Extreme V's 4500

I've recently purchased a 4500 and decided to keep my extreme as a spare, just couldnt bare to get rid of it as I've had so much success with it lately on my recent prospecting trips,
I'm fairly sure I've got the settings right on my 4500 but to be honest am not noticing any extra performance over my beloved extreme, yes I'm in Tas doing my testing, so the ground is fairly quiet, but every time I bury small nuggets both detectors can pick them up no probs.
People tell me when I get to highly mineralised ground in WA etc the 4500 will come in to its own with the smoother threshold making all the difference(and enhace smoothing out hot rocks etc), so I guees the main question is, do these machines have the same sensitvity but its just the 4500 has a quieter threshold?
The 4500 does seem a bit quieter, but the extreme with an 11inch mono is deadly and I think very quiet with a small coil.
I'm heading off to WA in a few months and wanted to sort it all out before leaving, last year in 4 months I managed to find 8 oz of gold, smallest .13g biggest 43g, from what I have read etc im presuming I can find even more gold with the 4500 in the same places as my extreme, im really not sure to be honest, I guess time will tell.
Some thoughts from the more serious prospectors would be appreciated.
Cheers.

Gday GoldFever
I've been running a 4500 since they first came out. I've used many previous models and have detected with guys using those older models.
I really don't think that any one model (even the 4500) will detect the same gold at any greater depth. BUT....what the 4500 does is give you an interference free threshold to hear gold that was previously masked by various types of groundnoise. If you're testing a 4500 against any other ML PI in bengn conditions, then you probably won't notice much difference.
Getting the right setup for a particular ground type is a matter of learning what you need to, in order to run the machine at its' optimum.
RX Gain, Stability, tuning, audio volumes and a few other tweeks are absolutely necessary adjustments from place to place. You really need to familiarise yourself with the machine but after a while it will all seem a lot easier.
Initially I'd recommend running in Enhance, RX Gain at 8, Stability at 7-8 and most of the other settings are personal choice. Have a look back on this forum at other peoples recommendations for use of these machines. There's a wealth of knowledge here. Read your manual.
Once you're used to Enhance try Sensitive Extra. More powerful but also more susceptible to groundnoise etc.
You can't discount the benefit of the 4500's capacity to mask hotrocks and groundnoise. It allows you to hear more gold.
If you've got any questions and I can help, fire away.
cheers
Brett

hi
i used to do pretty good with my extreme but there was a fair bit of hot ground in vic that got it groaning, even made the 3500 groan abit
but the 4000 and 4500 handled that ground much better and i found more gold that was just a whisper and could not be heard with the older machines.

each time i upgraded i would wonder if i done the right thing, but if you use your 4500 for a while then go back to your extreme you really
notice the differance

to answer your question= yes you will find a lot of differance when you get into hot ground, plus you will have more options like
tweaking the manual tune to reduce emi on those days with bad emi instead of having to put up with what ever the auto tune on the extreme
gives you

cheers

edit...brett posted while i was typing but thought i would post anyway....

Gday


I had an extreme for some time and did really well with it, upgrading to a 3500 I found that I still would have preferred to use the extreme, anyway later upgrading to the 4500 I immediately realised the benefits of the enhance mode when working really hot ground with a mono coil, previously I worked this area with the extreme and a dd coil, it simply would not allow the use of a mono coil and would just moan and groan and if there was some rain forget it, you could not detect it very well at all.

As Brett said the 4500 has the ability to smooth out the ground noise to a point that you can recognise the signals, where I dont doubt that the gp extreme has the same depth ability but the electronics simply cant cope with the mineralisation so therefore the signals are not heard, on ground with low to medium mineralisation the extreme will do the job, but highly mineralised and variable ground will bring out the best in the 4500.

cheers

stayyerAU

Yep, Same here.
I loved my extreme but recently upgraded to a 4500.
I made a test patch up the bush about 8 months ago. Just 4 buried chips of lead, 0.5 to 1.5g 3 - 4" deep. The extreme struggled to discern them amongst the mineralisation and hotrocks.
Yesterday arvo, waved the 4500 with 10" mono in 'enhance' over the patch.... Beautiful, clear, well defined signals, no hotrocks.
Definitely a good thing (under these conditions)
Cheers !

G,day Goldfever,
I'm also considering upgrading to a 4500 from an Extreme. As a Taswegian myself, you can really notice how quiet the soil is here in Tassie compared to WA, as I have done a few trips across there myself, so for use here ( in Tassie) the Extreme will suffice. My Extreme performs well in WA soils as well, but seems to pick up every bit of rubbish, mineralisation, hot rocks, and even buried charcoal. As I dig every target, and I mean EVERY TARGET, it can sometimes be a bit daunting when you are spending considerable time digging upwards of 150-170 holes per day for nothing more than rubbish and buried charcoal from former bushfires for 2-3grams of gold, and you look across at your mates who are using 4500's, and have only dug half a dozen holes for upwards of 15+ grams in only a fraction of the time. I generally get the coil to the ground at about 05:30-06:00 am each day and come back to camp at around 7:00 pm. On really hot days, during summer, 40-45+Celsius, I did notice that the 4500's would give up the ghost and get really noisy so my mates had to either wait till it cooled down a bit or give up until later in the day to detect, whilst I would continue on with the old Extreme with not a worry in the world, as the heat didn't seem to affect it. Just make sure you couple it up with a DD coil at this time and you shouldn't have any worries. The reason for me possibly going to the 4500 is to cut down on all the digging, as the old Extreme just picks up everything. The only drawback for me at this time is lack of affordability, or that 4500 would be in my hands now. In the meantime, I'd better get back to panning to pay for my petrol.

Hi Guys, Thanks for the great replies Im looking at upgrading from my GP 3000 to a 4500. Very helpful info.
Cheers & happy hunting

JW

Hi All,

I'm with JW on this one, I love my extreme, but have decided to put it on ebay. The extreme has found some really good gold (who am I kidding - ALL gold is good) but you have to be really slow and careful with the ground noises. I am going to get into a 4500 and am really looking forward to trying it on previous patches found with the extreme.
Thanks for the info.

Cheers

Well I'm starting to get better at detecting these days, so thought I'd update a little info. Since changing from my extreme to a 4500, I've definately found more gold as the machine runs smoother. When I compared the 2 machines at the back of home I couldn't tell the differance in performance at all, but out on the gold fields is when I started to notice the nuggets I was finding were deeper on average than what I would find with the extreme. So I guess if you can afford it, go for it. In saying that, I'm still sure I could find gold with my extreme. The best I did last year was a 4oz patch in WA which included a 37 gram at 4-5 inches (extreme would of found that) and a 31 grammer 10 meters away from that which I found 3 days later and still can't beleive I found it as it was so quiet(impossible for the extreme to hear that). Actually not sure if I will or not but I'm now considering upgrading to a 5000 for the next trip, cause I can't wait to go back to my patch with a bigger coil and maybe upgraded machine.
Cheers