3 of 10 people found this review helpful:

Review by: Richard Von Aschen

User Experience: 2-4 years

Submitted on: Mar 19, 2008

User Rating:

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This is my second detector. It was purchased as only to find gold and other precious metals. I have found a little color in the Arizona mountains, but no big nuggets yet. With gold at $1,000 per ounce now I need to think about getting out to use this detector. the Weather is getting better out into the hills. We had 2 inches of snow on Sunday. This has been a very fine detector, when hunting in the all metal mode I found an old miners shovel, a block and tackle that had a wooden wheel, and at lot of square nails.

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6 of 19 people found this review helpful:

Review by: Donald Sollberger

User Experience: Newbie

Submitted on: Mar 17, 2008

User Rating:

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This Minelab SD 2100v2 machine is one of the best and easiest machines to operate. I usuallly just turn on and go it is pretty easily ground balanced and don't seem to pick up hot rock as everybody else's seems to do.

I have not found any gold nuggets as of yet but I have found a lot of coins and bullets out in the desert. I am pretty limited to how far I can walk so I do not get to use it as often as I would like. The only problem I have with this unit was it is extremely heavy so I purchased one of the new lighter versions which make carry and swinging it a lot better.

The new batteries seem to be alot better also I had to purchase a swingy thing to help me with using the unit. I hunt mostly in Arizona around Dolan Skprings in the Gold Basin area. I have used this machine at Stanton Az on a push they had last year and I did not seem to have any problems with interference of outer units.

I never found anything but pieces of the blade broken off the dozer. I know a buddy who wished he had a machine like mine and ID don't think I will ever get rid of it I think it will be even great for my grand children to use because I think this machine is as good now as the later models can ever be. I think I am the only person with this detector in the GPAA club here in las Vegas. A lot of people have gone over the machine I have and they seen to like it but most can't afford the cost of this machine however I always figure you get what you pay for. I took my machine to the mine lab company here in Vegas and they look over overything and checked it out and said all is fine and every took the time to take me outside on their lawn and gave me some pointers.

I don't know of may place you can go to and get that kind of service and professionalism. It seem to me that if you want a really fine detector and can afford this machine it would be the one I recommend you purchase.

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19 of 25 people found this review helpful:

Review by: Jim Sheldon`

User Experience: 7+ years

Submitted on: Mar 17, 2008

User Rating:

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It was about eight years ago when the bug to go and explore first bit me. I had been working too many hours at the plant, and had been buying different treasure magazines to occupy my break time. All those pictures of smiling faces holding their golden treasures did nothing bur fire my imagination.
AS time went by I quickly realized that my old standby metal-detector would be useless in the highly mineralized soils most free gold was to be found in. I searched every treasure magazine on the market, and hungrily devoured any information and field test on all gold type metal detectors, noting there ability to ignore hot rocks, and the associated black sands.
My first trip out west was to visit a old friend in the Prescott Az area, which is where I met some fine people at a place called "Black Horse Mining" the local prospecting supplies and Minelab dealer.
Early on I had made my mind up to save my money for a Minelab, of all the stories I read Minelab had been rated on the top of the pile for it's ability to work under extreme conditions, temperature, mineralization, and heat.

With the Patient help of Kevin of black horse I was soon on my way to fun in the desert with my Minelab, now many hours and lots of experience later...
I have found that it is the experience of the user that determines the success of the hunt. In short the Minelab 2100V2 is a great detector that in the hands of a somewhat experienced user will work under conditions that will far exceed what the dectorist can tolerate, small .22 caliber sized objects, were easily found with this machine at depths in excess of 18" in highly mineralized areas, where the air temperature exceeded 111 degrees.

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8 of 13 people found this review helpful:

Review by: sheldon wolf

User Experience: 6 months to 2 years

Submitted on: Nov 9, 2008

User Rating:

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I have been looking for a detector specifically for gold that that would not require two arms and a leg to purchase. I searched for a while to find the best deal and purchased my Minelab SD 2100v2. When it came to the house I was excited to see what it would sound like as I have a Whites Gold Detector in the past which seemed simple to use. I was tired from work and just opened the box, laid everything out and decided the weekend was the best to assemble after I had a chance to read the manual. That was a good call. I assembled it in a short time and made sure the battery was charged and was ready for a trial test. But wouldn’t you know it was raining. The following weekend still had bad weather. I called a fellow panner who had a creek scoped out so I loaded the detector in the car and headed out. There isn't much gold here in my area mind you, so I was not expecting to find any. My goal was to see how my new SD2100 was going to work. I read the manual and was pretty amazed at how easy it was to ground balance. Into the creek we went and my buddy beat me in, so he was ahead of me. I had a steady signal for a bit and then it spiked. We had fun searching to only find a piece of wire. Up the creek a ways, and I got another hit. Just a piece of a Pepsi can. I feel totally confident that when I go to any area that gold has been found that I will paying my detector off in no time. I'm totally satisfied with the performance of this detector and know when I go prospecting next time I will be bringing home more just stories.

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3 of 3 people found this review helpful:

Review by: Mark Klemkosky

User Experience: 2-4 years

Submitted on: Jun 1, 2009

User Rating:

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Hopefully, most people find this review useful because most of the ones I have read so far are lacking in information. I bought my SD2100v2 about three years ago and have used it in the AZ desert a fair amount. The reason I bought an SD2100 and not an SD2200 is because I wanted to follow the philosophy of "Digging All Targets". After all, you wouldn't want a monster nugget getting away from you because the detector's discrimination thought it was iron.

After years of digging all targets, I think I'm going to pick up a gold detector with discrimination. I could probably build a car with all the metal tacks, pins, shell casings, etc that I've found to date.

In terms of sensitivity, the SD2100v2 is pretty damn good. Most of the nuggets I have found have been deep targets (8-12 inches). Headphones are a "must" to hear the subtle variation of tone in the detector. If you are getting blasted out of the water with sound, odds are it's a boot tack but the little sound changes are the ones that really get me digging!

Overall, the SD2100v2 is a good mid-range detector for gold hunting in highly mineralized soil (like you find in the AZ desert). The detector I had prior to this was a Gold Bug, and it did not deal with heavy mineralization well at all. I had to do more balancing than detecting with that one.

Hope this helps.

Mark

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