I suppose LS,.... if you have a gold type detector that has notch discrimination and can handle the challenging soils found around the goldfields with little interference from ground noises produced in conjunction with mineralised soils, you could just wave different sized nuggets and gold bearing specimens, along with a 1gm+ sample of fines found in the vicinity of the field you want to detect under the coil and just discriminate out every thing else(like us treasure hunters do),.. you may not find everything, and you may not find anything at depth(big saver on digging holes too deep), but the things you do find will have a better chance of being gold than nails,... that said, I'm no prospector of gold, just a humble hunter of treasure (at the moment),... but,... that doesn't mean that what I have to bring to the table should be discarded without undue attention to its merits,... that being, if you want a dedicated gold detector, find which one fits the bill for the above description and go through the motions of setting it up for yourself(as above) to get what you are after in a way that will give you piece of mind as you search,... if you were to find any gold, or you thought you might have a patch you could just turn off any discrimination to give you a deeper looksy around the area,... in so saying you would want to ensure that your goldfield ready detector with notch discrimination was going to be up to the task you require of it when it is in all metal mode as well as your personal gold recovery settings. even so,...after all we don't really want to get it all as there are generations upon generations yet to come that still want a chance to find a bit themselves,.. they just aren't here to speak out about it just yet,... however,... we do still want our share(common wealth and all).
Maybe it would be a good exercise in experimentation to make sure you have someone with a proven bad boy gold machine to follow in your footsteps to ensure that you are not missing anything easy to find(at the least)
Cheers and Beers.
Silver.