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GTI 2500 coil advice needed

R

Rob M

New member
Hi guys, have not posted in a while (a long time). I have a question about using my 2500 for hunting small nuggets in California's gold country rivers IE. Yuba, American. I saw a post from a few months back where someone prefered the 9.5 stock coil to the 4.5 sniper coil or the 5x10 scorcher. Would I use all-metal or disc. and since these coils don't image, do they still work well w/ the 2500. I will probably sniping over some river rocks and such. Thanks for all your advice guys.
 
I have never hunted for gold with my 2500. My opinion is that I would hunt for gold only in True All Metal mode. I one time found a .177 pellet in a farmers field at around 6 inches doing this. I suppose that little chunk of lead could have just as easily been gold. I would try out different coils but I think the 5x10 Scorcher would probably be best. I also think that imaging would be almost useless for gold prospecting. You never know what nature will create either how big or how small. I hope you hit big. Alan and John are the guys I would listen to along with UW who knows most everything about Garrett machines.

Chris
 
Hey Rob,
I use the GTI 2500 in N. Cali for hunting nugs. They are hard to find for sure. Hunt in All Metal Mode as it is the most senstive and powerful. Use the Disc mode to check for hot rocks and target id. Usually pinpoint mode doesnt respond to hotrocks, but occasionally do, which is a great tool when deciding what you are digging.
I prefer the 9.5 coil because it is the most sensitive. And Image on a small nug will show as an A size target. Image very useful, but should dig most targets anyway. I used the GTI 2500 on the N fork of the Yuba also. As both areas have many hot rocks and minerals they wlll drive you crazy after an hour or so, if this happens I usually switch to the 5x10 coil as it is more stable being a DD. But it is not as sensitive as the stocker. You have to find larger nugs for it to sound of, but I run the DD coils on MAX sensitivity and they are fine. I dont have the 4.5 anymore (had it with previous 2500) but it is very sensitive and did a good job in Ga. for hunting nugs. The 2500 is a universal detector, it is prefered by most ppl to have a higher freq detector for hunting nuggets, like the Scorpion, or goldbug, but it will find them.

Try to find outcroppings of bedrock and search there and old diggings like hydraulic mines also. VLF's loose depth in hot ground. A PI detector would increase finds of nugs. Like the Infinium..which FINALLY I will be ordering soon, as I have sent off the rest of my dredge gold to the refinery just for this reason.

My settings for hunting nugs with 2500 are....sensitivity-9-7, threshold 5.8-6.0, auto track- fast or for more sensitivity and stability I use manual grd balance. (turn auto off and grd bal w fast trac and it will be set). DD settings are max sensitivity or on 11. She is a powerful machine, It hot ground you will be looking for nugs at 1/2 gram or bigger. Higher freq detector will find smaller ones. Less hot ground- smallest is probally at .03 gram at 1-2 inch. But you will have fun!! be patiant while hunting, cant hunt at coin poping speed. Enjoy...heres a pic of my last nug found at Thompson Creek California w 2500.

P.S. If you have the Garrett Propointer take it with you prospecting as it is very helpful....I love mine!!!

Alan, now in Ashland Oregon
 
Great post Alan. Into my archives.

Chris
 
Thankyou for the information.
Nice color in your hand.
 
Hey bud do you hunt the dredge tailings on the bank and do you hunt the Feather River Dredge tailings that run forever? Used to do a lot of fishing on the Feather before I got into tecting and prospecting. My old man helped build the big Oroville dam down there. In the early sixties I worked at Beale Airforce Base on the facilities for the SR-71 spy plane before the public ever knew it existed. Those big nuggets I have shown pics of here on the forum came off the bank of the Yuba River near a big tree. Not all the nuggets are in or near the water.

Bill
 
Forgot to ask - do you have a leter model with the new mineral chip installed which greatly increases your odds when nuggetshooting in highly mineralized ground. If yours doesn't have it Garrett will install it for about forty bucks. If your tector is still under warranty I think it is free sans shipping.

Bill
 
I also have a GTI 2500 and they do pickup gold very well with the 9.5 imaging coil as for higher frequency units picking up gold better my Minelab Eureka Gold with 6.5k.20k,60k selectable frequencies does not work any better than my GTI, and for bigger stuff the GTI goes really deep with the 12.5 coil much deeper than the minelab but it is heavy and fun.
Don't forget everyday above ground is a good day.
Trout fun to catch good to eat.
the prospector
 
Yeah imaging doesn't count much in nuggetshooting and all metal is the only way to go in the hot ground, alkali, and black sand where nuggets are most often found. And there's a lot more teeny nuggets than there are big ones and one needs a lot of sensitivity and gain to get those which is why all gold machines run high frequencies like the Scorpion's 15 KHZ. And that lead pellet could just as easily have been gold as the conductivity of lead and gold run pretty close..

Bill
 
Forgot to say - that new PP should work great for ferreting out those teeny nuggets. Have you found that to be the case since it runs at a frequency of 12 khz?

Bill
 
I havent been down to that part of Cali yet...I have plans on it though. Yes I think also there are many nuggets tht arent near the banks of rivers. Like on the Klamath area there is the old river channel 200 feet higher up from shoreline. There are old hydraulics up there, many places to detect uphigher. Thats kool you worked on the SR-71, My dad worked for Lockheed for 25 years and worked on many of there aircraft. Heard it was beautiful down toward oroville. Yeh the Propointer is pretty sensitive. It works on many small nugs I have found with my dredge. I have kept a few, but have sent off the rest of my gold early this week to pay for me an Infinium.

Alan
 
Hey it's good that your hobby can pay for your toys. :rofl: Yeah when I was at Beale I was always bugging the pilot of the SR-71 and asking questions. Course the answers were all classified. I asked one time how fast that puppy would fly and he said that was classified but that it would outrun a 30-06 bullet. That pretty well answered that question. :)

Bill
 
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