Hello Jim & Marius.
Thank you for your kind welcome. After I wrote my above reply and was a bit concerned that I should trim it down or remove a few images but in the end, it made sense to reply with as much detail as I could. I hope I don't stray outside the content limitations of these forums. My images are loaded elsewhere to save the forum's disc space.
Marius: You'll find that the X-70 is quick to learn but it will take you a little while longer than that to force yourself to kick a few habits - like only digging the sharp, loud sounds. The best ones are often the faint ones. The X-70 has a handy feature called Auto Ground Tracking which, with the press of a button, will adjust the Ground Balance as you travel across different types of soil and moisture levels. But if you are Prospecting rather than Coin Shooting: Here's a link to a business card sized quick reference guide I made:
http://www.pbase.com/image/93941205/original.jpg
Here's a thumbnail of the image:
Just download the original (in the link above) and print it out... fold it in half, pop it in your pocket and refer to it as needed.
The first time I went out with the X-Terra 70, I neglected to read and bring my Minelab manual. I just figured it would be easy and obvious to use the machine straight out of the box. Wrong! Sure, it worked (to detect metal) but I was forced to reset the machine every few hours and to dig a lot of junk because of my oversight. Over a few months of weekly use, I picked up a slew of tips which made it possible for me to make a pretty good guess as to what I was about to dig up. The Whites detectors are sold where I am but the main preference for our hard to read soils is either Garret or Minelab. I think I've seen a couple of Whites out on the ground and on the beaches but for Prospecting there's only a few choices here due to our soils. If I drag a magnet on the ground here in some places, just about 30% of the soil and pebbles sticks to the magnet. That's how bad it is. Only a few detectors can read through that junk. Now I may be wrong here, but it was my understanding that American "Hot" soils are a lot milder than ours. So there's probably going to be more brands that will work efficiently there which wouldn't work so well here in Australia. I know that a local traveled up to Alaska recently to an area known for nuggets and he creamed the competition with his X-Terra 70. I heard that the other prospectors there were more than surprised with how well he did on such a short visit. We're talking about Ounces too. I believe the reason that he was so successful was that the gold was not sitting near mineralized ground and the moisture in the soil was canceled out by the X-70. The same moisture would have cause problems for the other detectors. But you'll see that the X-70 has a Beach Mode as well as an Auto Ground Balancing setting (called Ground Tracking)... avoid both wet and dry soil or sand in the same sweep of the coil though since it might (possibly) give the machine a conflict of signals. The X-Terra 70 has a great pinpointing capability too and it's VERY accurate when trying to dig a target. You just need to remember that your target almost always looks just like the soil you are digging in. Same color etc until washed or cleaned. I've only recently purchased a Pinpointer from the USA to assist me in quicker recovery. There's been days when I thought my detector had to be wrong and I'd be sifting through the soil in my fingers and sprinkling it over the top of the coil. Eventually it would appear and often it was just a .22 casing. A strange rock the size of the end of my thumb (which I detected with the 6" HF DD coil in a creek on my last trip) was a small, pitted iron meteorite.
When you get used to your machine, you can just turn it on and walk around with it. I like to consult the card above (image) which I still keep in my pocket when I haven't been out in a while just in case I forget to hit the buttons in the right sequence during setup. I prefer to reset the machine when I drive to new areas though. Takes about 1 minute to reset it for the area. Having Ground Tracking is handy. Saves you from resetting your Ground Balance all the time. Again, remember to turn it off when you find a target or your detector will try to mask the target out as part of the continuous re-balance process.
A tip I picked up from another user is that you should switch to Coin/Relic mode if you discover a signal when in Prospecting Mode... then see if the numbers bounce around really quickly. If they vary wildly from one-another rather than hop around two or three sequential digits, it is likely to be iron junk. I have tested this theory and dug the target just to see what it is... the results were Horseshoe (Iron), Nail (Iron), Screw (Iron), Tin Can (Iron), Half Horseshoe (Iron), Screw (iron), Bolt (Iron), Sleeper spike (Iron), Soda Can (aluminum).
My friend & Detecting partner Robert getting his gear on for a heavy day's detecting. My X-Terra 70 is leaning against the car. We traveled about 400km to get to this hidden spot.
Hi Jim: I'm afraid that whilst I've used other machines, the X-Terra 70 is my only machine at the moment. I need two more though: One for underwater marine use and also a dedicated "Super Gold Detector". I haven't used the Whites machines yet.
I bought my first metal detector when I was a kid: my father offered to pay half of the cost of one I'd been eyeing off in a store window. It was expensive too on my limited pocket money. But when I assembled it at tested it out, it did little more than flash a red light bulb when the coil passed over metal. Quite useless on the beach on a bright day. No headphone socket or audio signal. That was a long time ago but I didn't use that plastic piece of junk at all ... and to my parents, it became a warning of sorts for years to come. "Remember the metal detector!" they'd say whenever I showed an interest in something which they thought was worthless or useless.
I worked in the film industry for the last decade or so and left the job recently, quite disgusted with the way people I worked for had changed.
But in my last two years, I was online observing the changes in metal detectors on the market after looking online for one to assist me with underwater work. There's an Island in the Pacific near here with a long lost (buried) treasure worth many millions... and I want to find it someday. At least I hope to. I went there recently for the 14th time but the island was in a tropical storm for almost the entire duration of my stay.
As soon as I left my job, I got to chatting with the staff at my local Prospecting Supply Store and explained my interest in Prospecting but inquired about underwater machines. They suggested a few detectors to me, including the Excalibur but this device was incredibly heavy out of the water. I considered the GPX machines with the higher price tags but they were not really designed for beach use and my folks live by the ocean. Seemed like I needed a dual-purpose machine and one that could handle Australian soils for prospecting and there's only a few machines that are dual purpose. I was on the verge of buying a dedicated Gold Detector but felt the that the X-Terra would be lighter to carry and easier to break down for transit. I don't like being followed around when I'm metal detecting and unfortunately this has happened a few times so being able to break a detector down and to carry it lightly in a backpack is also handy. I am using old maps from the 1800s with modern Government Mineral Maps and Google Earth Maps ...and my own experiences gold panning ...to piece together where the best gold is likely to be. I even use the X-70 with the optional 6" coil to find clumps of gold hidden in the creek bed crevices. If there's enough granules packed closely together, the X-Terra lets me know about it. These small clusters of gold won't show up on the Elliptical coil though. It's not quite that sensitive but it's far better for covering larger areas faster. It's also picked out some very small pieces around a 0.33 of a gram under a few inches of clay. Some are even smaller but that's the lightest I've weighed.
Since I was out in the Goldfields, I bought a few different types of Gold Pan to try out. At first it was just for fun and, after a while, i enjoyed testing creeks to see if there were signs of gold because that would show me (using a magnifying glass) if the source was close or far away - based on how smooth or rough the granules are. Panning for gold has led me to build some interesting devices to suck gold particles from crevices but it also adds to my equipment. A small gold pan is an essential tool though and I always keep one in my backpack. Sometimes panning can be peaceful and on other occasions the time goes so fast in a day that I forget to use my detector.
Whilst Minelab says the 5x10 Elliptical Coil is not waterproof, it is still considered to be Water Resistant and a lot of owners have managed to waterproof it and seal the unit using Marine Silicone around the area where the cable enters the coil case. Look for the gap if there's one visible... where the slender cable meets the flexible junction fitting. I can't tell if adding sealant would void your warranty or not so perhaps contact Minelab and ask their opinion before doing so. I haven't sealed mine.
Something you SHOULD do though (and it won't void your warranty) is to apply a tightly wound layer of plastic duct tape around the rim of your Elliptical Coil. This seal will prevent magnetic sands and similar debris from ending up inside the area that your scuff cover protects. It will also prevent the scuff cover from falling off should you have an accident that causes it to split (say by smashing it against a rock). I assure you it's worth your trouble to buy a $2 roll of this tape and apply it.
You can see the tape wound around the edge of my Elliptical Coil in this image. This protects your detector slightly from rocks but stops the cover falling off if you split it. It also prevents magnetic sand from entering the gap and causing false signals as it moves.
The X-Terra requires movement to detect your target. If the target or the coil is moving, you should get a signal. If you get down to digging a target, you can place the soil directly onto the coil and poke the gravel around with your fingertips. Don't use a hand with rings or a watch on it obviously. When the target is shifted whilst sitting on the coil, the detector will beep to let you know.
My first two days detecting (two hours apiece) without reading my manual yielded junk. Those nails were hand forged in the 1860s.
My friend and detecting partner Robert. We found a nice 9 gram nugget a half hour after this picture was taken using the X-Terra 70. In the 1870s, this hill was covered in Prospectors looking for gold in quartz matrix. It's now populated with potentially deadly ants (Jack Jumper Ants) and Brown Snakes (also lethal). This was my 6th trip out.
My last day out detecting had me digging unfamiliar targets to see what they were. Some were slag from old miner's smelting efforts (rear) and some nails and a 1943 threepence coin... along with a couple of small gold nuggets & quartz specimens containing iron ore, a fired .303 bullet and a .22 caliber case. Expect to find anything like this in the goldfields all over the world. Gold is hard to find anywhere so I try places where it's harder to get to, hence there's better odds that I've dodged the less dedicated detectorists
My experiences with the X-Terra 70 have been memorable. I really LOVE getting out there. However, so many places I want to detect on turn out to be inaccessible or privately owned and I don't realize until I get there. Most days digging for mystery objects can actually be quite miserable. Fly plagues (think 600 flies fighting for a landing space on your face), leaches, snakes, wasps and ants combined with hours of digging in 45 degree (118 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures and 10 miles walks with all your picks, equipment and water can mess with your head. Then try driving home 600 miles with bug spray in your eyes at night whilst trying to avoid kangaroos with a headache and thorns in your fingertips... ah well, you get the picture. Kangaroos are interesting but they're a very stupid animal. They creep up on me when I'm down on the ground digging a target and spook me occasionally. Here's a picture I took of one on my first trip out
click link):
http://www.pbase.com/image/89362502/original.jpg They sound just like another person digging with a pick axe nearby when they bound on the ground.
Scanning the beaches in front of my parent's beach house yielded a number of gold & silver jewellery items and plenty of coins last March. No diamond rings yet.
The X-Terras are all pretty effective on the beaches. It can be a tedious process if others have been there before you because you have to dig the stuff they've missed. Plus a lot of soda cans and junk. But in a short while, you can delete these items from your detector by masking the signals. The X-Terra still drops its threshold tone to let you know you are standing over something.
Some of the gold chains came from boat ramps at low tide and even a few American and Asian coins came up where tourists frequented. The cache of pre-decimal Australian coins I found was in the Mountains. I've cleaned the gold in an ultrasonic tank and buffed some items with a jeweler's polishing wheel on my Dremel. Not sure what to do with all those Pennys and Half Pennys though.
After finding the beaches that the detectorists were visiting, it paid off to scan areas they routinely ignored.
All in all, the X-Terra 70 is convenient for me to use and carry. Depth is pretty good although I've not taken the time to measure depth properly. It never crossed my mind. But if you dig a hole THIS deep (click link for image)
http://www.pbase.com/image/91577225/original.jpg then you know you're exceeding your detector's capabilities. Why did I did such a deep hole? Because I picked up a VERY promising signal in Prospecting mode whilst in a small creek directly in the middle of the 1850's gold diggings. The world's largest gold 'nugget' (the Holterman Nugget... actually a 235.1 kg Gold Reef Mass) was found very close in the same district in 1872. So I was sure this new creek had cut through a great spot. Now Prospecting Mode is more sensitive than Coin & Relic Mode. And I couldn't get a number I.D. for the target in Relic Mode... only a strong signal in Prospecting Mode. I was therefore digging blindly. Why was there no Target I.D. number showing when I was in Coin/Relic Mode?
The soil was clay-like and moist but as hard to dig as partially set concrete. I broke my shovel and then a pick before driving home and returning with a new set a week later. I couldn't sleep without knowing what it was. Result: It turned out to be a type of grey clay called "Pipe Clay" which is known for containing gold nuggets... but in this case was host to a mineral deposit which had run down the face of the creek wall and entered the pockets of clay. Apparently the GPX-4000 would have also triggered on this location and signal. So with the best detectors being fooled by this freak mineralization, I don't feel so bad. I filled in my hole (right next to a Quartz Reef!)... but if you look to the upper right hand corner of the image, you may detect a white spider web - courtesy of one of our deadliest spiders. I was hoping the wall didn't collapse and cover me with them. It's a bit faint in the image so here's a closeup:
http://www.pbase.com/image/91577224/original.jpg ... I dug out one of the inhabitants last time I was there for the camera. Don't worry, the insects got me as I was eventually stung by wasps when I brushed past a nest hidden on a low tree branch trying to carry a pan of the mysterious clay to a waterhole further down the creek. It seemed like a good idea at the time. No hint of gold though.
Finally, since gold here is often associated with other heavy metals like iron, many of our best specimens can confuse a lot of detectors and get screened out as being iron junk.
Here's an example of what you have to contend with digging or ignoring iron signals:
I'm thinking about the Super Gold Detectors - but if I ever get one, their 2-3x deeper seeking abilities means I'll have to dig holes so deep that you can see the craters from orbit. Not sure if I'd want to do that for the occasional chunk of iron with a hint of gold stuck to it. I'll live longer with the X-Terra 70. But Never Say Never.
All the Best,
Marco Nero
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
with me in case i forgot some setups.
