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Almost done this season but may get in a few more hunts. My 3rd and best season detecting for gold. Gold is from Montana and Idaho from 5 different locations. Total count was 436 pieces, 119 with the SDC and 317 with the Monster. SDC got the 3 big ones and also the bulk of the total weight. Big nugget weighed 3.55ozt, then 25+gram, and 12 gram (3 nugget pic). SDC also found me my 1st "pocket" where I'd had a 20 piece day with 14 coming out of a 6" wide x 8" deep hole...THAT was FUN!!! Total weight (so far) is 7.66ozt. Nuggets came from public, private and permission ground. The Monster still amazes me and the addition of the SDC really helped make this season by far my best. Thanks to everybody on the forum for all the info/stories etc. and to Steve for hosting and maintaining the site!!!!

The grey thing mounted in this is I suspect a silver coin. Any suggestions on cleaning it to see what it is?

As many of you are aware, I have been 'accused' of driving a lot and not staying in one place long enough to find gold. I'm here to tell you that is TRUE. Here is an example. Tuesday afternoon my wife reminded me that Pat Keene (that Pat Keene) might be up on his claim in Downieville. I said "The Forests are CLOSED!" I called anyway and sure enough he was in his second week of his annual pilgrimage to the Downieville area and said come on up. That is a 500 mile trip for me but I said I'll leave tonight and be there in the morning. My wife and I have fond memories of this trip as we went to this about 5 years ago and had some success. She found a 5 gram button on a trail near some old workings using a Gold Bug Pro and I found a 1/3 ounce nugget using a 3030 sniping the Yuba River. Now I have an 800 and the 6 inch coil and thought I could find what was left. After a bit of packing in the late afternoon it was time to go out to the 4Runner and wipe off the cobwebs and see how it looked. It needed a bath so I could see but it also had a low tire. What? It was too late to go to a tire store so I stuck some of the tire seal in and when to a gas station and filled and checked the tires all around. I gave it a bath and my plan became to find a tire store on the way and get it fixed. My original plan was just to take the 800 and the 3030 as backup but as I got closer to 11 PM and a nap I decided I'd take the 7000 and the Xcoil in case I had time to make it to the old WSPA claims in Sierra City. I laid out all my stuff and tried to take a bit of a nap. About 12:30 I got up and packed the car and knew if I got to Auburn at 8 AM the America's Tire Store would be open and I could get my tire fixed and all of the rotated. It would be over an hour and a half to Downieville from there. Staying on schedule and making pretty good time I followed my familiar route up I-5 and I-80 to Auburn and arrived there about 8:15 with a still inflated tire! When I was asked why I was there I pointed at the tire and right on top was a screw head. I said I think this is my problem! I bought these Cooper Tires from America's Tire because Fred Mason told me his good experiences with them. They told me I should be out of there by 9:30. Well, because of some 'training' and scheduled appointments I didn't get out of there until 10:30. They showed me the screw and it was about 3 inches long. They plugged it. Now I was on my way. Going up Hwy 49 to the northern Sierras. This particular 70 miles of road is 'lovely' but I learned to hate it with my 4Runner because it doesn't like turns. The anti-swerve gets activated because it is old and needs a new R&P and it grabs. Most of my friends will not pull a trailer on this road. So with all of this 'behind me' I arrived at Downieville about noon. My plan was to stay in the hotel with the other participants that night. When I got there Pat was making a video about some of his innovations to a sluice they produce in Canoga Park. I took off with the 800 and 6 inch coil. My first stop was going to be where I found my nugget. When I got down to the back of the river it had changed. This is to be expected of rivers that flood and are subject to snow runoff but the conditions now didn't leave me much bank. In addition there were panners and sluicers set up all along the area I wanted to detect. Hummmmm ... I chatted with a few of them but I wasn't there to pan. I walked around them and found some areas to get to work. It was more difficult for the 800 than I thought it was going to be. I've used it for thousands of hours now on the beaches but these hot rocks were making me take the sensitivity way down from my normal 23. I was down to 17-18 before I could make it ignore some of the rocks. I was trying Gold 1 and Park 1. This bank area is not that big and it is steep with green moss on it but I worked it for 3 hours. I couldn't get into the water because it was too deep. This was one of the changes. It was now time to check where my wife had found her gold button on the path up above. While looking for anything up there I did come across a 'mini-spill' which was 3 pennies and a dime but nothing more. At the end of this it was about 4 PM and it was time to check on a room at the Inn. More later ... Later has become 2:40 PM on Sunday the 27th. When I went to check on my room ... there was none available. My original plan was that I would sleep in the 4Runner but I saw the setup and I said I'd go on up to Sierra City and get a room there. That is about 12 miles. I passed by Sierra Pines on to an old club claim and saw they had been working on the forest to thin it and had disturbed the soil. This now became the area I wanted to detect. A new 'plan' had replaced the old plan because I could stay near this location. The problem then became gas. Sierra City and Downieville don't have gas stations any more. I had to drive to Graeagle and get gas and that would also be a place where I could use the phone. When I got there I called a forum member, Norm but there was no answer. I spoke with my wife and she was ok at the end of the first day and said everything was fine. I drove the 20 miles back to Sierra City, got a room and got on the computer before I slept. I messaged Norm and Klunker. I told them where I was and that I could be around for a couple of days but there would be no way to call me. When I got up in the morning I had messages but Norm was not available and Klunker was working but could consider Friday but he wouldn't know until late Thursday. So, we didn't have any way to set a schedule. Off I went to the claims where I had found gold before. When I got there I could see that they were still harvesting some trees. This is one area where forest management has continued over the years. When I first prospected around this area over 5 years ago you could see old tree stumps left from maybe the first cuts in the area 60-70 years before. Now they were thinning the trees again. Some was cut for lumber and other was cut to make road access. I gouged the dirt deeply and that was what I thought would be different. Above was the first area where I pulled into and started detecting. It was about 9:30 and pleasant after the low of about 42 in the morning. I was rested and ready to tackle the area where I know gold had been found before. At this point I knew Norm was not going to show up but he wished me well. I began detecting the ruts as were my plan but that plan soon had problems. My Xcoil was working fine and I was getting these 'targets' but they turned out to be pieces of the dozer blade! Oh, no. Why can't they make these blades and teeth harder so they don't shed. That continued all day. I altered my pattern and detected some unrutted areas. At one point I was walking along (looking out for snakes in the process) and I almost tripped. I went to pull my foot up and it was like it was in mud. It was actually dirt that was so dry and fine that it acted like water and mud. That is one of my lasting impressions of this trip. It was DRY. There was another problem that I discovered after the first 30 minutes or so. YELLOW JACKETS were everywhere. I could walk along and try to recover one of the little pieces of blade and they would gather around me and then land on my arms and then try to get behind my sun glasses. They were not overly aggressive in the sense of a big swarm but they did sting me a couple of times when I had to get them out of the way. After 4 hours at the first location which included the area where I found my last nugget I had to move about half a mile to another spot. At this spot I had found the remnants of a pair of Levi's. There was really no material left but the buttons I was able to date back to the 1890s. That meant there was old workings and others in our group had found some nice gold here. They had even cleared the brush when Fred was out with them to get access to the gold. It was not long before I got a couple of targets that included normal trash but then I got a deeper target. I went back to the 4Runner to get my phone to take pictures because I was into the roots. A new roadway had been scraped here to allow for taking out the logs. I thought this was the nugget of the trip. The Yellow Jackets were around and I was digging down and down and got the target out of the hole and ... a big piece of lead. Sooooo disappointing, just like Australia I thought. Well, there was nothing I could do other than fill in the hole and keep after it. I went a few feet more and got another good target. This time I walked back to the car and got the 800 to pinpoint. It was an odd number of 10-13 and it wasn't coming out of the hole easily. I used a pin-pointer and found it. A WIRE. Now I'm getting late into the afternoon. Home and obligations started to weigh in on me. I had gone to the areas I knew best and didn't get any gold yet. I went to another area where the undergrowth had been cleared and tried to get a stray nugget to keep my head in the game but it was not to be. I started thinking about telling the story of forest management with pictures. All of these trees that had been cut down would make some people mad. What I realized was that there can be too many trees. All of the little trees on the ground didn't have enough sunlight to grow in many areas. This was being corrected with management here. I was done with detecting and I knew it was time for me to go back but I wanted to take some pictures on the way. Here is what I saw on the way from Sierra City to the end of the forest and the valley overlook. The road above is covered in snow during the winter. A few years ago we couldn't get to the claims where I was detecting until April there was so much snow. The road below is 49 again. It is maintained through the winter. I wanted to show Simon the elevation and also the ski area but this is not a ski resort as much as it is cross country. I don't know much about it because I don't do it. As you guys know, I'm a beach sort of guy. If I don't get early, quick results then I'm bored with limited time. I want to thank Klunker and Norm for taking my call/message on very short notice and trying to help me find some color. I didn't plan the trip very good and once I decided that missing the traffic on Friday was more important than gold I was done. I did see on accident near Sacramento on the way back. I don't see many and this one was a car had just run into the center. I was back in Santa Monica about 1 AM on Friday morning. I had been gone 48 hours and driven about 1200 miles. That is a long, short trip. One day I hope my sons will be able to still read about it here on Steve's forums. Thanks Steve. Mitchel

I started out the day on a high note by detecting an old farm that I found a Rosie and a merc on a previous outing. First good signals were some 22 casings. I then got into some 1970's pennies and hit a bunch of wheaties, The oldest was a 1919 pretty good I thought. Next up was a kids silver plate bracelet. Was hoping for better but it was not to be. After about 45 min. of trash I stumbled on an odd 1 3/4'' copper piece. This is very unique and I have no clue what it was. Last but not least was a 1943 p nickle, my first of this date. I thought it was an odd silver but seeing the delamination on the surface, my hopes were dashed.This nickel was at the 10'' mark. Now for the bad part !!!! On my way back home I decided to try and get permission for another old farmstead. This property is having a new house built on it and I figured why not. There were some drywall guy's there who did not speak english, so I decided to look at the old barn before I departed. The first sign you are in trouble is when a black cat tears ass out of the barn and almost hits you. I should have realized I was headed for problems. Anyhow I decided to leave, Jumped in my big truck, pulled foward and into a 3 foot ditch I failed to see. After stacking about a ton of stone under my passenger tire I got out. But It will cost me a new bumper $350, Brackets $52, and possibly a new fender $400 + paint. I'm not sure my finds will cover my stupidity!!! My wifes thoughts were, Glad it wasn't me. You would have bitched for days about my bad driving. Sometime's dumb catches up with all of us. Damn Black Cat !!!!!!

I agree that electrolysis would probably do the job but I would proceed with caution. That could be a valuable coin being that it is set in gold. I agree with JoeD and would probably have a capable jeweler involved.

Thanks for the video and I watched it and learned a couple of things from it. Right now the ground has been so dry that no matter what I do it still leaves damage. That is why I have only hunted at grandmothers house. I can water and keep an eye on everything while I am here helping her. Today I found an old jar with some type of grease in it with some coins inside. When I can clean them up I will post some pictures. I don't know why there would be coins in inside it, but they were there. The grease is black and almost a tar that is on them, so I have to remove it to be able to tell what they are. The jar was inside where the cabin was near a corner so I hope it has something good inside.

Nice find Rick, was that an AQ find?? I'm thinking some sort of collectible silver coin, based on the buildup, and the setting! I don't believe a platinum coin would have a concretion like that! I would have a jeweler possibly remove the coin for proper cleaning! That way, the setting won't be damaged! The setting look's custom for what it is holding, and is very nice! Let us know when it's cleaned! Post a pic!!👍👍

Hi Joining from Southern Connecticut, with a just purchased XP ORX. I live near several beaches, but hoping to use the ORX primarilly on camping and hiking trips in in CT and California. I grew up in California, and have camped throughout the United States, including Alaska. This is my second metal detector. In high school I bought a very inexpensive Fisher but left it for my younger brother when I went to college. He made one unusual find: When searching in a field in the California foothills he found a portable Sony Color TV sitting in the grass. Believing it was stolen, he turned it in to the police. Two weeks later, the police called and said the TV was his—it was worth more than the metal detector.

Fisher Impulse AQ Ltd Owners Manual - Download Here

Have a look at it now. Still unfinished but, at least it is there. This is a first draft from Alexandre to be completed and kept up-to-date later on by the official marketing support of FTP.

Along with Simon's idea, you might also check to see if the wireless device itself is interfering with the GPZ due to close proximity to the GPZ control box. Reason I say this is because my phone will interfere with the GPZ if I bring it within about 1 inch or so of the control box. I noticed this the first week I had my GPZ as I had my phone in my pocket. I thought the coil was picking it up but it was EMI and not signal, and was actually the phone getting too close to the control box. From memory - it only interferes if the phone is basically touching the box, and worse at some parts of the control box than others. If your friend is mounting the aftermarket devices to the control box, he might try removing them at least a foot away and see if the problem persists.

Thank You Alexandre!! And Thank You and the Team for all the work, time and effort that it took to get the AQ out !! Hats off to the Team!!

WTG Pirate. I feel your pain all my spare time has been taken up this past month. It seems like I had more free time when I was working. HH Mike

Well ... other obligations keep me from finishing this story in a timely fashion. I don't want to spoil the suppositions about a nugget in the scoop but I must do that before I finish the story. The scoop is filled with a nemesis we all face. It was a bullet at the bottom of an 8" hole among the roots. When it came out I could only think of my Australia trip where I dug a deeper bullet that was going to change my Australia trip. It still hurts that it was a shot fired so far down into the ground. I will finish and give some meaning to the pictures I posted up. I was thinking of you Simon when I took a couple of the pics.

Another jealous UK hunter here. They rarely come out that good from our soil, (probably the acidic rain, a result of being a heavily Industrialised nation in the 1800's ), and the condition is great as it is, no need to try embelishing it. Here's what an uncirculated example looks like ( thanks to Tony Claytons' site ) http://www.coins-of-the-uk.co.uk/pics/farth.html

Superb!!! Patina is amazing i dont have a nice one like that and i am in the UK

Thanks Cliff! Yes. I was Very Blessed to have the chance to own one of the first and Out of respect to all of those who have waited and are still waiting... I have asked Rick to save me the very last "AQ" Limited if possible.

Nah have forgotten the way to WA, FNQs the go for this old fella, plus I don`t think Oneguy needs our hints or anything as he`s on fire as is.

My iron program is based off the deep program. Disc 8.7, iron vol 3, sensitivity 90, 31 KHz, reactivity 4, silencer -1, 5 tones with breaks at 8.7, 50, 80 and 97. The first and last breaks the tones are set to 202. 2nd break set at 367, 50-80 is at 593 and 80-97 is at 993. As you know with the HF coil 31 KHz up averages everything. So everything but nickels and similar items are in the 80-97 bracket. The mid tone I scrutinize closely in iron as it usually represents a masked target. You also have to be careful with the break at 97 because bigger silver like halves and dollars can come in that high. But where I'm using this program there is little chance of that happening.

This sounds like a critical step, IMO. The copper/silver that's alloyed with the gold could be affected by any cleaning method, even soaking in de-ionized water as Tmox suggests. Electrolysis? Add a couple orders of magnitude of concern. My guess (and it's simply that) is that it may be a coin merely of particular meaning to the individual, such as dated with year-of-birth, a family memento, etc. Yes, it could also have numismatic value so care in cleaning, as always, is a good idea. Just be careful not to "throw the baby out with the bathwater." Pretty interesting find!

Thanks Mike! I fully understand. I'm getting out about once a week now but hopefully this winter things will easy some. Been working on the batteries of late...

I been hunting this park for 2 hrs a day since last Sat the 24th. Anyway I have pulled out in excess of $35 - $40 in clad and a cpl silver rings and a few worthless tokens. This morning I pulled out $6.37 in two hours and only dug one tab and had on mystery 25 signal that I quit looking for at 12". I already had an 8" diameter plug and at 12" I just quit. There were a bunch of women show up and started exercising in the same area I was detecting but I was getting ready to quit so I headed toward my truck and on the way I decided to make a cpl passes of areas I already hunted. Well to my surprise in less than 50' and two passes 4' wide I picked up 85 cents and that got me to think that maybe I should grid it and cover the area again. I will admit when I swing there is a good chance I miss an area 6" or so between swings as I move forward but in the past when I tried gridding all I did was wear myself out and found very little or nothing. Since this park is such a producer I am thinking when I finish the last 3rd of the park maybe I should go back and start over covering the park in a horizontal search of what I been hunting. I am also wondering since I turned up the sensitivity yesterday if that's the reason I should go back over what I have hunted. I got the sensitivity turned up to 25 with no chatter or interference's. I been using park 1 and other than turning up the sensitivity I am in factory pre set. I have hit few bottle caps and I know colt 44 rings up but Bush beer don't. Tokens been ringing up 31 & 32 but I recognize them after digging a few. The separation between trash and good signals is beyond by belief. Three times this morning I hit signals that went from 23 - 30 and I kept swinging to see which signal want the most prominent and when I dug I got a quarter, dime and penny. One time 2 quarters and a penny. Also in the holes I found rusty nails and a lead sinker. I may not be right on the amount of clad I have dug because I haven't counted it exactly but I know I have a pile of clad not counting pennies of $93 and about $35 of it is E-Trac finds. Maybe someone can answer this. Often times when I pin point for say a quarter that's ringing up at 29 when I start to pin point the detector shows 13 while I am pin pointing. It don't bother me because I am listening for tone but always wonder why the detector don't show 29 when I am pin pointing a 29. All I can really say is I am one happy detecting dude with the 800. My E-Trac may go to rust unless I find a good reason to use it for anything other than back up. One last thing. I have charged it twice and get almost exactly 12 hours per charge. When the battery is almost dead the 800 with shut off on it's own. I do think that Minelab should halt production of the 800 so others don't get one and that would reduce the competition.

For electrolysis, I use a model train transformer and watch it carefully. Less power than the battery charger shown above, adjustable and yet I still need to watch to make sure I'm not loosing the silver too.

I would use electrolysis. Just keep an eye on it, so you don't go too long. Here is a silver I cleaned a few months ago. I don't usually clean any of it, but this one stirred my imagination. Just used a small battery charger.

Hi Norm, I haven't used the Trond system but assume it's Bluetooth? I have tried 2 x different Bluetooth tx/rx systems (Avantree & TaoTronics) on the GPZ, a while ago now, to see if they could be used as backups to the WM12 in case of failure or failure of me to recharge it 😆 From memory both were usable if required from the headphone jack but they did have noticeably more background interference type noise & the WM12 was preferable for that reason. The Avantree Bluetooth system did work well on the SDC2300 for me though? I'm no wireless tech but had assumed it was either something to do with the channel/s Bluetooth inherently selects on the 2.4ghz band or that the Bluetooth units not being made specifically for metal detectors aren't as well shielded as other purpose made devices. I could be wrong on both counts? I didn't experiment with placement of the tx either. May need to move it around & see if it improves at all?

You didn't get that bullet on a WSPA claim, I think I got the last one! Norm

Coin or emblem maybe. Platinum would be pretty clean. My guess silver.

Your hearing must be a lot better than mine. Tabs, nickels, some slaw, melted aluminum can nuggets,and gold rings all sound about the same to me. If I get a 14 or higher, I know it's not a nickel, but it could be any of the other three. At the beach they all get scooped. Quicker and easy that way, and it won't be there the next time I hunt that beach.

Thanks for taking the time to go through that detailed comparison. I would like to know what your Deus "Iron" program is, abenson. On Deus, discrimination plays a big role in countering the effects ferrous down averaging of non-ferrous targets. That is why I am not a big fan of Gary Blackwell's "no disc" setups like the "Sonar" program. First of all it "burns" a tone in a multi tone setup. 5 tones becomes 4 tones, 4 tones becomes 3 etc. So for a 2-tone setup you have to use a 3 tones and push the down break down to the iron breakpoint. If you simply use disc + iron volume - no need to burn a tone and you also gain the advantage of disc mitigating ferrous down averaging of non ferrous. For more "2-tone personality" I use pitch tone combined with iron volume. I get the iron grunt for anything below the iron disc breakpoint (I typically set it betweeen 7 and 10) and a VCO-like pitch tone (set at the highest pitch audio frequency) for everything above the ferrous breakpoint. That makes non-ferrous audio pop in nail infested sites and as an added bonus, if you are relying on visual target ID, the non-ferrous IDs are more stable and less susceptible to ferrous down-averaging with disc enabled.

I finally got my old 11'' replaced. This new coil is working great and I couldn't be more happy. Thanks to Dilek all my problems have been resolved. Yesterday and today were the first times I have given it a good run. I decided to hunt a farm house yesterday. I usually think the finds are getting low. Well low and behold I was wrong. Yesterday was good and bad as posted on the coin and relic forum. Today was even better!! same farm plus a kids camp. In two hours at the farm I scored a 2 oz. sinker, a bunch of odd lead, 2 wheat pennies, a girl scout pin from the 60's and two fabulous 1952 and 1957 roosevelt dimes. Around 1:30pm I decided to hit the camp. In another two hours I scored $1.05 in clad (not much) and a very awesome 1810 to 1830's button. inscribed on the back is Treble gilt Standard colour. seems to be a british button. Most of the clad from the 60's and 70's were at 6 to 7 inches deep. this button was around 3''. I did dig a bunch of deep trash always looking for the gold rings. The only thing is the id numbers are a little off, they are a couple of points off, but that was an easy learn. I'm thinking the old coil was bad from day one and today just proved it. I can't wait to hit some more of my sites and see what I missed with the old coil. The MK has yet to let me down and has been a great machine in the short time that I have owned it.

Well, I went for the foil, salt and warm water method and it revealed a badly corroded 1964 Roosevelt dime - birthdate I guess.

Sounds like you'll get the best of both 'worlds' of USA detecting -- Colonial coin and relics in CT and gold country in CA. Welcome and we look forward to more stories!

Beautiful ring!! This will work with patience, I use this on shipwreck silver coins. Go to the store and get s gallon of distilled water, put the ring on the window sill in a little jar and cover it with distilled water. Every week you can top it off and rinse it with a little detergent. The black will dissolve and become a little slimy. If you can get some lab grade 18 megohm water it works even better. I've used my mineralized tap water and it works well. Cheers, Tim

Welcome SG, you picked a great site to start gathering detecting info. please show us some of your finds when you hit the dirt and sand.

Wow, I think your grandfather is sitting on your shoulder, guiding you to these great finds! Keep the luck running!🤞 Especially for next year!!👍👍

Did a quick run over at the river bank and was able to pick out a couple Indian heads, 1903 and 1892. Also found a small musketball. Numbers are all but useless on any machine due to the iron. Usually hunt by hear a target, take a scoop then re-sweep to see what you have because of the high iron in the ground. Some areas are pretty clean but of course there are rarely targets there.

Copper pennies are usually 72-78 depending the year and ground, some the spots puts them below a zincoln which are 63-66 if i remember my id scale right on that machine. This was with the Multi Kruzer in normal mode (same id across frequencies). The Gold Racer does pretty well in that ground but lacks depth due to the high frequency and small coil. The river is tidal in that area so I also don't want to get any salt on that machine.

Coming from Deus, I consider myself pretty adept at tonal nuances and can definitely differentiate aluminum junk and pull tabs from gold rings and nickels using full tones. I also use Equinox pinpoint to "footprint" targets but it definitely would be quite a stretch for me to claim to be able to do that for differentiating nickels and pull tabs. More power to you on that ability. Kudos to you.

True !!!!

Caleb - Search around this site and the net for various recovery techniques that detectorists use to limit yard damage during recovery such as cutting flaps rather than plugs in sod and capturing the removed dirt on a towel so it can be more easily and effectively replaced back into the hole. Learning how to recover detected targets while leaving no trace on manicured yards or sensitive areas like parks, churches, and ball fields is just as important a skill as learning how to detect the targets in the first place. This will enable you to be invited for a return visit to a permission from a stranger and to not incur the wrath of grandma or maintenance personnel when detecting in yards or public sites. Here's a post to get you started:

Fantastic finds! Thanks for sharing! The big gold nugget is an epic find!

Just your third year, people like me complaining the patches are getting thin...... and look at you! Fabulous finds, congratulations!!

I have hunted there...........super hot, humid, the horseflies are gigantic and mosquitoes and chiggers were on me day and night. I preferred to work my material wet so I was covered in mud for three days and it rained all three days. So, don't go in the summer. Fall or early spring is better, before it gets too hot or the local insects say hello. Definitely take a teenager or younger person along, especially someone lucky who never gives up so you may actually find a diamond or two. For a geology loving person, the park is amazing. Digging in a kimberlite pipe in the middle of a volcanic crater is extremely cool. The campground is spartan but the park office is very nice. Plus, Mt. Ida and its amazing clear quartz crystals are only an hour away.

With this weeks output, 8 units the last two weeks. Hope the trend continues and increases.

Pretty good test, as air tests go. I would have liked to know the individual settings on the machines to see if we're comparing apples to apples. Coil size is another variable that skews the test. The last test didn't show what the 11" Equinox coil would do, and I don't know what the recovery speed or iron bias settings were either. I often hunt around fire rings at the beach and find by moving the coil real slow with high recovery speed and high iron bias settings, you can pick good targets out of a carpet of nails. Not uncommon for me to get a slight high tone chirp among the iron grunts, scoop, and find a dozen nails in with a coin or other non-ferrous target. Naturally, the smaller the coil, the easier it is to do that, but, even with the 12X15" coil, I can still hunt effectively in that situation. You just have to really slow down and when you get a chirp, barely wiggle the coil to lock in on the good target. A full sweep won't do it.

My Tejon has no user slots but only one user, does that count? 🙂 I wish you could just put a thumb drive on the control box and pick the saves you had and back up ones you create. Then your not really restricted at all, even be able to share settings with others with the same detector. The Kruzer and Racer only have save all for current setups and a factory reset. Not a big deal on the gold racer as it is super simple to use but the Kruzer has enough settings that can make it a pain to restore if needed.

Fisher Gold Bug - No manual ground balance - ground grab only Fisher Gold Bug Pro - Adds manual ground balance to Gold Bug feature set Teknetics G2 - Gold Bug Pro with a different rod and coil configuration Fisher F19 added the following features: Pinpoint in both disc and all metal modes Main volume control Ferrous volume control Notch accept or reject Notch width control LCD backlight Teknetics G2+ is a F19 with different rod and coil configuration Bounty Hunter Time Ranger Pro is a F19 with different labels (and possibly coil)

I have noticed this...most of the gold rings I have found are below the nickel range...I'm still waiting for that 12.13-12.15 Gold ring so I keep digging nickels....Wonderful post...and I hate the guy with the lawn mower. strick

A detector that makes you dig something and is wrong only makes you dig a piece of trash. A detector that tells you not to dig a target because it is trash could be wrong and you just missed your first gold coin. It's far less expensive to dig and be wrong then not dig and be wrong. I therefore advocate looking for reasons to dig, not reasons to avoid digging. The difference might be subtle but I think it is one thing that divides people making great finds from everyone else.