Custodian hunt - my experience so far and hoping for recommendations.

• •Okay, so I'm finally pulling the trigger on rolling over a decent chunk of my old 401k into a Gold IRA.
• •Being based out of Dublin, OH, I've had a lot of time to think about this after selling my company a couple of years back.
• •The whole idea of true diversification, with some real assets, has just been gnawing at me.

Okay, so I'm finally pulling the trigger on rolling over a decent chunk of my old 401k into a Gold IRA. We're talking about $1.8M that's just been sitting there, mostly in tech stocks that frankly, after seeing how the market's been behaving the last few years, makes me more nervous than excited. Being based out of Dublin, OH, I've had a lot of time to think about this after selling my company a couple of years back. The whole idea of true diversification, with some real assets, has just been gnawing at me.

I’ve been doing my due diligence on custodians, and honestly, it's been a mixed bag. Augusta Precious Metals came highly recommended by a former colleague, but their minimums are pretty high, and I'm not sure I want to put all my eggs in that basket with just one provider. Then I looked into Noble Gold, which seemed promising, but their storage options felt a bit… convoluted? It’s hard to get a straight answer on fees sometimes, and that just grinds my gears. I remember trying to get clear pricing for cloud services back when I was running my startup, and this feels surprisingly similar.

I'm primarily looking for a custodian that’s transparent about fees, has solid storage facilities (segregated storage is a must for me), and offers a good selection of IRA-approved metals. I'm leaning heavily towards physical gold and maybe some silver bullion. User experience and customer support are also huge for me – I want to be able to talk to a human who knows what they're talking about without being put through 17 menus. I've heard some horror stories about people getting locked out of their accounts or having endless delays, and that's the last thing I need with this kind of capital.

Has anyone here had particularly good (or bad!) experiences with Gold IRA custodians they'd be willing to share? Specifically, if you've got a portfolio in the 7-figure range, what worked for you? Are there any hidden gems out there that I might be overlooking? I’m open to suggestions beyond the big names.