What PI detector did you find you biggest nugget with?


Guest goldstudmuffin

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Don and Inhere,

Don, what was the turn around time to have Woody do the modds on your 2100?

Inhere, I also had major problems with the 4000 in mineralization with the normal setting with a mono coil. It ran great over the same ground in sensitive but I know it will miss some nuggets in this settings. I've done a lot of testing with the 4000 in different setting and didn't like the way it will miss nuggets if not set to that particular ground, coil, and nugget.

Inhere, I've dug most of the big nuggets over 18" in wahses.

Besides the GPX 4000 has another flaw... the only big nugget I found with it was a deffective one....

it had a dadgum hole in it! :blush:

I really like the simplicity of the 2100, I used one for years with Ismeal's GMP external modd and I loved it, I'm afraid that running the voltage as high as 8.5 volts is hard on 13 year old compoments and now that Minelab dropped the ball on service I'm leaning towards Woody's modds.

Flawed nugget found with the GPX4000... :spank:

Hello Goldstudmuffin,

It normally takes Woody 2 weeks to complete the mods but call him to make sure he is not booked up.

FYI:

If you have the older green SD2100D then the hot rock reject mod does work. That was the problem for me with that hot rock reject switch. I have the newer SD2100V2.

In the older unit there are dormant pulse timings in the software that can be activated that don't exist in the V2.

Woody was able to make the old D model ignore almost 100% of the nastiest hot rocks but it didn't work on the V2 because the software was rewritten on that newer model.

He did a hardware switch version instead for my V2 but it didn't work so well. I usually leave it turned off.

Here is a video of this mod on Youtube for the SD2100D.

(These are ironstone & basalt hot rocks that would cause a signal even in Enhance timings on the GPX-4500)

-Don

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Guest goldstudmuffin
I din't find my biggest nugget (5.53oz) with a pi, It was found with a vlf. In fact every nugget that I have found to date could have been found with a vlf.

Allen in MT

Hi Allen,

Wow, very nice nugget, we would love to hear all the details. I will be heading to Montana pretty soon myself. I never new there was so much mining history in Montana, maybe we could get together for lunch.

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Guest goldstudmuffin
Hey Goldstudmuffin you may try and send a PM to Frank (SGTFDA) on Bill's site he uses a moded 2000 from

Ismael Minelabmods.com. Just offering another option.

This one of the more interesting threads that I've read in awhile. I am glad that you started this one.

way2cool,

I've enjoyed it also, for the most part there are a bunch of great guys that prospect for gold. I have some theories about finding big gold, some people don't think there's enough big ones to justify hunting for them, or they don't know how or where or what equipment to use and that's fine with me.

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way2cool,

I've enjoyed it also, for the most part there are a bunch of great guys that prospect for gold. I have some theories about finding big gold, some people don't think there's enough big ones to justify hunting for them, or they don't know how or where or what equipment to use and that's fine with me.

You folks should talk to Jonathan Porter before wasting any of your money of Modified detectors. I agree with him that there's a lot of outright lies being told as to the benefits of modding. If you can afford it and the consequences of a botched job, go for it. Yes, it MAY be possible to generate a slight improvement with older models (unconfirmed). But beware of this trend which has been labeled by many experienced detector operators as a scam. I think you'll find that Minelab have had to repair countless detectors that were outright ruined by inexperienced persons who had charged the owners serious money for the privilege of modding them. I believe the term " idiot" was used to described the Modder who had performed a number of these mods - and this was in reference to the botched wiring job. I do NOT know who the person was that did those mods. But the resulting modifications actually "dumbed them down". I believe Ismael has some valid points with modding and it may be that it's possible to squeeze a little more life out of the older SDs & even a few GP Extremes by replacing and adjusting a few of the older parts.

But didn't Woody's sample-detector fail the recent tests performed in Victoria? I seem to remember that he felt there must have been something wrong with the machine that he donated for the exercise. Do some research and see if this is something that you should be doing or not.

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Nice Gold , goldstudmuffin I especially like that "flawed one" anyway as far as voltage I built several different voltage regulators for my 2100 and tried voltages up to 9v I finally settled on 8v anything I tried above 8v just had too much background buzz to justisfy any minimul depth increase and I to was worried about over stressing components. AzNuggetBob

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Nice Gold , goldstudmuffin I especially like that "flawed one" anyway as far as voltage I built several different voltage regulators for my 2100 and tried voltages up to 9v I finally settled on 8v anything I tried above 8v just had too much background buzz to justisfy any minimul depth increase and I to was worried about over stressing components. AzNuggetBob

Hello AzNuggetBob,

I have wondered about increasing the voltage on the SD2100. Do you think going from the pocket rocket's 7.3V to a different regulator at 8V would make much difference in depth?

Ismael made an adjustable regulator in the past but no longer offers it. He will provide the schematic if somebody wants to build one.

-Don

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InHere. I have to agree with you about most nuggets being at less than 2 feet in a DESERT Environment. The exception being dry stream beds and deep leads. Anyone who has visited WA and seen the vast areas of oldtimer drywash piles will have noticed that they seldom went over 1 foot deep because the gold simply ran out. Flattish places and gentle slopes are subject to soil depletion concentration. The soil simply slowly washes or blows away leaving the heavier, harder material behind and the result is a relatively thin layer of gravels and gold near the surface and that is why deserts are the preferred place to use detectors for nuggets. All the gold and harder material that was at one time in the rock and soils hundreds or thousands of feet thick above where you are standing is now in a thin layer under your feet. You aren't looking or finding gold that is coming from below the ground, but gold that was at one time far over your head. In steeper terrain the gold will move along with the soils by water action but at a slower rate than the lighter material but it will, given enough time reach the nearest dry stream course. If the streamcourse has lots of bedrock showing or just under the surface, this is also a great place to detect, but at some point downstream usually the overburden will eventually get thicker and at some point the bedrock becomes out of reach for our detectors because most of the heavier gold will be on the bedrock. As many have learned the hard way in the desert, after going to the expense of obtaining a bulldozer, getting permits to use it etc. They find that their PI had already gotten most of the gold and what was left didn't even pay for fuel. Deep isn't always the key to where the gold is. Many of my nicer nuggets from flats and gentle slopes including a 5 plus ouncer were barely an inch deep , and most of my larger gully found nuggets were at about 18" deep or less. There are of course places where the gold may be at random depths down to many feet or meters but in most places , there is a factor which limits how deep they will go (bedrock, Clay layers ) and that is where the concentrations will be. I'd say the vast majority of desert dry placers are within reach of any PI with a 16" coil on it.----Bob

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Hi Don Here is the regulator I built and Im using now. Its sort of a knock off of a Pocket Rocket. but is set up to run at 8v. and I added a few features including a large LCD meter so I can keep track of my remaining battery strength and volts going to my detector at the same time by just a flip of the rocker switch on the end. I built it inside of a mini battery charger case. AzNuggetBob

Anyway to answer your question it does help some raising the voltage with the regulators I tried and one was similar to Ismaels. For those that dont want to venture into building your own just go with the Pocket Rocket its a safe voltage and I used one off and on while experimenting and building my own and they work great.

Here is a couple of other tips if your building your own, Sony lion camcorder batteries work the best or build your own battery packs and don't forget to include a separate pack regulator. all factory lion battery packs have a built in regulator in side of the battery case and are rated for specific devices. these regulators control charging, overload, or excessive drain (short) Sony batteries have a higher built in rating then most and wont shut down at turn on of the SD. SD's have a significant power drain or load when turned on or started up and shut down other factory batteries packs I tried. But if shut down does happen just put the battery back in a charger and this will reset the built in battery regulator again. Take care all and if you have any questions I'll answer them if I can. AzNuggetBob

post-1452-1246997530_thumb.jpg

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QUOTE (claim jumper @ Jul 5 2009, 10:01 AM) *

I asked you first!!! You give me what I asked for, then I will give you what you want!!!

Awaiting your response claim jumper.Below is picture of a Geophysical VTEM TDEM coil.Why do you think that such a big TX is used?

vtem.jpg

all the best,

doug

Dang Doug, I thought only Coiltek built coils that big? Its an interesting concept but GEESE. I'll bet it doesn't pick up 1 ozers or does it? That's what I hate about big coils. All kidding aside. There was a company flying something similar below a heli around here a while back but it looked more like a fish, like whats nominally towed behind a boat but I was told it was a magnetometer. I dont have a picture of it, wish I did. anyway great photo. AznuggetBob

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InHere. I have to agree with you about most nuggets being at less than 2 feet in a DESERT Environment. The exception being dry stream beds and deep leads. Anyone who has visited WA and seen the vast areas of oldtimer drywash piles will have noticed that they seldom went over 1 foot deep because the gold simply ran out. Flattish places and gentle slopes are subject to soil depletion concentration. The soil simply slowly washes or blows away leaving the heavier, harder material behind and the result is a relatively thin layer of gravels and gold near the surface and that is why deserts are the preferred place to use detectors for nuggets. All the gold and harder material that was at one time in the rock and soils hundreds or thousands of feet thick above where you are standing is now in a thin layer under your feet. You aren't looking or finding gold that is coming from below the ground, but gold that was at one time far over your head. In steeper terrain the gold will move along with the soils by water action but at a slower rate than the lighter material but it will, given enough time reach the nearest dry stream course. If the streamcourse has lots of bedrock showing or just under the surface, this is also a great place to detect, but at some point downstream usually the overburden will eventually get thicker and at some point the bedrock becomes out of reach for our detectors because most of the heavier gold will be on the bedrock. As many have learned the hard way in the desert, after going to the expense of obtaining a bulldozer, getting permits to use it etc. They find that their PI had already gotten most of the gold and what was left didn't even pay for fuel. Deep isn't always the key to where the gold is. Many of my nicer nuggets from flats and gentle slopes including a 5 plus ouncer were barely an inch deep , and most of my larger gully found nuggets were at about 18" deep or less. There are of course places where the gold may be at random depths down to many feet or meters but in most places , there is a factor which limits how deep they will go (bedrock, Clay layers ) and that is where the concentrations will be. I'd say the vast majority of desert dry placers are within reach of any PI with a 16" coil on it.----Bob

G'day montana,

It's not hard to figure out why you do well on the gold, when you write post's like that.

I reckon most people would be wise to read it 4 or 5 times.

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You folks should talk to Jonathan Porter before wasting any of your money of Modified detectors. I agree with him that there's a lot of outright lies being told as to the benefits of modding. If you can afford it and the consequences of a botched job, go for it. Yes, it MAY be possible to generate a slight improvement with older models (unconfirmed). But beware of this trend which has been labeled by many experienced detector operators as a scam. I think you'll find that Minelab have had to repair countless detectors that were outright ruined by inexperienced persons who had charged the owners serious money for the privilege of modding them. I believe the term " idiot" was used to described the Modder who had performed a number of these mods - and this was in reference to the botched wiring job. I do NOT know who the person was that did those mods. But the resulting modifications actually "dumbed them down". I believe Ismael has some valid points with modding and it may be that it's possible to squeeze a little more life out of the older SDs & even a few GP Extremes by replacing and adjusting a few of the older parts.

But didn't Woody's sample-detector fail the recent tests performed in Victoria? I seem to remember that he felt there must have been something wrong with the machine that he donated for the exercise. Do some research and see if this is something that you should be doing or not.

I do agree with you on this Nero there are some people doing botch mod jobs out there, they just don't know what their doing. And if your only taking into account the early attempts at modding I don't think that's a fair assessment. You should also take into account that some of these mods were pushing the detectors component limits to the max by some. Some of us modders have learned what those limits are, some have not. AzNuggetBob

ABTW "Some" of the mods I do on my detectors only upgrade them to newer machines.

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Guest goldstudmuffin
I'd say the vast majority of desert dry placers are within reach of any PI with a 16" coil on it.----Bob

Montana Bob,

Good post, I really like the 16" round also. There is as you mentioned always a exception to the rule. I can think of least 3 nuggets over 1 ounce that a 16" round mono missed at our 18 ounce patch, in fact every coil in our arsenal including a 18" round mono's and 18" DD missed a beautiful 1.81 ouncer using a modded 2100 and GP 3000's. It took a 24" round on the modded 2100 at 21" deep to finally hear it after working the wash many, many times in all directions for months. The wash is deep and full of nasty course black sand. The GPX 4000 has trouble in the normal mode in this wash with a mono unless you turn the gain way down to where it's loosing depth. The ses/deep mode just won't go that deep.

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Guest goldstudmuffin
Nice nugget's goldstudmuffin,

I reckon the one you found with the 4000 may have sounded a bit of a funny signal?

The 4000 found a lot of gold over here in sen/smooth, but I prefer the 3500 for normal mode with a mono

As far as running 8.5v in your 2100, well its up to you BUT if my old mate Reg was still talking to me, I bet he would agree with this.

"If you doubled the voltage from 6v to 12v and everything still worked, you would gain maybe less then 1" extra depth."

Now about mod's, a lot of the mods for the early SD's were developed by a mate of Ismael's many years ago. Ismael used this info to developed his GMP and sold quite a few,when the schematic's of the 2000 were released Ismael

really knew what he was doing and developed even more mods, he passed this info onto woody and some other modders.

Now this is my opinion and I'll say it just once, IF YOU MUST HAVE YOUR DETECTOR MODDED, GET ISMAEL TO DO IT.

Why not woody??? Well woody has likely thought up another 2 mod's while I've been typing this and many of these mod's don't work and are not tested, I have a mate who had his 3000 completely ruined by 1 of these idiot mod's and I would take his 100% satisfaction guarantee with a pinch of salt, he sure as hell hasn't offered to remove the idiot mod or repay the money spent.

So If you have a woody modded detector that you are happy with, your lucky, you threw the dice and won. My opinion is It works only because of the Ismael input.

There is too much BS to go through on his site, just remember that no one has the complete schematic for even the 3000 at this time.

Inhere, I can't keep up with Minelab wanting $4000 or $5000 every 18 months or 2 years for the lastest detector. So I guess I do have to Modd the old ones to bring them up in performence to the latest or even better in some cases than the lastest detector.

I have one of Ismael external GMP modds and it does more than just improve depth, I've used it for years. The reason I considered Woody was he has SD parts in stock for repairs that Minelab claims they can't get anymore. Thanks for your concern about Woody's modds, I'll check him out better. You just hear so many people bad mouthing others it's hard to know who to believe anymore. I just wish Ismael didn't go bush for so long, when he gets back is when are detecting season starts over here.

PS, The nugget with the hole in it was only about 15" deep and sounded like a rusty can.

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Hey Goldstudmuffin and all,

Russ - I know Woody is a member of this forum. He might not post since I deleted one of his recent posts trying to promote one of his battery mods. It was posted on my Pocket Rocket thread. I have no problems with others making stuff similar, but there are other ways to promote your products besides trying to high-jack a thread.

I've heard pro's/con's about Woody's mods. I'm sure it's like Minelab Repair thing, people are looking for miracles. They are hoping Woody can take an older detector and make it outperform the latest and greatest. Sounds like Woody and some of those others guys are very knowledgeable when it comes to mods, repairs and general knowledge on how they work.

On another note, I find this sentence interesting since you stated you didn't find any nuggets when I loaned you the Coiltek 24-inch round. I never expected anything, if you found something or not. I loaned you that coil as a friend and was hoping you would find something. If you did, you would probably purchase one, so it's a win-win for both.

It took a 24" round on the modded 2100 at 21" deep to finally hear it after working the wash many, many times in all directions for
months

I loaned another coil out and it just returned damaged and tapped up per what my wife stated. I'm not jumping the gun, just saying ....

AZNuggetBob & Montana - Great information you guys are posting. Heck, everything is posting great information.

Take care,

Rob Allison

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Guest goldstudmuffin

Hi Rob,

That's right Rob I never found anything with that coil when you loaded it to me. I used it at 6 ounce wash in a different mountain range and never used it at 18 ounce wash at that time. I found that nugget after I bought the coil from a guy in New Mexico.

I guess that's why I loaned you a MXT to go to Alaska!!!

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Inhere, I can't keep up with Minelab wanting $4000 or $5000 every 18 months or 2 years for the lastest detector.

Nobody needs to buy a new detector. And nobody has a gun to their heads being told that they need to. That's something that only the professional nugget hunters do because they believe that any new release may have an improvement on it which might give them an edge. So when a new model is announced (usually every 23 months), people are queued around the block with cash in their hands trying to get one of the first pieces of stock that is shipped. It's absolutely insane. And completely unnecessary. Just treat your detector like a car... it's designed to get you from A to B. Nobody at Minelab is forcing anyone to buy the latest detector when it comes out and nobody has to do so in order to find gold. I would estimate that a good 10% of the buyers of newly released detectors want one for bragging-rights alone. A professional nugget hunter will see an advantage in slightly reduced noise or slightly improved depth because an extra inch may be the difference between finding an x-ounce nugget - or not.

I think that, like computers, people feel that their existing computer is inadequate if there's another on the market that is promoted as being fast/better/stronger. And I'm guessing that the very same applies to detectors because we all want the best new toy on the block. For the same reason, people will trade up their mobile phones, computers, ipods, detectors, cars, wives etc as soon as something new catches their imagination. I can't see how this can be avoided. Please be sure to pass on your suggestions if you know how to avoid this pitfall because we all seem susceptible to it! Must be human nature.

So I guess I do have to Modd the old ones to bring them up in performence to the latest or even better in some cases than the lastest detector.

Again, there's literally NO evidence of excessive improved performance from Modding a detector. Just minor performance issues in SOME that SUGGEST a slight sensitivity increase on older SDs and a few of the GP-Extremes. Some of the modders claim that there is but any perceived performance enhancement is extremely small. If you are one of those people who have been deceived into thinking that an old detector can be "modded" into outperforming (or even coming close to) a new detector, then you have sadly been misled. But you wouldn't be the only person. I've seen a LOT of the failed Mods... they're out there by the dozen. And all of those people were terribly disappointed to find their detectors were damaged by the so-called Modding process. A few still worked but had no resale value.

People are always free to choose. They can buy a nmew detector or continue to work with what they already own (and learn to use it properly). There's enough examples of people doing extremely well with older detectors (with numerous mentions of it on this forum) and possibly outperforming their rivals with newer machines - but mostly because they took the time to learn to understand their machines. As for Modding, that's also a personal decision but the jury is out on whether they actually work. They certainly don't stand up to the hype at the moment. And the results seem to include:

* some detectors which are no different to before the modding. (wasted money)

* some which have a slightly perceived sensitivity. (real or imagined?)

* some which can detect smaller targets but no longer the larger, deeper targets. (useless)

* some which are actually less sensitive than before they were modded. (very common)

* some which are claimed to be noticeably more sensitive as a result (not common).

If you do get a mod done (and we're talking about electronic modifications, not a new shaft or a body modification to the case), be sure to get a switch installed so that you can completely deactivate the mod. Of course, there's now claims that mods with such a switch are actually having the switch settings reversed so that the "OEM" setting is actually the "MOD" setting. They deliberately dumbed down the machine and the user will think that by switching to MOD, it will enhance the detector... when in reality, they are simply switching it back to OEM. Nice!

To answer the OP's original question: The two detectors I've seen which have brought in the largest nuggets have been the GP-Extreme & the SD-2000. The largest nugget I've personally retrieved was with the GPX-4500 in March this year. The second largest was several years ago with a borrowed GP-3500.

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Guest goldstudmuffin
Goldstudmuffin. See if you can borrow an SD2000 and put that 24" on it in the 18ounce wash. I don't remember it being affected too badly by blacksands. If that fails, I've got a freind with a bulldozer.----Bob

Hey Bob, maybe we can give you a tour of the patch sometime.

I thought this was fitting for some of us...

wrong.jpg

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