Would it be senseable to say that a gold detector would do better for looking for gold jewelry than a regular detector? Like a goldbug pro against an mxt for instance,never minding the brand? Would they seem to hit harder on gold items? just wondering !
Then you'd be beach or park hunting and you definately need some sort of discrimination. Tesoro Lobo ST has a full disc on a great gold machine. Any machine with a real disc circuit can be turned up too far and you'd lose all gold and silver rings/coins also-Hit harder is dependent on disc setting,ground conditions,sensitivity setting also.John
Any metal detector will pick up gold if it is big enough size. As you go up in frequency you detect smaller gold, and the same big gold with the other machine will usually be detected deeper. Example, Minelab Sovereign with 5 inch coil will pick up a man's gold ring I don't know 5 or 6 inches. A half-gram nugget maybe one inch deep or less. Since I have an AT Gold I know with the 5x 8 dd coil it will pick up the same ring at twelve inches. The smaller stuff about 1 grain you might only get three inches in bad ground. So the other thing to consider is that aluminum tabs, even wadded tight foil sound like gold. But yes, the gold machines are going to hit harder on the low conductors compared to the coin machines.
There's a lot more to it than just how hot it is on gold. Target separation, recovery speed, etc. not to mention the specific features for working in iron all add in to the final blend. Then you have to decide which machine has the features you need.Of course you will get propaganda and snobbery not to mention outright deception from a couple MFR's. The internet is a good place for that. I have no doubt the MD designers are tracing the electronics in the AT Gold right now so they can copy it. You think these MD designers are genius, well they just copy the latest thing and change it enough so they hopefully don't get a lawsuit.
It all depends on what you are trying to do. If I am hunting rings in turf I like a unit that tells me a lot about the target. The Whites DFX with Bigfoot coil really clicks for me due to the SignaGraph display. But if I hunt a beach or volleyball court looking for chains or earrings I often break out my Gold Bug 2. For general tot lot hunting I like my Gold Bug Pro. Gold machines are better when you are in a dig it all mood, but other units may allow for better cherry picking in thick aluminum.
Tesoro Golden Sabre is a perfect example of a righteous ring beach park unit with the old school notch function BUT not that good at all for real nugget shooting,BUT again utilizing that DD coil over the concentric donut sure makes ol'gold work much more better in heavy mineralization and wet beach sands also. Sooo many machines and sooosmall a lifetime-John
My hunting buddy and I both have found that 12 khz to 19khz detectors with good disc ability are the best gold jewelry hunters. A 6.7 khz coin machine is not very good detecting gold jewelry. Especially the small stuff.
Yeah I should note I run my DFX in 15 kHz single frequency mode with normalization off to get more resolution in the gold/aluminum range and of course better hits on the smaller targets.
No. No detector does it all, but some come close. What you gain in sensitivity you loose in depth. Some areas will need discrimination as you will get a coil overload and your ears will bleed. Any vlf detector can be used. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but a gold detector (vlf) will hit on smaller fine gold or nuggets. But you will be dealing with a lot of man made trash if your looking for a ring. I hunt rings. A small coil on a All Metal Mode will be your best shot. You can hunt in a discriminate mode, but will loose deep and miss targets. Gold comes in a wide range of trash signals. I have seen the whites used, even the setup with the big foot, and they do well. I agree a higher freq will produce well in the park. Its a numbers game, you have to dig the foil and pull tabs if you want to see gold. Good Luck.
This is a really good topic. I usually water hunt with a Fisher CZ21 and use the same machine on land quite often. I have no trouble finding men's wedding bands. Thin ladies rings are more trouble to find unless they are somewhat shallow. Small chains (without a pendant) and earrings need to be really shallow. On a positive note, I can usually avoid some of the iron junk. Now, a gold machine will normally have no trouble finding all of that gold, but will also have more trouble with the junk and tiny pieces of foil. As such, it will really depend on the spot and if you are in the mood to dig more. I used to know a fellow who used an old Goldbug exclusively for all of his detecting. In the right locations, he really kicked butt. In fact, he even took it into the shallow water by floating the electronics on an inner tube.