The XP ORX has had a busy Winter in Australia with loads of people finding Gold in challenging conditions, across 4 states that I Know of. QLD, NSW, VIC and WA.
What has been great is that people who are brand new to the hobby as well as some seasoned detectorists are realising that the XP ORX can handle most of what the Australian soil can throw at it.
But a few have had some problems getting the ORX to settle and they have reached out to me for a bit of advice.
I Pretty much give the same speech in each phonecall, email or PM so I thought I’d write that speech down.
So here Goes,
Clegy’s XP ORX Settings for Gold in Australia when the going gets a little tough in mineralised areas.
In The ORX you have 2 Gold programs and 2 coin programs built in. I mostly use 2 and 3. Fine Gold and Coin Fast, even in the goldfields coin programs are super handy. Read on….
Now remember to only start making these changes if the machine is getting proper hard to deal with. Make the changes in order and test after each change as you may NOT need to make all of them.
The Most important thing of all is to have a balanced machine, so the first thing you need to is balance the machine perfectly. So BOTH Numbers on the screen need to match exactly. You may be able to get away with 1 or 2 points off, but seriously the ORX ground balances in 1 second using the ground grab button. USE IT OFTEN.
This Goes for ALL Programs whether coin shooting or looking for gold, Balance your machine. Its critical in Australia.
If it is still being a Bit noisy then introduce some threshold.
Threshold is deigned to cap target responses, so by employing 3-5 points of threshold you can effectively cap a lot of ground noise. The targets will breakthrough the threshold and allow you to hear them while keeping false signals and ground noise to a minimum.
This is a gold program adjustment so applies to program 1 and 2 only on the ORX.
Don’t go too high with threshold or you’ll cap everything and the day will be quiet for all the wrong reasons.
Still being a bit of a Pig?
Crank up the reactivity to 3 and then Lets start dropping the frequency at this point.
Just before we do that, a recap. By the time you get to frequency dropping you have already balanced the machine and added some threshold and cranked your reactivity to 3.
Start by using the Frequency shift button to go to the bottom end of that frequency band. With the elliptical coil in the top band you can run between 68 and 81Khz. Try dropping to 68 and trying each of the 7 frequencies before dropping a whole band to 30khz or even 15khz.
Pick the quietest and highest you can get away with. It might take 10 minutes to get through them until you find the right one. But really 10 minutes setting up your machine might save you a day walking around for NO targets.
Remember Balance the machine! It is so Important and NONE of these steps will make any difference to an unbalanced ORX. Make the Numbers match.
Your last resort is to start dropping sensitivity and if your going below about 75 I’d start thinking a beer in the Pub could be a better option.
Now I mentioned the coin program, Coin Fast.
If you set coin fast up and make sure its ground balanced, Its a great way to target check. Quite often in a coin program iron and also Hotrocks will immediately give themselves up due to the 3 tones.
Gold programs have 1 Tone, and you’ll use TID Numbers and Iron Probability meter to help ID targets. The use of the coin program alongside the Gold program gives you almost perfect Ferrous NON-Ferrous discrimination.
This is one of the ORX’s main advantages over other machines, Its also a very very good coin machine and when your in the bush hunting gold it can be like having 2 different detectors to check targets.
Remember though if your in Doubt about a particular target then FIND IT!
The one you walk away from could very well be a sneaky piece of gold.
Happy Hunting Folks
Clegy
For all your ORX and XP metal Detector Needs.
