Minelab Eureka gold tips, settings, questions

Take your time SunriseBoy. I intend to do a day with Coiltec in Maryborough, Vic. I believe they do a good one day tour where you get instruction in the use of a GPX machine, knowledge on reading the ground and old goldfields structures and then you get to use the detector for the afternoon. I think that I really should have started with such a day and then I would probably have held off and bought a White's TDI PRO (Oz) set up. I could never have afforded a GPX of any description. There are lots of good reports to recommend the White's PI's.

Cheers Bob.

Hi bob. Yes, I'm using an amplifier. Since using it I've been able to pick up a lot more and you can genuinely hear what the EG is "seeing". Like anything it will take a bit of time to get used to but once you have it will improve the number of targets you'll detect and you'll be surprised at how small some of those targets are.

Of course, that's means detecting more junk and smaller junk - but hey if it's gold you won't complain.

The amplifier I bought only cost me about $20 off eBay and I just had to assemble it, but I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and I have all the equipment to diagnose and fix any faults. But if you're not I'd recommend the one that Nenad sells.

Happy hunting...

AU

Good call. Ron told me just the same thing. White's SPP or the Oz Pro are the one's to aim for.

At the moment I am trialing some Ferrite Core Filters with the Eureka Gold. I have 5, 6mm Ferrite Core Filters connected to the cable just outside of the Eureka Gold box. This is to introduce interference filters and to reduce noise caused by EMI sources. My occupation is electronic sweeping for transmitting devices in Economic and Industrial Espionage. For me the RF environment is amazingly strong in most unusual places, especially near water and generally all around the world. Even overhead aircraft transmitting on VHF at 1000 feet in altitude, are emitting much RF interference to a conductive cable.

Cheers

Peter

I am adding 3, 6mm Ferrite Core Filters to the Eureka Gold coil cable, where the coil cable meets the coil as well. I am tapping the spiraled coil cable to the shaft with heavy duty electrical tape, for further protection and insulation and to reduce any possible movement of the spiraled coil cable.

Cheers

Peter

Anyone on here own a shop who has aftermarket coils for a eureka gold that I can purchase ?

You could try Miner's Den Stores. I have the 11" and the 15" inch coil and they advertise the 6" inch coil as well. They have online shopping if you do not live near one of their stores.

Cheers Bob.

Thanks bob ! How do you find your eureka gold?

Have a look on the page that displays your post. Down below there is a good post started by Au fever covering the Eureka Gold. I have made some contributions there as well.

Cheers Bob.

Hi guys heading to the GT tomorrow for the day and thought I'd would be a good chance to grab my brothers mindlab eureka gold 1000 and have a swing I am a complete rookie when it comes to detecting so any helpful hints will help. are these good detectors? And what settings should I be using? Thanks guys

Follow these instructions by Argyle. Its the best instructions on operating the Eureka gold.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1053

Threshold- 2-3 o'clock , tone- 11-12 o'clock, sensitivity- full, volume full , 60-slow track, 20-6.4khz slow or fast track depending on ground and coil used, audio-normal, run with a booster better, but can use without.

Hope this helps.

I watched a few vids last night so I have a rough idea too. Your settings were certainly wrong yesterday and will help ya get that goin soon

The Eureka gold manual and U-tube instructions are wrong and Argyle is spot on with his setup. I run my eureka gold in areas that my SD2200v2 howls on and that's using a DD coil. The Eureka has the ability to run on hot ground at full sensitivity, but only with Argyles setup, setup as per the manual and you will be dropping that sens. in half.

I was so interested in Argyles post i went and bought a Eureka gold just to try out his setup and test the ability of the Eureka gold. Every thing that Argyle stated in his post is spot on and i purposely took the Eureka into some nasty ground to test.

Its the smoothest running VLF i have ever used in hot ground and as Argyle stated "Made for hot ground, but mis-used by many".

And wind up that coil cable nicely around the shaft and secure it with velcro strip. As you have it now it may be prone to falsing.
Karl

What I've gathered is set your personal tone, sit on floor, turn on, fix threshold, raise 1" and fix sensitivty to fix background noise, 20khz freq for starters or 60 depending what I want to do, all metal mode ( for gold ), fast tracking as its high mineral and a few up n down pumps to ground balance it.

Sound ok? Of course the settings would be slightly different, but what I've written above is what I've just done on mine and it seems to have worked byt was still a littlebit wabbly. Threshold is down so its another setting..mabey sensitivity, its not max.

What i found was that fast track can cause constant threshold drop outs in some soil/ coil locations. By switching to slow track this can smooth out the detector and prevent un-necessary drop outs, this allows you to run max sens. and concentrate on true target drop outs not false ones. I think in some locations that the Eureka's fast tracking is over compensating and causing these false drop outs. In some locations the fast track is fine, especially in the 6.4khz setting.

So in an area your detector is causing false drop outs, before you wind the sens. back change to slow track first. If this doesn't smooth out the detector then drop sensitivity.

The slow track speed on the Eureka is not that slow compared to other VLF detectors and i put the slow track more like medium track.

Tone control is not set to your personal preference, but should be set to give the best identification to targets over the threshold tone. This tone adjustment is different if you are searching for deep targets as opposed to small shallow targets. If you are chasing shallow small gold then bury a small piece of gold and adjust tone to give the best distinction from you threshold tone and ground noise, unfortunately this is not always the most comfortable to your ears, but you adjust to it after a while.

Ill try that out next cheers. So the Tone control has nothing to do with what tone our own ears can here individual of other peoples hearing? Several videos mention its for our personal adjustment as we all have different hearing. A war veteran said he couldn't hear the tone but everyone else could and he had to adjust the tone until he could hear it correctly. Myth?

Ill certainly take your advice over the american youtube videos though mate

Bring that threshold up to at least to the two o'clock position, sens max, then try what i said about tracking speed before touching sens.

I was thinking of doing a video on Argyles setup, but i will wait a bit until i have more hours up and try some different coils.

Maybe the best tone control setting is the best tone that is for our hearing? I set the tone to a small piece of gold buried, you can really tell when you have it adjusted right. The signal is far more distinct.

I forgot to mention, slow down your sweep speed. The same sweep speed as a SD with DD coil attached, if that makes sense.

I am a slow mover with a detector and very precise not to swing it in a cresent / curve shape, but an overlapping left-right swing.

Do you also use boost when you think its a nugget and if it is gold, when using the boost it will make the signal louder to verify it?

I've got some pickers its picking up really well probably only .1 grammers