G'day GT, Mate I dont think I would bother with a gold bug when you have a GP 4000. Ok the bug may find some very tiny gold but it will also find every shot gun pellet (maybe your 4000 does as well) from the rabbit shooters as well. That will drive you nuts in central otago
I got myself a Whites Goldmaster, was a toss up between that & a bug, went to Ophire with it & I actualy got sick & tired of digging targets I couldnt even see & find. Ended up chucking the handfuls of dirt with the target in it into a bucket. When the bucket was full I took it down to a pool of water & panned it out. Quess what. Not one piece of gold but a handfull of bloody pellets. The time wasted in digging these targets & going off panning the results did my head in.
I have tried the Goldmaster at a few other other spots with the same result. I now just stick with my GP 3000. It finds a few pellets but not so many. I quite like that fact. It also gets some pretty tiny gold. .06 of a gram is the smallest. A pellet weighs .2 of a gram.
I have come to the conclusion now, as Wildcat mentiond as well, why bother wasting all that time finding & diggin such small gold when that time out in the field is better spent finding & digging bigger gold at new locations. Better to find & dig a 1 gram piece than spending all day finding & digging 10 .1 gram bits. The old numbers game thing.
I never thought I would find myself saying that as I am a fan of finding & digging all gold as it all adds up, no matter how small. But I now see the sense in what I have just mentiond.
Naturally at a new spot you usually find the bigger gold sooner rather than later & the smaller stuff will follow later. I start with a bigger coil, usually the 24" X 12" mono, & then go to the the smaller coils to get the rats & mice. I find the 10" X 5" mono coil a great coil. It gets the 2, 3, 4 ,5 gram bits easily at goodish depth & deadly when you really focus, concerntrate & ground balance your mind on the sub gram bits in shallowish bed rock ground.
I have just got a 6" mono & used it a couple of times. It has found a few bits in ground I have been over with the 10" X 5". .1 bits. I have also used the 8" mono but I find it hard to bet the 10" X 5" coil. It is great for getting in to tight spaces & dragging through crevices etc. It just keeps proving itself to me time & time again. I love it.
Went for a detect this morning. The forecast was for snow to 300 meters. I got in about 1.5 hours at a new spot. It didnt look to be old sluiced ground but driving past it looked to have some bedrock & it was just down the road from an old sluiced area. So I gave it a go. It started raining so I called it quits but I found a .4 gram piece that I really thought wasnt going to be a bit of gold as It wasnt on bedrock but in the loose material beside a large slab of schist. Got heaps of lead bullet heads. Dont you hate those
Got home & it is now snowing. BUGGER.
How are you placed for a detect at Ophir next weekend??
Happy hunting
JW
I much prefer the Gold bug 2 for the gb capabilities and sensitivity and yes doesn't weigh squat and good to go for many hours--John
