I have a question.....

[Salida]

I have a question about the GMT and the MXT.

The MXT operates at 14 khz.

The GMT operates at 48khz.

The Garrett AT PRO operates at 18khz and the Gold Bug 2 operates at 19 KHZ

NOW THE NEW GOLD BUG operates at 70 KHZ.????????

So my question/s is this; if operating at 70 khz was so great for nuggett hunting then why didn't WHITEs, Garretts
and other manufactures do this a long time ago? Is it really that big a deal or is there a place that meteal detector machines can safely sroop and still have a GREAT machine for nugget hunting?

One last question. Does it cost anymore to make a higher Khz machine than a lower one?

Please weight in on these questions.

 

[Tom Slick]

No cost difference beween the Frequencies. Each manufacture designs based on how they weigh everything that influences the detectors performance and what they expect for each machine. I believe the choice of frequency is based on lots of different criteria. Higher frequency works well for the smaller nuggets but lower frequency works better for depth in highly minerlized soil. Manufactures are looking for a compromise between the ability to detect large nuggets at depth and the ability to locate small nuggets near the surface. Some areas don't have large nuggets so a higher frequency (GMT) machine works best. Where large nuggets have been found, the lower frequency machines shine (MXT).

 

[skookum]

High,
Good evaluation of the matter.
That pretty well hits the nail dead centre on its

 

[salmonriverhotrock]

Something you need to consider as well, is many of the most popular Gold areas have been worked and reworked on top of worked over again through a great many years with untold varieties of equipment and numbers of hands and eyes. The easy Gold if there was easy Gold to find many years ago, is not so easy to find anymore and the size is getting smaller and smaller unless, you belong to a Club that has a very good mining claim, a drainage has a flash flood or a mountain has a slide and reveals new or virgin material or bedrock, or you just happen to be the first human being to find a place that has never been prospected and good luck on that one and more and more places are being withdrawn from prospecting/mining. Even Meteor Hunting has become so popular, the most popular areas are suffering the same effects. Meteor Hunters are so aggressive now, the first hint of a ground strike sends them in droves to the area and I suspect here in the not to far away future, the Government will regulate that just like prospecting/mining as it's my understanding, there is much more money in it than Gold if you get lucky.

I have a machine that does the 50kHz and another that does the 15kHz. As very hard and as much time is required to find gold, I don't need to be passing up the tiny Gold that adds up to at least something while I can detect that Gold just as big as the 15kHz will do. As much as I like Garrett for instance, I have no idea why they have held their Gold machines hostage to what I think is an out dated frequency for Gold Hunting today. Even at 3 kHz, you will find Gold if it's big enough. You are talking machines and depending on available coils, being able to detect at least 1/2 Grain of Gold or possibly smaller and machines only capable of a few or more Grains or Grams and bigger. It's my understanding now through a friend who nugget hunts often and is a member of a few Clubs, is the guys are now going to PI machines in the heavily worked over areas because they will go deeper than the traditional VLF machines while being less effected by mineral/iron conditions but will only hit on the bigger and deeper previously undetected nuggets. These guys are also digging bigger and deeper holes. They are not using little Nugget Cups and simple hand scoops or trowels alone.

 

[GoGoGopher]

The average metal detector user is NEVER gonna nugget shoot...Now for a dedicated nugget machine...the 70KHz may be a great frequency...I often wonder how much is too much though...how high do you go before ity is no longer benificial???

HH,

 

[skookum]

High,
Now that depends totally on your claim and the amount of silver found thereon.
In many claims on the North-West coast, silver was found in abundance with gold.
Back then (in the old days) though, silver was pretty well worthless in the usual amounts that were common; the costs of retrieving it didn