I want gold!!!

[signal_line]

Almost to the point of getting bummed out. So I did what I had done with my last detector--toss a gold ring out in my yard and go find it. Bad mistake. LOL My yard is a mine field of nails, beer caps, can slaw, and assorted various junk. The detector was going crazy and seems like nothing I tried was working to quiet it down. Then i remembered the Silencer. Really helped. If nothing else, I learned a good lesson to use what is available. Or as i say--that's why they put it there. Everybody says run Silencer at -1 and I was terrified to move from there. Not afraid any more.

So I went through all the programs looking for the best one for this small kid's gold ring. All the Andy Sabisch programs worked good. His GOLD (page 115) hits the hardest but not so easy to differentiate between this small ring and aluminum. The 12K Coins program is what I spent most time with. The tone break was just right for this ring. Probably will modify it a bit. I ran probably twenty toss-and-find repetitions and I hope it does me some good next time out. Not done practicing yet. I also lifted the coil up several inches to simulate a deep target. I hope I get this ingrained into my brain.

 

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[smokeythecat]

At least I'm not the only one to plant a test garden, or chuck something in my lawn and then spend the next 4 months finding it!

 

[signal_line]

I recall reading the Zip Zip (advanced) where he would throw a nugget in front of his students and then tell them to find it. Immediately they slowed down and were much more meticulous--until they found it, then they went back to their old ways . LOL There is definitely something about having that good attitude that you are going to find something.

 

[signal_line]

My quest is to find where best to place some very narrow notches in the aluminum band. Again, the idea is to just cut down some of the aluminum that is overwhelming in the trashy areas. I don't like the big, wide notches. Actually surprised no one has such a program (or at least willing to share it).

 

[secondstar]

My quest is to find where best to place some very narrow notches in the aluminum band. Again, the idea is to just cut down some of the aluminum that is overwhelming in the trashy areas. I don't like the big, wide notches. Actually surprised no one has such a program (or at least willing to share it).

I don't believe that it is possible to notch in an effort to better identify gold targets. Size, karats, etc... are all too unpredictable to safely notch without potentially missing a fabulous gold target. I own a 1913 gold $2.50 U.S. Indian Head piece and when air tested, it sounds just like a pull tab and additionally also displays the same TID as some of the pull tabs that I ran underneath the coil, yikes! To find gold, you need to work an area slowly using 12 kHz, 18 kHz, or higher and dig everything. I have yet to find gold myself, but I don't hunt areas where there would have been people losing gold jewelry.

 

[signal_line]

My Dad used to say "If you want something done right, do it yourself." I guess that's what it's going to take. I just cringe when i hear people say "Dig all aluminum." No way!" There's gold in the middle of the aluminum ocean because no sane person would detect there. Sure, the idea of creating a big notch to cover most all aluminum isn't going to cut it. I'm not interested in getting all the gold, just some of it, any would do right now.

 

[CoinFetcher]

literally get excited pull tabs and other midtone targets!

although my recent gold ring sounded 'all over the place' in the salty sand.

 

[dirtlooter]

unfortunately, so many variations in gold alloys, size and shapes that the detectors available to us right now just can't discern gold from trash. So I dig the tabs etc in moderation LOL. 6 gold rings so far.

 

[signal_line]

I tried setting three narrow notches (two numbers each) on the 12K program at 56, 64, and 73. Ran it for about two hours and found more coins and less trash, but still no gold. Got rained out. i am considering dropping the 64 notch because I think maybe there might be more gold there than at the others. Any ideas?

 

[A2coins]

I think you learned your lesson lol

 

[GeoW]

Sounds like you’re trying to avoid the gold!

g

 

[signal_line]

Sounds like you’re trying to avoid the gold!

g

LOL I always wonder what other search areas are like. Must be millions of pull tabs and other aluminum where I search. How can you dig all those? My brain protests. i went back and widened the notches another number after checking with some different pull tabs. Only going with two notches now--55-57 and 72-74. Actually can't remember what I set them at and I got it on charge now so can't check it. i don't use this all the time--just in the heavy trash areas.

 

[vferrari]

I find gold when I least expect it. Usually when I think I am digging another tab. Pressing too hard, getting too cute with settings have always led to frustration in my case. You have to dig the trash to find the treasure. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. There is a reason "everyone" is saying it. Been there, done that. Hope you get that gold. Sounds trite, but my "gold" is just getting the chance to get out, relax, and go detecting. Stressing over finds is the last thing I need because the whole point of detecting, in my case, is to remove myself from the stressors of daily life.

 

[signal_line]

I find gold when I least expect it. Usually when I think I am digging another tab. Pressing too hard, getting too cute with settings have always led to frustration in my case. You have to dig the trash to find the treasure. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. There is a reason "everyone" is saying it. Been there, done that. Hope you get that gold. Sounds trite, but my "gold" is just getting the chance to get out, relax, and go detecting. Stressing over finds is the last thing I need because the whole point of detecting, in my case, is to remove myself from the stressors of daily life.

I hear what you are saying--stressing out does not help, damages your positive attitude. i try not to use the notches but after a while I just have to change things, like running a different program to rest my brain a bit. And i really don't like the wide notch that covers all aluminum. These narrow notches i can still hear the targets just broken up. i still dig a few that sound too good to pass up just because I want to know.

Thanks for all the comments. I will try to not use this too much.

 

[OBN]

The detector is only part of the puzzle when searching for gold. Effort is important but effort in the right places increases your odds. Once you get to these spots, then knowing what the tell tell sign to slow down is, and possibly dig all. Since I hunt older beach's, I dig a few wheaties, silver coins, brass,.etc. I wear the area out. Over 500 gold rings in the last five years and I've yet to call one.

 

[GeoW]

Sig, you don’t know how good you’ve got it, only having to deal with caps and tabs. I’m one that started with all metal White’s detector.. Everything beeped!
There was a lot more good stuff in the ground back then and the fact that the machine would find metal was enough to make digging worth while at the time.

Dig the aluminum, you’ll appreciate the good stuff more! ��

g

PS, check OBN's profile, his pics are there!

 

[HuntinDog]

Siganl ilne
I've dug my share of GOLD and to tell the truth OBN has it right.
Even in the water you can't tell Gold from Tabs.
And has been said here a bunch of times "you have to dig TRASH to get the Gold"
It will show up when you least expect it...
Good luck and keep digging...

 

[signal_line]

The detector is only part of the puzzle when searching for gold. Effort is important but effort in the right places increases your odds. Once you get to these spots, then knowing what the tell tell sign to slow down is, and possibly dig all. Since I hunt older beach's, I dig a few wheaties, silver coins, brass,.etc. I wear the area out. Over 500 gold rings in the last five years and I've yet to call one.

Holy Smoke! Guess i better start digging pull tabs and stay calm. I'm trying.

Thanks everybody for all your help.

 

[signal_line]

After further study I went back and made some changes to my notches. I see now had it wrong, so will try this out and report back with the gold. LOL

 

[vferrari]

Keep experimenting with notch if you like - it is fun to experiment with settings because you never know what you will come up with. Unfortunately, with notch, you also will never know what you are actually missing, too, if you inadvertently notch it out. The more I have thought about what you are doing, the more I think about how difficult what you are trying to do really is. Let me illustrate. Notch works best when both your desired target and "trash" have very little target ID variability. For example, notching out zinc pennies at the beach is pretty straight forward because you can easily determine the TID range where the clean and mildly corroded zincolns will fall and just notch that out. If you are looking for high conductors, then no problem you can even tweak it to be able to snag wheats if you want while leaving the zincolns behind. Highly corroded zincs will have lower TIDs and you can just ignore them. Similarly, if you are detecting in an area such as a patch of beach where you run into a bunch of pull tabs, chances are they are coming from the same 12-pack or case of beer and all of those particular pull tabs will likely have similar TIDs and those can also be "situationally" notched out with a narrow notch until you get past that patch and you have a much smaller chance of missing that rare gold item that would just happen to fall in your notch range. But what you are trying to do is find the right set of notches for most pull tabs or pieces of can slaw which is daunting because even aluminum pull tabs have a rather wide range of TIDs when you consider all the varieties and it gets even more variable when you consider bent and broken tabs. Now combine that with the fact that gold jewelry TIDs are very highly variable depending on the size, shape, and composition (purity) of the gold. You are trying to notch a moving target (TID wise) "aluminum" without inadvertently notching out another moving target "gold" and your chances of notching out the gold just skyrocket unless you have one very narrow notch like I described in the "patch of tabs" scenario above, and then in that case, how many tabs are you really notching out if the tabs can be of any shape and type.

Regarding silencer, -1 is recommended because higher numbers risk the chance of one-way masking of non-ferrous targets in the presence of iron. In thick iron, higher reactivities are your friend because they enable more separation between targets. That is why XP saw fit to turn silencer off by default for reactivities 2.5 and greater. Silencer will certainly quiet your detector down in thick iron situations, but there are no free lunches. It is a filter, and like notch, or even discrimination, use of any filter to knock down the audio or filter the TID of undesirable targets risks also filtering out desirable targets. The only filter I regularly use is discrimination. I use it not because I do not want to hear iron (because I DO use iron volume, so I can hear the iron even if it is discriminated out), I use it because it helps to prevent ferrous TID down averaging of non-ferrous targets. More experienced detectorists tend like to hear it all or hear most of what the coil is detecting and let their brains and more importantly their shovels be the discriminator.

If you want to increase your chances of getting gold, the best method of doing so is finding the site that has the highest probability of gold drops - that typically is at the beach, in the water, where jewelry slips off of folks fingers and wrists as they first enter the water with the second best being the towel line where people lose their bling by intentionally taking it off before they go into the water. Since detectorists know this you either have get there before the other detectorists do or because gold sinks rather quickly out of detector range, hit eroded parts of the beach to find those really old drops.

The other place is sites where people gather (parks, concert venues, picnic areas, campsites, and old home sites). The problem with that is the drops/losses are less frequent than at the beach (i.e., less replenishment) and typically these are also the places hit hard by detectorists, not surprisingly, so your best bet of finding the gold is to hit those trashy areas that may be masking it. That seems to be your situation and finding the gold there is not going to be easy as you have found.

Good luck on finding the elusive gold.

I should add that your perseverance should eventually pay off so keep plugging away.