New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Robert of Puiaki Supply was great and managed to express me up a Gold Bug Pro with extra 10" elliptical head in time for the forum get together being organised near Reefton last weekend. However I wasn't to keen to head over and get soaked when the time came, especially as the weather was so good in Christchurch - sorry guys. Was a bit gutted the weather turned ugly over there :(

That left me chomping at the bit to get out there and try the new toy (other than coin hunting) so when the weather looked like it was going to turn good on Labour Day itself I jumped at the chance and headed over Sun night. Quite surreal having a beautiful sunny day in Christchurch to then hit the road block in Arthurs Pass that night making sure cars had chains or were 4WD to continue over the pass. Waved through as I had both. From warm sun to snow in just a few hours - bizarre.

Hit a spot I've found gold at a few times before with the GPX 4500. Pretty heavily hit now, so not much left to pick up - just small bits it seems.

I started with the 10" inch coil but found this to be a bit too noisy unfortunately. Just seemed to take a slight knock to the edge of the coil to get a false signal. Was getting frustrated with it so decided to swap over to the little round 5" coil it ships with. Result was remarkable - no false signals and far easier to pinpoint any signals found, also easy to poke into nooks and crannies. Felt like a different friendlier detector - far easier to use! Not sure about the 10" - will have to experiment some more to see if it's operator error, just the way the larger coil is, or other. Anyone else used the 10" elliptical for gold with similar experiences / recommendations / etc.?

Hit a few spots I'd found gold at before and hooned in to the gravel to see if we could unearth some new targets. I'm pleased to say that the new toy found me a few very small sub-gram nuggets. Quite surprised how small some of the pieces it could detect were, but if super small then it needed to near enough touch the target first.

Was a very slight learning curve getting used to the new toy - but quite quick really. Definitely picked up a lot more hot rocks with the GB than I did with the GPX, but the large ones gave a distinctively different "boing" signal so were easy to ignore after I'd confirmed the first few signals. Did come away with a handful of varied hot (and probably cold) rocks to experiment with that gave a more positive signal, but were again quickly easy to locate or gave themselves away with a higher ferrous indication. Rusty junk was also far easier to determine due to the number that came up, so I'll probably dig less as I use the detector more (nice being able to get this value while in all-metal mode also). I'm looking forward to hitting trashier areas now to see how I get on as even the smallest gold, once close enough to the coil to get a number, gave a value of 40+ while iron never seemed to get much over 20.

Attached is a photo of the GB cherry poppers recovered that day :)

Great post. Very interesting.

I've got gold on mine down at 20 but only a few time, but only when its a bit deeper. normally its right on 50.

the small 5" coil that come with mine was great but stopped work after a while so go a new one. the new coil (still 5") had the same thing going on that your 10" has. every time i bumped it on the bottom on a rock or something it would give me a signal. got so annoying i had a look at the old one and found it had a lose wire so fixed it and now use that one.

The gold bug coil is filled with resin and i think what happens is that some of the wire didn't get covered and moves a little when it gets knocked and give you a signal. Just my thoughts.