First time out with Fisher Gold Bug 2


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Yesterday I took my new GB2 out to some old diggings I have been detecting for years with my Whites GMT. I detect mainly around old digging heaps. The first thing I noticed was I was picking up hot rocks.The ground is very mild I had the Ground balance down to setting 1 but the ground was littered with these tiny hot rocks. I was looking for tiny gold so going into high mineralisation mode would have meant I would have missed it. So I battled on it was not as bad in Normal mineralisation mode. Well I finished up with three tiny nuggets 0.3 grms the biggest the other 2 were pin head size. I am using Killer Bee 150 ohm headphones I was wondering whether a lower ohm set would give a better sound differential,some hot rocks would give a boing sound and it was obviuos but other sounded very similar to gold. Over all I am pleased with the machine I am only at the learning stage but off to a good start for sure. Looking forward to gettingf out again Neilo

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Great finds, The GB2 is the best detector for finding small gold, Get your self the 6" coil for the really small stuff, my finds from the other day range in size from .184 gram down to .016 gram.

I have used and sold the Jimmy Sierra Maxi Phones for years and they are 150 Ohm. For being in the learning stage you are doing it right, double check your ground balance once in awhile.

thanks for sharing and go find some more

Allen in MT

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Hey Neilo,

Thanks for sharing your finds. I have to agree with Montana, get used to toggling between the "All Metal" and "Disc" modes for questionable targets and hot rocks. The GB2 also does great in "Disc" mode for small bits of trash vs. small nuggets. It's amazing how small a nugget the GB2 will find, especially with the small 6-inch elliptical coil like Allen in MT mentioned.

Take care,

Rob Allison

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Hi Neil

Great finds mate, well done.

look, i dont wanna be the fly in the ointment here, but i disagree with using the GB2 disc mode at all

when hunting gold,in fact its best to "dig all signals" regardless of what detector you use.

It was many years ago in the adelaide hills in sth Australia that i was running a GB2,

and that also was my first high frequency detector (71khz), so like you i was sick and tired of all the hotrocks

screamin in the headphones so i flicked on the disc and was very happy with the job it was doin then,so for 2 yrs

all went well finding the small gold until one day i met up with a bloke who was "the god" of the goldbugs.

He told me to strait away go check back over some of my old ground and be patient WITHOUT the disc switched on,

man was i amazed at the amount of gold i had missed and each of them nuggets had a small amount of black

ironstone attached, seems the GB2 was over compensating when it sensed any iron at all not just rusty steel etc.

I was amazed at the amount of gold i had missed due to the flamin disc mode cracking up those ironstone bound nuggets,

my gold intake was instantly tripled and not only that, when i was hunting in ironstone rich areas it was cutting my depth

by a good 30% too...

So i took the old blokes advice and also got a hipmount bag for the control box and always had my left index finger on

the "fine" ground balance knob, and was able to tweak it ever so gently to get rid the hotrock problems nearly 100%..

Dont worry, you wont balance out the gold signals at all.

BTW: the advice on running a small 6" ellip "sniffer" coil is spot on the money,those lil buggers will sniff out

an ants nuts..

Pete in WA Aus B)

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Thanks for your replies and advice I am running the 6inch coil, I must admit I was worried about using the iron disc to sort out the hot rocks. The gold I am after in the area I detect is generally very small and wondered about the iron disc hiding gold. The area I was detecting there would be up to 50 hot rocks in an some areas of about 10ft square. So to dig and check each signal would be a real task.I tried detecting very slowly and tried picking out the softer broader signals. If I used boost it was hard to seperate the tones as all the hot rocks were magnified as well. The soil was also very wet and I think that magnifies the signal from hot rocks as well. Beepinpete I am detecting in the Adelaide hills, at Chapel hill and Jupiter Creek diggings.I havent tried the high mineralisation setting but think it would probably stop the hot rock problem, but at the cost of missing small nuggets. I did try to balance out the hot rocks but wasnt able to must have my setting wrong, too much power, or wrong mode. At this stage the machine is new to me, so I have a bit of learning to do. thanks seeya Neilo

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NEIL

ahh MY OLD STOMPING GROUNDS jupiter ck and chapel hill, i had so much trouble running the GB2 at jupiter,

and it can be extremely noisey even for the minelab pulse machines unless a smallish mono coil is used.

my suggestion is to stick to chapel hill diggings, park under the powerlines at the opposite end from the

main entrance, walk down the track until you just cross the small creek on the low level, then head into the

scrub and detect the shallow diggings around "german dam" but not in the dam as its very hot ground.

Also if you keep walking along the same track you will come to "new rush" close to the end of the track, when

you hit the last rise on the track and can see the paddocks at the end, head into the right.

This area must have given me countless hundreds of small nuggets in the past, it was a deep "15 - 30ft"

tertiery river bed deposit and the gold sat on the white looking pipe-clay at the bottom of the shafts,

carefully scan those mullock piles that have rounded boulders/pebbles and the gold will come for sure.

Stay totally away from "poormans rush" as that is a very highly mineralised area and the GB2 will squeel in agony

at the ground.

Also "christmas rush" is a good spot to detect with the GB2 "deep tertiery wash" 40ft to bottom of some shafts so be very carefull mate.

Besides the above advise, probably the only other best advise i can give you is to go into bunnings and buy a complete

steel rake, and never go to chapel hill without it, this is a typical way i operated in that area...

first: head into one of the spots i suggested.

second: choose an area say 50ft square that has mullock heaps covered by branches,sticks,mulch. (these piles have NEVER

seen a detector and are a bonanza waiting for you).

third: dump your detector and rest of gear in the centre of the spot you choose, and get stuck into the mullock piles

clearing all the refuse by hand firsly, then lightly rake the loose stuff off so the piles are clean.(Important as you

want to get that coil as close to the ground as you can (1-2 inches max).

Fourth: Now with a stick or the rake handle mark out the piles like cutting a pizza into slices from the shaft outwards,

and then proceed to detect each marked area one by one, this will ensure that you have carefully scanned every cm and no

nuggets will escape you.

Watch out for the "Jumping ants", they give a nasty nip and are very fast on their feet.

I have pulled some very high quality nuggets from this method including some top shelf crystaline gold as below.

crystalinenugget.jpg

crystalinenugget2.jpg

This is the type of mullock heaps at chapel hill you need to be searching for below.

ech2.jpg

Good Luck up their Neil, and if i can help with anything else including maps,reports and general info

on gold prospecting in sth oz let me know mate, as i can email you a lot of stuff no probs mate.

Pete in WA

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Thanks for the info Pete have sent a pm.I know all about those ants they can be lethal, they have a toxin which builds up in your body,its like bees.to many stings your dead.I got bitten on my hand it took a month for the itching and swelling to settle down. I also saw a snake the other day it had fallen down one of the shafts and was trying to get out. It was a cold day in the middle of winter so much for hibernating.Will be out again one day this week and see how I go with the GB2 let you know how I go seeya Neilo

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Pete -

Ironstone bound nuggets are very rare in here the US - not unheard of, but very, very unusal to find. Also small bits of trash spread through the goldfileds is much more common. Using disc is a good idea here. Just goes to show that strategies for nugget detecting do not always work the same everywhere on the planet.

Chris

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  • 1 month later...

Hi all, I am heading out to Crawford for the first time ever gold detecting tomorrow. While not expecting to find anything, I hope to learn lots about the Tesoro Lobo and reading gold fields. Just want to say thanks to all that help newbies and share tips and in particular a big thanks to Beepinpete WA for the inspiration and quality advice to new folk.

cheers, shaun

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