Hi Brad,
I would love to tell you that the GQ would work fine where you hunt, but the fact is, I have never nugget hunted west of the western AZ border, so I really do not know what you will run into if you try the GQ equipped with a DD coil.
My guess is any mono coil will or at least, could display quite a bit of ground response, making it somewhat difficult unless you really slow your sweep speed down and take extra care in keeping the coil level above the ground. I expect this to be the same when using a ML compatible mono coil.
I do know a friend of mine who hunts in California has run into some really bad ground and couldn't hunt effectively with a mono coil without some form of ground balance (GB).
I am not sure just how well the DD coil works at that location without any GB turned on. Maybe Rick will jump in and let us know.
Now, I have hunted a lot of different areas in AZ with my GQ clone while using a home made DD coil and found I could hunt all areas just fine without any ground balance. I don't expect that to change when using a ML compatible coil. In fact, my initial test indicated the ML coil did a great job of minimizing the ground signals where I tested it. Now, this testing is very limited, but I dont' expect that to change much either.
Now, I will admit there were a couple of areas that did require a little slower sweep to minimize what ground signals I was getting when using the DD, but overall, I found it was quite easy to hunt most anywhere I tried. Again, I would expect little or no change when using a ML compatible DD coil. In fact, my guess is, the DD coils will be the ones a person will ultimately prefer using in most areas. It is the coil I would recommend.
In some of the more mineralized areas I found in AZ, it was quite difficult to try to hunt with a mono coil, so I don't expect that to change when using ML compatible mono coils. In those areas I needed to raise the mono coil to minimize the ground signals. Increasing the autotune speed also helped.
I wish I could give you a better answer to your question but this is as good of info as I can give you.
One last point, don't sell the DD coil short. On my GQ clone, I find that the DD will match the mono coil for depth or beat it when comparing target signals from buried items in some really bad ground. Where the mono coil seems to appear to do better is in a simple air test of the two coils.
Reg
