Micro-Jewelry Hunting Volleyball Courts with Fisher Gold Bug 2 - Settings & Advice

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I've watched the beach lecture twice now, and taken a lot of notes. I was most intrigued by the GB2 in dry sand for micro-jewelry hunting, so I've got a GB2 now (6" and 10" coils) and I am ready to give it a shot for myself. I'm curious what your ideal settings are. Would you please share that information with me? (I have no experience with this detector yet)

Also, in the video, you said ground balancing isn't necessary at all in this scenario, so does that mean it's turn on and go for this application?

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"Iron Disc" invoked is the only critical part. All of the rest of the settings are to be max'ed out. Max Sensitivity, the threshold on the back of the unit max'ed out (fully clockwise), low mineralization............ and use the 10" coil as your primary coil. Ground Balance mid-scale is fine. Remember... stay in the dry sand (prefer volleyball courts)… clean the area out with a regular metal detector first. Your sand sifter is the most critical part of this type of hunting. If you do not have the correct micro-sifter... you will soon/instantly hate this type of hunting!

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I got out for my first GB2 volleyball court hunt yesterday, with the settings you suggested, and I was certainly shocked at how sensitive the detector is! I didn't find any jewelry, but I didn't totally expect to, as I only spent 30-40 minutes and I don't think this court sees much use anyway. As you said would happen, I ended up finding a good bit of foil, with some pieces being super small. Impressive!

I made a few observations that I wanted to run by you:
1. With the threshold maxed out, there was no threshold at all -- it was completely silent unless a target was under the coil. Is that how it should be? I hope so, because I enjoyed the contrast between target and no target in this case.
2. In this particular court, I could dig about 4-5 inches of sand before I hit black dirt. Obviously this wouldn't be the case on the beach, but this court was in a park. That's normal for an off-beach court right? I didn't dig any dirt out of respect for not messing up the court (there's probably a way to be neat and tidy, but I'm not sure of it), so I ended up leaving some targets behind, that were in the dirt. Would you have dug the dirt?
3. I had some "scratchy" sounding targets, that I didn't dig because the little pieces of foil really sounded off, so I figured the faint / scratchy tones couldn't be of much interest. Was this a mistake, should I dig everything, even with the GB2?

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First... yes... even though your Threshold was max'ed out… you should still have no threshold. It is silent search. BUT... as you become more familiar with the detector... you will notice a fairly large performance gain... when this Threshold is set on maximum.

I doubt I would have dug in the dirt layer below the sand.

I would dig some of the scratchy targets... IF they repeated. You may learn that you do not need to do this at all... or... you may learn that they are 'fringe' depth targets.

If you are digging very tiny bits of foil... then the court is NOT hunted by anyone with a GB-2. You will eventually start finding jewelry. For now... I would try to stay under the center of the court... under the net. IF IF IF you have time/patience/energy... you could attempt to 'clean out' one side of the volleyball court... then... the other side. You WILL find jewelry by that time... assuming this court is indeed used somewhat frequently to play volleyball.