My GTI 2000 Gold findin' mini-test results.

[willy]

Okay folks, this is mostly a copy 'n paste from another forum I posted on; it takes forever for me to type stuff out and I just couldn't get up the energy to do it again. Couldn't find my 1 grain test nugget, so had to shave off some lead. If the pic loads properly, you'll see the relative sizes with a dime to provide a reference. The bigger piece of lead looks to be about the same weight/size as the gold, but it is actually far far less, a bit over a grain. To start it off, the GTI would only pick up the smallest piece if it was rubbed on the coil.. not bad for something that's sub-grain. Unfortunately, gold doesn't tend to wander up to my coils and get all snuggly: more's the pity. The second piece gave off a much stronger signal and could be detected at about 3/4" when lying on the ground. The ground I tested on was pretty mild (for here), reading at 80 on the GMT. It seems that the GTI tracks a bit negative & that reduced the signal strength somewhat. Putting it in manual mode & GB'ing it a bit positive really enhanced the signal. The ground tracking was also pretty good re. not tracking out such a small target. I tried to do so by having it on it's fastest setting and bobbing the coil over it.. it didn't track out. I could, however get it to track out a hot rock. Anything more than 1/4" of dirt & the signal was gone. With the gold nugget I could still pick it up when buried about 3/4". One thing of note is that, having a slowish autotune, the GTI should be swept slowly in AM mode. This allows a person to distinguish between noise (mineralization, electrical, etc.) and a good signal. Contrasting the GTI with my GMT showed some interesting differences & parallels. They both exhibited somewhat noisy operation, though it was a bit easier to distinguish with the GMT; probably because it's a familiar machine to me. The GMT also was able to give strong & distinct signals on all the targets, at greater distances, but this is only to be expected. The GMT is a hard core nuggetfinding detector with incredible amounts of gain and a very aggresive ground tracking system. The GTI proved to be surprisingly capable as a nuggethunter and, while not in a position to outshine a dedicated gold detector, I wouldn't hesitate to use one if it was what I had available. In many ways it reminds me of the Scorpion Gold Stinger I had a few years back. One other finding of note: as expected, the stock coil lost it's extreme sensitivity when the nugget was laid on the ground, therefore the 5x10"elliptical was used. This is not to say that the stock coil is garbage, it just can't handle the mineralization & be as hypersensitive as the DD.