How much am I going to miss out if I get something with a preset ground balance?
If your soil is close to anything like mine in Birmingham probably a lot.
Too much bang for the buck?
Don't think I ever heard that before much on the forums.
The reason you get feature rich detectors is to have more ability to deal with mineralization, iron masking and other issues and better depth with better ID's at depth.
You don't have to use every feature but the more you have available to you the more arrows in your quiver to combat challenging sites and succeed.
If you are having a huge issue with those nails I might suggest get a small sniper coil for yours, they make hunting in iron, trash and garbage much easier.
I had an F2, old version of that F22 and used it for 3 years and found a ton but most of it was shallow both here and when I lived out west in much better dirt.
I hunted all kinds of sites including one in particular which was an old farmhouse with a gazillion nails.
Never could make a whole lot of headway with that F2 or anything else I used but then I upgraded to a Fisher F70, (now the Teknetics Patriot).
It took a little while to learn how to hunt in massive iron because it was confusing but soon enough I did learn and learned well and then you would not believe the treasure I found after.
https://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.phpt=238214great
As much as I loved the F2 it couldn't touch what that F70 could do in any iron and junk infested sites and it continued to do that for many years after until today.
It wasn't just the GB that made the difference but add in the possible settings, more power and just much more abilities to do what I needed to do in difficult situations...like yours.
If you don't like the sounds yours makes, how it feels in your hands or have other personal issues with it and want to get rid of it for those reasons that's logical, to downgrade from an extremely capable tool to an entry level model because you think it is too much...AND if you think you would find as much as you do now or more or even if you think it would make things easier more with a lower end tool, you are going to be mistaken.
You don't downgrade from a full size Chevy truck to an S10 if pulling a decent size load is what you need to do.
They both are trucks, they both have 4 wheels and you can put a tow bar/ball on either one but the S10 won't cut it and it will eventually die.
You have what you need to get the job done, already, you just need to become one with it a little better.
There are a million guys around here with mucho hours on the Pro and I bet many that learned to deal with the same kind of challenging site you have...and got real successful at it, too.
I have two friends I hunt with in my crazy dirt around here and they both use the Pro...and are very successful.
If it were me I would ask a bunch of questions here about hunting in a carpet of nails from other owners and learn from them, plenty are willing to help you, I bet.
Once you get better at this stuff you will find more and it will become easier to do it....especially if you see the logic of using a smaller coil to help you sort things out better.
The bigger coil can do the job but snipers make everything much easier, as I mentioned.
Downgrading will not help you in the slightest....it will hurt you, instead.
Only my opinion, of course.
