Gold Bug 2 Tips


Recommended Posts

Tips...Well, run the sensitivity around 6 to 6 1/2, set the threshold so you can barely hear it, hunt in all metal, use the discrimination to check signals, USE headphones, keep it ground balanced. Swing sped not too important. You will hear the target from very fast to barely moving. An interesting lesson to practice, when you get a weak signal, slow way down and listen to how it sounds. Does it sound round or real snappy? Most gold will sound very sharp, pops in pops out.

Practice those settings and see if that helps. After 13 years, about 7000 hours of hunting with the GB2 you sort of become one with the detector.

Oh, be sure you use the 6" coil.

Goldbug Ron

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tips...Well, run the sensitivity around 6 to 6 1/2, set the threshold so you can barely hear it, hunt in all metal, use the discrimination to check signals, USE headphones, keep it ground balanced. Swing sped not too important. You will hear the target from very fast to barely moving. An interesting lesson to practice, when you get a weak signal, slow way down and listen to how it sounds. Does it sound round or real snappy? Most gold will sound very sharp, pops in pops out.

Practice those settings and see if that helps. After 13 years, about 7000 hours of hunting with the GB2 you sort of become one with the detector.

Oh, be sure you use the 6" coil.

Goldbug Ron

Ron, what is the real difference between the GB2 and the GBpro? Which do you recommend for sniping gold nuggets?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Miner49, I just got a GB Pro and really can't answer that question yet. The Pro sounds very much like the GB2 with the additional digital features. Perhaps you could address that question to my long time hunting partner TrinityAu. He has been using the Pro since March, and knows a lot more about it than I do.

Goldbug Ron

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've had time this summer to compare both the GB Pro and GB2 - and I'd say that the GB Pro is a great multipurpose machine with a good discrimination system that is very capable of finding gold. If your desire is a pure gold machine and you dont give a hoot about hunting coins or jewelry, then for pure prospecting, the GB 2 is clearly superior.

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Admin

Hey Guys,

I was a Fisher dealer for many years and used the GB and GB2 for a long time. I have owned a handful of Bug 2's, still have one. I had a customer that purchased a GPX5000 not long ago that also purchased a GoldBug Pro cause of all the hype. He wasn't impressed, but figured he would bring it out and let me play with it. We done a lot of testing and I'm not anywhere convinced it's even close to performance of a GB2 at least on smaller gold.

Personally, it seems more like a multi-purpose detector with a much lower operating freq, so I won't be going out in investing in a GB Pro anytime soon.

The GB2 will find much smaller gold no question about it.

I think a Minelab PI and a GB2 is the ultimate combination if you can afford to own both. The Minelab PI gets majority of the gold in the higher mineralized ground and larger/smaller pieces at depth, the GB2 can clean up the surface dinks, invisible gold (very porous) or specimens with smaller amounts of gold content. You won't be missing much if you use these two together in an area.

Just my thoughts,

Rob Allison

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From 1 grain up to about 1 DWT theres very little difference, on fly specs the GB11 is better, on larger nuggets the GB Pro is way deeper. on the GTB Pro it [s very easy to avoid digging iron. With the boost mode on the GB11 a very small piece of gold will sound louder. you can't go wrong with either one

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey All, Here are some pictures in support of the GB Pro. I dont have anything against the GBII. I used one for many years myself. It is just my opinion that the GB Pro will do everything that the GBII will do but better, easier and with far less of a learning curve. Like any unit you have to play with it and learn it. I have been out almost every other day since it came out and I am just trying to enlighten people about a good thing. TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of my last trips out with the GB2 resulted in therse 43 little pickers with the largest weighing .258 grams and the smallest .008 grams. There were other VLF gold machines there and they could not hear the majority of what I found.

Allen

For centuries gold has been weighed in Troy Wt, grains, pennyweights and ounces. a grain is a small and precise unit of weight. Nowadays everone seems to want to weigh it in grams and fractions thereof. How many .258s does it take to make 31.1034768, or in easier figures 1 ounce? 24 grains = 1 DWT 20 DWT =1 ounce or 480 grains to a ounce. Simple. Troy weight is the international and traditonal unit of weight for gold and has been since the 5th century. I can't even visualise the size of a piece of gold that weighs .258 gms. Maybe I'm old fashioned but Troy just seems simpler to me. Ft Knox even uses the troy unit of Wt.............JMO

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Tracker, Here is the same gold in TROY and the original photo in GRAMS. It is still very, very, very small stuff. I am just pushing the point that the GB Pro will detect the same fly**** that the GBII will, only deeper , easier, and with less of a learning curve. TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Allen,

.008 thousandths of a gram or 8 milligrams? Am I understanding that right?

I guess if I weighed the .258 gram piece in grains it would weigh 3.9815484551 grains or 0.1658978523 dwt I guess

Well I took them out and re-weighed the smallest piece and this is what I came up with

This scale is for up to 50 carats and 10 grams an weighs in the thousands

post-122-0-00613200-1317867101_thumb.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What do you guys do about EMI on the GB2? The past 3 outings I've had to stop for a bit until it stopped. I'm in the moutains and away from humanity... No power lines anywhere close.

I stopped at radioshack on the way home and bought a ferrite choke. We'll see if that helps.

Could be an aircraft TXing on radio or AC radar.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have used the Gold Bug 2 since they came out. I also have a Gold Bug Pro that I have used a lot in Alaska. I got to play around with Chris' unit also while in Australia.

The Gold Bug Pro is a great little unit, especially for someone who wants a multi-purpose detector strong on gold. I do think on gram size or better nuggets it can equal or exceed the Gold Bug 2 for performance. But it absolutely will not hit gold as small as I can hit with my Gold Bug 2. It struggles with extreme hot ground and hot rocks that the Gold Bug 2 will work better in. This is surprising as the Gold Bug 2 is such a high frequency detector. In both Alaska and Australia we got into hot rocks that were so bad that the only way to get a Gold Bug 2 or Gold Bug Pro to shut up is to go to the disc mode on both units. In constant cross checking the Gold Bug 2 would find nuggets in iron disc mode that the Gold Bug Pro would not register on, even knowing they were there. In all metal again it was surprising in Australia that the Gold Bug 2 would ground balance to hot red ground more effectively than the Gold Bug Pro. The Pro seemed hypersensitive to variations in the ground that the Gold Bug 2 easily handled.

Again, the Pro is a good little unit. But there is no way that it will be replacing my Gold Bug 2 as my go-to unit for small gold. I agree with Rob - the GPX 5000 and Gold Bug 2 are a killer combo.

The Gold Bug 2 forces me to think in grains. 480 grains to an ounce, and it is the same grain used in weighing gunpowder. So I use a digital powder scale accurate to 0.1 grain or 1/4800th of a Troy ounce. I very regularly find, well, let's not call them nuggets but flakes, that weigh up at 0.1 grain. I also get some that will not register at all as they weigh less than 0.1 grain.

Before somebody laughs let me point out that a 0.1 grain flake at $1600/oz is 33 cents. And yeah, I could pan or sluice them but where I get them water is far away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have used the Gold Bug 2 since they came out. I also have a Gold Bug Pro that I have used a lot in Alaska. I got to play around with Chris' unit also while in Australia.

The Gold Bug Pro is a great little unit, especially for someone who wants a multi-purpose detector strong on gold. I do think on gram size or better nuggets it can equal or exceed the Gold Bug 2 for performance. But it absolutely will not hit gold as small as I can hit with my Gold Bug 2. It struggles with extreme hot ground and hot rocks that the Gold Bug 2 will work better in. This is surprising as the Gold Bug 2 is such a high frequency detector. In both Alaska and Australia we got into hot rocks that were so bad that the only way to get a Gold Bug 2 or Gold Bug Pro to shut up is to go to the disc mode on both units. In constant cross checking the Gold Bug 2 would find nuggets in iron disc mode that the Gold Bug Pro would not register on, even knowing they were there. In all metal again it was surprising in Australia that the Gold Bug 2 would ground balance to hot red ground more effectively than the Gold Bug Pro. The Pro seemed hypersensitive to variations in the ground that the Gold Bug 2 easily handled.

Again, the Pro is a good little unit. But there is no way that it will be replacing my Gold Bug 2 as my go-to unit for small gold. I agree with Rob - the GPX 5000 and Gold Bug 2 are a killer combo.

The Gold Bug 2 forces me to think in grains. 480 grains to an ounce, and it is the same grain used in weighing gunpowder. So I use a digital powder scale accurate to 0.1 grain or 1/4800th of a Troy ounce. I very regularly find, well, let's not call them nuggets but flakes, that weigh up at 0.1 grain. I also get some that will not register at all as they weigh less than 0.1 grain.

Before somebody laughs let me point out that a 0.1 grain flake at $1600/oz is 33 cents. And yeah, I could pan or sluice them but where I get them water is far away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree that the GB11 is superior under those conditions, but in moderate dirt the GB PRO is deeper on a larger nugget, and in trashy areas the disc does a better job of eliminating iron. IMO the GB pro is close to preformance of the original GB on small gold or maybe a little better and has comparable depth. (Both operate at close to the same freq.) The original GB was deeper than the GB11 and if it had a disc. it would still be a great detector. I probably found more gold with the old Bug than with all my detectors since. (Biggest was 9 oz.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the GB2 is a great crumb cruncher as I call them. Dont get me wrong I keep one in my arsenal . My wife found her first nugget with one in a place i'd hunted several times with a GB1. They are great for small nuggets and some places very well suited. Its been my experience with them that they don't have a lot of punch in very hot ground because they are VLF and (ground balanced based circuitry ) and a little bit sensitive to hot rocks Ive never found anything large or deep with one but where most of the gold is small nuggets their a decent machine for the money. AzNuggetBob

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.