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How to reduce noise in highly mineralised ground

K

keysk0

New member
Hi, I am new to metal detecting and I have an X-Terra 705 with a DD coil. I have found a place to detect for gold, there is lots of quartz, iron, copper, you name it. I set my detector to prospecting mode and noise cancel to negative 2, I ground balanced and placed iron masking on. I also used the tracking as well.

My problem is I still had background noise everywhere, no matter where I detected. I would here a louder noise when over a target, but it was really had to distinguish a genuine target noise. Only the loud target noises could be heard and that was with headphones.

I'm not sure what else I can do, can anybody help me? Any advice or tips would be great.

Thanks
 
Watch Kevin Hoagland's video first. He shows exactly what to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJcXBf5ivus


Other than that, I can only suggest that a lot of falsing occurs due to sweeping too fast. Slow up some and see if it doesn't settle down.
 
Unfortunately there's nothing you can do and it's for this reason that PI machines are favored in these highly mineralized areas. I have tried my 705 in very similar areas with both the elliptical and 6" HF DD coils. I've tried swinging slow and fast, sensitivity low. Ive tried with tracking on and off and GB offsets. I've tried all types of iron mask and threshold levels.

I'm not sure where you are but I've tried in Clermont in Australia and there is so many small pieces of iron stone that you just get beep after beep all day. As you say, if you hit a large piece of gold you will hear it as it tends to scream compared to the small iron stone. But really, you can just forget trying to find any gold smaller than a .22 bullet. Small gold sounds exactly like that iron stone unfortunately and the iron mask won't get rid of it without also getting rid of small gold.

My advice, stick it in coin mode and look for old mining relics.
 
Thank you brgordon17'. I wish I knew this before I bought it. Let me know if you upgrade to something else, I'll be interested to know what would be a better kind of machine to use for gold hunting in highly mineralised areas. I'm in rocky by the way. Thanks for taking the time to reply too. I was thinking of buying the 6 inch double d coil to improve performance too, but seeing as you've already tried it, I'm all out of options.
 
Don't get me wrong, your machine can find gold in mineralized areas but if there's heaps of that iron stone around you'll just end up going nuts. I think the 6" HF DD is the best coil of the lot but I use it mostly for relics in areas with lots of rubbish. Personally, I think you'll do just as well in your type of gold fields with the eliptical coil, as you'll be hunting for bigger targets that scream above the small rolling beeps that hot rocks and iron stone give.

Try the old diggings and mullock heaps. You might find these to be much quieter than the ground elsewhere as the iron stone hasn't sat in the weather for as long. Take a shovel and dig off the top few inches and detect again. Also, if you're near water, give panning a go. There's a guy at our local detecting club that finds more gold than most with a small sluice and pan.

To be honest, the SDC 2300 is the machine that's going to find gold for you. Most of the easy gold was gone many, many years ago and detectable gold is getting harder to find. The SDC 2300 will find gold that no other machine has been able to find to date (the small stuff) so that's what I would buy if I was interested. i know guys here in Aus that are finding 50+ small nuggets every day. They're combing those grounds bare of gold and before too long, you'll be struggling to find gold with that machine too.
 
Gold is a funny metal. Once you find some, it gets in your veins, you get the fever and you'll go nuts trying to find more of it. It's great to find but I think it's a mugs game unless you've got plenty of time and money, and even then, you'll be very lucky to find enough to cover your costs. Everyone wants gold and I wanted it too for a while.

I love the 705 though! I can tell the difference between coins and trash at least 90% of the time. At the end of the day, detecting is just hobby whether it's gold or relics you're after, and personally, Ive found way more relics than gold. I like to detect the old mining ghost towns. Lots to be found in these still, especially in Aus. I prospect for everything to keep my options open: gold (panning and detecting), relics and gems.
 
I agree in coin and treasure mode it's fine when I avoid creek beds and focus on the beach for example. But when particularly looking for gold, in areas highly mineralised it seems to be useless. I was particularly focusing on creek beds though. Should I avoid creek beds? Is there less ion stone in creek beds or would it be much the same in the whole area. Also, another question I have is when in prospecting mode can you switch over to coin and treasure to distinguish if it's junk or not, I'm having trouble distinguishing between different noises. When I do switch over I seem to be getting a lot of bouncy targets that very in number pattern and I've been avoiding these because i read unstable targets were junk. Plus I was doing this to know how far to dig. Would you advice against this, if so why? Thanks again for your help.
 
I think it's perfectly fine to be looking for gold in creek beds, assuming that you're in a gold-bearing area of course. Knowledge is the key for finding gold. If it was me, I would be testing the creek bed with a pan before getting out the detector. If you're getting decent gold in the pan, your chances of finding some with the detector are reasonable too (although I would just pan/sluice). On the other hand, if you get nothing in your pan after doing a number of test pans in different areas (inside bends, rock bars etc) then it's a safe bet that there is no gold in that part of the creek and you move on. You'll need to be looking in areas where the gold is alluvial (deposited by water/erosion) or where reef gold is shedding into a creek or down the side of a hill. You don't need water either if you have a good pan. Always keep an eye out for gems too :)

I would think that there is a lot less iron stone in creek beds, that is certainly the case here in Aus. That iron stone gets noisier the longer it sits on the surface and becomes oxidised. However, I'm by no means a geologist nor familiar with your area.

I think it's worth switching to coin mode just for the simple reason that it's all a part of learning your detector and the ground you're working. In saying that, don't trust your readings too much until you get much better with it - so dig everything anyway. I've also found the readings to be somewhat more unreliable due to the mineralisation. This is especially so on small and deep objects like .22 bullets but on coins and up it's usually pretty good. In general, I think the idea that jumpy signals are junk tends to hold true most of the time. You could try turning the sensitivity down but I suspect it's already quite low anyway. Personally, if I'm looking for gold in an area that has little junk, I just want my machine to find metal and the prospecting mode will give you the best chance of doing that. The 705 will scream when you hit real metal!

When you get a target, use your pick to scrape back the top cm or so of dirt as this will get rid of the majority of the loudest iron stones and that mineralised crust. Swing again in prospecting mode and if the signal gets better you're probably on to something. It's worth checking out with coin mode at this point. If it doesn't get better or is completely gone, your piece of metal was right near the surface. In these areas, you MUST hunt with tracking on. I tend to auto GB to begin with then just use tracking from there on. I've never found tracking to GB out a genuine target although I still switch mine off when I find one, as it helps to "reset" the auto tracking from time to time by switching it off and on again.

In our detecting club, many of the guys running PI machines still have an xterra or other VLF machine in the back of the car. Why? they use them in known gold nugget areas that are high in junk and where most others PI users get sick of digging junk all day. Here, the discrimination ability of the xterra has a real advantage. Something to consider when choosing a place to hunt ;)
 
Thank you so much for all the tips and advice, I'll certainly tKe it all on board. I took it out again to a different rocky creek bed and it just seems like there's a target everywhere :( false signals galore or junk everywhere, really hard to tell. I'll keep playing with it and adjusting different settings, hopefully I'll master this machine soon. Thank you again.
 
Yeah it's a tough one! I still struggle in these areas too and Im still learning a lot. I think the biggest thing is being confident in your abilities. Take out some lead sinkers of varying sizes and bury them an inch down. The size that gives you solid a hit, that is distinctly different to the ground noise, is what you're listening for. Just ignore everything else. Sure, you could be walking over small nuggets but it's just not worth the frustration of digging rocks all day. Good luck! Im sure you'll find something if you stick at it.
 
First of all I would like to say, do your noise cancel in auto noise cancel. Auto will get it more precise than manual every time. Reduce sensitivity and also run it in ground tracking and apply the ground balance offset. You won't wipe it out every time but it will help some. Take those iron stones put them in a pile and try ground balancing over them and not operating in tracking. Also try beach mode. You won't eliminate all of it and some places you just won't have a chance with a VLF. Have a couple spots like that here in Montana for gold hunting. Makes me regret selling my gpx4000.
 
Thank you so much for the advice, I've had a play around with all of these settings mentioned, however I haven't tried over iron stone. I'll give that a try too. Thank you again.
 
another option to try is the 7.5 kHz coil, not a NEL as they do not handle salt on the etrac so I doubt they will do any good in the bad ground, see if you can borrow a 7.5 and see how it does :biggrin:

AJ
 
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