how does your sdc2300 behave ?

Great post kurrajong. Thanks, reckon there is good advice there for any detectorist.

Nice write up Kurrajong!
I agree & the green button is doing something. I found it was best used if your machine gets out of ground balance to do a quick re-balance using the button to settle it down quickly then let the auto tracking do its job. To me it definitely allows you to balance a bit quicker to ground changes or if you upset the ground balance etc. If your on fairly consistent ground the auto tracking does a great job & the button doesn't seem to make too much difference but it's there for a reason.
Also agree that the state of battery charge makes no difference. It's internally regulated so should operate the same from full charge to shutdown. It's designed to shutdown once the input voltage of the batteries dips below that required. IMO any difference is perceived only & not actual. I've pinged gold when the batteries had one bar left & I was returning to the ute to get my other set before it shutdown on me.

Great report Kurrajong , for a machine that is advertised as plug and play I am still learning how to get the best out of mine after hundreds of hours , the blue machine is a beauty !

Cheers

alright I got my sdc back , the turn around was about 14 days but anyway I am glad its back , might be a few weeks before its dry enough to get back to my swinging spot but will update you all when that happens .
here is the summary short but sweet .

Great write up Kurrajong,

Found it very interesting how you touched on the human factors and peoples own personal belief sets with detecting. Its a mental game of chess where your opponent in the GOLD!

For example the fact that some people believe that the SDC can only find small gold. This belief is logically not valid. The real reason that the SDC seems to only find small gold is because no other detector in the last 30 years has been able to see it in the ground. People have been walking over the nuglets for 30+ years. The larger nuggets have mostly been pulled out of the ground, again an ADLI detector would have found the Hand of Faith.

So on the surface is would be easy to form a belief that the SDC is finding all these tiny pieces of gold and cant find a larger piece. That's because 30 years of detecting has depleted larger pieces.

When I first bought my SDC I had used it for about 8 full days in a month. Found nothing but rubbish. Was only about one or two trips away from selling it because all the "golds gone" that was my belief.

Then one day I found my first ever nugget. From that day forward my belief set changed to this thing really can find gold so slow down and scan the ground carefully and listen, or even better not listen too intensely and wait for that change in threshold. For the record I run mine on max settings. But have a "belief" that if I don't I will miss deeper or smaller pieces of gold. (I'm smart enough to realise this is most probably not true, but the brain is difficult to win an argument with)!

Some quirks I ve found is that if you do get a faint threshold change and rescan a few times, the sdc will balance it out and the signal disappears. Now I move the coil away from the target and have a few sweeps in a different spot then come back to the suspected target, if its there its something, if its gone, ground noise.

I learnt this when my 19yo was claiming he had a signal then he would say "no false alarm I m not sure now" He had headphones on so I could not tell. I did give advise earlier that if the signal is repeatable its something so stop and dig. I said give me a listen and then figured out what was happening. He then started finding small pieces that I did not hear on ground I have been over before several times, although the ground was very damp. Again a belief of mine is that it performs better in damp ground.

If it plays up badly, turn it on and off for a full reset.
Kind of use mine like a broom, sweeping forward and back trying to wear out the skid plate and slow.

Thanks for sharing your take on the wonderful SDC!

Cheers

RS

Hey AF, did they say they found a fault or just what the receipt says?

nah just what printed there , they haven't really gave me any correspondence once I had sent it apart from it was on the way back to me , before I sent it they were very confident it was the pcb connections so I am guessing it is reasonably common
it does read "poor connection" so I guess they tested it before they opened it. I will email them during the week to see if I can get a better report.

Maybe it's a do not talk about issue, you'll know after a good run with it if they have done anything

Excellent post Kurrajong!

Some really good information there guys top stuff

B5MECH said:

Hey AF, did they say they found a fault or just what the receipt says?

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From the service report the only defect found was poor connection. The fix - fully pushed home all internal PCB connections & reassembled.
Nothing replaced etc. so a pretty simple fix.
That's about all you get back on the service reports - they're pretty basic & straight to the point.

I will give it a run probably Monday, but it wont be in gold country, but I will soon know if the demons have been exorcised

Hopefully it's better than new! I know the feeling of having your pride & joy go bonkers. Had my GPX5000 back under warranty for a PCB issue too. It was better than ever when I got it back. My service report was much the same as yours - very basic info but straight to the point. Basically we found this, we fixed it then put it back together & tested it. OK now :lol:
A year or so prior to that I sent my SD2200D in for a check as I thought it was a bit unstable. Before they sent it back to me I got a call from one of the technicians & he explained it all over the phone. The basic service report was still sent but it was nice to get a verbal on it as well. Probably a sign of the times unfortunately - cut backs etc. so the little extras get the chop.

I think Kurrajong and Retirement Stone have nailed it; confidence and belief are critical. And as mentioned, sometimes that doesn't come until you find your first bit.

kurrajong said:

I run the beast as hot as I can, usually on 5 and with the threshold at max.

Click to expand...

Retirement Stone said:

For the record I run mine on max settings.

Click to expand...

The above quotes also give me confidence

Leroy said:

I forgot to point out too that a persons hearing, or lack off, probably has quite a bit to do with it. Mine is pretty bad and for some reason the settings I use seem to help a lot so I usually try and stay with the ones that work the best for me.

Click to expand...

I was told that if hearing is an issue for you (and it is for all of us as we get older), you should change the pitch from high (default) to low. Apparently some of the sounds the 2300 can make while on high pitch can be missed by your ears as we can't hear the same frequencies as younger people. To change the setting, you just hold down the threshold button and turn the 2300 on and it'll change to low. You don't have to change the setting each time, it remembers what you changed the pitch to.

As for batteries.. I read a lot about battery problems when doing research on the 2300 earlier in the year but I've never had an issue with it, not even with the batteries they give you. Maybe they fixed the problem or something on models produced later, I don't know but I've never had to put tape or anything around the default batteries or the ones I got from the Dick Smith sale.

Interesting with the high pitch frequencies.

I downloaded a high pitch frequencies app to shut the dog next door up (for the record it just made him angrier)

I sat in the lounge room and was playing with it and everyone could hear the higher ones but my hearing only kicked in at a certain level.

Ive been a Train Driver for over 30 years so have inherited a certain level of deafness (high pitch) plus what comes with age. Confirmed by medicals every 5 years.

Will be trying the lower frequency setting next outing but only after finding a target in high that my ears are tuned to. Ill switch over at that point to see what it sounds like in low.

Thanks for the share. I had forgot about that feature of the SDC.

Does anyone else use it in low frequency setting????

Cheers

RS

Great machine sdc 2300 finds me gold every trip
But question regarding threshold, i have my between 2-3 but notice above 3 there is no difference in threshold tone
Is this standard with the machine ?
Mick

Hey Mick,

I'm no expert in the threshold theory. I just have mine up all the way so all LEDs are lit up.

Seems to me to be a volume switch. I'm sure its far more complex than that but the higher I set it the easier it is to hear and I always use headphone to help eliminate coils scraping and wind/external noises from the sweet tunes that the SDC plays.

Would be keen to see what other know and what works for them?

Cheers

RS

Thanks RS
I use sunray gold headphones as they are tight fit and have volume control
But will try using threshold on full and see if it makes a difference for me
Cheers,
Mick

Hey Mick,

I use the same headphones as recommended by Nenad on the forum.

Cant fault them, snug fit keep the noise out. I think they are made in the USA off memory, without googling!

Cheers