk to gold but I do keep detailed records of nuggets against times out, average weight etc. I seem to always come back with a pouch with some junk in it so based on the pouch size I would probably quess at around 30 - 50 bits of junk (on average) per piece of gold. There have been days when it has been 6:1 (gold to junk) but you don't get them very often.

With my first 4500 (long story).
149 nuggets.
Number of nuggets per outing 3.31
Average hours per outing 4.77
Average depth 2.53 inches.
Finds to no finds (gold) 93.33%
Average weight .35g

With my second 4500
86 nuggets
Number of nuggets per outing 2.69
Average hours per outing 4.36
Average depth 3.36 inches
Finds to no finds (gold) 84.38 %
Average weight .8g



Chris.

By my calc's Chris that's about $15/hour tax free at todays spot price. There's a lot of people working 40 hours a week for less than that.

Robert

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies from everyone very helpful. I have a question about the 4500 settings. On the weekend I was using the coil/rx setting in Mono when using a Mono coil and have read that many users use the coil setting as DD when using a Mono coil. Can anyone explain why you would use the DD setting while using a Mono coil and does it impact the performance if you use the Mono setting when using a Mono coil.

Nuggets