What About The Garrett Infinium For gold Prospecting?

[Hard Prospector]

I've been using my Whites TDI for some time now and have been very pleased with its performance but have always wondered about the Garrett PI detector. Any input, opinions and experience with the Infinium would be appreciated. Thanks....Rob

 

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[SeabeeRon]

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Looks like a big ol' Can-O-Spam to me!!

 

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[gunsil]

Look what I received a short time ago! LMAO I want to know if there is "SUCKER" tattooed across my forehead that I don't see when I look in the mirror?? Anyone see it?

Need a closer photo with your hair brushed back.

 

[nuggetshooter323]

Lady Pirate,

How has your Infinium done on nuggets in Wyoming? I haven't been prospecting up there yet, but I know you all have good gold and gem stones.

 

[Lady Pirate]

nuggetshooter323, I have not gone a huntin' yet. I moved to Cheyenne in Jan. and was there for only 5 weeks when I got called to Tequesta, Fla., to watch my 6 yr. young grandson. Been here 4 mos today and am so ready to back home. Husband is a geologist so it's going to be very helpful on what to look for different gems and gold. I am missing the best part of the weather. But I will surely be taking the Infinium and the AT Pro. whenever I go out touring around. Both machines are doing me very well here on the beaches. Been from Hobe down to Juno Beach.

 

[UncleMatt]

Just like Reg, I have really not encountered any areas here in the United States where a dedicated VLF goldhunter won't work. Yes, there is some hot desert black sands, hot rocks, and soil that require ground balancing every few yards, but "generally," anything you can find with a low powered PI you can find with a good VLF. In the second video I posted (Garrett Infinium vs Minelab GPX 5000), I am of the opinion an ACE 250 would have also found that nugget which looks to be at least 3-grams. Just sayin..

Reg: "BTW, I have yet to encounter dramatically mineralized ground here in the US." http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/m...viscosity-explanation-please.html#post3412669

Terry, just three weeks ago I had both my GB II and my Infinium out in the NM desert with Dustedyou and family out near the old mines he has posted photos of. I first broke out the GBII, and it was completely useless. I was going nuts trying to figure it out until I did some magnet sampling on the surfaces in many different spots. There was so much black sand it only took a light touch for a second against the ground to produce a large pile of black sand on my magnet. So I broke out my Infinium, and it acted like the black sand wasn't even there. A perfect example of a situation where a VLF isn't as effective as the Infinium. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Terry Soloman]

Gosh, it's too bad you didn't have a Tesoro Lobo Super Traq with you. You could have popped it into the "Black Sand" mode. So did you find any gold with your Infinium?

 

[UncleMatt]

Nope, just old degraded relics. We never made it to the mines we were headed for though, we got stopped by a mechanical problem some distance away. We were trapped there for 5 hours, so I was just prospecting around.

 

[Reg]

UncleMatt,

What setting did you have the mineralization switch on when you were using the GB 2? I have hunted in quite a few locations in NM and never had any big problems with black sand. However, it can get a little touchy if you use the low mineralization mode. You might try using the high mineralized mode next time out and if it is still bad, then raise the coil a little. It works for me on most VLF's including on the GB 2.

On a different note, when time and money is available I plan on trying the Infinium. It sounds like a decent detector.

Reg

 

[UncleMatt]

UncleMatt,

What setting did you have the mineralization switch on when you were using the GB 2? I have hunted in quite a few locations in NM and never had any big problems with black sand. However, it can get a little touchy if you use the low mineralization mode. You might try using the high mineralized mode next time out and if it is still bad, then raise the coil a little. It works for me on most VLF's including on the GB 2.

On a different note, when time and money is available I plan on trying the Infinium. It sounds like a decent detector.

Reg

I tried the highest mineralization setting, and it still put out a constant hit signal. I have some video of the soil conditions I am referring to, I will try to post it today so you can see just how saturated the ground was with black sand.

 

[UncleMatt]

You can see the video I took of the black sand saturation here



Of course, I am still learning and always welcome feedback.

 

[UncleMatt]

So only youtube videos will post here? Why not from FaceBook?

 

[Ausgoldhunter]

Hello George! Nobody is arguing that a PI can handle hot ground better than many single-frequency VLF detectors, but in 35+ years of detecting in Arizona, there has only been three times that a GMT, LST, or Goldbug would not get the job done for me. Further, the TDI is no better at finding gold nuggets than an Infinium, and certainly cannot find the small gold that a GMT can. If you could only get one machine for gold prospecting would you buy the TDI, or the GMT? My choice would be the GMT EVERY time.

Again George, I think the TDI is too expensive, and not sensitive enough to the small gold that buys the beans and biscuts for everyday gold prospectors.

Agree with you on that one Terry, while I love the tones, and feel of the Whites TDI and TDI SL machines, the infinium is the better buy, $200 cheaper than the SL, and if you take an unintended decisive swim, your machine will live.
My infinium has a little success with the 8" mono but nothing special, best was a 2.4 gram specimen never found anything under the 1.2-1.4 grams... That I remember..

As for the GMT, it'll beat the piss out of pretty much anything... Maybe not the GPX 5000 on depth :P but then they aren't in the same class now are they

 

[Ausgoldhunter]

You can see the video I took of the black sand saturation here



Of course, I am still learning and always welcome feedback.

holy crap...

 

[nuggetshooter323]

I was looking at the coils on the Razorback coil site, and the 5.25" mono and the 3x6 "Piglet" micro mono look interesting for small gold. The write up says the 3x6 can detect down to .4 of a gram, that's about 6 grains. Very respectable if it works out that way in the field.

 

[nuggetshooter323]

You can see the video I took of the black sand saturation here



Of course, I am still learning and always welcome feedback.

That's pretty amazing! And I thought some of our washes were bad.

 

[UncleMatt]

I appreciate hearing that this is indeed a high level of black sand saturation. And it was the same result no matter where I sampled along the bottom and sides of the wash. Lots of bedrock was coming through the surface farther down where I had the camera pointed, and I look forward to going back to do some more detecting. Dusted and I identified several places where veins had been cleaned out leaving slots behind, and also dig outs along the banks of a couple of tons or so.

 

[Reg]

UM,

I am not sure where you are hunting, but if it is Los Cerrilos, I have hunted there with both a PI and different VLF's and didn't have that much of a problem. The black sand you experienced there is heavy but not impossible to hunt. So, something is wrong either with the detector or the setup of the detector.

Now, I have my GB 2 loaned out so I can't readily run tests right now, but I do have a bunch of other gold detectors I can try. Unfortunately, my "black sand bed" was destroyed by my grandson many years ago and I never tried to get any more black sand. I had the sand in a 50 gallon plastic barrel cut lengthwise and had one half full of black sand that came from a friend who had a claim and ran a lot of material down a 50 foot long sluice. So, he had buckets of the stuff years ago. My setup would allow me to test small nuggets for depth of detection in pure black sand down several inches.

Now, if your GB 2 detector won't stop screaming, something is wrong. Did you have one switch on difficult and the other switch on normal? If the detector still won't settle down, you can't run with the coil right on the surface, nor will the detector ground balance properly if the coil is too close to the sand. Raising the coil reduces the black sand's effects exponentially, meaning it only takes a couple of inches in height to handle the toughest of areas.

The GB 2 has a concentric coil and this type of coil is more ground sensitive than a DD.

Were you trying to run in the all metal mode and not in the disc? In the disc, you have to set the ground balance slightly positive, but in the all metal mode, the detector should be set as close as possible to perfect or maybe ever so slightly positive meaning as you lower the coil towards the ground, the audio increases just slightly.

Using the disc feature of any VLF may seem like it is the best, but all too often it will lie to you and gold will be ignored simply because of the gold's surroundings. This holds true for all VLF's that I have tried and that is a bunch of detectors.

So, if you get a chance, you might pick up some black sand in a 5 gallon bucket and take it home to practice with. There should be settings you can use on the GB 2 that will work. If not, make a video of how you set it up and maybe we can figure out if there is something wrong with the detector or the coil.

Reg

 

[Reg]

NS323,

PI's don't act like VLF's when it comes to changing coils. Yes, a smaller coil will do slightly better than a standard size one, but not that much better. Quite often a DD coil might be the best choice on gold smaller than a gram.

If the foldback is designed right, it can work almost as well as the very small coil and not give up the length.

Right now, I am working on a different coil design for a TDI coil that reduces noise and is almost as sensitive as a DD on the small stuff. It can be implemented on the TDI in two ways, meaning one way it requires a mod to the detector.

Unfortunately, at least some of the Infinium coils have active components, so until I purchase the Infinium, I can't build one for it.

Reg

 

[UncleMatt]

Reg,
You should come out there with Dusted and I some time in late July and I would be happy to learn all I can from you about the GBII. I don't believe any of my settings were causing the issue, so maybe it is a defective unit (though it is right out of the box). And my Infinium worked perfectly, and I was able to find conductive objects.

I also recommend you check out the site www.geotech1.com for all the MD tech you could ever want to learn about.

 

[Reg]

UM,

Thanks for the link but I am already familiar with the Geotech1 site. I use the same name over there as I do here.

Now, I suspect the black sand detection problem is lack of familiarity of what has to be done to use the GB 2 in areas with heavy black sand. Actually, all VLF's suffer from this condition but the detectors with a concentric coil are affected the most and the GB 2 has a concentric as does the LST and Goldmasters prior to the GM4.

Concentric coils experience something called, by one engineer, foldback. What this means is the coil becomes overwhelmed by the strong signal and the signal will change polarity. In other words, under extreme conditions you can't perfectly ground balance but you can get close and to operate effectively, you have to operate with the coil elevated. Just how much you have to elevate the coil depends upon the black sand intensity and the machine being used, with some being worse than others. If you try to operate with the coil right on the ground or even very close to the ground, you will find it range from extremely difficult to impossible and the problem will be a constant signal.

This occurs with all VLF designs but the effects are much greater when using a concentric coil. Now, how much one might have to elevate a coil to get the detector to work right may be as much as 3" to 4" or possibly higher in certain places and with certain detectors. Another detector my work at closer to 3" or maybe less especially if they have a "Difficult" or black sand setting. Generally, such settings simply reduce the gain so the early stages of the electronics are not overwhelmed with signal.

If you look at the newer designs of gold detectors, the primary coil type is a DD design. Detectors like the Gold Bug Pro and the associated Gold Bugs from the basic unit, and the SE normally come with a DD coil White's GMT also comes equipped with a DD.

The reason is simple, DD coils handle bad ground much better than a coil of concentric design. The design of the DD is such that a percentage of ground signal is basically cancelled, thus what might overwhelm a concentric can still be hunted reasonably well with a DD.

Now, detectors with the concentric coil generally have or can have a slight sensitivity advantage to small gold but quite often the extra sensitivity to black sand will offset this sensitivity capability.

As for a trip in July, wow, it should be hot at that time. My limited hunting in NM has generally been by invitation, so my access is extremely limited. As you probably know, much of the area I mentioned before is now either private or under claim and much is behind locked gates.

I have a friend who may be going your way this fall and he actively uses the GB 2. In fact, he has mine which he used until he was able to get his sent in and now he has his recently repaired unit also. If I find that he will be going your way, I will see if he can meet up with you. As for me, well that is a 5+ hour trip and I have reached that point in my life where trips of that distance are becoming extremely seldom, if at all.

Reg