No doubt, yeah, specialized ones work best, my whole story started after i fitted a pulse wave to my laser miner, just to discover after that, that i do find cores with it.
Then thoughts about fitting all the stuff necessary to handle another core while mining platinum, but no, then it's only 2 lasers. I do fit a single subsurface missile on my every miner tho - only takes one slot and may earn you some extras on your way.
I ended up with laser mining Python that performs quite well + a core mining Keelback mostly for fun. Had quite an xp in Colonia when i found like 5 cores in 5 mins, sometimes it can be impressive even profits wise.