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 findng 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, mineralizaton 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
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 disapear. 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.
Once you have decided on the machine you like the best, learn how to use it 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 GOD. 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”.
Metal Dectectors of all types can be found a great prices on e-bay. CLICK HERE to access a page devoted to metal detectors and things GOLD
MXT's are auctioned off regularly at really good prices. Some are almost new often with extra equipment Try eBay now! 
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Copyright 2006. hookedongold Larry Weilnau
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