New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Hi John

On one of the sub forums on here, I think it was gold grab,(User Name) or something similar. Bought one off Skylab Christchurch. He was kinda worried it may be a counterfeit. But it turned out to be the real deal. He is a self admitted new chum. Took it for a trip up Moonlight Creek but was thwarted by a log across the road, blocking access. His latest post was he was down on Summner beach, ChCh find mega bobby pins.
I rang Sky Lab just to see what price they are offering them up at. I think the guy said $3850.00 plus delivery costs. That was around the same cost the minelab dealer in Auckland had on his website. But the price there now seems to be gone. Seems they are popular. They are now on a back order basis, the guy in ChCh said Minelab expected the next shipment to arrive about Wednesday this coming week.

Lots of info and utubes on. https://www.prospectingaustralia.com.au/forum/

Im still tossing up as to whether to get one or not. I run outa puff these days, still it would nice hanging on the wall. Lol

Cheers Trev

Hi John

Rang Metal Kiwi today. To get a price and the availability of the koss water proof headphones. He will get back to me.
The SDC 2300 is an embryo of the FC3 1 mine detector. As landmine manufacturers get more cunning, they shrink the firing pin and cap, so as to defeat modern land mine detectors, the rest is just plastic and c4. blow a leg or foot of. Better to maim than kill, takes up resources.

The very name Minelab is what they are about. Then they found a new world in the game of gold. The FC3 1 is obviously a plug and play mine detector. Can be carried in a grunts backpack and if the patrol gets into a mine infested area, out it comes. And all are saved, hopefully.

So they tweek the FC3 1 a tad and we have the SDC2300. So it must be a very small firing pin and cap indeed. All the better for us gold detectorers. Steve Hersbach from Alaska has kinda fallen in love with his, read here if you haven't. But Chris from Reno had all the fun and games.

http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/

A couple of pics

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I was up in Alaska a few years back, lovely place. Doing a gold thing, but thats another story.

But yes Im gunna get an SDC2300. Do I need one. "No" do I want one "Yes"

Cheers Trev aka " The Hatter"

I would love to know how 'waterproof' it is, would be a handy tool to check bedrock after dredging to see if urve got all the gold. If any of you get one, can u chuck it into 2m of water for an hr or so and tell me if it still works after you pull it out.

Hi golddigger

I have had my unit under water several times but for short periods of time only and all seems well. I understand minelab give a 3 yr warranty on this detector so I'm sure it would be ideal for what you want it for. I will give it a good underwater test in the next few days, but not really that keen on holding it under for a couple if hours lol.

Not long back from a trip to Western Australia, visiting our son and his wife in Perth We did a trip up the coast as far as Exmouth then headed inlandto look at the mining and to do some detecting I have a Fisher gold bug pro.On our way south we met up with my son and his good lady to spend a week chasing gold in one of his favored spots.
He has a minelab 5000, and his lady just traded her minelab 4500 on a sdc2300. It was the first trip out with the sdc.
To cut along story shorter the 5000 got the the biggest nugget about 8 grams probably got 10 for the week the sdc got the balance of detected gold best day was about 30 nuggets. The ground was extremely mineralized lots of hot rocks and iron. The sdc is very easy to use the first time I managedto get a go with it I scored a nice nugget and shortly after another 3.
For the week we got just under 2.5 ounces. On our way back to perth we stayed overnight in the bush by some old workings a fairly popular spot as it turned out as people were detecting by us that night you could hear their detector hitting old rusty sardine cans etc. Also next am we heard a bike and abit later a 4wd. Inthe am by some old workings in an hour I got 5 or six small bits 3 of them so small the scales wouldn't weigh them the 3 together .1gm.
I will try to post a couple photos 1 with those few nuggets and the other some of the larger nuggets.
PS. On my couch here in Coromandel is a new sdc2300 arrived today from Chis at Detectnz, batteries in the charger.
I have a fisher gold bug pro with a 11inch elliptical coil and the 5inch gold coil for sale, going on trade me when I get a chance a good buy for some one.

Mean.

Hi Gary, The quick answer is yes, quite a bit. The 5000 comes into its own on the deep gold, and the large area you can cover using the larger coils. Find it then clean up with 2300.
We did try an 8 inch coil for comparison but the 2300 was still better on the sub grammers. my test piece is .25g, but we were getting gold to small for the scales est .05g maybe even smaller. I think maybe the 5000 with a small coil and a very experienced operator may get there, the soil, what there is of it, is so highly mineralized that you have that to contend with as well.
The 2300 you can take it out of your vehicle,cancel the electrical interference noise if any, set threshold i find 1.5 to 2 leds a nice easy to listen hum, ground balance and you are away it even seems to automatically GB itself after that. When turned off it remembers your previous settings. It does have about 8 different ground type settings,3 for salt, that you can select. Just left it set in the green #2. There are a row of 9 leds. I found them to be of great help when detecting you think you hear a target and you can go back over it watching the leds, 1 is on all the time the 2nd just coming and going,when you are onto a target (sub grammer) the 2nd led will stay on and the 3rd flash until you have it pretty much pinpointed, some times you will hear it some times not. Large targets the whole 9 go and it blows your eardrums apart. The 5000 picks up a lot more ground noise and I think you miss the small stuff partly for this reason, this is where experience comes in.
A few things about it that Im not happy with (cant get it perfect). the first day out the wires came apart at the plug for the headphones, cable to short for gold detecting, a few fixxes, when you find a target unplug the headphones and take them off use the on board speaker to help recover your target. Failing that collapse the coil shafts it's easy enough. dont use headphones we found plenty of gold without them, but it's a bugger by machinery or wind. Set up as shown in enclosed picture, met a guy who also had the same problem as us, wires got pulled out of plug. he has an amplifier speaker, notice the small light headphones, they hang under the chin so you can wear a wide brimmed hat
Available now are extension adaptor leads from Phase Technical made by Nenad Lonic (he used to be minelab australia's technician and is now out on his own) email:[email protected] As you would expect they are expensive $103au. Reeds Prospecting in Perth stock them $110au they also have remote speakers $40 and amplifiers $140 so you can set the noise up beside your good ear, on the harness $85. bungee set up $42. Ive made my own bungee and harness out of bits and pieces as you do, get a dee fixxed onto your backpack and you are half way there, the shoulder gets pretty painful after a few hours swinging.
With a bit of luck Chris from DetectNZ may source these, be something extra to put on the accessory webpage, we should support the guys here, Im sure he can beat the aussie prices.
The other niggle with the sdc2300 is the elbow rest and strap the strap is awkward and a pain to keep adjusting velcro would be a good fix. the collapsable rest wants to collapse when putting your arm thru especially with long sleeves. The fulla whose detector is in the photo his collapsing bits are not far away from disappearing he is going to use a bit of 100m plastic waterpipe to sort. his detector is the machine he uses almost solely now, his 5000 and other detectors stay in the camper van. He had just returned to the town camping ground from a walk for about a hour around the local watertank with 3 nice nuggets when I caught up with him. An area that's been thrashed for years.
Dont get me wrong these detectors where designed for the military. The guy swinging the detector won't be digging the mines so the headphones would be heaps long enough and he wont be putting it on the ground every 5 mins so putting your arm in and out of the elbow rest wont be worrying him either. the way they collapse and fold away is a brilliant piece of design fairly rugged as well, not all flimsy.
The other photo is of a days collecting for us.

Would have loved to stay there, temp getting up in high 30s, tomatoes to plant and the big snapper are coming in. Heading back next year to really clean up before all the grey nomads over there buy one of these.
Keen to get out here should work really well amongst our hot rocks etc. hard to believe the mineralization over there.
We had fly nets etc,man are those flys a pest up your nose in your eyes and mouth, back black with them. I never had to resort to the nets this year got some Horse Bum cream from Reads, best $18 Ive ever spent you only need a little dab spread around your face and ears and the flys are gone amazing. A couple of applications a day. At least the flys go to bed early and get up late. It was used by the old miners. A cream made from olive oil ,sandelwood and rosemary I think.
Doesnt take them long to get copies done, buyer beware. at least with Chris you know what you are getting.
Watch out Otago.