I am just back from a two week prospecting trip to Alaska (11 days of digging), and I now have about 120+ hours of prospecting with the SDC 2300 and I have really been impressed with it. Just to show how successful the SDC 2300 has been for me, here are 50 grams (1.6 ounces) of SDC 2300 gold I have dug from both California and Alaska.
The SDC is targeted at small gold, but the fact is that if you keep hunting small stuff in time you will probably find some big stuff too (and yes, it bangs hard on those big nuggets). Finding a few gold smaller nuggets regularly can help keep you focused and listening closely to what your detector is telling you. Part of being successful in detecting is having a positive attitude, keeping your head in the game and listening closely. The weight of the little ones does add up.
In the photo, the bigger nuggets and those to the right of them are from Alaska, and the rough ones to the left of the big nuggets are from California. The largest I have found so far with the SDC 2300 is 0.75 ounces, but it was only about 2 inches deep and honestly could have been found with any metal detector. The nugget was in a hole dug previously and made a very loud down-up signal (as you might expect). The previous digger walked away from it, assuming that it was trash. I decided to get it out of the hole as big loud trash can overwhelm smaller more subtle signals from nearby gold. I was pretty shocked when I took two swipes at the bottom of the old dig hole and out popped this big flash of gold!
The other large piece is a specie which is one of those where you can debate if it’s a nugget or a specimen. It has lots of quartz, but there is more gold than quartz by volume. It weighs 8 dwt and was a good, easy to hear hi-lo signal. It was down a good 10 inches from the surface, which is good depth on something like that. The SDC does very well on specimen gold. The third largest piece weighs just under a pennyweight and was a sharp lo-hi signal at 4 inches deep. (It’s interesting that a less than pennyweight solid nugget was a lo-hi, and a much larger specie was a hi-lo tone.)
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