Yesterday was about 8-9 hours of prospecting with the new Gold Bug.
First two places I took it were to a couple of large prospect digs way...way out in the Bradshaw's. The first one I doubt anyone has been to in decades. It was a tough ATV ride of about 1.5 hours just to get within a 1/4 mile and then...it was a rough hike up.
I was basically sampling the tailings piles and sides of the prospects. Did not find any gold here and by the looks of it probably turned out to be low grade ore. The detector was able to be run at max sensitivity all the time. I ran in All metal mainly. The disc mode is not reliable on small nuggets in bad ground and this is the same with all VLF's nuggte machines I have tried....even the GBII. Once the nuggetts or targets are out of the ground you can swap to Disc and it works fine but....with the ground so bad they all loose reliability. So...no prospector uses anything other than all metal.
I did find the normal bits of small iron...typical.
We left here after an hour and decided to hit a stretch of bedrock that has produced quite a few pickers before...so off we went on the ATV's.
As we were getting close to our next destination I was riding behind my friend...he was a few hundred feet ahead. I spotted a prospect dig through the brush that we and alot of others had missed. It was maybe 20 feet straight in and the roock was very solid...a good one to sample the walls and see what we could find. SO I hopped on the ATV and caught up to my partner and we went back. This dig is actually on one of his claims and this claim has produced some nice nugs...and just up from this prospect is a big dig that has produced some serious poundage in the old days.
Well we did not have flashlights which is unusual...but since it was bright out and the shaft was bright enough to see any bugs,snakes and so on...I popped in...my firend stays outside.
I scanned the walls with the GB all the way in. At the very end of the dig right in the middle of therear wall I get a nice hit in all metalll.man this is solid...definately not ground minerals. My buddy tossed me in a pick and a plastic scoop.
He was so excited as he could hear my detector ring out ( no headphones on in shaft)....so he grabs his digital camera and video shot me digging.
Well took me 20 minutes to pick out the 3-4" of shist and rock to get the sample out. Picked it out of the wall and had it in my hand...then..I dropped it...damnit..now I had to locate it in front of me on the shaft floor..but it is asmall area...so soon it was found. I came crawling out of the dig...man this was sweet.....took the samples out and man there it was.....a .223 caliber slug someone had fired into the dig and had buried itself into a crack in the schist about 3-4" in. AHHHHH...you gotta be kidding me..I sat it bat poop for 20 minutes for this...ahh...c'mon.
My friend was cracking up...we both were sure it was a specimen...and had it been we would have tore up that shaft. It is all on video and will be posted on his gold forum. i will put up a link....you can here the GB going off...it is a good shot. But overall it was rock solid for hard rock sampling....just great in tailings.
Anyway, now the wind is out of my sails but we proceeded to the bedrock stretch we were heading to an hour earlier.
Now this is where there were some minor shortcomings. While the GoldBug ground balancled very well and was quite stable...it did not handle the Magnetite,hematite and basalt as well as a GBII. We met up with a fellow we had run into before in this same stretch the week before. he was pounding OUR strecth of bedrock with his GBII. He was a nice guy actually...and so i stuck around him as we both wanted to compare the new Gb to the older GBII target for target.
The new GB hit every small target his GBII did almost 100%. There was a small piece of birdshot (ended up being) he was detecting in a crack and I could hear it but it was slightly hotter on his machine..not much..just a bit.
The bigger difference was hot rock rejection/accept. The GBII is a bit better on being able to discern between a faint target and hot ground changes. Not a huge difference but noticeable. This was the only minor flaw I found.
Now if you have never hunted a dry creek bed in Az then..you have no idea the misery that it can hold. Hot bedrock, basalt, magnetite,hematite, iron trash...it sucks. So having a VLF that can give you a good audio difference between hotrocks and target is crucial. This was it's only minor weak spot. But then again..I hate creek beds with aything other than a PI...but there is alot of small picker in the cracks the PI misses so...need a VLF that can cope..here the GBII is a bit better.Overall though it worked awesome especially for it's pricepoint. In hardrock tailing and such where the mineral content runs fairly constant it was a joy to use.
On the coin and relic end...it has mucho potential for a dual purpose/crossover machine. It isn't going to replace your F70/75 but....it will give a 70 a run for the money. I cannot give solid feedback on it's relic ability as I just do not have that here especially at any depth. Later this year we are going to do some relic up in an undisclosed location but...that is a few weeks off. I will bring it there. In my test plot...it hits a 6" indian head solid with just the 5" coil and I can lift the coil 3" up and still hit it and that is at 70 sensitivity( out of 100).
Ths machine deserves someone back east giving it a shot for relics and reporting. If I were in the Carolinas and wanted a machine to hit those creeks for nuggs and then walk right over and do relics..there is no other unit like this one. I hope someone trys it out down there.
I would not see a problem buyting one from Cabela's and trying it out...so if you are feeling froggy...give it a shot. You can return it for any reason to Cabela's with a full refund. Even if it works fine but you don't like it...they say it is fine. this is their policy and I would take advantage of it...within reason.
When the video is up of my Lead mining I will post a link....it was fuuny actually. I give this unit 2 thumbs up overal...but only one thumbs up and one thumbs down for hot rock accept/rejact ablities.
scott
Can I mention Coinstrike! 
