Nice video, I was taught a little different when it comes to ground balances and my SDC 2300 will now reach a depth of 30 - 35 cm the owner of Reeds Prospecting in Midvale Western Australia, has come up with the optimum settings to get maximum depth. Would be worth contacting him, Even Minelab sent him to America to teach people this technique. Keep up the videos, very informative, thanks.
Thanks again Ian I’ve been so busy on our first couple of tours I’ve been a bit slack in posting some new videos. I hope to have two new videos up tonight showing some of the great gold finds our clients have been finding on our current out back tours. Cheers
G'day Groty, Thanks for watching and your very kind comments. Part 2 cont(showing how to actually swing the detector etc), will be out in the next couple of days. Cheers, Mark GPA
Hi all how can you here small signals with such an unstable thres hold my gp 3000 has a better more stable threshold ive noticedthat on all 2200 vidios
Hi and thank you for the video. I have have just retired and wanted to do some fossicking. I recently bought the new lithium-ion SDC2300 for my first detector and have taken it out on a run for a few days. Found nothing but lots of rusty metal of various sizes (some extremely small at depth), lead shot, bullets and nails/tacks etc. However, on the last day did find two nuggets in the one target hole. First was small 1 gram piece then a 15 gram (cleaned) nugget. I was just using the settings recommended by the MineLab website (mode 2) and did the noise cancelling, threshold and ground balancing the way they suggested. I would appreciate if you could explain (1) why you set the mode dial on 5 (or 4) as your standard and not the green 2 as they suggest? and (2) why you have the audio background threshold setting up on the highest setting, not somewhere mid point, like they suggest? Maybe I missed some targets by not having my settings optimal?
G'day Dave, thank you for watching our videos and your comments. Congratulations on your 2 fantastic pieces of gold, the bigger one is a bonus piece. The Minelab settings are very conservative. They certainly work and it makes the machine very quiet and stable. For someone starting out in this great hobby it's a starting point. On our training days we set our clients 2300's at either 4 or 5 depending on the ground conditions. This can be a lot nosier than your 2 setting, but it will certainly give you more depth and probably twice as many signals/targets. I know, that means more lead shot, but it also means a lot more gold! We have trained many people who have their sensitivity set at the factory preset. What we do is put them in the higher setting until they hear a very faint signal and then we get them to go back to their 2 setting, and on over 75 % of the time they can't hear it. The higher setting gives you much more volume on these hard to hear small or deeper bits. The higher threshold setting helps us to hear our clients machine a lot better as we walk beside them during our training. If conditions are really good (no wind or other outside noises) we certainly take our threshold down off flat out. The higher setting can be the difference between getting gold every time you go out or coming home with just junk. You will certainly find more junk with these settings as well, however if you're not finding targets, you're not finding gold. Dave, I hope this has helped. Try the higher setting(it will take you a bit to get used to it), find a very soft signal and put your machine back to 2 and see the difference. Cheers and good luck out there, Mark GPA
@@GoldProspectingAustraliaVideos Thank you Mark for taking the time to reply. Since my last post above (and before reading your reply) I have been out to my fossicking area again. This time I had the sensitivity knob settings on 5 or 4 (depending on how much of a sound warble seemed to be present). Sometimes the warble sound was quite prevalent and distracting from determining what was a faint target, or just the warble (I am getting to know my machine and picking up the slight tell-tale sounds.). In these cases I would just spend a lot of time going back and forward over the suspected target spot, seeing if I could reproduce a consistent sound pitch/volume variation over the exact target spot. (I didn't want to miss any deeper targets at the end of depth range for the SDC 2300.) Also I was only using the unit speaker (with protector cover on) as the sound source, so this also added a variance of sound as the unit moved around and depending on which arm I was using. (I am usually out all day for 4-5 days at a time, working on steep grassed/lantana slopes, so have to regularly change arms to share the load.) I was thinking of getting a shoulder speaker (like ML Pro Sonic or other) to keep the sound source consistent. However next time I will just use the ML headphones (newer version) that came with my new version 2300 (I read that they are much better than the older headphones?). Anyway this last trip I found 45 grams of nuggets from the same patch in 3 1/2 days. One was 6.7 gms, one 5 gms and a few 4 gramers. The rest (about 20 pieces) varied from 3 gms down to 0.6 grams. Not sure if I would have found all these without the sensitivity knob setting on 4-5, but I now know it definitely does find them. Most of the gold on this steep patch is not deep and is in shale/rocky black soil covered in grass and a low mat of lantana patches. This makes it hard to get the skid-plate on the ground. I have to us hands, feet and brute force to get down under as close as I can to the surface. I have been told by a mate hobby fossicker (20 yrs experience), that the type of very rough 'coral looking' nuggets I have found mean they are close to the original source. (There is no option here on YT to attach a photo of the nuggets for you or I would have.) There is an abandoned gold mine from the late 1800's on the very top of this hill not far up the top. I'm sure there will be more nuggets at depth that I am missing, and will go back there with a better detector suited for depth when finances permit. I researched about changing coils on the 2300 to get more depth, but the majority consensus is NOT to mess with this unit as it is perfect for what it is designed for. Instead, just buy, beg or borrow a detector that is designed for depth and go over the patch again later to find the deeper gold. I also only had the audio threshold lights on about 3-5 led settings so not sure if I should bump that up as well? I guess if I am going to use the headphones then that setting won't need to be up as high as just using the unit's speaker? Anyhow, this is getting a bit long winded so will again thank you for your advice and expertise that you share. Cheers, David
Nice video, I was taught a little different when it comes to ground balances and my SDC 2300 will now reach a depth of 30 - 35 cm
the owner of Reeds Prospecting in Midvale Western Australia, has come up with the optimum settings to get maximum depth.
Would be worth contacting him, Even Minelab sent him to America to teach people this technique.
Keep up the videos, very informative, thanks.
Thanks for the information mate!
Very informative video thank you. I now have a lot better understanding of my new SDC. Lithium battery version. Looking forward to more videos. Cheers
Thanks again Ian
I’ve been so busy on our first couple of tours I’ve been a bit slack in posting some new videos. I hope to have two new videos up tonight showing some of the great gold finds our clients have been finding on our current out back tours.
Cheers
Great vid mate, awesome explanation of a great machine. Thanks for sharing.
G'day Groty, Thanks for watching and your very kind comments. Part 2 cont(showing how to actually swing the detector etc), will be out in the next couple of days. Cheers,
Mark GPA
Great video very impressed
Hi all how can you here small signals with such an unstable thres hold my gp 3000 has a better more stable threshold ive noticedthat on all 2200 vidios
Hi and thank you for the video. I have have just retired and wanted to do some fossicking. I recently bought the new lithium-ion SDC2300 for my first detector and have taken it out on a run for a few days. Found nothing but lots of rusty metal of various sizes (some extremely small at depth), lead shot, bullets and nails/tacks etc. However, on the last day did find two nuggets in the one target hole. First was small 1 gram piece then a 15 gram (cleaned) nugget. I was just using the settings recommended by the MineLab website (mode 2) and did the noise cancelling, threshold and ground balancing the way they suggested.
I would appreciate if you could explain (1) why you set the mode dial on 5 (or 4) as your standard and not the green 2 as they suggest? and (2) why you have the audio background threshold setting up on the highest setting, not somewhere mid point, like they suggest?
Maybe I missed some targets by not having my settings optimal?
G'day Dave, thank you for watching our videos and your comments.
Congratulations on your 2 fantastic pieces of gold, the bigger one is a bonus piece.
The Minelab settings are very conservative. They certainly work and it makes the machine very quiet and stable.
For someone starting out in this great hobby it's a starting point. On our training days we set our clients 2300's at either 4 or 5 depending on the ground conditions. This can be a lot nosier than your 2 setting, but it will certainly give you more depth and probably twice as many signals/targets. I know, that means more lead shot, but it also means a lot more gold! We have trained many people who have their sensitivity set at the factory preset. What we do is put them in the higher setting until they hear a very faint signal and then we get them to go back to their 2 setting, and on over 75 % of the time they can't hear it. The higher setting gives you much more volume on these hard to hear small or deeper bits. The higher threshold setting helps us to hear our clients machine a lot better as we walk beside them during our training. If conditions are really good (no wind or other outside noises) we certainly take our threshold down off flat out. The higher setting can be the difference between getting gold every time you go out or coming home with just junk. You will certainly find more junk with these settings as well, however if you're not finding targets, you're not finding gold.
Dave, I hope this has helped. Try the higher setting(it will take you a bit to get used to it), find a very soft signal and put your machine back to 2 and see the difference.
Cheers and good luck out there,
Mark GPA
@@GoldProspectingAustraliaVideos
Thank you Mark for taking the time to reply.
Since my last post above (and before reading your reply) I have been out to my fossicking area again. This time I had the sensitivity knob settings on 5 or 4 (depending on how much of a sound warble seemed to be present). Sometimes the warble sound was quite prevalent and distracting from determining what was a faint target, or just the warble (I am getting to know my machine and picking up the slight tell-tale sounds.). In these cases I would just spend a lot of time going back and forward over the suspected target spot, seeing if I could reproduce a consistent sound pitch/volume variation over the exact target spot. (I didn't want to miss any deeper targets at the end of depth range for the SDC 2300.) Also I was only using the unit speaker (with protector cover on) as the sound source, so this also added a variance of sound as the unit moved around and depending on which arm I was using. (I am usually out all day for 4-5 days at a time, working on steep grassed/lantana slopes, so have to regularly change arms to share the load.) I was thinking of getting a shoulder speaker (like ML Pro Sonic or other) to keep the sound source consistent. However next time I will just use the ML headphones (newer version) that came with my new version 2300 (I read that they are much better than the older headphones?).
Anyway this last trip I found 45 grams of nuggets from the same patch in 3 1/2 days. One was 6.7 gms, one 5 gms and a few 4 gramers. The rest (about 20 pieces) varied from 3 gms down to 0.6 grams. Not sure if I would have found all these without the sensitivity knob setting on 4-5, but I now know it definitely does find them. Most of the gold on this steep patch is not deep and is in shale/rocky black soil covered in grass and a low mat of lantana patches. This makes it hard to get the skid-plate on the ground. I have to us hands, feet and brute force to get down under as close as I can to the surface. I have been told by a mate hobby fossicker (20 yrs experience), that the type of very rough 'coral looking' nuggets I have found mean they are close to the original source. (There is no option here on YT to attach a photo of the nuggets for you or I would have.) There is an abandoned gold mine from the late 1800's on the very top of this hill not far up the top. I'm sure there will be more nuggets at depth that I am missing, and will go back there with a better detector suited for depth when finances permit. I researched about changing coils on the 2300 to get more depth, but the majority consensus is NOT to mess with this unit as it is perfect for what it is designed for. Instead, just buy, beg or borrow a detector that is designed for depth and go over the patch again later to find the deeper gold.
I also only had the audio threshold lights on about 3-5 led settings so not sure if I should bump that up as well? I guess if I am going to use the headphones then that setting won't need to be up as high as just using the unit's speaker?
Anyhow, this is getting a bit long winded so will again thank you for your advice and expertise that you share.
Cheers, David
покажи все снаряженище-лопаты и т.п.
G'day again Ivan, Lot's of the accessories we use have been shown and talked about in the first of our 'How To Series' on accessories. Cheers Mark GPA
Another very informative video. Thanks Mark and Ronda for the time and effort you guys put into this. I will catch up with you guys next year :)