Yeah, I don't know what is up with the sand on the west coast beaches, we have heavy concentrations of this black sand that sticks to magnets, I'm thinking it's Magnetite or something. I've talked to guys with Excaliburs, Sov GTs, and one guy with a Safari, and all said that this sand makes them turn their sensitivity real low and really screws up their depth and tone id. I've heard from a could people that smaller gold will id as iron in this sand, I guess because the auto ground balance is balancing to iron, so it sees foil and other low conductors as iron.
Anyway, the SS didn't like this sand either, it saw the whole ground as a target. Wasn't user error, I tried minimum pulse delay, silent threshold, lower volume, everything.
I think even your Arizona gold fields are mild ground compared to some of my beaches...
If you're ever in San Diego, I'll take you to one of these beaches I'm referring to.
That's cool that the SS picked up that .5g nugget for you, I want to nugget hunt one day, finding a gold nugget is a dream of mine (and a gold coin....) but I just cant find anywhere near me to go, there is Julian/Banner, CA, but I don't even know how to find public land that I can hunt at.