Nice little colonial silver

[azsh07]

Although the French 2 Sous is arguably lacking silver as they cut these with alot of copper....hence the dark color and the fact they ID as foil....but hey...it is a piece of 1789 silver.

I have been using both versions of the Gold Bug ( SE and Cabela's) quite heavily. Both are great machines...I still prefer the Cabela's audio most of the time (unmodulated)....that is just me and where I hunt. Otherwise machines are identical.

I do like the ID meter on the SE....has more seperation on the mid range. Since these 2 Sous are foil they ring in close to where .22 shells ID. On my F75 they would ID the same but on the Gold Bug they are quite a few digits difference between the two. Since I was in a Rev War encampment I knew these were here as I had dug 2 before but there is alot of .22 shells around. You might say....well .22 shells are shallow and easy to ID by depth..but that would be wrong. They are so small the depth at 4 inches when they are only an inch...pesky little buggers.
Anyway this 2 Sous was a solid 48 whereas the .22 shells were coming in the 53 range.

Also this area is loaded with iron around the encampments and the GB really was very easily seperating the targets. I have poundeds this small site for years but managed to pick 3 colonial buttons out of the iron as well as seriously corroded KGII at about 8".

scott

 

[therover]

Scott....40 range ID's on the GB SE are turning out to be very interesting targets.

 

[azsh07]

Normally that foil range is tight on other machines but since this is a gold machine the iron and foil /gold range has a lot of resolution which is turning out to be nice...

 

[Keith Southern]

It is amazing what the Gold bug can pull out of pounded site's in iron especially!!!

Thanks for the post...I like to see what the GB is capable of!!

Keith

 

[Keith Southern]

throw big plow point size iron the the upper 50's and you just know by the sound and target I.D. to boot that there's no way there's a mid conductor reading that large so it's very easy to I.D. large iron visually and audibly ....small iron isnt even an issue with this machine...best I have ever seen working nail's with depth to boot!

Keith

 

[Frank in NH]

n/t

 

[azsh07]

By edges I am talking about the edges of the tone...it beaps hi but has this weird sound as it ends.....and it is always big rusty iron. I see it more so with rusty tin cans and roof tin...or with Ox Shoes.
Nails are a non issue.
What I like best is most iron does not up average like on the F75. With the 75 deep rusty iron likes to average up and then usually in the silver range. Where with the GBSE most iron does not do it...once in a while it will but everytime it has that weird edge sound to it and I so far I have always been right as to it being iron.
Plus the All Metal is dead nuts with the meter ID and I use that if I am unsure.

 

[Cal_Cobra]

That's a great find! Was it deep?

The closest thing to that out on the West Coast would be finding a Spanish real at a mission era site, but they're still quite rare finds.

I've been following all the posts on the GB/GBSE and it's really peaking my interest. I have the F75 LTD and the Omega (and a small arsenal of other machines ). I'm not really a prospector (although sadly I only live about 2 hours from NorCal gold country), but how would the GB/GBSE do as a deep silver turf hunter, or for hunting those sites with tons of iron compared to the Omega and/or F75 LTD?

Also I understand that the DD coils on the GB/GBSE might be interchangeable with the Omega DD coils, is this true? I have the Omega with the 11" DD, and I've been wanting the 5" DD for my Omega...seems as the GBSE comes with the 5" DD coil, if I could use it on my Omega, and use my Omega 11" DD on the GBSE, I can use fuzzy math to reduce the $500 price tag on the GBSE down to $360 factoring in that I don't have to spend the $140 to buy a 5" DD for my Omega (I'm trying to talk myself into getting the GBSE

HH,
Brian

 

[therover]

n/t

 

[azsh07]

....I have tested it side by side with an F75....and depth is close to the same on silver. Now I had a Cabelas version 5 months ago that I returned later as it had some display issue...but it was almost as deep as my LTD ib Boost and was definately deeper than the F75 in DE mode. Now the two i have now are not quite that hot and i may have had a hot unit. Either way they are very good on silver...especially if you are using the 5" coil you will see the depth is as deep as any detector out there with a 5" coil.
As for iron it is one of the best I have used and significantly better than the F75 in my opinion. No where near as much false hi hits on deep rusty iron. Far more stable in respect to EMI...nowhere near the chatter at max sensitivity that the f75 has.
As matter of fact that 2 Sous I dug was in a spot that the F75 just constantly chatters....sometimes so bad I have to just shut it off. The GBSE....just cruised through this spot with hardly a wimper.

Now as for depth the 2 Sous was not deep and they never are....all the ones I have dug run 2-5" deep. This one was down maybe 5" max but was such a strong hit. My opinion on why they are always so shallow is they are very very thin and weigh nothing and in the woods I think they just float on the top soil over the years. I have dug buttons and coins here at 8"-9" but all the Sous were not deep.

Anyway it is great in iron....very nice with the 5" coil.

The Omega series DD coils work and that is actually the 11"DD I use as do others. Dave J. has said earlier that the Concentrics were not designed to work with the GBSE....well..actually he said the GBSE was not designed with concentric coils in mind....if you try one and it works than lucky you but...don't expect concentrics from the omega to work well.

scott

 

[Keith Southern]

if you are listening it can tell you alot....Even when setting to just break tone on nails( about 18 or so) the larger iron that reads like say in the 30's still has a broken sound that you can still tell is iron compared to a good non-ferrous hit that is dragged down into the 30's that has that sweet sound to it....


And yes the Big iron is raspy on the edges like you speak off....

Lot's of nuance to the machine......Nice observation's Scott

Keith

 

[therover]

On those iron targets in discriminate mode, at any point, are you switching over to all metal and see how the target reacts ? Trying to see how the meter, sound and Fe meter reads on these targets. The all metal audio, in addition to the arc reading and Fe meter can possibly help determine iron more accurately, but I am still experimenting.

Tell you one thing...I like this unit more and more.

 

[Keith Southern]

I truly havent tried the all metal mode all that much...I usually hunt in areas littered to death with all sizes of iron so all metal hunting is virtually impossible without just staring at the screen constantly...

I am sure you could get some correlation going with the Fe meter maybe???

I can truly say that I havent had a problem with any size iron with the Gold Bug....I have had some large iron high tone and try to fool me but the readings on the I.D. meter will be in the upper 50's and once you hit pinpoint and see it's rather large you just know it s a piece of flat iron and the disc audio will be raspy......Modulated audio helps here alot!Loud squeals are almost always iron..Like on the LOBO ST..

One thing I have found that helps more than anything on the large iron is if you get a nice solid hit but fuzzy on the edges so to speak and it pinpoints wide but you think it might be Non-ferrous is to sweep off edge of target and it will grunt if it's iron everytime...You can also turn your coil on edege and pass over the target and if it's iron it will grunt or roll tone...

Again small iron is just a non issue with this detector..It's got a clean iron reject...If it was not in 2 tone mode you would not hear 90% of the iron in the ground with this machine....
Reminds you of the Tesoro's of old with there clean iron rejection but alot quicker,and way more deeper...

The target I.D. on the GB is second to none... very stable ..once it gets a look at a target it pretty much just lock's on ...no matter the depth...and it' not jumpy and erratic like the F-75 heck it's smoother than the T-2 or Omega on I.D. and audio..

Shotguns shells are a detectorist worse nightmare but the gold bug has alot of range in the middle and I can actually tell if it's a high brass shell or even shell gauge with the accurate target reading..


Guess I got a little off track but there's so many attributes to talk about on the GB...

Good Luck

Keith

 

[azsh07]

...I use the all metal quite abit to help ID iron. I never thought about the FE meter but too much meter staring and I could have dug the target by then.
One thing that helps in all metal is it reacts better to iron as far as IDing it if it is one of those bouncy targets in disc. Watching the arc hash marks in all metal is very informative for all targets.
Classin frustrating targts are those deeper rusty iron targets that are medium sized...classic one of these sized is the good old ox shoe. Not too big but big enough and rusty enough they can fool alot of machines. While the SE in disc may hit hi it will react different in all metal...especially as you move around the target with the coil.
The all metal is also great for pinpointing....I find the pinpoint sensitivity to be too hot..and yes you can detune but I found the all metal to target way better than pinppint. Also when chasing an iffy rusty target that seems to move in the hole just swap to all metal and use the tip of the DD coil to scan the hole....if the meter stays in the iron range more than 50% of time it is always rusty iron. Use the tip to locate the prximity in the hole and scan it with the nose. The meter arc will ID iron dead nuts everytime even if you are still inches away.
scott

 

[azsh07]

This was the very first relic I dug the first day. Nice way to start with a new machine. This was in an area loaded with iron nails from a celar hole.....but this rang through clear as day. Funny thing was once it was out of the hole the disc would not see it.....that was before keith discovered the hi conductor problem. I was wondering why it did not see it when it came out of the hole and never gave it a thought until Keith posted the problem.
This sucker blew my ears off.....forgot to post it when all the poop flew over the calibration issue.
So...can the SE relic hunt...you bet...can it coin hunt you bet. Of course a Large Cent is not a tough target to see for most good detectors but nthis area has been pounded but given up due to the iron trash being so heavy.
I think this is a small date 1803...if it were a large date it would be worth a decent chunk of change even in this condition.