Prospecting With the Gold Bug SE

[Dwayne2010]

I went out to my claim yesterday to work the bed rock. A couple of questions that I am seeking help with. I discovered the settings I had it on liked the mineralization in the bedrock and often caused me to started digging, only to discover it was not a nugget, but the mother rock. I was getting a lot of this. I had the detector Gain set at about 1300hrs and the Disc set at All metal, 0700hrs position. I eventually had to scale back the Gain to 1000hrs to not get so many hot rock issues, but I am afraid that I missed a lot of grain gold. I am wondering what my settings should be when prospecting? What is recommended? My understanding is, that I should be in the All Metal Mode? Is this correct? Any suggestions that I can use to optimize my success in the field?

 

[azsh07]

...is a cast iron b1tch for one....even a higher end unit like the Gold Bug II will respond. Now the easiest way to to deal with it is understand that first off you can't really tune out hot rocks with the SE as much.

You can try to alter the GB point a little negative or positive from the ground grab set point and this will change how the hot rocks respond. However you mus be careful now swinging the coil as any changes in coil height will cause a response.

Mainly you learn to deal with them and learn how the hot bedrock responds verses other real targets. The first and most noticeable is that hot ground will give a real WHAM when it hits...and when you lift the coil just a few inches it disappears almost. Certainly disappears way sooner than a real target would with the same response. That is the most noticeable...fast target fade with just a slight increase in coil height.

Second is how it responds in audio verses real targets....hot ground will have mushy or soft sounding edges. that is to say that the target is broad and fades as you come off the edge. Whereas a gold nugget is a clear cutoff in audio as you come off of it. This requires a slower deliberate sweep.

Last is.,.....you will run into areas where there is nothing you can do. A VLF machines is NOT the machine for hot ground....this is where the PI like the Whites TDI rocks the world. You have to learn where to use the VLF and where not to.

I learned in Arizona that any of the desert dry creek beds was almost always a lost cause with any VLF. The creeks up in the high country with water in em were fine. Hard rocks sampling in tailing's is where the machine is a true joy....that and dry wash piles. You will pick up pickers that the dry washers lose.

Honestly I did not like the new Gold Bug in dry creek beds...it could not handle the bedrock most of all. The GoldBugII I had only did slightly better although better enough I could hunt but still had a lot of false targets. SO the key is learn the areas where the SE shines and seek those out. Avoid the areas where a PI is required...you are really wasting time trying to stick it out in these spots....trust me I wasted a whole summer being stubborn and got nothing.

Again the SE is a stud in old mines, tailing's and ground that is not working against it.

scott

 

[RRandy]

Hi Duane2010

I also took my GBSE out yesterday, to some claims east of Sweet Home at the GPAA claims...tons of bedrock. Mainly for training, and learning my new machine (and hoping to find a nugget in the process). What I did is I used all metal, and about 70-75 on the gain, and 10-15 on the threshold, and when I got to the big bedrock, I rebalanced to the bedrock, so I could check out the cracks and the moss, and then rebalanced when I got off...(this is big bedrock...up to a Hummer size) this worked pretty good for me. If I got a target, I occasionally switched to Disc to get a depth. I noticed that almost all bedrock and hotrocks registered 40 on the upper scale, and the mineralization bars on the left went up. The upper scale I found quite handy, and like Scott said, alot of the hotrocks made a "different" tone, like the tone you get when you pump the coil while balancing the unit. I would just move the smaller hotrocks if I could, and they were a multitude of colors. I also detected an old gravel road (mabe an old mining road, I dunno), and found the ground really changed alot on that road, and actually lowered the gain to 55 at times, and even at that I found alot of bullets, shoe tacks, nuts and bolts, some of the bullets and the shoe tacks where pretty small.

The more I got used to it the more I appriciated that upper scale, and the ground grab...I also manually adjusted the ground balance occasionally...but what I really liked while hiking up a creek, over big bedrock, and downed timbers, was the weight. I wore myself out doing this, it was HOT yesterday, but my swingin arm could have outlasted the rest of my body. Its also nice to know the exact gain and threshold, and have the ability to compare the machines balance, and the ground phase (although the ground phase did jump around where there was alot of hot rocks)

 

[RRandy]

Sorry Dwayne2010...I took alot of the little "hotrocks" home in a bucket to identify...I found alot of reddish quartzlike rocks that was setting of my detector, as well as about every other color. I have no idea of what the lode material looked like in the old closed mines....it will look good after putting them in the tumbler. Im actually going to send mine in to Fisher, after the summer gold huntin season.

 

[Dwayne2010]

Hi Randy,

Do you suppose that there is an issue with your detector in that it is picking up these hot rocks? I haven't been out to prospect again, but will in the coming days. However, I have been out to the local beach. So far, I have found pennies, dimes and nickles. Not sure if it is missing the loonies and toonies, or if they just aren't there to be found. I have found that if I put the Disc mode on and set it at 40, it gives a grunt on iron and a high pitch worbble on non-ferrous. So far, I love this machine, just hoping that it was set right at the factory, otherwise, all the time spent in the field is a waste of time.

 

[RRandy]

I dont think there is any problem with the GBse, with the hotrocks....I have owned a Goldmaster II, and its the same with hotrocks, the GM II has an iron ID test switch and meter that helps to identify iron, which does work on some hotrocks, the GBse has a classification scale at the top, and the tone, and the mineralization graph, and the ground phase...I tried to observe what the displays were showing me, and tried to listen to the subtle differences in the tone, also try sweeping from a different angle. I found that the more I used the unit, the easier it was for me to identify the hotrocks, which was one of my main purposes for going out to a known gold area. As Scott said, there are limitations on VLF machines (and there are advantages as well), but in my opinion they are easy to work around, and I think it just takes practice and experience (I am faily new to this hobby, about a year, so I have a ton to learn, and I personally learn the most by going out and using it). This is my first brand new detector, and like you I really like this detector, especially the information provided to you visually...I will probably not use the "discrimination" mode while gold hunting, except mabe to pinpoint something.
There are differences in the hotrocks/coldrocks, one makes a fuzzy kind of "boing" sound, like the the sound you get while ground balancing, and the other is a zip zip, like you get with a actual target, the latter I would move the rock and sweep over it to make sure the zip zip followed the rock. Maybe from using a GB II, which has manual ground balance, I pump my coil alot to check the ground balance and Ground Grab my unit pretty frequently....(probably more than I need to...I hope I dont wear out my GG button)

 

[azsh07]

...hot bedrock was alot tougher to deal with on my Cabelas Gold Bug. Hotrocks are easy...kick em away...whatever works....but bedrock..OMG. It can be real tough sometimes especially since little pickers get down in the bedrock and that is what yu are usually after. Usually bedrock was responding all over the place making the detector just go off constantly....just a nightmare sometimes.
Again hotrocks like hematite and magnatite ( however you spell em) were not to terrible to deal with...usually they are quite a bit off in the GB than the local ground and will either boing or go null just before you sweep over and then hit hard on the offsweep. GB adjustments can help...as will the ID sometimes. The bedrock was just a bugger for me and it liked to ID at 40 which is near gold...go figure.
If we had SAT adjustments that sometimes help to speed it up fast, but we don't. I always thought any gold VLF should be required to have a SAT for the All Metal.
I wish i had a magic answer...well I do it is called the Whites VDI...but for the GBSE man I honestly just avoided any creeks with hot hot bedrock.
Way i looked at it there was plenty of ground near by that was easier to hunt.

 

[Dwayne2010]

Any reason why my Gold Bug SE doesn't make a sound when I ground Balance it? As per the manual, I set it to All metal, push the GG Button and pump the coil up and down several times. No Noise? Should it be silent?

 

[RRandy]

Hi Dwayne
I noticed on your initial post, you had the All Metal knob at the 0700 position...I was wandering what your "threshold was. I was using +10 to +15. As you rotate the threshold knob clockwise, it will display the setting. For my unit +10 to +15 is about 1300...then I would lower the external volume control on my headphones to a comfortable threshold hum. The ground balance threshold hum when you pump your coil should be about the same as the threshold you hear while you are searching.

 

[Jackpine Savage]

I don't know that I would set the threshold level using the headphone volume control. The headphone voume level should be set to a comfortable level for detecting taking into account the louder responses of shallow trash targets. After determining a good volume setting for hunting then set the threshold level using the detectors control.

JMO

Tom Z