Gold and the SE ???? Freq. question.

[grumpy]

Hi All;
I have been reading to much lately this winter :) I have a question that is baffeling me if you help.
I use and SE and had the EX II before but the freq. they use 28 from really low one something to 100 pretty much covers the whole band .
Now they are noted not to be and Gus at Minelab long ago told me they are not gold machines and personally I have never been able to get mine to find a planted nugget so I assume they are NOT gold machines.
The litterature states on the gold machines like the Eureka gold that the three freq it operates the low ones for this and mid for that but the 60 something freq it uses for deep small nuggets. SO why isnt the SE capable of finding the nuggets if it covers this range. What is the diff.????
Also one other thing the soverign is from low to about 25 freq so what is its speciality being a lot of freqs 17 and only going to the 25 . Is it best suited for coins or jewelry , both or ???
Just a winter time quiz to get you all ready for spring. ITS COMMIN !! SOON !!
Thanks for all the help.
Grumpy

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I think you are confusing machines said to be good for "gold", as opposed to machines that are said to be good for gold nuggets. There are lots of machines that are good on gold jewelry, but are NOT going to find a grain-of-rice sized nugget (those, and smaller nuggets, are the most common size in nature). A coin/jewelry machine will be engineered to not find every little staple, BB, paperclip, etc... But a nugget machine is designed to excell in those little teensy items. There are some cross-over machines (like the MXT), but no, the Explorer is not going to find BB sized nuggets, no matter what settings you choose. It was engineered to be coin/jewelry/relic machine, not a nugget machine.

 

[grumpy]

Thanks Tom;
I understand the machines and the desings of the types but what I was wondering was why if they use the high like 60 frequency to hunt gold in the Eureka and the SE has such freq. in it does it not lend itself to finding gold also. I know they dont just wondering if it is something besides the frequency that also determines what these little wonders will find.
Also was wondering if the soverin GT was 17 freqs up to 25 what is the machines main expertise?? Like coins, jewelry Gold jewelry or what?
Guess I just dont quite understand why they say a machine does not find X X because it is in a different frequency and yet the machines that have the frequency built into them wont find it either.
Thanks for the reply Tom hope my questions are not anoying.
Grumpy

 

[GaryL]

Grumpy, I think the big problem MIGHT be the fact that one can not Manualy adjust the Ground Blance on the SE.. I think it is completely auto.
With that being stated I do stand to be corrected, but do think the SE can find Gold Nuggets, just not as small as a GOLD MACHINE ONLY.

Good Hunting!!

GaryL ....

 

[NH Bob]

n/t

 

[tab-nabit]

I'll have to agree with GaryL - in addition, some of the areas I have hunted for nuggets has high ground mineralization which some machines are better suited for the condition.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Gary, that is exactly it. To find teensy nuggets, the machine can't have automatically adjusting ground balancing. Because the minute a machine does that, it starts to interpret minor changes in the ground as part of the ground matrix. To find teensy nuggets, you have to have "locked" balance (or nearly so) so that you can stop right on top of the target, without it interpretting minor changes as part of the ground to "smooth out", as a coin/relic machine would do.

This is why a nugget machine is not well-suited for coin/relic hunting, lest a person go MAD hearing every single staple and BB in the ground.

 

[steve herschbach]

Hi Grumpy,

Frequency is only where it starts, and higher frequencies see smaller items better.

But other factors apply, with gain and voltage to the coil making a major difference.

The White's DFX can run at 15 kHz alone and uses the same coils as the MXT, which also runs at 15 kHz. Yet the MXT easily hits smaller targets. You can take a higher frequency machine and easily make it less sensitive to smaller items. The DFX was designed to find coins and run quietly while doing so. It simply is not tuned up as hot as an MXT, which was designed more with prospecting in mind. But the MXT is a noisy coin hunting machine due to this hotter setup.

The Explorer and Sovereign were designed as coin detectors, and so are purposefully designed not to hit on every tiny bit of aluminum ever spit out of a lawn mower. Just because a machine is quoted as having this or that frequency really means nothing. You have to take into account what the design goals were. The Explorer and Sovereign were simply not designed to hit pinheads. They hit gold just fine, but not tiny gold.

Long story short, do not focus so much on frequency. It is not the whole story.

Steve Herschbach

 

[grumpy]

Thanks Ya Thanks Ya Thanks Ya !!
You guys are so great at these problems. I had in the back of my mind (being a small one of a gunsmith) that it was the design rather than the freq that made the machine. I really thought and still do if a guy got into gold prospecting he should have a gold machine ;I mean why go hunting bear with a switch when you use a really big gun and get all his honey??
It boils down to the fact Freq is really a selling tool. Like here on the Arkansas River where I live and fly fish we have lots of fly fishing shops, with lots of flys tons of flys. Some for catching fish ! I would say probally the other 98% are for catching fishermen :)
Gotta get and use the metal detector that works and works for you .
Thanks Lots
Grumpy;


With SE and thinking Sov. GT.?

 

[digitrich]

n/t

 

[digitrich]

I am thinking of getting one for prospecting nuggets (been watching that show Gold Fever too many times). But I am thinking if one was proficient with the GP that maybe it could be used in the areas that were to heavily mineralized to use the SE. I am just wondering if the Extreme would work in areas with coal slag, or if because the coal slag pieces are much larger in size than the more spread out mineralized grains that are in the soil normally, and because of that, maybe it wouldn't be all that effective for that purpose. I am also wondering if maybe for four and a half THOUSAND dollars, just maybe, does it get better depth than an SE??? See, living in the Midwest and being 84 billion light years from the nearest gold nugget, I am going to need more than a trip or two a year of gold nuggets to make this purchase a sound one. So if anyone has used the GP Extreme, or the 2200 to locate gold coins, jewelry, or silver coins with any success, I'd sure love to hear about it.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Hey digitrich, I have the same question about the 4000: "What is its potential as a coin machine?". You know, since it is no secret that it will pick up coins easily at up to 1.5 ft (much deeper than any coin machine on the market now), could someone use it for coins, instead of nuggets? I think the problem is that .... since it's a pulse machine, you would have no way to reject nails and iron. If so, you would not want that in the average coin environment, lest you go crazy digging or hearing every single staple, nail, thumbtack, etc.. But I may be wrong, because other nugget machines do indeed have iron ID features. Not sure if the 4000 has tried some kind of pulse iron ID or not. I posted the same question on this forum: http://members5.boardhost.com/MetalDetecting/index.html We'll see what the response is.

 

[digitrich]

It's that whole ID'ing thing again. I wonder if someone makes a meter for the Extreme like they used to for the Sovereign. I doubt it though, I don't think the Extreme has that large of a customer base to have that many third party manufacturers. I saw someone makes a "gold button" for the Extreme but all it does is lock the tracking and unlock the tracking. Thanks for the link, it's pretty interesting reading.