Wow, 49 bucks!? Now I guess the question needs to be asked: Do the small NEL coils warrant twice the money? I understand they are DD but I have only used concentrics.
DD's are good for snaking though trash with that thin scanning field, I use one now on my F70 and it works well.
I didn't have much problem using the F2 and the 4" concentric either, that $15 coil found me about $600 in clad and twice as much as that in silver and especially gold.
Also I hunt in mostly the trashiest sites and areas...always have.
Curb strips, basketball and volleyball court perimeters, picnic pavilion areas, parking lot islands.
I assume the F44 is just as fast and has just as decent target separation abilities as the F2, could even be better for all I know.
That is what is pulling the major load when hunting in trash, the coils matter but the tools and the natural abilities they have that you mount them on matter more I think.
I have read posts and talked to people that think he Nels go pretty deep, sometimes deeper than the factory coils but sometimes just the same.
If depth is a factor that should be considered with more opinions, and DD's do handle mineralized soil a bit better.
If you get the DD it could maybe work pretty good in old home sites with lots of nails.
The cheaper one will too but if it is a real old site a little extra depth can't hurt if indeed you can get deeper with the Nels.
If depth is not an issue any kind might work well enough as long as it's small.
Most coils will eventually pay for themselves anyway given enough time.
Hopefully as people get home from work and get online a few with the Nels will
give you more info.
Here is a Keith Sothern vid over a year old where he adapted a DD coil on an F44, I have no idea which one, could have been from an F5 or an F75 and neither one matches yours exactly so the frequency match might really matter doing this test or in the real world.
Notice what he says near the end....he is not all that sure that DD's of any kind are a good match for this particular unit but I don't have a clue about that.
I hunt in iron all the time with my F70 and a DD sniper works great but I have a much more advanced machine, also.
Honestly using my F2 I never had much luck in iron with any coil but then again I rarely hunted those kind of sites back then and 99% of the time I notched out iron, anyway.
But as I said in trashy sites that thing and the concentric did shockingly well.
You have a decision to make, I think they will all work better than the bigger coil but what is really the difference and in this case does price really matter...or not?
I am curious so I will be watching this thread.