A Monster Month

[Lunk]

I recently had the very fortunate opportunity to use the Minelab Gold Monster 1000 for 30 days. During that time, I was able to discover the nuances of the machine that, like any metal detector, can only be fully realized by logging lots of hours behind the control box and investigating lots of targets. 

In Steve's excellent review, he has covered most of what the GM 1000 is capable of doing, as well as the features and functions of the machine, so I will not rehash those here. Instead, I will relate my experiences with the detector and its unadvertised abilities that have come to light during my sojourn with it in hand. 

I first powered up the Monster at Rye Patch, Nevada, and after a very brief automatic frequency scan, the unit emitted two short beeps, signaling that it was ready to start swinging with no pumping of the coil or ground balancing necessary...nice! The first thing I did was to bury a small 3 or 4 grain test nugget a couple of inches into the damp alkali soil, so as to fiddle with the manual and automatic sensitivity settings in order to find the most  distinct target response. Right off the bat I noticed there was no audible threshold...a little unnerving, but I decided to just roll with it and trust that the engineers at Minelab know what they are doing.  In all-metal search mode at low sensitivity settings there was no response from the conductive damp alkali ground, and very little to no response from the tiny test nugget.  Increasing the sensitivity to 6 or 7 made the nugget start popping much better, but some slight feedback from the ground was also noticeable. At a manual sensitivity setting of 10, the conductive alkali response was overwhelming, but as soon as I increased it to 11 - which is the first automatic sensitivity setting - the screaming ground response completely disappeared and in it's place was a crisp, clear target response from the test nugget...very impressive. Advancing the automatic  sensitivity to 12 (auto+), the signal response from the test nugget was even louder and more intense, but there was also some ground response as well. I decided why listen to ground noise when the test nugget is plenty audible at a setting of 11, and went with that. 

With any new detector, I dig every target, even if reads 100% ferrous, just to familiarize myself with how the machine responds to various different targets. The few hot rocks that signaled on the Monster, both positive and negative, completely pegged the gold chance indicator all the way left into the ferrous zone. Soon I was finding extremely small bits of foil, lead and iron. Then I started to notice something quite amazing to me; the iron targets - even the tiniest ones - were making a subtle "boing" type of a response like a negative hot rock, whereas the nonferrous targets were more zippy and lacked that subtle boing quality. After a while, I found that I no longer needed to look at the gold chance indicator to determine whether a target was ferrous or not, just by relying on the sounds; I was really starting to like this detector. Then it happened: a fairly strong response that was pegging the gold chance indicator all the way right, into the non-ferrous zone. After digging a couple of inches, out popped a beautiful little crystalline nugget weighing a mere 2.4 grains - the first Monster nugget!

With the northern Nevada weather being uncooperative and still quite wintery, I headed for the sunny warm deserts of Arizona.  First stop...the Yucca Dense Collection Area north of Lake Havasu City, formerly known as the Franconia meteorite strewn field. VLF machines make the best meteorite hunters, and the Gold Monster 1000 did not disappoint. I took it to an area that is carpeted with basalt hot rocks that make it extremely difficult to operate a VLF while retaining any shred of sanity. The Monster was incredibly noisy in auto sensitivity, but adjusting it manually to a setting of 4 mellowed it right out and within 5 minutes the detector nailed its first space rock!

and then another a while later...

Although finding meteorites is fun, the GM 1000 is a gold nugget detector after all, so it was on to the famed gold fields of Quartzsite, Arizona to see what the Monster could do in beat up old patches that have litterally been detected by hundreds, if not thousands of detector operators. Well, suffice it to say it didn't take long to find the first sub-grain speck of gold.

And another...

The ground in Quartzsite is much milder than the alkali rich soils of Rye Patch, but has lots more hot rocks including magnetite, which is super hot and very magnetic. As I was detecting an old nugget patch littered with these super strong  magnetite hot rocks, I decided to see how the Monster responded to them; waving  the coil over one resulted in a very sharp and intense zip-zip. Slowing my sweep speed to see if the signal would broaden, I slowly raised the coil an inch or two above the magnetite to see if the signal would drastically decrease in strength (an old VLF hot rock identification trick). Slowly lowering the coil back down above the rock, I was suddenly incredulous at what I was now hearing...absolutely nothing! The Gold Monster had completely tracked out a magnetite hot rock!  I placed my test nugget right up against the magnetite and was stunned to hear the nugget respond loud and clear, with absolutely no interference from the hot rock. Even this guy couldn't hear that hot rock:

I also found more meteorites in Quartzsite with the Gold Monster...the full story here:

In my limited time swinging the new Minelab Gold Monster 1000, I can definitely say that it is unique and can do things that I haven't seen from any other single frequency VLF gold nugget detector, all in a light weight simple to operate and competitively priced package...kudos to Minelab!

 

 

[GoldEn]

Well done and thank-you for sharing your experience.

 

It's impressive and seems fun to have. 

Hope many more finds with it. 

 

GoldEN 

[Northeast]

Great write-up Lunk. 

After my experience today I know now I 'need' one of these. Very rich old mine with masses of football sized quartz chunks lying everywhere and great shallow gravels all around and targets, targets, targets, targets...and after the first 7 being junk I said ?$&( this and went somewhere else. 

I'm positive there is gold there but I don't have 10 years to get through the crap 

[~LARGO~]

Great write up, Lunkster!   Your being a truly "straight arrow" guy across the board, (not to diminish my respect for friend Steve Herschbach) I put great value in your comments and experience!   Your comments, along with those of Steve Herschbach only magnify my anxiousity (new word: derivation of anxiety and curiosity...) Thank you, for your comments!  I am now even more anxious to receive my own "Monster" in the near future!  C'mon MINELAB!

~Largo~

[klunker]

 Thanks for the great report. My favorite part is the ears with a rabbit attached.

[IdahoPeg]

Excellent report Lunk! I'm glad I decided to add the GM1000 to my arsenal....can't wait to get it and try it out on the tailing piles and lode mine gravels up by my cabin! Plus, it'll be a fun lightweight unit to use in the desert when taking a break from the zed. :-)

[Jim_Alaska]

Great report. It sounds like this newest addition to our nugget hunting arsenal is something that detectorists have been looking for all along. features like eliminating the hot rock, while still revealing the tiny bit of gold are a huge step up in detector technology.

This report really makes me wish I could step up from my ancient V-Sat, but alas, my wallet is way too thin. Thanks for a great, detailed report.

[flakmagnet]

I always look forward to your in-depth reviews Lunk. Between you, Steve and JP we amateurs get to make leaps in our experience without ever getting out of our chairs. Only half joking here. Thank you for taking the time to inform us.

[Steve Herschbach]

Congratulations on the meteorites Keith! Probably the first, most, largest and maybe the only ever found so far world wide with the Gold Monster 1000. Enjoy your place in the Guinness Book of World Records while it lasts!