Minelab Eureka gold tips, settings, questions

Prospecting Australia

Help Support Prospecting Australia:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
roy cobb said:
Only new with mine but works fine on 6.4 just got to learn the tone differents and that just comes from time on the detector

Thanks mate. i was deciding between the Eureka and the X-terra 705.

my main detecting will be coins / relic but i would like to have a crack on the gold field.
 
roy cobb said:
Are you more towards gold or relick / coin then work out which one suits bettet

I want to concentrate on gold but in reality im a few hours drive from closest gold field but only a 2 minute drive from beaches and old parks. So i can see myself down the beach alot more often than on the gold field.

Looks like i hight have to buy both :D
 
Hey 2FQ, The Eureka won't be a good beach detector it's not waterproof, the 705 is better for coins and relics and I believe handles the wet sand, if your going to do more beach and park hunting I would advise something with an ID target screen, parks have more junk than goodies and if I didn't use a ID target with tone sounds there would be no grass left and holes every where, in reality one detector doesn't cover all, in saying that all detectors can find gold but your chances are slim.
The park hunting I do I run full discrimination in coin mode and still get junk
On the beach the jewellery usually hides in the low tide mark and the detector must be able to handle wet sand and salt water to get to it
The eureka is designed a as gold detector, in saying that it will still find all other metals coins relics and all other junk as well, copper, brass, alloy, silver will all be medium to high tones and gold is sort of in a medium area if it is pure, the lower the carrot the higher the tone and that is why gold rings are so hard to find, they sound like a pull tab and there's thousands of them buried
If your 2 min from the parks and beaches go with the 705, as you wont get rich with looking for gold unless your the luckiest guy in Australia :lol: It took me 8 months of trying to decide on which detector to buy it should suit what you will use it for most not least :)
 
B5MECH said:
Hey 2FQ, The Eureka won't be a good beach detector it's not waterproof, the 705 is better for coins and relics and I believe handles the wet sand, if your going to do more beach and park hunting I would advise something with an ID target screen, parks have more junk than goodies and if I didn't use a ID target with tone sounds there would be no grass left and holes every where, in reality one detector doesn't cover all, in saying that all detectors can find gold but your chances are slim.
The park hunting I do I run full discrimination in coin mode and still get junk
On the beach the jewellery usually hides in the low tide mark and the detector must be able to handle wet sand and salt water to get to it
The eureka is designed a as gold detector, in saying that it will still find all other metals coins relics and all other junk as well, copper, brass, alloy, silver will all be medium to high tones and gold is sort of in a medium area if it is pure, the lower the carrot the higher the tone and that is why gold rings are so hard to find, they sound like a pull tab and there's thousands of them buried
If your 2 min from the parks and beaches go with the 705, as you wont get rich with looking for gold unless your the luckiest guy in Australia :lol: It took me 8 months of trying to decide on which detector to buy it should suit what you will use it for most not least :)

Thats a fair call. thanks for that. A nice second hand 705 came up for sale reasonably local to where i am so i might make a call and see if its still available.

Cheers mate.
 
EG strikes gold :)

G'day all just my recent experience of the EG in the North west , prospecting in the kimberlys and getting my first nugget .

Spent a week out Hall creek way , first time on any gold bearing ground and from what ive reaserched and could make out i was in the right spot . Hand held GPS was a life saver ( was also carrying a PLB ) and combined with Minedex , dmp and google earth i felt pretty confident.

First morning session, down hill from some old tailings piles and a small creek running between a few quatz blows - signs of detecorist tracks through the dry creek bed , one or two holes here and there .
I had a swing over the piles , detector runings smooth a few hits of old timer junk but worked my way down the edge of the creek and banks , obvious quatz washing along the banks and through the creek .
I had only been swinging about 3 hours on my first day when i hit a patch of old timer junk , quite consentrated but moderately spaced enough to guide the standard gold search 10x5 between the hits and make out the 2/3 signals.
A couple of old style nails / studs , i assumed to hold an old wooded sluice or dry blower together , on the the next traget . strong and extremely clear another nails or something iron by the strength of it ? I brushed away the top dusty layer with my hand and there it was .... Almost a sun baker , there had been some later rains a few weeks back maybe its travelled with that but there it was my first nugget :D
I worked the initial area as best i could ( after id calmed myself down ) doing a rough grid up and down and across using the marked nugget area as the center. Nothing . But by that time it was becoming to hot the days pushing 37 and mininal shade i had to get back to camp .
Returning the following two days i work the nugget area and surrounding areas but yeilded nothing more than old timer junk.
There was a clear line of a mix of gravel including quatz wash and old timers junk forming a slightly curved line almost parallel to the creek and i can only assume where there water level may have been during big rains . i worked this thougherly digging everything but no more colors .
Imo i was on the right track , looking in the right area and doing what I could with techniques . Gold not there ? Gold to deep ? Missing the faint signals ? ( i managed to find a sewing needle.........eventually, among the old timer junk on my gold wash line ...... What more could i do ? .Still happy with the nugget i got i moved camps .

The next few days became challenging, very challenging. The mineralization became to much for the Eureka , a stable threshold wasnt achievable without dropping the sensitivity but at the cost of what little depth the Eureka has ?? The previous days had been smooth and stable the odd knock on a rock would cause a peak but it was tolerable and easy to recheck the false signal .
After digging a couple of hot rocks , chaseing dissapearing signals and the battle between unstable threshold and the thought of loosing gold i headed back to camp .
I had some small lead with me to use as test peices just to check , well now i had my gold so between the both i cleared and area of camp ( also good gold ground a fellow prospector recoverd a 1.3gramer on the edge of somones fire a few days before .... Lucky bugger .
Well the test was slightly disappointing , im extremely fond of my EG so it was quite disheartening.
Clearing two small holes 30-40mm deep i placed the gold and lead of equal size down , the surface area of both fairly equal and un sure of weights of either but for a bush test was as best i could do . Coverd over and patted down to firm up each hole .
Sett up - 20khz , fast track , all metal , normal , threshold-tone-sensitivity al set to the ground and my hearing . The lead was clear and repeatable something u would dig , the gold was weak potentially even missable ( no dout in a highly mineralized patch i would have missed it ) boost made some improvements but with the high minerals and unstable and irratict threshold it was heat breaking to see that something that should be assisting me is hammpering my progress .

Im not bagging out the EG as the first two / three days it was stable and it was performing well for an entry level machine , plus it had bagged me my first nugget .

I just want to share my experience as for me when I purchased the EG i could afford a GPX , however couldn't justify spending 4-6$k on something that seemed highly technical and i wasnt even sure i liked metal detecting (completely obsessed now - my GF would grudgingly agree im addicted )
If anyone is considering buying a metal / gold detector really do consider its uses and what your likly to be doing with it . the EG also works well in parks and dry beach sand , but struggles and is unworkable on wet beach sand . There are cheaper machines that will do the same job and even work the wet sand so consider that . Also the area , if looking for gold , how mineralized is it ? The North west is heavily mineralized ! Maybe in Vic , Nsw the soils are more forgiving on the EG and it will cope better, i do hope so as its a pleasure and easy this machine .
Thanks all , sorry for the long post .
 
1475546469_image.jpg
 
Well done Chriso 1988 on your first nugget with your Eureka Gold. A piece of gold on your first visit to a gold bearing area is a very good result particularly when people have reported results of no gold in the area you were working using better, more expensive machines. It took me three and a half years and many visits to find my first piece. Even though the Eureka struggled a bit you still found a nugget. Next time time you set up a little depth test comparison like you mentioned in your post, try each frequency and also try varying the threshold to see which set up gets the best signal response. Well done on your first nugget find.

Cheers Bob.
 
Thanks fellas , ive been itching to get on gold ground since I brought it and the hours of reaserch help alot .

I dont own any scales so im not sure of the weight, i was second guessing my self when i first saw it , when i picked it up i knew it was the yellow stuff , decivingly heavy for its size , but it the firsy nugget ive held so nothing to relate to .

I did try 6.5khz and it was just as weak , alot of the gold that gets recoverd up this was is small and fairly shallow ( from what ive herd and read ) so i felt 20khz would be the best maybe i should have ran 6.5 maybe the threshold would have been more stable . 60 i had no hope , sounded like R2D2 lol

Really considering an upgrade now , and currently making a slucie , panned of a spot in a small creek and getting some small bits , grabbed a few backets of tailings to so might get lucky with them and will help set up the sluice for the next trip .
Definitely keeping the EG tho had a swing at the beach this morning found a few $ , old trusty :D
 
Yes roy i knew the VLF would suffer with the minerals but didn't realize it would be so bad . I was picking up rocks / small stones with my magnet .

If i had searched around maybe i could of found some more stable ground , but it just seemed to be everywhere . I even took of the skid plate making sure there was no dirt in there ( i keep the joint fully taped up so was all clean )
 
Sometimes running in Fixed ground balance can help to ID the hotrocks, as when you are in Tracking and sweeping over them, the sound will change so can be harder to identify.
 
Top