nugget shooters??

[RetRmy]

I have a garrett treasure ace 100, and a whites 5900DI are these sufficient detectors for nugget shooting,say in the arizona area??

 

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[Eu_citzen]

I don't know the size of the gold in Arizona but I wouldn't bet them to be good nugget shooters. They are coin/jewellery machines and that is nothing like a nugget shooter.

 

[ParkHunter61]

Just get a gold stud earing or a thin gold chain
and air test it.
Bill

 

[thompy]

the 5900 would work but, regular prospecting machines run at a higher freq. also the soil conditions can be quit harsh, and may have to ground ballance quite often, generally a prospecting machine uses a DD coil and none are redily available for the whites 6.59 frequency machines, some were made in Germany, and the bigfoot wich is good coin getting coil on open parks and yards, not very deep though

 

[Willy]

The short answer would be "Nope!".. but there are a few caveats. Almost any detector will find gold; the relevant factors being size, depth, purity and mineralization. You're better off getting a detector that, generally, operates at a higher frequency and has been designed with an eye towards prospecting. You'd be more likely to be successful. Barring that, the 5900 would be the better choice and hunt in all-metal mode. The retune rate is probably not all that fast, compared to some, so it might struggle a bit in nasty ground. The disc. mode probably goes down to all-metal accept, but being a 4 filter detector and requiring a faster sweep speed would probably cause it to drop the really tiny stuff (the bread 'n butter nuggets). Thing is, if you buy used there are many detectors that could be utilized for nuggetshooting and found at a reasonable price. Think of it as bear hunting.. a .22 can kill a bear, but a .50 cal is much better. ..Willy.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Willy is right. Those are coin/relic machines. Nugget specialty machines on the other hand, are designed for their task: teensy pinhead bird-shot sized targets. Coin/relic guys probably DON'T want to hear every staple, birdshot, etc... So the machines have differing goals, hence different designs.

A few cross-over machines that can do both have been attempted (like the MXT for instance). But those cross-over machines excell in neither arena. They may be "ok", but there will be better nugget machines, and better coin/relic machines.

The Ace 1000 and 5900 *might* be made, under the right conditions and in all-metal mode, be made to get a signal off of a BB (which is the normal size of gold nuggets), but you'd certainly not be competitive in the slightest, when compared to dedicated nugget machines.

 

[Willy]

My main gold detector is a White's GMT and it will find specks that are easier to find by scooping up and panning out later. I used an MXT up in Alaska's Brooks Range in '03 and was finding 'almost' powder gold in bedrock cracks. There I had everything cranked up to maximum and was listening for a faint crackle. Now, the MXT is basically built on the same electronics platform as the GMT, just without manual GB, Ground Grab, audio boost and operating at a lower frequency. Of all the crossover detectors I've seen/used, it would probably be tops. Behind it would be such detectors as the Fisher F75/F70, XTerra 70/50, Tesoro LST, Vaquero, Scorpion Gold Stinger, and a number of other detectors I'm too lazy to list. Hell, I even found a whole whack of nuggets with a Fisher CZ6a, but I wouldn't recommend it as a serious nugget detector. So there you can see that there are plenty of choices, you just have to settle on one and really learn your machine. This is 'cause nugget hunting is quite possibly the most difficult aspect of metal detecting due to the ground (usually highly mineralized) and the fact that gold can read anywhere on a VDI. Also, unlike the majority of coin hunting, depth is a big factor.. depth, depth, depth. ..Willy.

 

[Big Jeff]

I'll just throw my 2¢ in here. I don't know about other areas but here in AZ. the mineralization will gag most coin machines. You need a detector made specifically for gold nuggets and a MANUAL ground balance capability. The VLF machines used most here are the White's GMT and Fisher's gold bug II. Then of course the Minelab PI machines. The new White's TDI (PI) machine (which I have) is developing a good reputation here as well.

 

[Willy]

The Garrett Infinium also works really well down in Arizona. Strange thing is, I did a lot of detecting in Arizona (all over the place) and never really had any trouble with the ground. On the other hand, up here in B.C. we've got ground that even PI's (tested with an Infinium and Minelab GP) hate. I should head down south next year and spend the winter in the desert. It sure beats freezing my hairy white butt off up here. ..Willy.

 

[Willy]

Hey there Pete. The signal boost on the GMT is a post processing audio signal boost, which the MXT doesn't have. As far as I can tell, White's just didn't go through the trouble of labeling stuff on the GMT (Hypersat is just a name). The GoldBug2, while a good detector, does a face plant up here when compared to the GMT.. ground is too harsh. Manual GB is often preferred for detecting because there's no chance (unless you GB over a target) of tracking out a nugget and tracking onto iron. Personally, unless I'm hunting relatively homogeneous ground, I leave the tracking on. As for the iron ID on the GMT, that's all a person really needs.. and even that might be too much in some situations. I haven't taken my F75 out prospecting yet, but I suspect that the MXT might still have the edge when it comes to variable bad ground. It's too bad that they didn't include ground tracking in the F75, given that it's such an overpriced detector.
I notice that you have the good ol' maple leaf under your name.. where in Canada are you? Who knows, if in B.C. I might just bump into you. ..Willy.

 

[TerryC]

Ret Rmy,
My suggestion, for what it's worth, is a Garrett Scorpion Gold Stinger to get gold. Use the 3 X 7 head to get into spots the 5 X 10 is too big to go. It will detect pea sized nuggets to 4 inches. Use the ground balance. Go slow. Good pair of earphones is a must! And it is a knockout coins shooter too! TTC

 

[Big Jeff]

Pete, manual ground balance will prevent the detector from tracking small gold and effectively tuning it out , the auto track can be a great feature but you need a way to overide it. As far as the Garretts are concerned......Get a GMT.

 

[Willy]

Hey there Pete. It looks like you're right re. the signal boost, they just incorporated it into the gain POT. As for the HyperSAT.. I dunno. Having used both the GMT and MXT, there doesn't seem to be any difference at full SAT save that, if I remember right, there's a slightly higher pitch on the MXT. That's why, to me at least, it seems like I'm swinging the MXT when using the GMT. Problem is, the info regarding the GMT is pretty sparse and even in the engineering report they don't clearly differentiate the difference between the 2 units. " HyperSAT is a completely different type of SAT system with different sounds and target responses. The background threshold sound is a little rattier, but
nuggets are crisper, the ground is quieter, and negative hot rocks vanish when you slow down your sweep.".. all sounds just like what happens with the GMT at full SAT, so I dunno. As for the disc. on the GMT vs. MXT, they operate differently insofar as the GMT, when the trigger is pulled, turns off the tracking and accumulates data re. the target so that each successive sweep progressively refines the ID. The MXT AFAIK only processes single sweep data.
Onto a somewhat different subject, if you look at the price of the F70 vs. the F75 there's basically a $350 USD difference in price. Question is, are the added features of the F75 worth it? Also, the F70 has features that the F75 lacks, so it's a bit of '6 of 1 and 1/2 dozen of the other'. The lack of ground tracking is somewhat of a limiting factor in really variable ground and I doubt that it really would have added to the price of the detector if it was a software based implementation.. as opposed to adding hardware. I've hunted ground with the MXT where it was next to impossible to hunt without tracking. In fact, there were others with VLF detectors that basically just ditched them in disgust (used ML SD2200's and a Garrett Infinium). The only 2 detectors that worked well were a Fisher CZ6a running in salt mode and.. wait for it... my MXT with 6x10" DD. That, to my mind, takes ground tracking out of the 'bells and whistles' category and sets it firmly into the 'performance' one. Even so, it looks like the F75 will be enjoyable to use (when the weather improves). So far, even testing under fluorescent lights (in the garage) and near maximum sensitivity, I haven't noticed this terrible instability I've read so much about. Maybe I bought a keeper. Out in the mountains it should run even better! ..Willy.

 

[arizonaames]

Parkhunter and Willy are right. Most machines will not pick up small gold and were not designed to do so. Even most of the expensive Milelab machines will not pick up a small gold necklace. Also, if you plan on using the machine out west, you will run into mineralized ground where you will have to bring out the heavy guns in order to use your detector. That means that you machine will have to have adjustable SAT. Willy hunts in ground like this and it is the reason that he mentions the MXT, that is also a coin and releic machine, and the GMT. Both have a variable SAT. What is SAT? What sets a gold VLF gold detector apart from a coin machine.

Many gold nuggets are found where there is a lot of mineralized ground. The big difference between gold detectors and coin and relic machines is a variable SAT. The nice thing about the MXT is that the dual control is a discrimination control in Coin and Relic modes but in Prospecting mode it becomes a variable SAT. What this means is that when a signal is sent from your coil and hits the target, it then comes back to the coil and registers a target in a certain time frame. The speed that this happens (Threshold speed) is controlled by the turn of the SAT (dual control in Prospecting mode). You can speed up the recovery to the point that you can turn it up (cw) to the Super SAT +1 though+3. The faster that you run the SAT speed, the less depth that you will get but you will be able to hunt in bad mineralized ground that other machines cannot do. Can one recover some of the loss of depth caused by turning up the SAT? Yes, to some extent. One can turn the gain up until the ground conditions can cause the loss of a good target (experiment with a test nugget) or one can turn down the SAT somewhat and swing the coil slower. I hope that this helps someone understand the SAT on a MXT or other gold machines better.

 

[Willy]

Interesting thing about the MXT is that, with the SAT and gain maxed out, and running the 6x10" DD, I could hunt ground that would give an overload signal on other detectors at lower sensitivity settings. That's impressive. I'm hoping that the F75 will operate the same 9or at least similar), seeing as it too seems to have a very fast SAT speed in all-metal (too bad it wasn't VSAT). It reminds me of the Gold Bug2 that I used for a bit. It's not really critical for the F75 to find the tiny stuff, that's what the GMT is for, but as a backup in case my GMT goes belly up.
One thing that I'm going to experiment with is a Sovereign GT. Picked it up last month during a fit of holiday insanity and figure 'Why not give it a try?'. There are such wild claims being made about the depth in bad ground that I'm getting curious. Don't expect it match the MXT for small gold, but how 'bout larger at depth? So far, air testing, it has no problem picking up my 5 grain test nugget. Curiously enough, it seems to be more sensitive in disc. mode (minimum disc.) than in all-metal. Can't afford a decent PI (wouldn't mind getting an Infinium again) so maybe the Sov. can fill in till then. Wouldn't mind using it, with a WOT coil, for finding the big deep ones. Nice thing is, it's hip/chest mountable, something I really miss in the pod style detectors like the F75/GMT/MXT. Being able to chest mount is really nice when hunting in a river/stream. ..Willy.

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Hi Everyone,

I’d like to jump into the conversation for a few moments if that would be OK with everyone.

First, RetRmy…neither the Garrett Ace 100 or the White’s 5900 DI are suitable for serious nugget hunting anywhere. I’d suggest a dedicated unit if you hope to have the best chance at success. Which unit you choose will depend on what conditions you expect to encounter…iron mineral levels and variability, target size, abundance of small bits of iron trash in the area (tailings) and so on.

If searching in natural landscapes, having a discrimination circuit will offer no advantage unless you encounter hot rock areas or intend to do some relic/coin hunting at any abandoned sites you might locate. On the other hand, if you intend to search iron infested mine tailings (depending on size of nuggets) a discrimination circuit could be useful. It is possible that you may be willing to forgo the smaller nuggets in favor of low level iron discrimination thus allowing you to “cherry-pick” the area more efficiently. Under these search conditions, a unit with only iron target ID will require the user to “check-out” a much higher % of the individual signals that will be mostly small iron. That’s time consuming, and means you will cover much less ground. That decision wrt discrimination is up to you, but it’s nice to have a choice.

Any prospecting unit should have a manual ground balance. Otherwise, as with the MXT for example, have the option of turning off (“locking”) the auto track. Such an option allows the user to “grab” the updated ground balance at any time with a flick of the GB switch and then return to operating without tracking. Keep in mind that this technique is not the same as having manually adjustable ground balance, whereby for example, the user can make adjustments to facilitate ore sampling, or positive offsets for more sensitivity to fringe depth targets.

The best option is to have both types of ground canceling, such as provided on the GMT. The posters above cover the value of having manual ground balancing.  In variable highly mineralized ground, the value of having ground tracking comes to the fore by keeping the unit properly balanced. Both the GMT and MXT, despite being produced some years ago now, have extremely fast, accurate and fine resolution tracking

The White’s GMT is the best dedicated VLF nugget hunter that technology affords today in my view. It will rival the GoldbugII on tiny nuggets, but has an edge on larger nuggets (not useless air tests, but in the ground where it matters...air tests on articles such as ear studs/fine gold chains provide no useful depth/sens information wrt how well they will respond in harsh mineral conditions). It also performs better in really tough ground, where the GoldbugII can struggle. Of course, in extreme ground, a suitable PI unit provides a more likely alternative, but lets restrict our comments here to VLF units.

The GMT does not offer a discrimination circuit, but does provide an effective visual iron ID probability, in addition to an audio “grunt” where the unit interprets a signal to indicate the strong likelihood of iron.

The MXT offers a similar, perhaps slightly improved, prospecting platform to the GMT (see the Engineering Report at the White’s website) but utilizes a much reduced yet effective operating frequency. It will not detect the very tiniest nuggets, but will still respond to sub grain particles as Willy points out above. It should (as a result of it’s lower operating frequency at least) go deeper on larger nuggets, and will handle higher mineralization levels better than the dedicated higher frequency units. The MXT also offers two very sensitive discrimination modes that respond especially well to low conductive metals. Depending on the size of gold, for example in tailings, this unit might be a better choice…again…if you don’t mind passing up the very tiniest nuggets.

It could be argued the MXT might actually meet or outperform the higher frequency units in really bad ground. The higher frequency units will lose their edge on tinier nuggets in such ground, while the MXT’s lower frequency will come to the fore in handling such conditions to more favorable advantage.

Arizonaames, you made the statement…“The nice thing about the MXT is that the dual control is a discrimination control in Coin and Relic modes but in Prospecting mode it becomes a variable SAT. What this means is that when a signal is sent from your coil and hits the target, it then comes back to the coil and registers a target in a certain time frame. The speed that this happens (Threshold speed) is controlled by the turn of the SAT (dual control in Prospecting mode).”

This underlined part of this statement describes “phase” which can be defined as the length of time between eddy current generation sustained on a metal target’s surface and the resulting secondary electromagnetic field effect on the coil’s receive winding. SAT keeps the threshold smooth wrt spurious noise resulting from changes in ground mineral, and electrical drift.  It provides for greater stability, especially in the all-metal mode, particularly when high sensitivity/gain levels are used. For prospecting, faster SAT speeds are required due to using inherently more sensitive higher frequency units over the variable high iron mineral conditions frequently encountered. Some folks might confuse this with recovery speed..which refers to the time it takes the detector to process one target signal such that it is ready to process a second target signal.

Willy… Regarding the F-70 comparison wrt unit pricing. The F-75 offers real prospecting capability since it provides manually adjustable, calibrated ground balance. This capability allows the user to make field adjustments to enhance the unit’s sensitivity to tiny nuggets (positive GB offset). The scale’s calibration further allows you a precise knowledge of any setting chosen. More, the calibrated scale facilitates the ease with which ore/rock testing can be accommodated. A GB setting can be established whereby iron mineralization (includes all oxides and reduced iron (Fe+2) in combination with elements other than oxides; does not include conductive iron sulphides such as pyrrhotite, pyrite etc…which must be viewed realistically as genuine targets desirable to some collectors) will result in a negative threshold response as contrasted to the positive response from sufficient conductive amounts of metals (including a host of metal sulfides) that may be present within any rock structure. Due to the varying amount of iron mineral “bias” (especially at the magnetic end of the ground balance scale) affecting threshold responses, this is not a perfect technique, but generally very effective. The F-70 does not provide manually adjustable ground balance, only the autograb. Yes, it could be used by and large, especially in a pinch, for general searching, but I tend to draw the line on units that neither provides auto tracking nor manual ground balance.

For prospecting purposes, the DD coil is certainly a must have item, and you would be required to purchase it as an accessory for the F-70. I have not checked on the 11” DD stock coil price, but I imagine it would run somewhere close to $200 dollars…since the small 3”X 6” coil runs at $150 dollars. 

The F-75 provides a static all-metal mode. I consider this mode of limited value, but then again it does accommodate ore sampling.

The F-75 provides the backlit target meter, which has value to many users for nighttime coin hunting pursuits.

Finally, my understanding is that the F-70 power settings are directly related to both the Threshold and Sensitivity controls. I have no first hand knowledge of precisely how these controls interface, but I assure you that I would prefer to set my threshold to a faint hum, and not have to consider any resulting impact to my overall power settings.

Regarding the MXT/F-75 comparison. I own both of these software driven units and regard them as distinctly different tools. It should be expected that one will demonstrate advantages over the other, depending on the task or search circumstances.

Some examples. The MXT does not have manually adjustable ground balance making it more difficult (impossible to maintain a positive offset) to perform the prospecting tasks as outlined above. It does have the autotracking.. offering more suitability over variable ground. The F-75 is a more powerful deeperseeking unit with even faster target response and recovery, and it is more sensitive to tiny pieces while offering significantly better depth on larger pieces. On the other hand, the MXT is certainly no slouch in these categories, and does offer the manually adjustable SAT control. The F-75 “retune” is fixed, but seems quite adequate for most situations.

It seems to me that in the event the ground requires more retune speed than available on the F-75, then perhaps it’s time to reduce the sensitivity a bit. The operator can afford to turn down the sensitivity and still get very good response on both small and large low conductive pieces that the MXT with the 6’X 10” DD will not see here in my ground (ground phase 83 to 85ish, magnetite 0.1%).

Stability: Up in prospecting country, the F-75 was completely stable and quiet as a mouse at max sens/gain levels. The MXT by contrast, constantly chattered at similar high gain settings. At times I found it annoying, and had to reduce the gain level just to get a break from it.

Weight/Balance: The MXT wore on my arm after awhile, whereas I could swing the 75 all day long and no issue.

So you see, there is no be all, do all unit for every task. I like both these units. BTW Willy, when you play with the F-75 in disc modes, view the discrimination levels as the primary gain control. The gain/disc level interface is quite different in JE from the other modes.

That’s about it, sorry about the length of this post everyone, there was a lot to look at here.

Jim.

 

[liquid1]

Howdy Jim, I have a huge question most folks will say that the F75 complaint if any is stability, Your post brings to my attention why do you think it ran so quiete and smooth while hunting the nuggets..Humm..I realize you were far from any civilized power
or static or amp loads But Most would think the Highly mineral grounds would cause a bit of Havoc..Jim this Is A+++ Findings and Good News..Kinda makes me wonder if the ground/Dirt make up around the country effects machines as much or more than mineral content..
Jim Did you always perform a manual ground Balance or could you fast grab at times..This is intresting as I love the F75 Its fast as Lightning and will locate the tiniest subjects..cool stuff..... ...James

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Hi James,

With respect to EMI (nothing really) and general ground mineral levels (ground phase 68 to 83; magnetite @ 0.1 and frequently less) the F-75 ran smooth at high sens levels, as did the MXT in a relative sense, but the MXT has chatter all the time at the high gain setting. That's not to say either unit ran quiet over the ground. There are innumerable small targets in addition to manmade iron, that include positive and negative hot rocks, plentiful pyrrhotite of variable sizes (a brassy coloured iron sulphide that weathers to a rusty appearing exterior), small bits of highly conductive niccolite (NiAs), plus a host of arsenic, cobalt, copper and other mineral sulfide configurations just about everywhere.

In remote sites well removed from EMI sources, the F-75 stock 11" DD coil could be held in the air at waist level, and the unit was very quiet whether in JE mode or motion all-metal mode, both at max settings. Yes there was some very minor "noise" in motion all-metal insofar as you knew the unit was working. In remote areas, JE mode at max sens might occasionally give some low level random "ticks". By contrast the MXT chattered at a much higher level (and volume too), and I felt this must be due to circuit noise alone.

Many areas are quite variable in ground mineralization. You'll come onto scatterings and mounds of rusty rocks where the ground phase is some 10 to 15 full units lower within a few yards.. so yes..in such areas I mostly fast grabbed rather than manually ground balance. It's quick, accurate, and convenient. In quiet areas, particularly in hard hit spots where I figured only small silver remained that maybe the F-75 could find, I'd normally go with manual ground balance with the positive offset of three full units.

Remember nothing is black and white on site. For example, if I was in the bush on a windless warm day..the flies would be out in force. Under such conditions I would not take the time to stop and manually ground balance...the flies take precedence as they immediately go for your eyes.

I hope that description will put everything into perspective James. See ya later,

Jim.

 

[Willy]

HEy there Jim. I had the same problems with blackflies/mosquitos/horseflies when in the Cariboo and found that one of those mesh deals that go over a hat worked wonders. Kinda funky with the camo and cut down on vision somewhat, but provided blessed relief and I feel it's better than smearing DEET all over my face. ..Willy.

 

[liquid1]

Yep Jim, You Know I'm alittle slow at times..You coverd it pretty well..It suprises me that considering what I can imagine
what you were up against, Any machine would run sort of quiet..And its great the F75 did so good, Great info..thank you jim...
Your Nugget Hunting is an Amazing Feat to me..stay warm my friend..james