Gold Rat Metal Detectors is located 6/50 Freda Street Upper Mount Gravatt. Gold Rat Engineering is located 4/16 Redcliffe Gardens Drive Clontarf This is where you will see the largest range of your highbankers, sluices and accessories

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A Range of Hand-held Pinpointers

A Range of Hand-held Pinpointers

A Range of Hand-held Pinpointers

Compact, hand-held pinpointers can sure save a lot of wasted time & effort digging for and locating targets such as coins, jewellery, relics, and gold nuggets/specimens, upon both land, and also underwater. I know so, from decades of experience of digging (and backfilling) thousands of holes on land throughout our awesome Continent.

The way I look at it – the more time I save from digging, the more time I then have to detect more targets, especially when I am sometimes time-poor on my detecting adventures at the beach, parks or out bush. 

The more expensive pinpointers feature adjustable sensitivity settings - which is very handy in challenging ground conditions e.g. when using it upon/in mineralised ground or upon/in saltwater-saturated/conductive ground. They also feature audio/tactile alert options of vibration mode, with or without target-proximity audio indication.

In late 2023, Minelab released a new hand-held pinpointer – the  PRO-FIND 40.
The Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer has a 2-YEARS Minelab Warranty, with a nominal 9-Volt battery life of about 20 hours, and costs $269.

I did some simple, in-store testing using the new Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer – to determine the maximum air-depth range of detection of an Aussie $2 coin, and also a flat (7x4mm) 0.43 gram gold nugget (and compared to using the similar costing, orange-coloured Garrett Pro-Pointer AT - commonly called “The Garrett Carrot”). Both of these pinpointers contained new/same batteries, and were set on Maximum Sensitivity.
The results were as follows: 

$2 coin -  Minelab PRO-FIND 40 = 7cm range   (Garrett Pro-Pointer AT = 6cm range, and Minelab Pro-Find 15 = 3.5cm range)

0.43 gram gold nugget –  both the Minelab PRO-FIND 40 and the Garrett Pro-Pointer AT pinpointers = about 2cm range.

The new Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer has the following features:
•  10% more Depth than the Minelab PRO-FIND 35
•  A Rapid Re-tune function - making it quick and easy to compensate for ground conditions
•  Improved Stability - for more accurate pinpointing
•  Adjustable Sensitivity - with 5 levels of adjustment
•  A Lost Alarm - that sounds after a period of inactivity & combined with a bright red body - makes the PRO-FIND 40 easy to locate
•  A Ferrous Tone ID - that helps to sort trash from treasure

The new Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer kit includes:
•  PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer - with speaker and LED flashlight
•  Holster
•  Lanyard
•  9V PP3 battery
•  Multi-language instructions

 


'Gold Rat Metal Detectors' sell a range of waterproof pinpointers (varying in cost from $159 up to $309) including:

 

Garrett Pro-Pointer AT (commonly called “The Garrett Carrot”)

The Nokta AccuPOINT pinpointer operates on a frequency of 20kHz  (whereas the Minelab pinpointers, and Garrett pinpointers, and Nokta ‘Pointer’, all operate on a frequency of about 12kHz). This higher operating frequency can make the AccuPOINT more sensitive to detecting small gold nuggets.
 
I did some simple, in-store testing using the Nokta AccuPOINT pinpointer (compared to the Minelab PRO-FIND 40 pinpointer) – to determine the maximum air-depth detection range on two different sized, small, flat, sub-gram gold nuggets (a 0.7gram flat nugget, and a 0.2gram flat nugget). Both of these pinpointers contained fully-charged batteries, and were set on their respective Maximum Sensitivity settings.
The results were as follows: 
Nokta AccuPOINT  =  2.5cm (0.7gram nugget),  and 1.5cm (0.2gram nugget)
Minelab Pro-Find 40  =  2cm (0.7gram nugget),  and 1cm (0.2gram nugget). 
Other great features on the Nokta AccuPOINT pinpointer include that it contains a built-in rechargeable Lithium battery, has discrimination capability (Ferrous/Non-Ferrous), Bluetooth connectivity, and a replaceable tip protector.
The Minelab pinpointers, and Garrett pinpointers, and Nokta ‘Pointer’, all operate on a frequency of about 12kHz.

The Nokta PulseDive pinpointer, and the Nokta PulseDive 2-in-1 Underwater Metal Detector, both feature Pulse-Induction technology – and both operate on a lower frequency of about 3kHz.