Double d and salt.

G'day all. I was planning on heading out to have a look at some new ground on Monday. This new ground has a few small salt basins on it which I wouldn't mind skimming the gpx 4000 over. Has any one dealt much with a double d coil on the salt? I don't have access to an ai coil but don't want to pass up this opportunity. Will my capabilities be lacking without an ai coil? Thanks for the help!! Keithy.

DD will be fine mate on the salt,i still use a mono and put up with the noise but you still hear the gold ping through.

K town.

Thanks Ktown. Can't wait to get out and have a swing.

High Kiethy George,

DD coil in Cancel but max out the gain and Boost audio, Sensitive Extra and if you want more depth just use a bigger DD coil

The coil will operate very quiet and be very sensitive to small gold down to .1gr on the 11"DD coil, your depth is the only limit

Ron

Thanks Ron. I am swinging a 14x9 blitz as well so I guess I will just play around and see what I can come up with. Also have my eye on a 19" dd dingo coil to add to the collection. Is there anything in particular I should be looking for on these salt basins?

I went swingin on the salt flats yesterday for the 1st time with my new 17x11 anti interference coil .set it in dd with salt gold after testin different setting also prefer dd over cancel. Worked a treat. hit a piece of yella and ping .sound jumps out at you.

id love to own a nice anti interference coil, but at the moment the minister of war and finance ( also known as my wife) is telling me to find enough yellow to pay for the last coil i bought first. hopefully the bit of land i am going to look at will prevail and put some nuggies in my back pocket!!

The only coils I have bought so far have been coiltek. Also had an xterra 705 in cairns to detect the beaches and hills.

I know this is not the main subject here but just wanted to  chip in with my experience on salt lake prospecting 2 weeks ago north of Kalgoorlie. We had a GPX 4500 with a gold stalker mono and as a first a Garrett ATX with the DD and then the larger mono coil. The GPX was extremely noisy but that was expected. Surprisingly, the ATX could be ground balanced on the salt and it was humming along beautifully without any interference noises whatsoever. The ATX is possibly not quite in the league of a GPX 4500/5000 on normal soil but on the salt lakes it shines. Might be useful to know.

Thanks mate. It's not often that I do get to hunt on the salt to own a predominantly salt machine I have a friend who said the same thing about the atx. I am a minelab kinda bloke but.....

Yes, no question. Minelab has been the company for decades producing the most suitable detectors for serious nugget hunters. What I don't like is the pricing trend of Minelab and that is getting to an unjustifiable point considering the half price not too bad at all ATX.
I do fly often and the ATX I can carry as a board luggage , its that small folded up and therefor very convenient. It fits into back packs when climbing extreme territory. I can and will use it under water as well. If it works on salt lakes it will work in salt water.
I don't want to go into the politics of comparing Minelab against Garrett. I personally believe, as I have both, that top range Minelabs have an edge in extreme circumstances. On the other hand many of the nuggets I have found I could have possibly found with a $ 79.99 Aldi detector and possibly all of them with the $ 1000.00 Minelab Eureka we have as well. Except...I would not have found that tiny gold piece on the salt lake with any of those except with the ATX. As salt lakes were mentioned may be you can borrow an ATX. In that specific situation you won't regret it.

I don't have any experience with Minelab and not too much with the ATX either. I prefer to use the DD coil on the ATX most of the time. Many have told me that it's not sensitive enough for small gold and perhaps that's the case but I seem to discover a lot more targets with the DD than the 8" mono and I cover twice the ground in the same time. The big mono is just too heavy for me to use for hours at a time.
It certainly is quiet in most cases. I run the machine flat out nearly everywhere. I take the threshold up until I get a little buzz then back it of one and there's absolutely no noise even under power lines until I hit an unmanageable hotrock or a target. They say I should be able to hear a slight noise with the threshold but I find with absolutely no noise I notice a signal much more clearly. I've had more trouble tuning it quietly here in Queensland than in WA.

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Today I ran into some guys who showed me their finds on the SDC2300. They were amazingly small. I'm sure I can't find that sort of gold dust with the ATX but then it could be the operator...

Agree, the ATX is very heavy especially with that large monocoil. The supplied shoulder strap to carry it on a bungee is not that great to say it polite . I use the new Minelab harness and a well adjusted bungee and then you can go for hours even with the large monocoil. Opinions will always differ and I dont want to appear snobbish, but these little gold flakes which hardly register on a scale are not my primary interest especially when I have to buy the expensive Minelab SDC 2300 for it.I rather go panning in this case. The ATX DD is superquiet on saltlakes and pieces around .5+ of a gram can be heard.I don't have the 8 inch mono, so I cant compare. Very likely the Minelab SDC2300 beats everything else on the extremely small targets. I wonder if it can be used on saltlakes though?
I have been down at Warwick QLD and found the ATX as quiet as in WA.

Hi AlexS,

Try using a DD coil in Cancel with your GPX machine, you will be surprized as to how quiet it is on a salt lake and very sensitive

Ron

SDC 2300 works fine on the salt lakes and will find bits down to 0.2gm without a problem. On normal ground we've found bits down to 0.04gms and up to 68gms including 10gms at 200mm in calcrete.

The 4500 running the 11" Commander DD in cancel in also pretty deadly on small bits on the salt. It may sound strange but I ran a stabilizer of about 3 and an RX of 12. The machine just hums along nicely but the signal are clear and sharp.

Flouro / Toad -

Wouldn't selecting to 'Cancel' negate any RXgain setting on your machine irrespective of where you set it in the digital menu because it looks like you must be then chopping off any salty ground noise with the stabilizer set so high at '3' then, no?

Also, when you are running the DD coil in this salt set-up, do you have the coil selection in Mono or DD?
(I think I've read somewhere of guys running their DD coil while selected in Mono to only just use half of it as a sudeo Mono for more sensitivity)

Hi Nuggiedreamer,

I use a GPX4000m and the 11" DD coil in Cancel, the choice being DD..Mono..Cancel

With the RX gain I max it out and try different frequencies as this also produced more gold over the same piece of ground

If you need to go deeper just put on a bigger coil as the depth in Cancel is reduced but the sensitivity is better especially with the smaller nuggs...1 or .2gr

Ron

Thanks Ron,

Definitely gonna try that out next time, can't let them SDC's clean up all them salty spots too.