Jump to content

Results Of Gold Nugget Detector Survey


Recommended Posts

A week ago I started an informal survey on seven US metal detecting oriented prospecting forums including this one. The survey here is at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1244-if-you-found-a-gold-nugget-in-the-last-year-what-detectors-did-you-find-it-with/

This is what got posted on all the forums. I have been compiling results all evening and it is after midnight so I am calling it a night. However, I will release additional details on this forum, probably tomorrow morning. I would like to post a screenshot of the entire spreadsheet if I can figure out how to get it all on screen at once. Or I may just post a copy of the spreadsheet in the download area for forum members to access.

I am proud to say that fully half the responses were on this forum alone, with the other six making up the remainder. There are a lot of active nugget hunters on this forum.

The survey was not meant to prove anything per se. I was basically just curious to see what the detectors were that were employed to actually find gold nuggets in the last year.

The survey has many shortcomings. It only polls people who were on the US forums in the last week who cared to respond. The forums have tended as a whole to be Minelab oriented and so it is not surprising results might skew in that direction. Still, I got a large number of responses and so some conclusions can be drawn.

I eliminated duplicate and joke responses. I eliminated a couple borrowed units. It was winnowed down to just detectors that found gold for their owners in the last year. Everything else was pretty straight forward. The only thing of note is I put a couple Gold Bug SE responses under the Gold Bug Pro because they are basically the same detector. The SE was just a precursor model. Everything was compiled on a spreadsheet and totaled.

114 people responded as having used 220 detectors to find gold nuggets. That is an average of a couple detectors per person but the reality is a lot of people owned three detectors, and then quite a few just one detector. In general you could say many nugget hunters own a couple PI detectors (or a PI and a GPZ) plus a good VLF detector. If you really want to generalize things your could say people own a couple Minelab PI type detectors and a Fisher VLF. The Gold Bug 2 and the Gold Bug Pro were the runaway favorites in the VLF category.

Tesoro is conspicuous in their absence. Only one Lobo ST listed. I was a bit surprised to see not one Garrett AT Gold listed. Except for a few ATX units Garrett is pretty much a no-show. White's does a little bit better but still only just over a dozen units out of 220. The TDI PI models are the most popular alternative to the Minelabs with 8 listed.

As I noted Fisher totally dominates the VLF detectors with the Gold Bug 2 and Gold Bug Pro. And I was surprised at the very large numbers for both the SDC2300 and GPZ7000. The GPZ in particular due to it being very expensive and out for only the last 6 months. The adoption rate is phenomenal in my opinion.

Here are two sets of results. The first is simplified for easy digestion. I have lumped similar models together and not listed onesies and twosies. The second list is the full per model breakdown. Make of it what you will, and thank you for participating!

Simplified Results:

51 GPX5000/4500/4000
33 GPZ7000
33 SDC2300
32 Gold Bug 2
15 Gold Bug Pro
13 GP3500/3000/GPExtreme
8   White's TDI/TDIPro/TDISL/SPP
5   White's GMT/GM3/VSAT
5   Nokta FORS Gold
4   Makro Racer
4   X-Terra 705
3   Garrett ATX
3   XP DEUS

Full Results:

33 GPZ7000
33 SDC 2300
32 Gold Bug 2
31 GPX5000
15 Gold Bug Pro
11 GPX4500
9   GPX4000
6   GP3000
5   GPExtreme
5   FORS Gold
4   Makro Racer
4   X-Terra 705
3   Garrett ATX
3   White's GMT
3   White's TDI
3   TDI Pro
3   XP DEUS
2   GP3500
2   Fisher F19
2   CTX3030
1   TDI SL
1   White's SPP
1   Troy X5
1   XT17000
1   SD2200V2
1   SD2100V2
1   Tesoro Lobo ST
1   White's GM3
1   White's V/SAT
1   Minelab F1A4
1   Garrett Scorpion

  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites


Fisher needs to make a PI prospecting detector. Minelab needs to make a better prospecting VLF.

I still think Garrett made a huge mistake with the ATX. Dry land box under 5 lbs and under $2K with decent coils it would have made an impact. As it is they are a non-player.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great data, even for a complete newbe like myself. Thank you for the tremendous effort you took putting that together. It had to be a PITA..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, here are the details I promised for members of this forum. Here I can name names.

Below is my spreadsheet. Sorry about the size. I had to cut it into an upper half and lower half and make the print fairly small to post here. But it is readable.

My methodology was start with results from this forum since it had nearly half the responses at http://www.detectorprospector.com/forum/topic/1244-if-you-found-a-gold-nugget-in-the-last-year-what-detectors-did-you-find-it-with/ Responses 1 - 54 are from this forum.

I then took the results from the next most responsive forum and excluded duplicates. This was Bill Southerns forum at http://www.nuggetshooter.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=29050 Responses 55 - 81 are from there or 27 total responses from nuggetshooting.com

Next up was Rob Allison's nuggethunting.com forum at http://forums.nuggethunting.com/index.php?/topic/11647-if-you-found-a-gold-nugget-in-the-last-year-what-detectors-did-you-find-it-with/ As I moved on more duplicates occurred due to the earlier results so Rob came in with responses 82 - 95 or 14 total responses.

Chris Gholson's forum at arizonaoutback.com http://arizonaoutback.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12271 added an additional seven new responses numbered 96 - 102

TreasureNet at http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/476779-if-you-found-gold-nugget-last-year-what-detector-s-did-you-find.html also added seven responses numbered 103 - 109

Findmall at Link deleted since Findmall Forum update broke all old links only added two responses 110 and 111

Finally we have the ICMJ forum at http://forum.icmj.com/index.php?/topic/669-if-you-found-a-gold-nugget-in-the-last-year-what-detectors-did-you-find-it-with/ with three responses.

A couple things jump out. I early on made my forum a refuge for GPZ owners who were getting lots of negative comments elsewhere. That shows with the many GPZ responses on my forum with only Rob Allison getting similar type results. Guys on these two forums are packing serious horsepower. Bill Southerns forum on the other hand is very GPX and VLF oriented, and nothing wrong with that. A little surprising to me though.

The main thing you can see here on the spreadsheet is that many serious hunters are employing multiple machines, and you can now see what they are choosing specifically by studying the spreadsheet. There are lots of variations of GPZ, SDC, GPX, Gold Bug 2, and Gold Bug Pro with people owning three or four of those particular model types. This makes a lot of sense as I have always believed a well outfitted prospector needs at least a good PI and a good VLF. In my opinion a GPX paired with either a Gold Bug 2 or a Gold Bug Pro is a killer high value combination with a GPZ either in addition to or substituting for the GPX depending on the budget. However, that is just my conclusion. You can make the case also that a person can do pretty darn well with just a Gold Bug 2 or a Gold Bug Pro. Or that amazingly popular SDC 2300. Interesting how in one year that went from being the new Minelab to bash on to the Minelab everybody now acknowledges as a real winner.

OK, that is about it for this project. Enjoy!

post-1-0-07400300-1443463881_thumb.jpg

post-1-0-92982900-1443463884_thumb.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good stuff, Minelab for gold in combination with the ageless GB2. You are dead right about your 4M being a Minelab refuge, the criticisms here are valid and positive, but a lot on the OZ forums they are just "hate mail".

 

Also thank you for not including Pauls 7 double O 5, gotta keep that weapon under wraps.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...