Qed User First Experience & Review

[Dave63]

Hello All

My First major outing with the QED. I intend to write a review here after ever major outing with the QED, until I understand the detector. This also posted in AEGPF. This is my first PI detector. Price, Capabilities and Aussie made were the driving factors to buying this machine.

I went to Warwick GPA for two days. Two purposes for the trip one to recon as much of the all GPAs as possible and two to test my new QED. Recon was to look for potential Dry wash locations. That a different story.

I found all the trash left in the GPA. Bullets, horse shoes, rusting tin, slug gun pellets. Nothing very deep though, all at only a few centimeters. This concerned me so I buried a five cent piece at 20cm on its edge to make it as small a target as possible. Picked this up no problems at all. Full repeatable target. So I am hoping I just didnt walk over any deep targets

I took an XP ORX and my QED

QED got a good 18hrs of use over the two days and used my ORX on some of the same ground: I found it interesting on how the VLF reacted compared to the QED. ( Not Direct comparison test)

My QED setup is as follows:
QED PLII with Detech Shaft
11" Detech Ultra sensing
Quest WIFI to a set of (Apple ipod earplugs ) I am going to buy a good set
Warwick I found has a great difference in minerals across the area. So I had to make sure I basically reset the QED every time I changed location

Quest WIFI - Worked very well. Battery lasts for 24hrs, just as well as I forgot to turn it off most of the time. Had receiver in my top pocket so my earplugs never got in my way. Forgot I still had them in a couple of times Overall very happy with this audio setup

Detech shaft - Excellent

11" Detech Ultra sensing coil - Being my first coil other than HF on ORX - I a had to get use to it sounding hollow while passing it over the ground. Being hollow cuts down on weight I suppose which is good.

I had to Factory Reset at every new spot I detected, as trying to adjust from the previous location was to hard. So in the end I just factory reset when I turned in on at a new location and went through the setup process. Working through the settings starting at 2, then 1,3,4,5

I talk about each setting in the order I used in my setup process

THS-B - Setup range was 49 to 59 so around 54 was mid point. I used it at mid the entire time so I would received an even tone for Small and Large targets

MGB - Setting ranged from 170 to 210. I very quickly got use to checking MGB on the Fly. I did find myself trying to balance in the wrong direction quite a a lot, this just meant spending time cycling back the other way to get correct MGB ( Silence in the Ear Plugs). MGB is achieved on the down motion of the coil, but I was receiving a tone on the up motion as well. Once I got use to this I adjusted the MGB until neither tone could be heard. Once MGB was achieved the detector was silent.

THS-A - This setting initially confused me a bit, as to me it I felt it wasn't really doing anything, after watch the training video over and over and reading some more I understood its relationship to THS-B. This how I used it - (This may be totally wrong so I will need some feedback here). Once I achieved ground balance I would adjust THS-A up until I could just here a tone being produced I would then turn it down until the tone was only just audible. I took this as being the sweet spot for THS-A. Around 50 all over the GPA

Gain - Adjusting Gain up above 2 produced an unstable response from the QED so 2 was the max setting for most of the trip. Adjusting Gain up also effected the tone produced by THS-A. I put the Gain up and went back to THS-A to try and adjust the tone out. This had no effect. So reset THS-A and lowered Gain to make detector stable

Mode - This setting is coil and ground specific to achieve a balance. I found that 3-4 was good for all areas I detected. Anything higher or lower made the detector unstable

After going through this setup( Only took a minute or two). QED was basically silent except for the very low tone that I could only just here from THS-A. While swinging I kept the coil in contact with the ground. I did not receive any coil to ground contact noise. At times I had to check that the detector was still on by passing it near my boot to get a target response ( steel in boots) The silence surprised me, but was excellent as I didn't have to have continual noise in my ears detecting

In patches this happened. I would get single tones from the detector both high or low, swing back past the spot of the tone, nothing. If I started to get these tones, I sometimes stopped moving the detector and listen, random tones still produced (EMI ground mineral) ? I also came across patches that produced multiple random tones. For example a patch 1m square where the detector was silent all around it, but just produced random tones all over the 1m Square. Nothing repeatable in one spot. I dug this out of curiosity, after removing a couple of cm all tone was gone and no target could be found or single disappeared. So eventually I just ignored this type of signal response putting it down to soil type\minerals. I also had tones that produced like a wobbly type noise that was over one spot that sometimes came and went. When dug target disappeared or I found I just spread the target noise over a wider area.

When target was found the tone was easy to recognize and repeatable over the one spot

Please feel free to give me feedback on my setup. I dont know if I am reducing the small target detection or loosing depth

This was my first experience with the QED. Overall I am very happy and excited with my purchase. All I need to do is walk over some yellow and find it. I think my next move is to setup a test patch somewhere. Lead sinkers from sub gram and up

[Dave63]

Thx for the reply I will have a play my QED setting.

ORX found some lead pellets. Had to concentrate hard to keep GB numbers the same all the time. As long as I did this it ran well

I am waiting for the x-coils to finish testing here

Cheers

Read JP review.  I would be interested to know if his QED has the latest update.

[Dave63]

👍

[Reg Wilson]

Wow Simon, you continue to spin me out as to how you have mastered the QED. You have a number of detectors, but like myself you have found that once you get the hang of this detector it answers most of the things that you require from a detector.

I had a QED customer come to me today who had problems with ground balance. Once I had explained to him that the new GB system was from zero to three hundred and that the old average was now up to 220 or more and demonstrated this to him, the QED purred like a kitten. He is now happy with the way his machine is operating.

[Rivers rat]

QED on the beach???Did you try Simon?????????????????????

 

 

Thanks

 

RR

[RickUK]

47 minutes ago, Rivers rat said:

QED on the beach???Did you try Simon?????????????????????

 

 

Thanks

 

RR

Regis,i reckon the QED could work well with your new Detech coil,are you thinking of getting one,must admit i really like the reviews that this Pulse is getting !!

[Reg Wilson]

I have used a QED PL1 with early software on the beach in Vietnam where it turned up Russian coins, but no jewelry unfortunately. It behaved very well, and moved from dry to wet sand without a problem. The locals were most intrigued as I don't think they had seen a detector in action before. That PL1 is still in Nha Trang where the owner uses it mainly at night so as not to draw a crowd of onlookers. 

[Smithobx]

On 11/15/2019 at 10:28 PM, phrunt said:

You may want to come down off null to enhance your small target detection, most gold is small, I run as low off null as I can, usually around 44 to 46 with the X-coils with my null sitting low to mid 50's on most coils, even a little bias lower will help

That is very good advice to enhance sensitivity to smaller targets in my somewhat limited experience with the QED. As phrunt said, only two or three clicks below null can make a surprising difference in sensitivity. This should also allow you to lower TH. A. 

[Dave63]

G'All

Had a chance today to test the setup given to me by Goldman. Went to a local creek known for its old mines for a swing. Car parts old very rusty tools. Panned a couple bits of yellow I could just see.

QED Setup - I followed the setup suggested by Goldman on AEGPF
Factory Reset
Set mode to 4
Set THS- B to NULL - I could not get anything Lower than 50 for NULL

Setting Gain to 6 - This setting just made the the Detector make continual noise - No matter what I did to other settings the noise remained - Again Gain at 2 for a stable machine, Could not get Gain to be stable at 4 as suggested as minimum level.

MGB was very difficult. The Default of 150 was quiet and stable. I just turned to MGB up to 200 and was still stable. Turned it down to 100 and still stable and Quiet. SO I left it at default. - I don't know the effect of to high or low of MGB

THS-A I turned it up to 65/70 detector was screaming so turned it down Hit 40 so started whole process again on a higher MODE. Setting a higher MODE just made the Detector unstable so turned it down to 3 and THS-A was raised to 60 and reduced to 58 to which was to point of a just audible tone

Tried suggested setup multiple times. Ended up back at my original Setup sequence to achieve a quiet stable machine.. Still had the issue of random detector noise High and low tones. None repeatable. Deepest target today was 100mm rusty metal piece.

I cannot do any testing at my home just to much EMI. I have made some test targets .2g, .4g, 1g and 2g. I will have to go somewhere and run some tests. I will try to Video my setup with the external speaker.

I am not keen on putting it on YouTube is there another way a video can be viewed for review and feedback via the forum

[Steve Herschbach]

YouTube is unfortunately the only realistic option.