Anything beats nuttn'. Use it to find enough stuff to pay for a dedicated gold unit. That old school Jimmy sierra bigfoot works pretty good but that concentric coil is much more sensitive to small gold. Apples vs oranges as the ground mineralization--or lack of--will predicate which coil to use at any particuliar place. The JS BF coil works great at the beach-John
Tip of the hat to you John... your comments are right on the money. I've owned that unit since it first came out back in the 90s, it is surprisingly sensitive to small gold / silver in the all-metal configuration using the stock concentric, the lower operating frequency handles tough ground mineral well, and the Signagraph is just dandy for iron ID no matter what the audio response.
I used it for years as an accessory for deep, large iron ID in silver country. It never was my first choice for prospecting silver and certainly would not be for gold, but it did serve a valuable purpose in my application.
In the absence of a unit primarily dedicated to gold prospecting... it does have some surprising merit, not to mention a selection of either auto or manual GB, and an all-metal enabled visual display. I can think of plenty of worse choices for a newcomer with little cash to spare but wanting something to use. So while this unit was primarily designed for coin and jewelry hunting, it can be used for other applications such as prospecting in a pinch. But
justinw...upgrade to a suitable gold unit if you decide nugget hunting is for you and as your finances permit.
As to coils I see that White's offer a couple of small "shooter" coils on their website...
Bullseye 5.3 Search Coil (6.59 kHz)
Fits XLT, 6000XL, QXT, IDX, ID, CL III, 5900. Provides better separation between targets in high trash areas.
Blue Max 4x6 Shooter DD (6.59 kHz)
Elliptical 4x6 inch "DD" design provides superior performance in extreme ground, better sensitivity to physically smaller metal targets, performance in extreme trash and physically smaller foot print for working around obstacles. Longer but narrower detection window compared to similar sized search coils. Finds the good stuff in areas littered with trash.
Jim.
