Anybody having any luck with the FORS Gold?

[Steve Herschbach]

I have been doing very well with my FORS Gold in the United States, having found one of my best specimens ever, a 1.83 oz beauty. That easily paid for the detector! The thing is, I am in the United States and you should not take my results in our admittedly milder ground as meaning anything really. What matters of course is people there using the detector.

I got an email from one person in Australia who was having problems with your bad ground. Mostly with the unit emitting its overload signal. I have one location where I got into a lot of ironstone here and the machine does sound continuously with its overload signal on the ironstone. I wish now I had taken the time to see if I could lower the Gain and eventually be able to ground balance on the ironstone to get the machine to settle down, but that will have to wait until I return to the location.

There was quite a bit of noise about somebody possibly getting a FORS Gold sent to them in Oz for evaluation purposes. Did that ever happen? Any results from them or anyone else?

The reason I ask all of this is that I am wondering if there is a need to expand the ground balance range of the FORS Gold or have some sort of "difficult ground" setting to help it deal with extreme ground. We all know you have ground there that will give even the very best VLF detectors fits so it is not realistic to expect any VLF to perform where a PI is really the only solution. You blokes have ground that challenges PI detectors! However, if there are issues with the FORS Gold it would be good to know because I am finding the company to be very open to realistic suggestions for improvement. Can't be done though without more feedback.

Anyway, here is a photo of that specimen found with the FORS Gold with stock coil in the California Mother Lode country. Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

 

[PhaseTech]

Great piece Steve. Just curious, have you swept that piece across your SDC2300?

I haven't spoken to anyone who's uses the FORS gold.
I saw a video on the Nokta website, where one of their reps was detecting some targets in Mali. A few things concerned me here.

1. It didn't seem to want to "lock" onto the target very well.
2. It appeared to perform much worse with a slower speed speed
3. There didn't seem to be any tone modulation on the audio signal
4. The unit was producing a lot of chatter even with the coil up off the ground

From my experience, all of the above points would make it difficult to find gold in mineralised ground, but this is just based on watching that short video.
I never make any conclusions until I've used something myself, in ground that I know, against detectors I know well.

Nenad

 

[Goldpick]

Hi Steve, I don't believe any members on this forum have had the chance to evaluate the Fors Gold as yet, other than ronniecruisin, who already owned one. One member and a dealer evaluated it on the AMDRH forum:

http://forum.kimbucktwo.com/index.php?topic=25999.0

 

[Steve Herschbach]

Great piece Steve. Just curious, have you swept that piece across your SDC2300?

I haven't spoken to anyone who's uses the FORS gold.
I saw a video on the Nokta website, where one of their reps was detecting some targets in Mali. A few things concerned me here.

1. It didn't seem to want to "lock" onto the target very well.
2. It appeared to perform much worse with a slower speed speed
3. There didn't seem to be any tone modulation on the audio signal
4. The unit was producing a lot of chatter even with the coil up off the ground

From my experience, all of the above points would make it difficult to find gold in mineralised ground, but this is just based on watching that short video.
I never make any conclusions until I've used something myself, in ground that I know, against detectors I know well.

Nenad

Hello Nenad,

I am pretty sure my SDC will signal on a nearly 2 oz specimen!

1. Compared to some other top end units I am impressed by the ability of the FORS Gold to correctly identify non-ferrous targets that other detectors incorrectly identify as ferrous
2. The unit does appear to favor faster sweep speeds
3. Very good modulation
4. Absolutely no chatter issues with mine unless in my house
5. Not impressed by video either - impressed with detector

Goldpick, thanks for the great link. It helped verify something I already suspected - the id mask acts like a secondary ground control. The FORS Gold seems hair trigger tuned while in the Boost (DI2) Mode to detect a nugget in medium ground. The id mask defaults at 10, and I found when setting it lower it would allow ground noise through, the exact setting where that occurred depending on the level of ground mineralization. The machine is extremely hot at default settings and set up for milder ground. It appears imperative in harsher ground to adjust the id mask setting higher. The Europeans are doing something different with ground handling that allows them to extract non-ferrous targets out of a bed of nails or other ferrous trash. Ferrous material is just an extension of the ground the way they set it up, and the iron mask regulates that. At least that is my working theory at the moment.

Anyway, not here to sell anyone on Nokta. I was looking to learn something and by golly I did - thanks! Advice to anyone that does decide to give one of these a go in Oz - pay attention to that id mask setting.

Thanks again, and Happy New Year to my friends Down Under!

 

[Goldpick]

Happy New Year to you as well Steve, hope to see some more informative reviews from you in the future, all the best.

 

[detector_noob]

Hi all,

New member and all of that. I have been a prospecting lurker for a few years, only done one prospecting trip a couple of years ago, but that was with a GC1038 $99 ebay special when they first came out!

I purchased a Nokta Fors Gold about 6 months ago and haven't done any detecting with it besides a bit on the beach.

I will be heading out to WA goldfields in February with the Nokta as the only detector, so we will see how well it handles the mineralisation.

One thing I did do is bring back about 20kg of Iron ore (from a Pilbara mine) and messed around by placing a 0.5 gram nugget at various depths in amongst and under the rocks and the Nokta was detecting as though the ore was not there, so take from that what you will.

 

[Redfin]

One thing I did do is bring back about 20kg of Iron ore (from a Pilbara mine) and messed around by placing a 0.5 gram nugget at various depths in amongst and under the rocks and the Nokta was detecting as though the ore was not there, so take from that what you will.

Well done, first post and you have exceeded anything any detector has done EVER.

 

[detector_noob]

Not sure what is implied by that.

I am saying I have a 20kg container of chunks of iron ore and I am placing a 0.5 gram nugget behind random rocks (2-3 inches I spose) and the detector is picking up the nugget. Once the nuggest is removed, the detector is silent. I am not saying I had the nugget at the bottom of the container. The range of the detector was the same regardless of whether the nugget was by itself or whether it was under ore.

 

[Narrawa]

Got out to Hill End for another day last Saturday, had a look around at some new spots and did ok on one of them.
On the last location of the day, the good women tells me she found a bit of gold....im thinking she found a wee bit, didn't expect it to weigh in at 2.1grams. Go the Fors gold.



The RACER did ok on the earlier spots tried, unfortunately for me, both items of interest have now been misplaced...the buckle i found im sure will turn up when we return due to it falling out of our camp kitchen after cleaning it. I know where it is.....and looking forward to getting back out there to retrieve it.
The other item i found was an early 1800s Snuff Box complete with Tobacco.?? This has simply been misplaced....very disappointing let me tell you as i looked forward to opening it.
Sh!t happens.

 

[Ramjet]

Very nice ugly. Congrats.

 

[Goldpick]

Good to see the VLF's are still finding gold, and a decent chunk at that. Nice one.

 

[PhaseTech]

Never been to Hill End but have seen plenty of pictures of the main workings and it appears to be very mild ground. Always thought a good VLF would do damage there. Especially something with a decent discriminator and hit the trashy areas.

 

[Narrawa]

PT,
Hill End has a lot of variable ground, so much so that you can use the older timings on the GP-GPX range some of the time.
To those models, mineralization is taken in their stride as you know, but a VLF turns nasty when put over the better gold getting spots. One minute its purring like a kitten, the next minute its in overload. Better results come from using disc modes rather than using AM and by picking your location better suited for disc operation.
Using AM with none adjustable SAT and VCO becomes tiresome very quickly when working highly variable ground.

 

[Narrawa]

Good news!!!
Yep, while looking for the lost snuff box i misplaced...it turned up right where i left it....there be the problem....age creeping up on me and could not remember where i left it till i found it....then i remembered.

It will be opened in a few days when i can break the seal without damage.....i'll post pics of the contents when this happens.

 

[Narrawa]

Ok so it took a little longer then expected to get it opened, but the wait is over.

https://www.facebook.com/centralwestprospectingsupplies

 

[Heatho]

Great finds Narrawa, damn only dirt in the tin, 150 year old tobacco would be rotten and deadly anyway most probably.

Nice Gold lump.

 

[Jaros]

Congratulations on the store opening Narrawa. Great website as well.
Cheers Jaros.

 

[jamie]

i saw this on facebook, even i was excited while you were opening it, i was hoping for a heap of gold to fall out of it

 

[JeffP]

Nice find indeed . Good to see someone getting some gold without having to spend 5 grand

 

[Matsamgd]

I have a Nokta Fors Gold, just coming to terms on how best to use it. If someone has one, what is the "threshold" used for? Did not find any gold in Bendigo this time but with a little bit more practice and some helpful advice I may have a better chance next visit in July! any tips on how best to use the Nokta will be appreciated.

Cheers

Garry