Doug,

I'm afraid that my schedule just doesn't allow me the one on one time that I used to be able to offer folks with detectors. Now the great news is that the GMT is a Killer detector and after a little time you will be doing great.

The GMT or any other VLF for that matter will not completely remove “Hot rocks or cold stones” but with a little time and the right settings, you can work through most of them without much headache. Hot rocks will become more of a one sided target over a good repeatable sound both directions. I’ll still kick or dig most of them to get them out of the way and check for better signals under the rocks but I do understand the frustration that comes from a patch of hot rocks.

First, get out of the factory presets. Match the GMT to the ground. If you have a copy of the current GPAA Mining Guide I line out in detail the process for setting the sensitivity to the ground you are working.

And that includes lowering your gain. Remember it is RX not TX gain and the higher the gain in bad soils the noisier the machine will be. Turning the gain up does not do anything for depth but it will make even the slightest mineralization start to respond in your headphone.

Gold will not always have that perfect zip zip sound that you hear us talking about. Matter of fact gold will in most cases have a nice mellow zip. Again setting the GMT up properly out of the gate can allow those signals to really come through.

The grab is a great feature on the GMT that allows you to bring the ground balance back quickly and precisely without the knob turning I have to do with some of my older GMT series detectors. Press and pump a couple of times at the end of a swing and you are ready to go. Know that in some areas where the ground minerals are very bad you may have to tune it up a lot. It is not that big of a deal once you get used to it and it will become second nature.  It just takes some time and again getting the GMT dialed in.

Now for the meter….. What meter, I wish the new GMT didn’t have a screen. I will tell you to never look at it and never trust it when nugget hunting. Yes there are some features the screen brings to the table but for me, unless I am tracking black sands, I just do not use it and I train folks not to use it either while nugget hunting.

I do not discriminate while nugget hunting. I have a rather nice nugget that has a huge iron content along with a lot of gold that almost all detectors will tag it as junk iron.

Doug, I think you just need some more time on the GMT and learn just a bit more about dialing it in. After that I bet it will be hard to get it out of your hands.

Hope this helps and never hesitate to ask anything you need.

 

 

Kevin, can you provide me hints on how to best use my GMT? Do you provide classes in the Phoenix area? Some of my challenges are eliminating "hot rocks" the other day there seemed to be more hot rocks interfering with my detecting. I tried pumping to detector, but it wouldn't discriminate them. Also, it seems that gold is NOT a "zip,zip" on this detector, but rather a subtle tone change. I have adjusted the dials according to the manual. Also, not certain what the grab and display are doing for me.