I want to thank you for taking the time to to share your knowledge and experience with with us. There’s no need to buy the most expensive detector right away and have no idea what you’re doing.

If you plan to do most of your hunting in and around salt water, you’ll need a specialty machine. For all purpose coin and jewelry hunting, stick to a single frequency VLF detector when first starting out. These are built more for salt water hunting and gold prospecting.

Low discrimination means all metal including soil minerals, are picked up. If you’re on highly mineralized ground, you’ll know because the detector will sound like a firework – turn down the sensitivity. That metal detector will end up flying off a cliff because it’s uncontrollable and really, really annoying. Your metal detector will pick up tiny traces of mineralized iron and report it as a find.

This is a great feature that will save you time and aggravation. Especially as it has the coveted autotrac ground balance – more on that later. The Bounty Hunter TK4 (great name!) is one of the best starter metal detectors on the market. Would you consider The Garrett GTI2500 to be an out-dated machine? Assuming the phone is on the surface, you shouldn’t need that much sensitivity.

The next thing to decide is the operating frequency of the VLF. You’re hunting in areas with lots of trash and need to discriminate. You’re hunting for small to medium sized nuggets at depths under 8″ (most common). VLF stands for Very Low Frequency and is the same technology used in detectors built for coins, jewelry, and relics.

The Equinox has pre-set search modes for the park, beach, and field, Park mode filters trash, the beach has low sensitivity for saltwater, and field mode works with different types of soil at differing depths. Automatic ground balancing and a numeric display telling you what type of metal you’ve found made the Fisher F75 a pleasure to use, and its pre-set search modes save lots of time. This machine is a top-drawer bargain buy that I highly recommended as the best metal detector for beginners or smaller budgets. David, Michael and Daniel posing after a day of metal detecting at the beach. Michael adjusting an early Garrett Metal Detector in North Carolina at the first treasure hunt we ever displayed our products at back in 1985.

You want to use the same detector for other detecting like coins, jewelry, relics. Now let’s dive into the reasons why this is the case by deciphering the most important elements total stranger of any gold machine. * The GPZ 7000 uses Zero Voltage Transmission (ZVT) which effectively gives you two machines in one – a deep PI machine, and a high frequency VLF machine.

If you have elbow or shoulder problems or another ailment that limits physical activity, it’s recommended to get a lighter detector. Some metal detectors are light as a feather while others are built like bricks and can be quite heavy.

There’s gold in them there hills, rivers, beaches, and deserts but to stand the best chance of finding gold a specialist gold detector pays dividends. Every squeak and beep is a signal telling you something metal lies beneath the soil or sand, but maybe there’s something specific you want to find.