Basalt, small gold and SPP

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This GB adjustment is not difficult to understand but I do need to clarify that from the onset, I recommended any SPP owner to add the high/low conductivity switch. With that switch life becomes easier to understand because signals can be separated.

Now, with that said, when you adjust the GB, you can change most of the ground signals or basalt from a high tone to a low tone easily. Usually, it takes just a slight adjustment from perfect GB. Also, any "hot spots" that sound off as a high tone can also easily be changed to a low tone with a slight GB adjustment. Again, basalt can also be changed from a high tone to a low tone easily and usually it takes just a little GB adjustment. At the same time, all small gold will remain a high tone throughout the GB adjustment. So, changing the problem signals from a high tone to a low tone and switching to high tone only, the only the gold or other small non gold objects will be detected.

So, if you switch to a low conductor mode (high tone only), and you adjust basalt and/or hot spots to a low tone, then you will be able to easily hear small gold signals but not hear any hot spots or basalt signals if the GB is adjusted properly. The result is, gold signals will come through clear but basalt and hot spots are ignored. This is what is displayed in lukeozdigger's video(s) and in one of those videos, he says, he could do this all day long, referring to how smooth the threshold is and lack of signals from the ground hot spots.

This makes hunting in areas where the ground changes quickly or basalt is very common extremely easy to do because basalt and hot spot ground signals will simply be ignored while you can still detect small gold or other gold that responds as a high tone which can often include large specimen or less pure gold. Now, some depth may be lost but that is a small price to pay if it makes detecting such areas much easier to do.

Next, the question was asked of the autotune feature would help keep the threshold steady under these conditions. The answer is yes, providing a person tries to keep the coil level and sweeps smoothly. Poor sweep techniques can further reduce depth of detection of gold signals.

Again, this GB offset allows a person to hunt in basalt infested areas and not chase non gold signals caused by the basalt or hot spot ground signals and still detect the gold signals.

The question was also asked why in the world operate this way? Well, if you test thoroughly, you will find advancing the delay will cause more small gold to be ignored and it would require operating with a later delay all the time in basalt infested areas. The selection of low conductor mode allows one to ignore any ground signal or basalt signal that is converted to a low tone by simply advancing the GB just enough to do the job. This technique keeps the threshold much smoother overall.

Either the GB or the delay method will work and can be easily used once a person understands what is needed to be done. So, either method could be used on the SPP, SL, or TDI in areas that can cause big problems for other PI's that don't have a feature to allow one to ignore basalt or lots of hot spots. I do recommend people try both methods until they understand what is going on. This simple feature adds versatility to the White's PI's not available on most other brands.

Keep in mind that either method mentioned should only be used in problematic areas. Ideally, perfect GB is recommended. However, in certain areas, that may not be the best solution and the delay or GB offset technique may be a better choice.

One final note, this GB shift is used here in the US when hunting silver and copper coins, but uses the high conductor mode and reduces the GB sufficiently to cause iron objects to transition to a high tone. Then shutting off the high tones minimizes iron junk from being detected, while providing good signals from old high conductor coins.

Reg
 
Sunriseboy, I will explain it as best as i can for you. As i know it's hard to get your head around this at first.

First of all The Ground is conductive target just like any other target, be it gold, silver, lead or any other metal. When you adjust your ground balance you normally get the machine to a point were the machine does not make a signal coming down to the ground, this is when the machine is ground balanced in ALL mode. From here any signal that is a lower conductivity to the ground signal will give a high tone sound and any signal that has a higher conductivity to the ground will give a low tone. This is how targets will respond in the ALL mode. You must first realize that metal target conductivity will increase with the size of the metal target. So small gold will produce a high tone and large gold will produce a low tone, but as Reg. said depending on the purity and size of the gold where that gold shifts from a high tone to a low tone is any ones guess, it can be different in different areas.

Now the Whites TDI SL, TDI PRO the conductivity switch is installed standard, but the SPP has no conductivity switch, we have installed this our selves so we can have this feature as you do standard. This conductivity switch allows the operator to switch to High, Low or ALL. IF you switch to high you will only receive signals from targets that are higher then the ground signal and if you switch to LOW you will only receive signals from targets Lower then the ground signal and switching to ALL will allow all signals to be heard. At this stage i wont go into ground balance off just yet, it will only confuse you. So depending were the machine ground balances on your machine. The ground balance adjustment is numbered from 1-10 and different soils will ground balance to a different number depending on soil conductivity and also coil type mono/DD and make of coil as well. But most commonly it will ground balance close to the factory preset of 8.5 give or take half a notch.

Ok, now we get to the point of using the Conductivity switch and Ground balance control in conjunction with each other.....I have run out of time will continue later, Roscoe
 
Listen, Roscoe, I am so grateful for the mentoring that occurs here. I really appreciate it. My learning difficulties have been a bane of my life and endeavouring to read and understand stuff with a mild dyslexic difficulty, I am very grateful, believe me.

So thanks for this.

Cheers.
 
I don't get out as much as I'd like but I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to go detecting with Luke L a few times and he's pointed me in the right direction as far as these little adjustments go on the SL, it's fast tracked me to being able to understand what is in the ground before I dig, all the above info about GB advancing and tweaking the Pulse Delay to ignore Basalt and "hot spots" are spot on and worth taking the time to learn as it makes a days detecting much less frustrating and more enjoyable instead of wasting time chasing ghosts that aren't there.

Great thread this for us SPP/SL/TDI Oz Pro users to really learn how to be more efficient with our detectors when chasing targets.
 
Sunriseboy, Don't worry mate it took me awhile to get my head around all this too.

The best way to learn the effects of ground balance control is by going over our Aussie coins. This is the way i started getting use to the effects the ground balance control has over the way the machine assigns a target to a high tone or to a low tone. With a ground balance point of say 8.5 our coins will be high tone for 5c, 10c, 20c with the 50c being an odd one and i will explain that in bit. The $2, $1, three pence, six pence,Shilling, Florin, pennies coins coming in as Low tone. The 50c can give an odd signal because it can fall into the hole. The reason for this is in some soils it is the same conductivity as the ground and any target that is the same conductivity as the ground will not be heard or give a odd signal and our 50c piece can do this on some ground.

Try this your self, ground balance the machine and set all the coins mentioned in a row spaced out, go over each coin at a height of approx. 6-8 inches and note its tone. Now shift the ground balance down to say 7 and note the tones you will find as you lower the ground balance a $2 dollar coin will shift from a low tone to a high tone and if you lower the ground balance further say to 6 it will shift a $1 coin from low to high as well. Now if we go up in ground balance from our initial setting of say 8 we can move it to 9 and that will shift a 50c coin into low and if we raise the again to say 10 the 20c coin will go from high tone to low tone.

Now lets say your in an area and you are hunting for old coins such as those mentioned above. If you first switch the machine to high mode then lower the ground balance to 5 we have eliminate all low conductors and also shifted $2 and $1 dollar coins into the low conductor side, because we have selected high conductor mode we will not hear the $1-2 dollar coins and any signal we get will be from more high conductive targets. This is great because most Iron has been shifted to allowing us to detect in very trashy ground for deep silver and old coins.

Finally gold and this basalt and/or hot spots causing false signals. Most operators will detect in Low conductor mode because most of the gold will be small and this will give us a high tone signal. So by ground balancing in ALL Conductive mode we make a note of the ground balance number that we get. We then shift the mode into LOW Conductor mode and start detecting, why, because we have eliminated a lot false targets this way that are high conductors and also eliminated ground signals that also give low tones. But some places we get strong high tone signals from the ground or hot rocks like basalt, so what we can do is slightly raise the ground balance dial and this will shift the offending ground signal into the High conductor side, but because we can not hear the high conductive targets due to us selecting the LOW conductor mode we can blissfully detect with out those offending ground signals and concentrate on the good signals that we are after like small GOLD.

Sorry for such a long winded post, but i hope i have given you a better understanding of whats going on and not confused you even more. :)
 
Pete, Reg. and Luke have been a great help to me with getting the best out of this machine. These guy's know the TDI's like the back of their hands and if i can pass on stuff i had learn't from them then we all win don't we. :)
 
For sure Roscoe, if Luke hadn't shown me some of the tricks in the field then I'd be very confused and having doubts about the SL as I'm still a newbie to detecting, same as all the great info RR has passed on when I first got my MXT Pro, you blokes and quite a few others on the forum are a wealth of knowledge and it's great that you all pass on that knowledge to help us guys starting out, it saves months even years of working it out the hard way and the info is much appreciated. Reading these recent posts and topics has helped refresh and reinforce what was passed onto me earlier in the year but it was a lot to take in back then, I've had time to let it soak in and confident now that I'll be detecting more efficiently from now on.

Got my 4WD packed for an early start tomorrow meeting up with Luke for the weekend detecting in the bush, it's been 3 months since I've been out so to say I'm excited is an understatement and will have a some new tricks to try out (setting frequency, swing slower etc.) thanks to some great help by you guys.
 
ProspectorPete said:
For sure Roscoe, if Luke hadn't shown me some of the tricks in the field then I'd be very confused and having doubts about the SL as I'm still a newbie to detecting, same as all the great info RR has passed on when I first got my MXT Pro, you blokes and quite a few others on the forum are a wealth of knowledge and it's great that you all pass on that knowledge to help us guys starting out, it saves months even years of working it out the hard way and the info is much appreciated. Reading these recent posts and topics has helped refresh and reinforce what was passed onto me earlier in the year but it was a lot to take in back then, I've had time to let it soak in and confident now that I'll be detecting more efficiently from now on.

Got my 4WD packed for an early start tomorrow meeting up with Luke for the weekend detecting in the bush, it's been 3 months since I've been out so to say I'm excited is an understatement and will have a some new tricks to try out (setting frequency, swing slower etc.) thanks to some great help by you guys.

Pete, your TDI SL is just like the MXT in respect as it is a Manual machine and there are no menu's, The TDI's are not a hard machine to use if you play with the controls out in the back yard to see what each control does and what the effects are, Having a few Whites machines I like the MXT and the pro but for ease of life in Hot Ground I prefer the SL and in Rough Hilly Country it is the Best PI On the Market because of its Light Weight, Don't get me wrong there are a lot of great machines out there but when the ground is moving under ya feet on a hill side the last thing you need is a lot of Heavy Gear.

Personally I don't mess with the Delay control much when I am trying to make false signals go away and I have mainly used the GB but that is more because I have used machines with GB Controls and not the delay until I got the TDI's, Although I have used it since I saw the Video about a year ago I have never used it at higher settings, I have VLFs for that job,
Coin hunting with PI's is more popular in the US than over here, and Generally speaking PI's are best kept for Beach's and Gold Fields unless you spend a lot of time testing them,
I have read a lot of posts by Reg where he can find things in places where others just scratch their heads no matter what machine they use, Learning to use the GB and the Delay will Give you a powerful Tool when you need it, So when you get time check out Regs posts on FINDS and a couple of other forums.

Good Luck this weekend Pete,

John
 
Hey, Roscoe, thank you. And I don't consider explanatory notes 'long-winded'. Besides, I just print it off in Word and read it while I'm in 'the library'.
 
Thanks for all of this fellas. I took the SL out for a real workout yesterday and learnt a lot. And was easier because of all the advice from those on this page. Thank you.

I'm so pleased at how easy it is to GB and even more pleased at how quiet it is. Brilliant.

And just an aside; what an excellent forum this is. Having been acquainted with LukeOzDigger who did the mod on the SL at fantastically low price.

Before Luke offered to do the mod, I'd previously rung the White's dealer and he casually reeled off a price of $360! ...he's a man of considerable personal control...he didn't even burst out laughing and fall on the floor clutching his sides in stitches of laughter. Outstanding effort!

I would have been an absolute sucker! Price gouging is so incredibly offensive. At least for me. Others may really enjoy getting screwed. I must be the odd man out.

So I just want to point to LOD again and say thank you for being so genuine and so helpful to me. He has saved me a lot of money and directed me in stuff with the SL. And Old-Grumpy Ridge-Runner has been a terrific big brother too. Shepherding me along with all my questions and directing me on matters of the battery stuff and setting up the SL (as is seen above and in numerous other emails). And Roscoe also. I appreciate you attention to detail and taking time out to teach me stuff. It has been a real blessing to me.
 
Regarding Basalt and testing,

Last weekend I was using the MJ 9x5 folded mono in hot ground, settings on the SL were:

Threshold = only just audible through headphones (good targets have a positive signal so no need for buzzing in my ears all day)
Pulse Delay = 10
GB = advanced 1 notch to help with hot ground (from memory GB was 8 so advanced to 9)
Gain = 10
Conductivity = Low
Frequency = did the full circle thing and adjusted until the least amount of EMI was present.

A couple of hours in I'd found my share of lead, bullet shells and other rubbish and whilst on a shallow surface area I picked up a sweet signal, turned out to be a golf ball sized piece of basalt so I advanced the GB until it ignored the rock, this was another full notch.
So with the GB on 10 we tested the coil with a tiny piece of flat lead and it still picked it up within a couple of mm, when I got home I weighed the lead and it went .1g on the scales.
I'm happy with that result, I'm not a fan of looking for fly shit amongst the pepper so if I'm losing sensitivity to anything smaller that .1g I can live with that.
The fact that I can now detect without having false signals and concentrate on the good signals at a possible slight loss of depth is worth it for me.
 
ProspectorPete said:
Regarding Basalt and testing,

Last weekend I was using the MJ 9x5 folded mono in hot ground, settings on the SL were:

Threshold = only just audible through headphones (good targets have a positive signal so no need for buzzing in my ears all day)
Pulse Delay = 10
GB = advanced 1 notch to help with hot ground (from memory GB was 8 so advanced to 9)
Gain = 10
Conductivity = Low
Frequency = did the full circle thing and adjusted until the least amount of EMI was present.

A couple of hours in I'd found my share of lead, bullet shells and other rubbish and whilst on a shallow surface area I picked up a sweet signal, turned out to be a golf ball sized piece of basalt so I advanced the GB until it ignored the rock, this was another full notch.
So with the GB on 10 we tested the coil with a tiny piece of flat lead and it still picked it up within a couple of mm, when I got home I weighed the lead and it went .1g on the scales.
I'm happy with that result, I'm not a fan of looking for fly shite amongst the pepper so if I'm losing sensitivity to anything smaller that .1g I can live with that.
The fact that I can now detect without having false signals and concentrate on the good signals at a possible slight loss of depth is worth it for me.

Sound good to me Pete, Next time when you have raised the GB to 9 try raising the delay to around 12 or 13 at the max then you won't have to offset your GB so much, that way you always have a bit in reserve,, I tried it and I did not loose sensitivity at those low setting and the hot rocks will be gone,

Just play with it and see which method you prefer, Thanks for the update Pete, I think that MJ 5x9 will be my first coil too,

thanks mate,, John
 
Yep did the delay test and it also works to get rid of hot spots and basalt but didn't check it with the piece of lead though.
After seeing the result of the advanced GB test I'll stick with that method as it's simple and the loss of sens. is minimal.
 
ProspectorPete said:
Yep did the delay test and it also works to get rid of hot spots and basalt but didn't check it with the piece of lead though.
After seeing the result of the advanced GB test I'll stick with that method as it's simple and the loss of sens. is minimal.

Yeah you gotta stick with what you are happy with, I would rather just use the GB method and enjoy the Day.

thanks mate,, john
 
Reading all the advice and direction here I'm now understanding why a lot of people say one brand doesn't work and the other is fantastic etc. is, I believe, that the operators simply aren't listening to the language of the machine and the ground they on. Hence, one brand gets slagged and the other lauded because of the different learning styles of the operators. And we see this clearly in the ML and White's debate.

Perception is reality.
 
SunriseBoy said:
Reading all the advice and direction here I'm now understanding why a lot of people say one brand doesn't work and the other is fantastic etc. is, I believe, that the operators simply aren't listening to the language of the machine and the ground they on. Hence, one brand gets slagged and the other lauded because of the different learning styles of the operators. And we see this clearly in the ML and White's debate.

Perception is reality.

As to which is best there is no right answer because the TDI's do things that ML machines can't and the ML machines can do things the TDI's can't do, I see other machines as an extra tool in the box, If I needed one the I would buy one, But where I use them i need them to do certain things, Your SL can be used in the junk areas like mining camps and old homesteads where you need depth and discrimination where a VLF will struggle and a straight out PI will give you a hard time.

john
 
It's interesting you mention the trash problem. I'm currently working with and owner who's property is on the site of an old army camp here in Qld. And I'm finding the SL is just dynamite in scoring various old army stuff. And yes, I have to concede I'm really loving the SL...and I didn't have to pay three and half to four and half grand to get into the place I'm in now. So thanks for the guidance RR. Excellent.
 
SunriseBoy said:
It's interesting you mention the trash problem. I'm currently working with and owner who's property is on the site of an old army camp here in Qld. And I'm finding the SL is just dynamite in scoring various old army stuff. And yes, I have to concede I'm really loving the SL...and I didn't have to pay three and half to four and half grand to get into the place I'm in now. So thanks for the guidance RR. Excellent.

Well 99% of the time I would say a VLF would be the weapon of choice for such sites, But knowing the Areas you want to work I'd say a PI that can Disc out the junk is a must, A VLF will work but it will loose a certain amount of depth and another Issue when you run a VLF in hot ground is the ground will drag down the VDI numbers which means you will walk over many targets because they can and do lower the ID's telling you they are junk when they are not, where that does not happen with a PI and the depth loss is minimal,

john
 

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