Hi steve, i don't know if you remember me, i'am Franck the French living in Ecuador and i asked you for some advise last year (november 2015) about gold detector to prospect gold in rain forest and mountain (Llanganati mountain...), after study the differents possibilities you suggest me, i took a sdc2300, very good detector that allow to find very small nuggest, but i encountered un big problem not expected in rain forest...the trash...i had to dig a huge quantity of metallic trash, result of various centuries of wood exploitation, farming etc so there is plenty of claws, barbed wire, pieces of sardine can, beer caps etc...so much than i expected... it's not possible in that conditions to prospect with pulse induction material, moreover the ground is not so mineralized that i thought (volcanic region but no many hot rocks..) so i have to reconsider my prospecting strategy and change the detector for Gold VLF ... .... here in Ecuador i have the choice in this list of detector :
Garret : AT Gold (1300$) - AT PRO (1300$) - GTI 2500 (with coils 9.5" & 12" and Eagle Eye - 2000$) - GTAx 550 (900$)
Fisher : Gold BUG PRO (1150$) - F5 (1400$)
Whites : TDi PRO (2300$)
Minelab : XTERRA 705 (GOLD Pack - 1000$) - Eureka GOLD (900$) - CTX3030 (3000$) - SAFARI (1400$)
Nokta : FORS CORE (2000$) - FORS GOLD (2000$) - Velox One (2000$) - CF77 (with 3 coils c23 c28 c45 - 2000$)
Other : DELTA PULSE 2 (650$) - DETECH SSP 5100 (1750$) ??? do know something about those ones, seem to be ground Radar more than detectors.....
I read a lot about all those detectors but a never used them so the choice is hard....
Importants things for me :
1 - I will make ONLY Gold Nugget prospection, here there is no coins nor Jewelry so i'am only interested to Gold nugget prospection capabilities of the detector... and i need one that can discriminate very well that huge quantity of metallic trash i encountered !!!! it's so borring to prospect in all metal mode and spent my time digging trash....
2 - I need one that resist hard rain with coil avaible for water, no need of a real underwater detector, just one able to detect banks of lake and river and dry land too
3 - Ground is low to medium mineralized
Can you suggest me detectors in the list below for various kind of price ???
Thanks,
Franck