Gatrett Euro ace not detecting small gold nugget?

[WestieDigger]

Hi, my friend has a gold nugget its one from one of those tourist attractions where you pan for gold in Queenstown area. So I tried to pick it up on the euro ace.

The nugget is about the size of a squashed .177 calibre air gun pellet.

The euroace wouldn't pick it up at all.

Would the small 4.5sniper coil work better on gold or is the euro ace just not a gold machine?

 

[Paulmarr]

No the Ace350 will not detect gold that small - if a $300 detector would find nuggets Minelab would've out of business as nobody would buy the $6k GPX 5000 ...

The Ace is a good coin and relic machine in parks and dry sand.

 

[Moneybox]

Some nuggets are just hard to detect. When we first got the ATX we tried to find gold on the Nickel River field near Karratha. A local guy was there with a GPX 5000 with a booster getting a few bits and we couldn't get a thing. He wanted to see our machine so when he got a little signal he called us over. I swung the ATX over it for a really weak signal.

He said "dig it, I think it's gold" so Sandra dug it up from just 30mm down. Once it was cleaned up it was 0.2g. In a zip bag on the ground it was undetectable with the ATX. The next day we were over on Burnies Patch and met a couple with a 5000. She swung the 5000 over our little nugget to prove the value of the 5000 but it couldn't detect it either. We took it out of the bag and put it on the ground but still no signal with the GPX 5000 and she was finding gold.

After we returned home I bought Sandra the White's Goldmaster and to our surprise it let out a loud Quack when passed over our little nugget. Then I was really pissed off with the ATX. I just paid nearly $4000 for the ATX and $1200 for the GMT (both including extras). So I got the ATX out with the book and went to work with the tuning options. It was all in the setup. Shortly I had the ATX with a clear signal as well. Perhaps we'd have found a bit of gold ourselves if we'd known what we do now.

That little 0.2g nugget is now our setup piece. Every time we setup we swing both detectors over it to be sure we've got it right. We keep a little one in a tube in our pocket for those times when it's all too quiet. It's nice to see that the detector is still working.

The point is that particular nugget is very difficult to detect but if the setup is right even the little White's Goldmaster GMT does it easily and yet the Minelab GPX 5000 and the Garret ATX failed to detect it until tweaked to suit the location and conditions. Don't give up on your little machine yet. Just get your self a little test piece of lead shot or gold and go to work with some field testing

 

[Goldpick]

Not an ideal detector for nuggets, but my Ace 250 will air test at about 2" on a 0.3gm nugget with the sniper coil, and about 2.5" with the large DD coil. Though you might expect significantly less than this on mineralised ground, not to mention picking up lots of very similar sounding hot rocks. You may have to drop the sensitivity a fair bit to get it running anywhere near stable enough to find something, though some lesser mineralised areas it may have a reasonable chance.

There is a you tube clip somewhere of a father and son out detecting in the Vic goldfields, and the young fella managed to score a small sunbaker nugget with his Ace 250, so it is not impossible. At least the EuroAce already has a DD fitted, so that should help on mineralised ground. Generally speaking, you can lift the coil off the ground over a target, and if the targets disappears, it is most likely a hot rock, if still getting a good signal, it may be worth checking out.

Like I mentioned, not ideal, but if that is all you have to work with, or can afford, then it is better than nothing at all.

 

[Ramjet]

I have a .27 gram nugget and my At Pro will only detect it sometimes.