Comparing Gold Detectors

[nuggetshooter323]

There's been a lot of debate recently on the best performing gold detectors. After four or five pages of comments there's usually a general consesus to the question posed, so most of the time members are able to take away something positive that they can use. I would venture to say that the recent posts on this subject have never been better, and a lot of that has to do with the fact the selection and quality of gold detectors is excellent. On another thread somebody was saying that they had about a $2000 budget to buy a good detector, I would say that you can buy several great ones and cover all your detecting bases.

Several times, people with a lot of experience mentioned that having a PI/VLF combo is the best way to miss less gold. A PI is likely to miss sub-gram gold, and a VLF is prone to missing gold around heavy concentrations of hot rocks and black sand. So if possible, go over the ground your detecting with a PI/VLF combo, you'll cover less ground but you may not be leaving anything behind.

Here a compilation of the impressions I came away with from all the posts on the different gold detectors. This is just another thread to help people choose the detectors that they want.

FISHER: Gold Bug 2: VLF operates at 71Khz, good ratings by users. It has a purely manual ground balance, and an iron discrimination circuit. Very hot analog detector, best for shallow sub-gram even down to grain wt gold. Not really a deep seeking detector because highly minerlized ground interacts with the extremely high gain of the circutry and limits depth, in extreme cases the GB 2 won't ground balance if the minerlization is too high. But, this same high gain allows this to be the best detector for shallow, small nuggets. Considered to be a good companion detector with a Pulse Induction, Whites GMT or any other VLF, but the GMT was specificlly mentioned. The GB2 was especially considered to be a good second detector with a PI unit like a Minelab, or a Whites TDI, because the PI units are notorious for missing sub-gram, and wire gold. The GB2 has no problem with these types of gold.


Gold Bug Pro: VLF operates at 19Khz, good ratings by users. It has a manual ground balance and a "Ground Grab" button the ground balances the machine with one push, as well as a display that measures various ground conditions. Very good all around, software driven, gold detector. Not considered a deep seeking detector, but a very good medium to shallow nugget machine. Users that only own this detector really like it, and don't feel like the GBPro is lacking anything to allow them to find gold. Some users that own the GBPro along with several other detectors tend, to look at the GBPro as a secondary detector because they feel other detectors do specific things better.

WHITES: MXT/MXT Pro: VLF operates at 14Khz, excellent ratings by users. Seen as the classic all around detector that does everything really well. It has an auto tracking and a "Ground Grab" button, and a display that shows specific information for each mode. Both versions of the MXT have three complete seperate programs, coin & jewelry, relic, and prospecting. The MXT Pro has had several updates one of which was to the prospecting mode. Whites added an iron "grunt" that indicates an 80% probability of iron. The circutry for the MXT prospecting mode was orginally derrived from the GMT, so the ability of the MXT approaches the GMT and the GB 2, but doesn't quite arrive. Users say that the MXT doesn't generally find as small gold as the GMT and the GB 2, but several have said that it will, but the operator has to work harder. The nugget size differences are so small and only noticed after a lot of comparison between the results of the three detectors. The MXT has found a lot of gold and will continue for years to come, especially since Whites just updated it.


GMT: VLF operates at 48Khz, and was given the highest ratings by all serious users. The GMT has the best of all worlds for ground balance. It has a manual ground balance, an auto tracking mode, a "lock" switch that locks the ground balance, and a "Grab" button to instantly set the ground balance while in manual or auto tracking. If the MXT is seen as the classic all around detector, the GMT is definately in that catagory for gold prospecting machines. The GMT is the fifth version of the Goldmaster series, and it's the best. Built just for gold prospecting, it's packed with features that undoubtedly make it a professional level detector, but the beginner can pick it up and be prospecting in 5 minutes. A unique feature in the GMT is the Variable Self Adjusting Threshold(VSAT), it's the only metal detector with that peticular feature. All serious user's find this feature especially useful. It allows the user to adjust the auto retune speed to match the soil conditions, very slow in mild condition with few signals to detect deeper. All the way up to ultra fast for use in trashy, hot rock, or cold stone infested conditions. This allows the GMT to reset itself for the next target before it passes over, and misses a target in the process. The GMT will detect down to Grain wt nuggets just like the GB 2, but user's have said the GMT will go deeper. The GB 2 will detect smaller nuggets, but the GMT make's up for that by going deeper. For this reason it's not a bad idea to own the GMT and the GB 2, so you can cover your bases shallow and deep. Another unique feature is the "iron analyzer". When you get a target your not sure about, in this mode, successive passes over the target allow the computer to decide what probability percentage that it thinks the target is iron and it shows the result on a graph on the display.



Tesoro Lobo Super Traq: A VLF that operates 17.8Khz with very high ratings from all users. A very high quality detector that always seems to work in all conditions. It has an auto tracking ground balance that does it's job perfectly. It has three operating modes, all metal(fast auto tune) , discriminate, and pinpoint. Seen by many user's as very versitile, as it will do great coin and jewerly hunting in the park as well as the gold fields. Being fully adjustable, it also has a soil condition switch, so you can go from "normal" to 'alkali" to "black sand". Two things that were impotant to me about the LST when I bought it was the lifetime warrantee and the nine coil selection that work on four different tesoro detectors. The LST will easily find sub-gram gold using the stock 10" elliptical coil, and will do even better using the concentric and the DD 5 3/4" coils.

 

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[Hard Prospector]

TDI SL if you can afford it... I WISH they were stable down here in Aus, sadly they freak out when they hit the ironstone down here.. but in the more neutral areas it was a beast...

I too would like to know how the TDI SL would handle the worst of all mineral conditions down under when fitted with a mono coil especially a smaller one. Its too bad a flight to Australia isn't as cheap as a ticket to Vegas.

 

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[nuggetshooter323]

If you could place all these in numerical order how would it look like? And is Minelab Eureka Gold
better han some Minelab SD or GP models? How does it compare to the GPX 4500?

When you consider this remember than the Eureka can actually mount this coil:
http://www.minelab.com/emea/products/consumer/accessories/coils/11-round-goldsearch-coil

Since this coil is quite big one could think it could just find medium and larger, but not small gold. However you can probably just switch to 60 kHz and still find tiny bits of gold deep in the ground.

Eureka is also resistant to mineralized soil, so it even works well in highly mineralized ground..

To me, Eureka seem brilliant, but I dont know.

As far as assigning a actual number of precedence to the detectors on the list, only you can do that. You need to determine what features and capabilities are important to be successful finding gold in your area. For Colorado I can tell you what's important, but you need to figure out your own area.

I'll give you an example, Colorado has medium-high mineralization, very small nuggets, and a fair amount of wire gold. All ground balancing gold detectors will work in a stable manner here, but the list gets more narrow when you add in the stipulation for sub-gram wt. even down to grain wt.. Just to get an idea the weight range I'm talking about, 15 grains= 1 gram. So between a VLF and a PI, VLF's are the most effective here. The nuggets are too small for PI's, and Colorado has a lot of wire gold, and PI's miss it like crazy. So my list, in order, for here in Colorado would be; GMT, GB 2, MXT, GB Pro, Lobo Super Traq, F75, AT Gold and the Vaquero. As far as PI's go, they are totally secondary here. They are used for relics, and large rocks with gold shot through them. There's no sense spending $5000 for the best PI on the market, the Minelab GPX 5000, when it's secondary only. So the TDI Pro, TDI SL, and the Infinium do great here.

This is my list, you need to read the posts about the capabilities of the detectors your looking at and determine what would work in your conditions to make your list. Here's my opinion and what I've heard about the Eureka Gold. It's a middle of the road VLF, not especially good or bad. Although, users have said that the 20Khz freq setting is the only decent setting for hunting gold, and they've said that the 60Khz setting is soft and not very effective. Another big negative is the price, $1000. That's way too expensive for a VLF, and what's more everybody that sells one, tries to get around $1000 for it to pass the mistake onto somebody else.

You can get a GMT, or a MXT for around $800, a GB 2 for around $750, Lobo Super Traq, GB Pro, AT Gold for around $650, and a Gold Bug or a GMZ for $499. All those are more effective and cheaper.

 

[Reg]

Ausgoldhunter,

I am guessing that the SL was a detector ordered from the US and it came with a DF coil, since that is the standard. As such, I would expect it to "freak out". I would expect it to work better with a plain mono coil or better yet, a DD coil.

Yes, a DD coil will work fine on any of the TDI series and because of the nature of the design will be less sensitive to ground signals of all types.

I have never experienced any ironstone you have over there, but I had a friend send me some other type of rock from over there that gives the detector fits. I need to do some experimenting with that rock with the SL.

Now, to go to the extreme one could use a "salt coil" on the SL. A salt coil is a ground and noise canceling coil often used on the salt flats because it minimizes ground signals. The salt coil is a noise canceling coil with a typical large mono transmit coil and a figure 8 receive winding.

I would think the coil Jason calls his foldback coil would work better than the dual field coil that comes with the SL also. The design of the foldback is something I came up with a few years ago as an option to the White's DF coil because the DF coil design is patented. Any person can make one for their own use but can't sell any coils with that design. However, the foldback coil does something similar in the fact there are two different size windings, with one for small gold and the larger one for bigger deeper gold. For those interested, I posted how to build a foldback coil on the Geotech1 forum after the TDI came out as an alternative to the White's DF coil.

This foldback coil was not called that specifically but referred to the foldback design since it starts out a larger coil, twisted into a lopsided figure 8 and then the smaller loop of the 8 is folded back into the larger portion. The smaller loop is then elongated but doesn't have to be. The idea behind it is the smaller loop detects smaller gold better while the larger portion detects the deeper gold.

The foldback isn't as ground sensitive as the DF and acts much like a conventional mono. I know there are some in OZ but don't know how well they work. The down side of a foldback coil is the size is limited if one wants to use it at the minimum delay. In fact most mono's above the 11" size may not work right at the minimum delay on the SL. The reason has to do with another simple trick I came up with that enhances smaller gold signals that was implemented in the SL. It is the reason why Digger Bob can detect the 1 grain nugget in his video of the SL that has a 12" DF coil.

So, there are options that will help the SL function better in OZ.

One last note, I have come up with a few design ideas and changes that may help in the future also, including a different coil not normally used on a PI.

Reg

 

[Reg]

OYE,

I have never used the Eureka Gold (EG) but I still own the XT 18000 (XT) which is the predecessor to the EG.

The XT has the three frequencies much like the EG. Hopefully, the EG works better at the higher frequency because my XT doesn't do that well.

I would expect the EG to do better than the ML PI's on the smaller gold, so here in Colorado, I would think it would be better.

Personally, I prefer the GB 2 and the GMT over the XT18000. However, for the less experienced, the auto ground balance on the ML works very well and might be a better choice for some. At least the auto ground balance does work very well on my XT18000. Plus, the auto ground balance can be locked in the fixed mode which is something that can't be done on the Tesoro LST. So, just how the different detectors line up is still going to be more of a personal preference type decision in my opinion.

Reg

 

[nuggetshooter323]

Ausgoldhunter,

I am guessing that the SL was a detector ordered from the US and it came with a DF coil, since that is the standard. As such, I would expect it to "freak out". I would expect it to work better with a plain mono coil or better yet, a DD coil.

Yes, a DD coil will work fine on any of the TDI series and because of the nature of the design will be less sensitive to ground signals of all types.

I have never experienced any ironstone you have over there, but I had a friend send me some other type of rock from over there that gives the detector fits. I need to do some experimenting with that rock with the SL.

Now, to go to the extreme one could use a "salt coil" on the SL. A salt coil is a ground and noise canceling coil often used on the salt flats because it minimizes ground signals. The salt coil is a noise canceling coil with a typical large mono transmit coil and a figure 8 receive winding.

I would think the coil Jason calls his foldback coil would work better than the dual field coil that comes with the SL also. The design of the foldback is something I came up with a few years ago as an option to the White's DF coil because the DF coil design is patented. Any person can make one for their own use but can't sell any coils with that design. However, the foldback coil does something similar in the fact there are two different size windings, with one for small gold and the larger one for bigger deeper gold. For those interested, I posted how to build a foldback coil on the Geotech1 forum after the TDI came out as an alternative to the White's DF coil.

This foldback coil was not called that specifically but referred to the foldback design since it starts out a larger coil, twisted into a lopsided figure 8 and then the smaller loop of the 8 is folded back into the larger portion. The smaller loop is then elongated but doesn't have to be. The idea behind it is the smaller loop detects smaller gold better while the larger portion detects the deeper gold.

The foldback isn't as ground sensitive as the DF and acts much like a conventional mono. I know there are some in OZ but don't know how well they work. The down side of a foldback coil is the size is limited if one wants to use it at the minimum delay. In fact most mono's above the 11" size may not work right at the minimum delay on the SL. The reason has to do with another simple trick I came up with that enhances smaller gold signals that was implemented in the SL. It is the reason why Digger Bob can detect the 1 grain nugget in his video of the SL that has a 12" DF coil.

So, there are options that will help the SL function better in OZ.

One last note, I have come up with a few design ideas and changes that may help in the future also, including a different coil not normally used on a PI.

Reg

Ausgoldhunter, Reg,

On the Whites website, in the coil selection for the TDI's they have four coils listed. Two of them are the 12" DF and the 7.5" DF, also they have a 12" Mono Aussie, and a 7.5" Mono Aussie. Are the Mono Aussie coils the one's that don't work good in Australia?

 

[goldchaser3]

nuggetshooter, the Mono Aussie coils are the ones White's made specifically for Australia. The DF coils made for the US are the one that don't work well in Australia.

 

[nuggetshooter323]

I was wondering if anybody in Australia had used the Whites Mono Aussie coils to make the TDI's more useable down under? Nobody had mentioned them before. Ausgoldhunter had mentioned that he tried the DF coil, but maybe the Mono Aussie would work.

 

[Reg]

As far as I know, all TDI's shipped to OZ from the factory come with either or both of the mono coils. Only detectors purchased by individuals from third party sources or maybe from a few dealers might be sent a TDI equipped with the DF since it was supposed to only be sold in the US.

Eric Foster went to OZ to personally determine just what might be the right combination and design that would work well in OZ. He determined that there were places where the DF coils didn't work well and therefore shouldn't be the coil sent with the TDI.

While in OZ, Eric made a few changes to the TDI that enhanced the detector a little and the result of his recommendations is what resulted in the TDI Pro. The pro differs from the regular TDI with the additions of a vernier ground balance control, a slight change in the filtering of the integrators, and the addition of a volume control.

So, getting back to the question as to whether the White's mono coils have been used in OZ, the answer is yes.

For those wondering about the DF coil, one can read White's patent on what is involved in building the DF coil. Here is a link to that patent.

http://www.google.com/patents/US7994789



Reg

 

[Ausgoldhunter]

Ausgoldhunter, Reg,

On the Whites website, in the coil selection for the TDI's they have four coils listed. Two of them are the 12" DF and the 7.5" DF, also they have a 12" Mono Aussie, and a 7.5" Mono Aussie. Are the Mono Aussie coils the one's that don't work well in Australia?

The 12"DF coil had stability issues, big time... A friend now owns and uses the SL as his deep relic machine..

I've just borrowed the machine on Thursday and took it out all day Yesterday, to my great surprise... With the 12" mono and 12" DF the damn thing was perfectly stable... Over the same ground I could not get it to balance on before.
It's fine..


After calling Aiden to make some inquiries... He had sent the machine to the guys at GoldSearch Australia to be checked out... It was returned to whites and came back a few weeks later working fine..
The tech report said (calibration failure) the machine performed stable on neutral ground even salt but wouldn't balance out some of the mineralization.


Anyway I just offered him $1100 for the machine as he rarely uses it.. He took it.


My problem is, the machine worked fine before, i even expected it to be unstable in our hot ground..



I use the small 7.5 Mono but I'll take out the 12" tomorrow morning (look weekend) woo..

 

[Reg]

The TDI SL has one and only one internal trimmer pot inside. That pot adjusts the calibration of the ground balance control so all SL's are the same in their ground balance control setting. If for some reason that control wasn't set properly or someone tinkered with the control, then the ground balance wouldn't balance properly.

On one website at least one person admitted he adjusted his internal control on his SL and found out he could lower the noise of the detector. Well, that is true but so will turning down the GB control or turning the GB off. The reason things got quieter is because it takes a lot of GB signal to properly ground balance. The control adjusts the GB gain and if adjusted for less noise would result in the inability to have enough main GB control for proper ground balance.

People should realize the internal control will not cause in increase in sensitivity but it will screw up the ground balance adjustment and as such should be left alone. Since this one control is the only one control on the inside that can be calibrated, I suspect that is what was done.

Reg

 

[Ausgoldhunter]

Has anyone tried the XT705 for gold prospecting? If so, how did it do?

The 705 gold pack is a rather good prospecting detector, though it is on the same level as the White's MXT, Garrett AT Gold.. "Do it all" class.. Really good machines.

My 705 goes pretty much unused these days, but i have a photo around somewhere of a little Nugget I got at really decent depth, raked out of a tailing pile but was under at least 5" of crap.. 1.3g..


Anyway, If its a gold machine you're after.. Gold Bug Pro, GB2, Whites GMT (my personal favorite) Etc. Etc..
I'm what you might call a collector of prospecting detectors collector. I just never get the chance to use them these days..