Greetings,
If you are looking for tiny flakes of gold in the 2 grain or less size then the Sovereign GT is not going to do the job. However, gold nuggets larger than 5 grains (1/3 gram) are detectable at reasonable depths. If you will check out the X-Terra forum and the post "Nugget hunting with the X-Terra 70" you will see a picture of a 1/2 gram nugget that I found with my X-Terra 70 operating with the elliptical 5X10 18.75khz coil. It was found at about 3 1/2" down in a crack in bed rock. Since I also own a Sovereign GT, I know that it would also have found this nugget. I also own a Gold Bug II that operates at 71 khz and YES it will find tiny sub grain flakes of gold that the Sovereign GT will not find. So far, in my limited electronic prospecting, I have found 5 nuggets. Two of them are really more like flakes. They weighed .9 grains and 1.2 grains. The other three you could say are really nuggets, one at 1/3 gram, one a little over 1/2 gram and one almost a gram. Based on my experience with my Sovereign GT, these last three would have also been located with the Sovereign GT. While it is not the hotest gold detector, I would not count it out any more than I would the X-Terra 70 or a White MXT and it handles the bad ground better than most. Especially if you use the smaller 800 DD coil.
I hope this has been some help, God Bless.
Smitty II
