Hello all,,,, here in my area they ran the old bucket dreges thru the river bed and I want to see if they missed any,,,, I'm a current ML owner (ETRAC) and I love my Tesoro uMax. I'm needing advice on the right MD for NORCAL dirt and rocks. I like the Fisher GB pro and Whites GMT, Garret Infenium, ML Eureka. I want to stay under 2 grand so the GPX series is out of the question (unless you have a used one to sell me HAHAHA),, any way give me your sales pitch for what you think might work for me here
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New to Nugget hunting and have mountains of tailing piles to go thru,,,
- Thread starter grouser
- Start date
Digger Bob
New member
Assuming you are near Oroville or somewhere similar that has the huge dredge tailings, I can give you this advice. Forget the VLF machines, you need a pulse machine for those. Yes, you will detect lots of trash deep, but because they are mixed tailings, the "hot rocks" will drive you crazy, worse than the trash.
A Pulse machine will cruise right over those without a peep from the rocks, mostly. I would look at the Whites TDI, particuarly the SL. It's lighter and smoother. Hunting a tailings pile means your arm will constantly be up in the air, scanning the side of the rock piles. The lighter the machine, the better. Also, you will be primarily looking for larger nuggets or gold and quartz specimens, larger rocks. The VLF's are great for small little nuggets but that's not what you usually find in rock piles. No dirt, just rocks. The TDI is great on those big ones!
Digger Bob
www.diggerbob.com
A Pulse machine will cruise right over those without a peep from the rocks, mostly. I would look at the Whites TDI, particuarly the SL. It's lighter and smoother. Hunting a tailings pile means your arm will constantly be up in the air, scanning the side of the rock piles. The lighter the machine, the better. Also, you will be primarily looking for larger nuggets or gold and quartz specimens, larger rocks. The VLF's are great for small little nuggets but that's not what you usually find in rock piles. No dirt, just rocks. The TDI is great on those big ones!
Digger Bob
www.diggerbob.com
GoldChaser
New member
Digger Bob is right on, as usual. In the California gold country you have to have a PI machine. I used to have a MXT which is one of the best VLFs for gold, but the hot rocks drove the machine, and me, crazy. I had a TDI Pro too, but traded both away for a TDI SL. In addition to being light, you'll love the quiet threshold.
GoldChaser
New member
Here are the reasons that I like the TDI SL better than the TDI Pro.
BTW - I use these forums as a source of information, not to make my decisions. Just like the rest of the Internet. Before I buy anything I go out and touch it, feel it, and test it myself. I recommend that you find a good, local White's dealer. I took my TDI Pro to my dealer and we took my TDI Pro and a TDI SL out into a field for some real testing on real, long-buried, in-the-ground targets. I made my decision to trade in my Pro for the SL after several hours of real field testing.
1) The TDI Pro is heavier, which means after several hours it becomes more arm-fatiguing. I work out a lot and while I never stopped detecting with my Pro because my arm was too tired, after a long, hot day it did get fatiguing and made the detecting less enjoyable.
2) Cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. The TDI SL uses regular AA batteries. I just bought a box of 40 for real cheap. I use them as a back-up to the provided rechargeable battery pack. I'll never be without power for my detector while I'm out in the field. Ever. The TDI Pro rechargeable battery packs are $199 on the White's website.
3) THE BIG ONE - The threshold on the TDI SL is SMOOTH. You can set it very low and listen to it for hours without any audio fatigue. Plus, being smooth it makes hearing targets very clear and easy. My TDI Pro's threshold was extremely warbly. It was VERY fatiguing to listen to hour after hour after hour. It's hard to describe, and that's why you need to go to your dealer to hear for yourself.
*** Now here's the important point - When we already knew there was a target in the ground, you could hear the target about 1" deeper with the Pro than the SL. HOWEVER, if you don't already know there's a target in the ground (like in the field) my experience is that the SL can detect a target at equivalent depths. That's because the warbling masks deep and/or small targets. All of the air tests and box tests you read about and see on these forums and Youtube are misleading. The tester already knows there's a target there and is intently listening to hear it. So when you run the detector back-and-forth and back-and-forth several times over a target of course you are gong to be able to hear it. Not only are you listening hard for it at the exact time it is passing under the coil, but passing the coil over the target multiple times helps ensure that at least one of the times it will pass over the target between the Pro's warbling noises. In the field you usually have just one chance. You pass the detector over the target once. If the Pro is on a warble noise, you just missed it. The SL threshold is perfectly smooth. There are no warbles. If you pass over a target - you hear it.
So that is a summary of my own personal evaluation. Don't take my word for it. Please go to a dealer and do your own tests in a real field where you can locate real targets that have been in the ground for many years.
You can then make your own decision based on your own personal decision-making criteria and feel good about your purchase and your new detector.
Have fun!
BTW - I use these forums as a source of information, not to make my decisions. Just like the rest of the Internet. Before I buy anything I go out and touch it, feel it, and test it myself. I recommend that you find a good, local White's dealer. I took my TDI Pro to my dealer and we took my TDI Pro and a TDI SL out into a field for some real testing on real, long-buried, in-the-ground targets. I made my decision to trade in my Pro for the SL after several hours of real field testing.
1) The TDI Pro is heavier, which means after several hours it becomes more arm-fatiguing. I work out a lot and while I never stopped detecting with my Pro because my arm was too tired, after a long, hot day it did get fatiguing and made the detecting less enjoyable.
2) Cheaper to buy and cheaper to run. The TDI SL uses regular AA batteries. I just bought a box of 40 for real cheap. I use them as a back-up to the provided rechargeable battery pack. I'll never be without power for my detector while I'm out in the field. Ever. The TDI Pro rechargeable battery packs are $199 on the White's website.
3) THE BIG ONE - The threshold on the TDI SL is SMOOTH. You can set it very low and listen to it for hours without any audio fatigue. Plus, being smooth it makes hearing targets very clear and easy. My TDI Pro's threshold was extremely warbly. It was VERY fatiguing to listen to hour after hour after hour. It's hard to describe, and that's why you need to go to your dealer to hear for yourself.
*** Now here's the important point - When we already knew there was a target in the ground, you could hear the target about 1" deeper with the Pro than the SL. HOWEVER, if you don't already know there's a target in the ground (like in the field) my experience is that the SL can detect a target at equivalent depths. That's because the warbling masks deep and/or small targets. All of the air tests and box tests you read about and see on these forums and Youtube are misleading. The tester already knows there's a target there and is intently listening to hear it. So when you run the detector back-and-forth and back-and-forth several times over a target of course you are gong to be able to hear it. Not only are you listening hard for it at the exact time it is passing under the coil, but passing the coil over the target multiple times helps ensure that at least one of the times it will pass over the target between the Pro's warbling noises. In the field you usually have just one chance. You pass the detector over the target once. If the Pro is on a warble noise, you just missed it. The SL threshold is perfectly smooth. There are no warbles. If you pass over a target - you hear it.
So that is a summary of my own personal evaluation. Don't take my word for it. Please go to a dealer and do your own tests in a real field where you can locate real targets that have been in the ground for many years.
You can then make your own decision based on your own personal decision-making criteria and feel good about your purchase and your new detector.
Have fun!
great advice my friend !!! I am just torn between the GMT and TDI, it seems to me I am giving up the little gold with the TDI, and missing the deeper with the GMT,,,,,, guess I need both ! my ertac does well here but have not really tried nugget hunting with it, not a small gold machine anyway but it seems to not hit the hot rocks like VLF's tend to do
Silicon John
New member
Hi, I have a mine lab 3000 metal detector that I would like to sell if you are interested. byramjohn@comcast.net
steve herschbach
New member
So grouser, how is the GMT working out for you?
Steve Herschbach
Steve Herschbach
I think I have it set up right,,,, I find plenty of scrap in the ground and very VERY small stuff sometimes,,,,, like a single strand of fine wire rope an inch or so long,,,,, so I think if I can put it over some au I will see it,,, but the rock piles are formidable,,, and dangerous to be on,,,, one must be care full to not avalanche large rocks on ones self !!!! thanks for asking Steve !!!
steve herschbach
New member
Tailing piles take huge patience. The fact is most people hunting cobble piles for a 12 hour day find no gold. Just lots of hard work digging junk. Day after day, and so very few people stick with it. The good finds are few and far between but if you stick with it long enough that one find could be worth all the effort.
So do not get discouraged if you are not finding any gold. That really is pretty much the norm. If all we had to do was get a detector and go hit tailing piles and find gold on a daily basis people would be all over the place doing it out there. And of course if that happened the gold would all soon be gone so back to square one!
Steve Herschbach
So do not get discouraged if you are not finding any gold. That really is pretty much the norm. If all we had to do was get a detector and go hit tailing piles and find gold on a daily basis people would be all over the place doing it out there. And of course if that happened the gold would all soon be gone so back to square one!
Steve Herschbach
steve herschbach
New member
I am not to sure about lumps of clay grabbing gold per se. In a bucket line dredge the oversize goes through a trommel, so lumps of clay would never get near a sluice box with gold in it.
At Ganes Creek the gold was near bedrock. Bedrock also had a lot of clay layers or pockets on it. Lumps of clay containing gold got ripped up and passed through the trommel intact. Finding these lumps at Ganes Creek was a sure gold indicator. Either gold in the immediate area of clay lumps in the tailings, or on at least several occasions I know of, including once personally, gold nuggets in a lump of clay.
Because of that experience I will always pay attention to clay in tailing piles myself.
Steve Herschbach
At Ganes Creek the gold was near bedrock. Bedrock also had a lot of clay layers or pockets on it. Lumps of clay containing gold got ripped up and passed through the trommel intact. Finding these lumps at Ganes Creek was a sure gold indicator. Either gold in the immediate area of clay lumps in the tailings, or on at least several occasions I know of, including once personally, gold nuggets in a lump of clay.
Because of that experience I will always pay attention to clay in tailing piles myself.
Steve Herschbach
steve herschbach
New member
I will start a new thread on the subject in the next couple days. The fines are under the cobbles, and generally not worth hunting. The best gold is usually on tops of piles as that is the material that came out of bottom of hole closest bedrock. Large stuff rolls and can get buried down between the rows but is a rarer find.
Steve Herschbach
Steve Herschbach