Wanted rugged metal detector

[Mack67]

Hi eveyone, Im new here to AD. I'm searching for a metal detector to accompany me to Indonesia at least a year. I'll be searching rivers for gold nuggets. Some of the rivers there are quite swift but when I was there 3 years ago there is plenty of black sand along the river bank.
I need a rugged dependable metal detector and gear coz there are no repair shops down the street, hahaha
I was leaning toward a Garrett AT gold detector but open to all opinions and experiences. I don't have the luxury of time since I will be leaving in 3 weeks to work and just landed the job. Metal detecting was an after thought to spend extra time.
Thanks and look forward to suggestions
Mack

[del]

Garrets don't have the best "track record" of dependability unfortunately , their plastic head units tend to separate from the shaft. If I was going to hunt for small nuggets in a watery place I would be looking at either a pulse induction beach type machine ( white's surf PI , beach hunter) or even a Tesoro (Tiger or sand shark) . A pulse machine would give you the very best chance at finding the tiniest of nuggets in my opinion .

Dan

[Oneil1979]

I agree with del on the Garrett’s they have some issues with housing units seperating I’ve had chords separate from coil, headphone issues all corrected by Garrett but not exactly what your looking for when in the bush. The tosoros are easy to operate, easy to pack and come with a lifetime warranty. The thing is all the gold detectors are going to be around the same price range so if I where you I would search YouTube for gold prospecting metal detecting and watch the different detectors being used in field and narrow it down like that. Good luck keep us updated.

[oldkoot]

I have been using the Minelab GM 1000 (Gold Monster) its fairly light weight pretty durable comes with two coils breaks down to pretty compact it is also water proof from rain though you cannot dunk it,it is vary sensitive to non ferrous targets and it will bang real hard on vary vary small non ferrous targets

Do not know how experienced you are with metal detectors but the GM 1000 is probably the simplest gold VLF you will ever find to operate pretty much a turn on and detect gold machine and it is reasonably priced for what you get the other machine I would suggest is a PI (pulse Induction)machine the Minelab SDC 2300 it is fully water proof which means if you were to drop it in a river or fell with it in a river it would survive it also folds up pretty compact so you can pack it in a back pack