Need advice

[Sandancer]

Is there a salt water machine of reasonable cost that can possibly discriminate between between hot rocks and gold? The area I hunt is full of hot rocks that that make it impossible to use my Beach Hunter ID 300 except to identify higher conductivity metal like silver. I am convinced that among all those hot rocks there is a fair amount of gold jewelry. Any suggestions.

 

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[Digger_O'Dell]

That depends on what price you consider reasonable. If you're working moderately hot areas or better, most any good machine should be able to ground balance them out. But is areas with lots of magnetite or deep black sand and such, you would have to go with a good PI machine. The only one that I know of that might do the job is the Garrett ATX. My Minelab CTX3030 does ok for most as a vlf machine. But both run around the $2500 mark.
Salt water beaches I use my Minelab GPX 4800 and it acts like there's no minerals present which is the benefit of a great PI machine.

 

[Terry Soloman]

A Pulse Induction machine is not going to help with hot rocks. You need a multi-frequency machine like the Fisher CZ machines or the Minelab Equinox. Even with these machines, you'll need to experiment and learn to discriminate the hot rocks. Best of luck to you!

 

[Sandancer]

I was thinking of an Equinox. A PI machine would have me digging continuously, and ground balancing has been impossible. Thanks for the comments.

 

[dewcon4414]

First off....... are you sure your machine is working properly? Terrys right a good VLF often works best. Not certain where they would fall on the Nox.... but simply notch them out. A good many machines they are a very high tone easily disc. A lot of times hot rocks are close to the surface and turning down the sensitivity sometimes helps make them disappear.

 

[Sandancer]

Thanks for the input dewcon. My primary salt machine has been a Whites Beach Hunter ID. It does not allow notching out, and to eliminate all the hot rocks which are all over the surface I have to turn the sensitivity down so much that it eliminates possible gold. I guess what is needed is more precise discrimination.

 

[dewcon4414]

Odd you have to turn it down so low. Being in Fl we dont have that issue...... but i have dealt with them in many states. It rarely took but a few clicks of sensitivity to calm them. Thats why i asked if you were sure you machine was working properly...... bad coil maybe?

 

[Sandancer]

Yes the machine is working well. It is not the mineralized soil, but the actual rocks of all sizes that just overwhelm the sensitivity reduction. If I turn it down enough to quiet the machine I lose a good deal of the gold range. Without a numeric reading the tone variations are just not enough for me to recognize. Maybe a different machine will help