I've been looking at getting one of those 12v recirculating highbanker/power sluice products for next year.

There are quite a few competeing products out there - Micro-Sluice, Gold Buddy, Jobe and so on. I've looked at the web sites for almost every product available but I'm completely flumoxed as to which one to buy. Naturally I'd prefer to not waste money and time on junk, but with so many products, all making impressive performance claims, my decision-making process is a bit confused.

Would anyone have any advice, tips, first-hand experience or even derisive peals of laughter they'd be willing to share?

As an FYI, I'm leaning towards a Micro-Sluice at the moment (their claims seem to be the most impressive), but I'm totally open to suggestions.

TIA and all that......

</chaz>

I bought a Angus MacKirk Desert Rat for $250 shipped. Included everything except a battery and tub. Real easy to cleanup and well built. Does a good job at catching fines. I use it for raw paydirt as well as to clean up dredge concentrates. Was the best bang for the buck that I found to process a decent amount of material quickly. They have a larger unit as well that would work great for processing dry material.

Interesting!

I've looked over the MacKirk site a couple times but discounted the tool because the sluice didn't have all the fancy schmancy riffles, v-mat, miner's moss and so on. (cut me a little slack, I'm still a complete noob )

So is it safe to say (in your opinion) that unit's performance would be adequate despite my misgivings (somewhat uninformed) about the design?

I have to say though, that the removable sluice tray idea looks pretty trick.

The MacKirk unit also looks like it would be suitable for either working on site or bringing concentrates home and working them there.

The Micro-Sluice unit doesn't look like it would work so good on uneven ground - might make it tough to bring into the field.

They use drop riffles which work real well. The Le Trap sluice has been used for years and works on the same principle. The unit I got has independently adjustable legs so you can level it off on uneven ground. The small unit is pretty small so you can't run a lot of dirt through it at once, but works great as a cons cleaner. I went though about 2 gals of cons in about 30 min. I like it a lot since it doesn't leave you a lot of cons and is super easy to clean. Just dump and rinse and your done. Here is a pic of my dredge cons cleanup from the other day.