Well, I have the GB 2, two Gold Bug SE's, a Gm4, a LST, and a few more not mentioned. I used to own a Stinger many years ago, but sold it so long ago, I can't tell you much about how well it worked. Personally, I prefer the GB SE's at this point. No, they will not detect quite as small of gold as the GB 2 or the GM4, but close enough for me. The other features make up for the limitations as far as I am concerned.
As for any big difference between the GB SE and the GB Pro, well, I have not tried the Pro but what I have been told by those who should know, there is little to no difference. When time and money permits, I will try the pro and the GMT, although I have used the GMT very briefly.
Responding to another discussion about ground balancing, personally, I find GB'ing over a piece of magnetite to be the best solution in certain areas and over the typical ground in other areas. It all depends upon on the ground and rock conditions. The reason I say this is because it is extremely easy to have a piece of magnetite or a rock containing magnetite to easily cause one to not hear a gold nugget next to it or under that rock. In fact, many years ago I use to give brief seminars on using metal detectors for gold hunting and one of my favorite displays was to show how one could easily ignore a half oz nugget if it was under a small piece of magnetite maybe golf ball in size. This happened regardless of the detector used if the GB is off just a little in adjustment. The exception today is a PI will detect the gold under the hotrock even if the GB is way off.
So, there is a lot more to nugget hunting that meets the eye and there is nothing better than experimenting and trying different tricks and procedures. Don't have any gold to test with? Well many people use lead as a test target, but brass mimics gold very well as does solid aluminum which, by the way, is quite close near pure gold in conductivity. (One can even buy small aluminum ingots on Ebay now.
Personally, I use brass balls of different sizes now for test targets. They are reasonably cheap and work well. I have also used pieces of brazing rod or even used small brass nuts when in a hurry and don't want to worry about losing my test target.
The point is, there are lots of possible test targets that will work. More importantly, gold varies dramatically, meaning no two nuggets are exactly the same and in many cases, gold from different areas is totally different in how it responds. Because of this, trying to use a TID meter to make a decision is useless in my opinion.
The old but standard rule still holds true, when in doubt, dig.
Reg
?? what is better than what
. My 2 cents and like you I am dated also.
