Can anyone make any recommendations on a good gold (placer) detector? I'm about 2 hours away from CA gold country and have been researching several site possibilities. I'll probably be doing shallow streams and some ground work. I'm not looking for anything real high end as most of the bells and whistles would probably be lost on me as a newbie. And I'd prefer not to have to break the bank in buying one. I've got the ACE250 and about 2 months experience--probably close to 130 hours. Using the standard coil plus the sniper. I suspect I'll probably be looking at a high amount of mineralization. I'm thinking the 250 might handle it to a degree even without any ground balancing. Maybe with a different coil?