Can a Radioshack Discovery 3000 be set to detect gold only?

Scavenger

I was trying to find a setting for gold only last night but had no luck. Or do they have special detectors that discriminate and are used only for gold.

lordmarcovan

There is no way to set a detector to find only gold, because so many other metals fall along the same range of conductivity (at least as recognized by a detector). This is why specialized gold-hunting detectors have no discrimination at all. (At least such was the case with the Fisher Gold Bug a pal of mine in North Carolina used).

To find gold, you want LESS discrimination, not more of it. The only way to do it is to set your discrimination low and dig those lower to midrange signals that might be gold (in other words, pretty much anything above the iron range, which is a 1 or a 2 on most detectors' meters). By digging pretty much anything above the iron range, you are gonna be digging a lot of junk. A LOT. But that is the sacrifice you must make if you wish to find gold.

Now, if you are nugget hunting in a remote area where there isn't much trash, you will want your discrimination set even lower, since tiny nuggets might read as low as 1 or 2 on a detector's meter. I really don't know, as I have no prospecting experience. I would imagine one needs a lot of sensitivity to do nugget shooting, but I would assume most off-the-shelf detectors would be capable of it, with the right settings. My prevously-mentioned North Carolina pal used to do that, but I never tried it myself. He used to hunt in streams and rivers and would talk about finding tiny targets like small fishing sinkers, tennis shoe eyelets, and pieces of buckshot. He did show me a pretty little nugget he found once, though. To me, it seemed like an awful lot of work and not very fun, but I imagine if I had tried it and found even a tiny nugget, I would have changed my tune.

The best way to find gold jewelry is to find a promising site for it (beach, lake, swimming hole, etc.), and dig just about everything. Ditto for nuggets- find out the likely places to find them and turn over every stone and dig every signal you get.