REVIEW AND
SETTINGS FOR FINDING GOLD IN
COLORADO WITH THE WHITES MXT
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Settings you can try
out can make the MXT perform better
in many situations. We had a friend
send us some of these and we are
also finding out that various tweeks
work really well with the MXT. Most
users will agree that having 3 coils
to work with helps to cover most
variations of soil, dampness,
mineralization and any other variable
you will come up against. The stock
coil, a 6 or 10 inch DD elliptical
and a 12 to 14 inch for more ground
coverage. The larger coils,
however, do not seem to give any
depth advantage over the stock
coil. Part 1 |
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If you are used to
running your detector a little
"hot", while hunting coins, the MXT
will seem noisy. Try running it in
the coin and jewelry mode and set
the switches to ground,
discriminator to 2, gain to 7,
handle switch to center, and
threshold at hearing level. The
threshold should be humming. Pump
the coil a few times. If the
threshold stays even, up the gain to
8 and repeat the process until the
you either start to get false
signaling or the threshold starts to
disappear. Test it with some coins,
and if you are getting false signals
reduce the gain until you are
satisfied you can be sure what it is
telling you.
Hooked On
Gold's
White’s MXT Metal
Detector Review
With Additional Setting
Instructions
When a person starts looking for a
metal detector you can be overloaded
when you see how many different
brands and models are out there. I
would suggest asking friends you
know what they like about their
machines. You should also find a
dealer you trust and knows a lot
about the machines they sell. If you
purchase one from a distant dealer
it may be a problem getting service
or answering questions. Your local
dealer is a great asset, use it.
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Once you have decided on the machine
you like the best, learn how to use
t by going out and start swinging
it. You can watch a lot of videos
and watch someone else using it but
you won’t
learn how to use it unless you are
out walking and listening to what it
is telling you. All metal detectors
will pick up metal. What you have to
learn is what metal the machine is
telling you it is picking up. Is it
a pull tab or a coin? When you first
start out, dig everything until you
learn the difference.
I have had a couple of other
detectors in the past that
were not cheap machines but
were not giving me the
results I wanted. They would
pick up a lot of targets, mostly
trash. |
I was at the local detector
store in Golden, Colorado a
couple of years ago.
Gold-N-Detector’s had a new White’s
model that had just come in. I asked
Bill to show me what it could do. He
explained to me how the White’s MXT
worked, and it was very impressive.
The White’s is not cheap, but
certainly more affordable than many
others, so I saved up and purchased
one. I started out searching the
grass areas around the place we live
for coins. The MXT has a screen that
reads out what the coil is picking
up. It shows if the target is a coin
or trash like a pull tap or bottle
cap, and how deep it is. I was able
to dig only the targets I wanted
after digging the trash to prove it
was telling me the truth. It was a
lot more enjoyable than the other
previous machines, and I was digging
targets that I wanted to dig.
My hearing is not what it used to
be, and so the White’s gives me an
advantage over having to use sound
alone to distinguish targets. The
MXT has an automatic ground balance
so you don’t have to do it manually
and the presets on the two other
control knobs make it easy to use.
The other key feature is that this
machine has 3 programs built in; a
coin/jewelry program, a relic
program, and a gold prospecting
program. I had used the coin program
most of the time during that first
winter, and loved it. I am a
prospector and have done a lot of
dredging and high banking in the
mountains of Colorado
for the last 20 years. With my other
machines I had tried to find gold
with no luck due to the high
mineralization in the ground I had
been searching. On my birthday in
September last year my wife Shirley
and I were detecting on an old mine
dump. In between the rain and snow
storms I found my first GOLD with a
detector. We had been hunting for
most of the day finding the normal
trash you find around a mine. We
dug everything. Then, the MXT gave
a good strong signal on one of the
tailing piles and the meter was
reading 0 on the target ID scale. I
dug and sorted through the rocks
until I had the one that was setting
the machine off. Each of the six
rocks I found was so dirty that I
couldn’t tell what they were. I
tossed them down to Shirley to clean
them off a little with “mommy” spit,
and after a little cleaning she
yelled up at me, “OH, MY. Yup, I
think you’re gonna like this.” I had
felt that they were heavy for their
size. We brought them home and did a
little cleaning. We could see the
crystallized and flake gold layered
in the white quartz on the sides of
the vein material, and they will
make some beautiful specimens. After
finally finding an area that had
some gold with a great machine, I
think anyone could do it.
Additional setting instructions
I have found that I have
better results hunting gold in
Colorado by
adjusting the controls a little
different than the presets. The gold
where I hunt is in the form of wires
and crystals in quartz, and is open
and widely spaced. I
had a friend using a Minelab right
beside me and it could not get a
signal on any of the gold as the
minelab works best with solid gold
targets, such as nuggets. He only
hit targets on iron and lead
targets, being more solid than the
wires, flake, and crystal gold in
these tailings. With the MXT setup
in the normal factory presets, I
would get a strong signal on the
targets. The ID readings on the gold
were slightly negative to + 4.
Most were 0. Any reading
above +10 was a blasting cap or
bullet, and any reading lower than –
10 was iron. To be able to find the
smaller pieces I had to turn the
GAIN up to the +3 above the preset
and the SAT to maximum. In this mode
I had to use a shorter swing
pattern, overlapping the swings
tightly. The shorter, tighter swing
pattern also gives you more coverage
at depth under the coil and avoids
changes in the ground which you hear
as threshold changes. Most of the
targets I found were around 4 inches
deep and the deepest was 12”.
Copyright 2007-2008. hookedongold Larry
Weilnau all rights reserved |
