I wouldn't worry yourself about finding gold with a Sovereign. These machines are known to hit and hit hard on gold rings. Over the years, when I didn't pay much attention to the Sovereign circles while owning other makes and even Explorers, I always heard that those machines were better at finding gold rings than anything on the market. Now I know it's both due to the BBS technology and great audio, but also most importantly due to how well the machine "locks on" with it's VDI to targets. It's VDI resolution is just perfect in my book. Not too low to give you fits on splitting hairs on junk versus rings, yet not too high to wander around on you or be jumpy (Explorer, etc). It may cram everything about a copper penny into the 180 number but remember many machines do that (can't tell the difference in coins easily), and it's VDI and audio scale is expanded on everything below copper pennies all the way down to tiny foil balls. What that means is you can see all the common tab type numbers yet nickles are easy to pick out by both VDI and audio. Not only that, but watch for those "odd" numbers that fall somewhere between nickles and foil, or numbers that aren't your common tab type in that area. I tested a bunch of foil balls from pea sized to quarter sized and was amazed that this machine puts them all for me below 90 on the VDI. There are a few rare exceptions in the field where foil will get higher, but for the most part most foil will ID lower than 90 and give a distinct fuzzy/sick sound compared to even gold rings reading that low. On the other hand, most gold rings will read about 75 and go up from there, so even if you set your discrimination to kill everything below 90 and then notch out most round and square tabs (84% fall between 152 and 165 on the VDI scale) you still will get the majority of rings we've tested. To further discriminate the other numbers most gold rings will lock into one or maybe two VDI#s, or at least not bounce around hardly at all in VDI. They will have a round/warm/smooth/soft sound to them most of the time as well. Where as junk even with the same VDI # will usually sound harsh, tinny, raspy, hollow, break up, or at least bounce around in VDI if it's not uniform in shape.
Gold chains and very tiny gold like earings are tough for any machine. Some are better at it than others like Tesoros, but the problem is that you'll dig a bunch of tiny bits of aluminum can slaw and other bits of junk that those machines will bang hard on and drive you crazy digging all day long. On the other hand, I've dug tiny shoe lace eyelets with my GT and 15x12 coil at some pretty amazing depths, so I have no doubt a small piece of gold like a earing should hit pretty good with it. If you are particular about looking for thin gold chains or tiny gold jewlery then I'd suggest going to a smaller coil. On most machines the smaller the coil the better they will hit those types of targets. Something like the S-5, Excelerator 5", or even the 8" (which is 7 1/4" or so) Minelab coil might do a better job at hitting better at those types of targets.
When we scanned in over 100 gold rings on the GT even the smallest of them hit well on the GT. How thin and small they were wasn't really a problem to lock on and give good audio. What did give the machine problems was those rings that weren't solid, like ones having a sort of spider web type construction where there were many holes in the "webbing" or "lace" with no solid surface area. I guess that compares to how gold chains are in a sense. Those rings tended to bounce around a bit, but I'd say they only represented about 5 or 6 rings out of a total of about 123 I think that a friend dug with his Excaliber while water hunting. Since he dug anything above iron this was a true random sample of gold rings, including white gold and even a platnum ring.
When air testing please remember that the Minelabs don't like it at all. For one RF noise will cause you to lower sensitivity so much that response will suffer. Keep it higher and the ID/audio will get flakey due to the interference. Besides all that these machines like a ground load instead of air to see with their processor. In other words you should expect much better/deeper response on undisturbed targets in the ground.
I've tested some pretty darn thing plain gold bands that hit fine on this machine and lock on with good VDI and audio. I wouldn't worry about it at all. You've got the deepest non-PI gold ring and old coin machine on the market. The M6/MXT have a great reputation for finding gold rings as well due to the audio and the VDI. However, the VDI isn't as high of resolution as the GT's, and the audio doesn't offer all the tone information the GT has either. Not to mention those machines won't get nearly as deep on a gold ring, even in good soil.
The key is the audio and a good VDI. Sweep over some gold rings and then some pulltabs or balls of foil with the same or close VDI numbers. Most of the time you CAN hear a difference in the audio. Like Rick said above another trick is to listen for those "tab" signals or other common trash VDI numbers that somehow sound different/smoother, or are deeper than what that type of trash is found at. I like to think of that as time traveling past the trash. If the old round tabs go no deeper than 6" deep at a location then you can bet I'll be digging any "tab" signal that is 7" or deeper. You'll soon learn by sound what depth a target is. I always found depth meters over rated myself anyway. They aren't reliable and on every machine I've had that feature on I just went by the sound to determine how deep it probably was. It also saves you time since you aren't going into depth meter mode and having to look at the screen to see what it thinks it's depth is. Even in shallow trash and a sea of tabs there are other tools. Use the notch from to just kill 165 and it will blow down to about 152.5, eliminating most tabs. Set the discrimination to kill all below 90 when a bunch of foil is around. Now listen for the softer/sweeter signals. Dig the stable ones and the "odd" ones, like say 166 which some say a silver 3 cent piece or maybe a gold ring might read at. Besides other number ranges of course, 166 to 172 is a good area to dig since zinc pennies at 173 when you are in a sea of those and can't stand to dig them anymore. You might dig a nice sized gold ring in those number ranges.
