Whites Goldmaster2 restoration

Well I received the Goldmaster2 from the US today, knowing there were a few issues with it - only cost around $200 anyway, and I'm not afraid of fiddling around with electronics. I quickly set it up to see what issues would crop up, physically, everything seemed in order, switches all good, ground balancing pots all good. There is no sound from the speaker, but works with headphones, the signal strength was poor, hard to ground balance, needle display stuck on non ferrous (battery check worked though), and it wouldn't pick up on a 0.4 grammer, in fact it barely even picked up the shed!

Knowing these old detectors are pretty tough, I looked into the wear items, being the coil, cable and plug. Seemed like there was a dodgy cable at the plug end with an intermittent break in the signal, easily fixed by terminating the cable further down as there is an abundance of cabling. I ended up pulling the plug apart to check the solder joins and whadayaknow, only 3 out of the four cables were soldered to the plug tips. Upon looking inside the control box at the male side of the plug, it was pretty evident that the loose cable tip should indeed be connected up.

Tonight I will strip everything down and try to resolder the cable back as intended, I also went to town with some isopropyl alcohol, cleaning up any gunk on the internals, pots and toggle switches.

One other issues was the AA battery holder, it connects up via a pair of 9 volt type connectors, one of which was knackered, popped down to jaycar for a replacement for a paltry amount, and should be back in business once all connected up -hopefully!

Nice job GP
Should be a good machine when it's back together.

In the 90's, I always wanted one of these, ended up getting an xt17000 with 3 coils, so it will be good to try it out.

Great work mate, I'll be interested to hear how you get on with it.

That sounds like a real good project. They look like they were built strong. Sounds like a good way for someone to get into electronics. Let us know how it goes, sounds interesting.

Well the gamble has paid off, after cutting back the coil cable, and resoldering all the connections, along with abundant use of shrink wrap, the GM2 now works as it should. I cleaned up all the hardware with Gumption (great cleaning paste) to remove all the renmants of fibreglass tape from the detector shaft, plus gave the control box a decent clean. I also fitted the toggle switches with rubber boots to keep the dust out.
It wasn't all plain sailing though, the external speaker still does not work, but that doesn't bother me as I always use headphones. Plus I had a bit of a heart starter when I soldered a new 9volt type connector to the Jaycar battery battery pack, the detector would not start up?!?!?!? Out came the trusty multimeter, and it was apparent that the output was -12 volts, when it should have been +12 volts. Either the connector or battery back was wired ass about, so I cut the cables and resoldered/shrink wrapped them, resulting in a perfect startup and battery check.

Next up was the moment of truth, took it outside and ran it over my 0.4 grm nugget, all good, in fact so good it was picking up every little bit of metal in the ground outside my shed. This thing is seriously sensitive, and so it should be at 50kHz!

So in summary, I got a bargain that was pretty much left for dead from a deceased estate sale (on ebay, pardon the pun), with just one wire not connected properly!

All ready to go!

I like it when a plan comes together

Well done on the repairs Goldpick !

I've had one of these for over 10 years ' they are great machines very powerful , bought the 6x4DD coil for bad ground & never took it off

Ok, so I had the chance to try out the GM2 in the field today, and I am really impressed with this machine considering its age. Turns out the the ferrous/non ferrous needle does indeed work, and the iron discrimination also works very well, better than the XT17000 in my view. The manual ground balancing works a treat, with the coarse balancing knob for inital balancing, and the fine tune knobs for more accurate balancing.

I was picking up the usual .22 shells with ease (deafening), and the most minute lead buckshot extracted from 2-3 inches down on the mine shaft tailings. If there was any fine gold still lying around, I'm very confident the GM2 would pick it up. It also worked very well amongst the plentiful hot rocks in the area, the signal is distinctly different to good targets with the typical broad boing boing sound vs zip zip.

If you want a good robust first detector for gold, or a very sensitive detector for small gold, I'd have no qualms about recommending this machine. The best thing is that the White online store still supports this model, with parts, and various coils still available to purchase. They regularly go for only a couple of hundred dollars on ebay us (mine was $265au landed), so if you can pick one up cheap, I reckon it is bit of a bargain.

Outback said:

Well done on the repairs Goldpick !

I've had one of these for over 10 years ' they are great machines very powerful , bought the 6x4DD coil for bad ground & never took it off

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How much difference did you find over the stock eliptical coil with regards to sensitivity/hot rocks/mineralisation? I've been eyeing that coil off on the Goldsearch website, $165 seems pretty reasonable.

Goldpick said:

[
How much difference did you find over the stock eliptical coil with regards to sensitivity/hot rocks/mineralisation? I've been eyeing that coil off on the Goldsearch website, $165 seems pretty reasonable.

Click to expand...

The original stock coil was just to sensitive , I was overwhelmed with signals that sounded like it could be gold & had trouble ground balancing on mineralised ground , after fitting the smaller DD coil it was so much better at separating hot rock / mineralisation sounds .
The $165 price is about right for the 6x4 .

Good luck with it .

Outback said:

Goldpick said:

[
How much difference did you find over the stock eliptical coil with regards to sensitivity/hot rocks/mineralisation? I've been eyeing that coil off on the Goldsearch website, $165 seems pretty reasonable.

Click to expand...

The original stock coil was just to sensitive , I was overwhelmed with signals that sounded like it could be gold & had trouble ground balancing on mineralised ground , after fitting the smaller DD coil it was so much better at separating hot rock / mineralisation sounds .
The $165 price is about right for the 6x4 .

Good luck with it .

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Just picked up the 6x4 DD coil and a new battery pack, pricing and delivery charges were pretty fair. Will be eager to see how much difference it makes.

Your going to like the 6x4 Goldpick ! It's deadly on fine specimen gold especially .
Interesting that this detector first came out back in 1991 yet can still perform with todays top gold VLFs .

You can remount the control box between the arm rest & hand grip for better balance , try it & let me know your thoughts

hey goldpick good to see you got her going, got to tell you the soldering on whites is pretty shabby, had the same issue with my GMT the coil connection is still a bit rough but to date ive re soldered 4 parts that i can remember i too am keen to get the smaller coil let us know how you go with it.

No worries, will let you know once it arrives. The connection on the plug that had to be fixed wasn't just a case of bad solder, a part of the red wire had completely snapped off, requiring the cable to be re-terminated to allow enough length. The problem these days is that people are using lead free solder, which is hard to heat, and tends to crack off easier due to not being as pliable as the lead solder. Easy fix though, found through the usual process of elimination.

Also having two coils makes it easier to located plug/wiring issues.

Hey Goldpick I noticed you have a Tesoro Vaquero & a ML X 'terra 305 , bet the Tesoro Sh*ts over that :lol:

Yeah, I hate using the 305 with its target ID's and annoying and sometimes confusing beeps in junky ground. Bought it for the missus, but she just wants to turn it on and go rather than researching the ID numbers and notching out garbage. Most the time I have to run over her targets with the Vaquero to discriminate out most of the junk she finds, should have bought her a silver UMAX, or another Vaquero, so much easier to use.

The 6x4 DD coil arrived today, talking about a small coil, will be eager to see how it performs!

yeh they certainly ate small supposed to have a much clearer responce though

Goldpick said:

Yeah, I hate using the 305 with its target ID's and annoying and sometimes confusing beeps in junky ground. Bought it for the missus, but she just wants to turn it on and go rather than researching the ID numbers and notching out garbage. Most the time I have to run over her targets with the Vaquero to discriminate out most of the junk she finds, should have bought her a silver UMAX, or another Vaquero, so much easier to use.

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I know what you mean ! I hate complication also , always liked detectors with knobs .

Good to see you have the little 6x4 coil , looking forward to hear your thoughts on it .