My Goldstrike arrived yesterday. It is a cream puff. New as described.
While I was bench testing last night I noticed something I hadn't noticed before; there is no spot in the ground balance settings that decreases the response to gold.
The Ground Balance range is -99 to +99, zero inclusive, in increments of 1. In other words the range goes -99 to 0 to +99. At a -99 setting high conductors like clad dollars read as iron. As the ground balance is moved away from the negative side toward 0 the hi conductors start to re-appear as non-ferrous. By the time you get to -50 they are hitting pretty good and the response continues to get a little better as you move closer to 0. However, as you pass 0 and continue to +99 the high conductors continue to respond better and better until at last you hit +99. At +99, a clad dollar is responding with a repeatable non-ferrous response at 13".
So the ground balance settings do have an effect on high conductor response.
However. ground balance settings from -99 to 0 have no effect on gold response. Using my thin 18 K white gold ring, I noticed no change in response in ground balance settings from -99 to 0. I continued to get a pretty consistant 8" non-ferrous response on the ring which is expected for the 5x10 DD coil as I've discovered with my 5x10 bench marking exercise. But, as I move toward and to a +99 setting, the ring response improved, until at a +99 setting I was getting another 1-1/2" in distance.
This was performed with a Sens setting of 9. Threshold setting of 0. Disc setting of 99.
So a positive ground balance setting improved both low and high conductor responses significantly.
No spot along the ground balance setting range deadened low conductor response.
High conductor non-ferrous response decreases as ground balance settings move toward and to -99.
Of course, since the GoldStrike is no longer in production this info doesn't help many people but I thought some might find it interesting information.
HH
Mike
