raresaturn said:
Why? is gold harder to detect than other metals? The specs said it would pick up silver, gold etc.
No gold is just as easy to detect as other metals, it's just that most gold these days comes from goldfields that have been worked by the early prospectors, the early metal detecting brigade who used various VLF style detectors and more recently by the those using the latest PI technology.
Just means that a lot (but by no means all) of the existing ground has been detected to death BUT there are always undetected areas and areas where gold has been missed due to a variety of other reasons (eg, wrong settings on the detector).
The best areas also tend to be unkind to detectors that are difficult to 'tune' to areas of high mineralisation, that is where the latest PI detectors come into their own.
I use a Exterra 705 and although sold as a 'gold' pack I bought it mainly for parks and beaches as a training tool, although people have found gold with them in the right areas I do not consider it gold detector but enjoy it for what it is a park/beach tool, I'm sure I'll try it out when I'm in the right (low mineralisation) areas.
Enjoy your new detector, try it out at the beach/park and get some results but more importantly use it to learn the basics, how fast/slow to swing, stepping and swinging smoothly as you walk, keeping the coil level and low etc.
There's a wealth of info in these pages that you'll find useful,
Cheers Tom