PULSE INDUCTION OR VLF BETTER FOR FINDING PLACER GOLD

[trailchaser]

Hi everyone! My wife and I are new to this. We plan to join a club soon. We have been using a entry level Bounty Hunter for about 4 moths going to some really good rocky washes at the base of the

Mountains near Phoenix Arizona. We did find several extremely SMALL fragments of gold after taking a soda bottle sized sample of the sand our detector kept going off for over an

hour before bottling a sample of sand for later. Please, we could really use some advice from you more experienced out there in finding the most effective detector for locating PLACER GOLD in a

ROCKY AND DESERT SAND DRY ENVIRONMENT. We want to go with Whites but dont know if a VLF or a Pulse Induction like a Surfmaster (Less money PI detector not sure if it will work for land

and rocky area). We do not want to spend much more than about 900ish dollars. What do you think???

 

[cvs]

If it

 

[Adrian SS]

Trailchaser,
Give the PIs the flick for placer gold. Only use the gold dedicated PIs where the iron mineralisation is extreme and the gold is larger than 0.1gm
PIs such as the Surfmaster, Sand Shark, Impulse,and other saltwater beach dedicated machines will be very noisy in ironstone country plus the PIs are not as sensitive to small gold as the Higher frequency VLF machines(18khz and up)
The GMT is ideal for placer gold if the mineralisation is not extreme. I would like to have one of those, also,The old Gold Bug II is dynamite on small gold.

 

[ColoradoGoldMan]

No question about it if your going to hunt for gold in AZ and desert areas of the Southwest forget about the VLF detectors. I know this is a whites forum so. The TDI is good PI gold detector an you can pick one up used for around a $1000.00. The Garret Infinium is good all round PI it will hunt the land as well the beach's. It find 1/2 gram gold with ease and you can pick a used one up for $500-750. get it with 8" mono or the 10X14" mono if you can. The problem is the gold fields have been picked over a lot by snow birds in AZ so you will need as deep a detector as you can get. I will omit the way over priced Mine Labs because of your price range. Let me say that VLF's will find gold and in some cases smaller gold but it will need to be fairly close to the surface, because the county rock and hot rocks will kill you and depth really suffers in the desert SW. There are other PI's but you don't want a beach only machine in the desert.
Good hunting and good Luck
C

 

[trailchaser]

Thanks for the replies! This new hobby sure is fun and adventures' We hunted today a 3 mile long wash 1/2 mile before a big lake 200 plus feet down the cliff full of rocks and discovered plenty of those pesky so called hot rocks EVERYWHERE that make the detector go off like crazy. We did however find some old foundation that was very hidden (cement) remnents left by "who knows". Looked like a place someone 150 years ago used as a hide out. Found several coroded old metal parts and peices of something? No gold this time. We'll keep an eye out for a better detector for sure. I know we have to be walking over and missing something. We are looking in a area thats prickly and very difficult to get to, so I dont think many snow birds are going through, but you never know...

Thanks for all the repies, Tomorrow we are going to poke around a ghost town site which doesnt have much of anything left but still worth exploring with the detector.

 

[trailchaser]

It looks like the GMT is best for locating tiny nuggets in highly mineralized/hot rock areas with ok depth. The PI units only find sizeable nuggies but are not as effected by difficult soil conditions. Do I have this right?

I'm think I might be starting to understand this, sort of?

 

[Adrian SS]

Yes,

A High Freq VLF will kill any PI on very small gold in lower mineralised areas.
The Gold dedicated PIs only have their depth advantage over VLFs in high mineralised ground.
If you are VERY serious about your gold hunting then the Minelab 4500 PI is cleaning up small gold here in Australia, so, if you have a deep pocket???

The PIs cannot trace Black sand like the GMTs.

Plaser Gold is found in Magnetic Black sand deposits and other minerals that are heavier than the surounding matrix in streams on the down side of stream boulders, rock bars etc or in Stream Washouts and sand bars.

I have a Gold Spear that I use in the creeks and river banks to locate fine gold that is washing down stream. This machine will find micron size gold but it is suited mainly to loose gravel and sandy areas. It must contact the gold in order to respond. It is very handy for locating dredgable and pannable gold and black sand deposits. I do not know if this detector is still available.