Garrett GTI2500 or Whites DFX?(looking for gold}

[DavHut]

I havent tried the MXT and the last top line Whites I used was a Spectrum. Knowing that the gold most people find MOST of the time to be grain sized bits and the "flour" gold from panning, sluicing and washing, your point is well taken - any detector has its hands full under such conditions. Just using one to find black sand pockets in the hopes of panning some "color" is a specialized task.

Add to that the fact that the difficult conditions presented by mineralized soils, hot rocks an oftentimes abundance of ferrous scatter and it's hard to imagine any but a top of the line model even coming close!

Bill DID test his 2500 on some grain sized bits and managed to get a response that was acceptable. How would it fare in the gold fields? Who knows, although I suspect not as well as purpose built design. I havent seen any such results for the MXT or others from Sweet Home to compare (and confess a bias for the Garretts), so I admit that they may do as well.

I think the best thing to come from this discussion is that the originator learns what he is asking from his detector AND what specialized detecting he might be getting into when nugget hunting.
Willy made the suggestion that he get a nice used LOBO and I gotta agree - that might be the best decision all around.

David

 

[Ralph Bryant]

Speaking of detecting small gold, the Gold Bug II is probably the best on the market on that "fly spec" sized stuff, but like you say, it is a very specialized machine. It's unreal the tiny gold the GBII can detect, especially with the little 6.5 coil. Nothing I've ever seen can come close, and some guys actually use it on dry sand beaches for "micro jewelry" hunting, tiny clutch backs, post earrings, chain clasps, and the like, the stuff that most detectors won't even signal on. It has a great iron I.D. circuit too, but no true non-ferrous discrimination, so it is a matter of "dig it all" to get that tiny gold. You'd almost have to use a flour strainer for a scoop too, as most of that would fall right through a standard coin scoop.

Like you say too, gold in the air ain't gold in the ground, and once the ground mineralization is thrown into the equation, gold nugget detecting becomes alot more difficult than most people realize, with some natural gold bearing areas being the worst soil you can imagine. Still, like Bill said, when it comes to small gold especially......if your machine can't detect it in the air, it sure won't detect it in the ground. I think there have been more than a few owners of some of the top rated detectors on the market who got a shock when they found out just how lacking their machines are on very small and very thin gold jewelry.

It all really boils down to the right tool for the job, or a combination of different machines for different purposes. I'd hate to think I had to try building a house with a Swiss Army Knife.

Ralph

 

[willy]

There's an older Lobo F/S/T on the classifieds right now. Manual ground balance, but still a sweet detector. ...Willy.

 

[sameolgeorge]

The two detecters are good for coins, How ever they wont work well on gold. I tell this to people all the time, most wont listen, then they wonder why they cant find gold. Gold is hard to find even with a specalized detecter. There is exceptions to every rule, like the kid that found a one pound nugget with a $19.95 detecter Buy a gold detecter with auto ground balance. I have three [no there not for sale] Good luke.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah the Gold Stinger would be my Garrett choice if I was going to mix nuggetshooting with coinshooting. Almost any good detector with ground balancing will find gold in larger sizes, but most of the gold out there ain't larger size and one needs a machine specifically designed to cut through the heavy mineralization and pick out that small stuff.

The problem with flour gold is that it's like small gold chains - your detector doesn't see it as one mass but sees it one link or one grain or speck at a time. And with flour gold the specks are just to small to generate a signal.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

You're right about Whites, and also the Gold Bug and the trusty Diablo. The nuggets in the pic were found by a lady nuggetshooter ( also an attorney ) supreme who scrounged these up on the Yuba River in Northern California. She has found quite a few bragging size nuggets and earned several awards for her feats. I've been going to do a story on her for a year now but can't get the lead out.

She got the bug when she attended one of Jim Straight's prospecting classes and hasn't looked back since. She picked the Infinium with mono coil as her weapon of choice and it has rewarded her well.

Bill

 

[Uncle Willy]

Yeah one never knows until one experiments. You sure done good. There is no universal detector that will find anything anywhere. If there was we would all own one.

Bill