The following day I returned to the patch and decided to stay out of the main “run” and instead focus on the fringes of the patch that were covered in heavy scrub. The thick oak brush and Manzanita made it virtually impossible to work with a large diameter coil. The constant snags and hang-ups were beyond frustrating, but this brush provided the perfect hiding place for a few more nuggets. By the end of the day I left with scratches on my arms, but not empty handed. Careful searching produced four small bits of gold for a total weight of only 0.5 grams; the deepest of which was roughly four inches. The SDC’s 8” monoloop coil was easy to maneuver around the brush, and its solid design kept it from getting snagged on the many low hanging branches. I feel it will be a good choice for working most of the central Arizona goldfields.
Another point worth mentioning was the overall lack of EMI disturbance. Fifteen years ago this patch was isolated and took effort to reach. Nowadays with the boom in housing development, it is perched right on the edge of civilization. So close in fact, that it is possible to hear the traffic on the highway! The GPX 5000 did a good job at eliminating most of the constant EMI bombardment, but the SDC seems to take stability to a whole new level. After performing a Noise Cancel I never once had any issues with the Threshold, even when the coil was lifted into the air!
My overall gold finds with the SDC 2300are not incredibly high at the moment as we are right in the middle of our summer season here in the desert. With daytime temperatures easily reaching 110°F or more, this is not the most enjoyable or safest time of the year to be prospecting. When fall rolls around in October it will be a very different story. There are many locations I can think of that have yielded gold in the past and will undoubtedly produce more of the yellow metal for me and the SDC. I will be doing a lot more testing in the days to come, but so far I think Minelab has once again produced another winner!
Chris Gholson
Arizona Outback, LLC
1.928.777.0267
Prescott, AZ USA
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