Vanquish 340 Preliminary Review

[Jeff McClendon]

This will be my last test result post for the Vanquish 340 incase I decide not to keep it or at least until Winter is over with the ground almost frozen and 3 to 5" of snow moving in tonight.

I took the 340 with V10 coil and my Nox 600 with 11" coil to do a same ground test. Did something exactly the same with the Fisher F75 LTD SE and Nox 600 recently.

I hunted a part of a Denver park that I had never hunted before. 3 yard by 50 yard section that I marked out with flags so I would not stray. I had the 340 in Coin Mode with -9 to +10 rejected 4 out of 5 sensitivity and I used the horseshoe button to check for iron. Found US coins: 9 copper memorial pennies, 1 wheat penny, 5 zinc pennies, 3 clad dimes, 2 nickels and one clad quarter along with a few pull tabs and 3 rusty nails, I kept one for the photo. I skipped any targets that did not have two-way swing tight numbers and solid tones and also tried to skip obvious iron tone targets. I dug the three rusty nails because they were deep targets that had silver range solid numbers and repeatable high tones even though they had accompanying iron tones. All of these targets were 2" to 8" deep.

 

Next I walked the exact same ground trying to follow the same guidelines. Nox 600 was in Park 2, -9 to +10 rejected, sensitivity 16, iron bias, F2=1 recovery speed 3, and I used the horseshoe button to check for iron. I had heard a lot (like 20 or more) very iffy signals that I would have investigated in warmer soil and weather conditions using the 340. Most of those iffy signals did not clean up much better with the Nox 600 as it and me were fooled by a AA battery, a steel bolt with spacers two crown bottle caps, a badly mangled steel screw cap and some larger can slaw that rang up a solid 11. I found 1 copper memorial penny that was a single 6" target. The other coins were part of two 3" deep coin spills accompanied by deeper iron (I did not dig the iron). 4 zinc pennies were close enough together to fit under the Nox 11" coil and sounded clearly as four separate targets but only by using the pinpoint function. No pinpoint function on the 340. On both the 340 and the Nox 600, some zinc pennies are jumping up to 10 numbers like 20 to 30 and are not fun to detect. Maybe it is due to the cold???????? The other coin spill also fit under the 11" coil but I did not need the pinpoint function to hear a clad quarter and nickel 3" apart with deeper iron in between them (I did not dig the iron). I didn't remember hearing two targets in that spot with the 340.

So, I will chalk the two coin spills up to one of the guidelines that I set for the dig: only dig targets with tight numbers. I will have to remember to check for coin spills more closely next time out with the 340. The missed copper penny was a miss. The fact that I avoided 7 trash targets with the 340 is very interesting...............

Jeff

[67GTA]

They really are decent machines for the money. I'll just copy and paste my post I just made on another forum.

Quote

I had an epiphany today while I was at work. I catch myself daydreaming about metal detecting when I should be thinking of other things(I know I have a problem). I think me and the Vanquish got off on the wrong foot. In the 2 years I've had the Equinox I have turned into a "detector snob". I've gotten so spoiled by being able to tune the Nox settings to out perform most machines on the market today. This must be how Deus users feel . The first time I turned on the Vanquish I was comparing it to the Nox. I was thinking about it today and that's when it hit me. I wondered how the Nox would do with factory defaults. I did a factory reset on each mode. You can do this on each mode by long pressing the mode button while the mode is selected. It will show SP and change that modes settings to Minelab defaults. The Nox and the Vanquish were very similar on the "old dime between the nails" trick with the newer F2 iron bias. You can adjust the Nox to eventually hit the dime with a normal swing speed but that would only be at a heavy iron site. You wouldn't hunt everywhere with those settings, and the Vanquish wasn't made to compete with the Nox at relic hunting. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I owe my Vanquish an apology.

 

[Chase Goldman]

1 hour ago, Jeff McClendon said:

 

I hunted a part of a Denver park that I had never hunted before. 3 yard by 50 yard section that I marked out with flags so I would not stray. I had the 340 in Coin Mode with -9 to +10 rejected 4 out of 5 sensitivity and I used the horseshoe button to check for iron.

 

1 hour ago, Jeff McClendon said:

Next I walked the exact same ground trying to follow the same guidelines. Nox 600 was in Park 2, -9 to +10 rejected, sensitivity 16, iron bias, F2=1 recovery speed 3, and I used the horseshoe button to check for iron. 

Jeff - Why not Park 1 on the Equinox which more of a high conductive coin mode and might be more comparative of the Vanquish coin mode?  Park 2 is optimized for mid-conductors which would tend to better illuminate the aluminum junk.  Also, since the 340 has high iron bias on by default, yet you set F2=1 on the Eq, not surprising those crown caps sounded off.  Thanks for running the side-by-side, good info.

[EL NINO77]

Personally, I think Vanquish will use an optimized Beach1-like program ... as a basis ... And that's why it works very well on the beach ... and without any special program just for the beach. But of course it is only an assumption .. If I have Vanquish 340 in my hands ..... I measure its TX on an oscilloscope ... and via FFT and take a picture of the frequency of the program ...

Advantage and Point Vanquish 340 is in the fact that in "One  Program" setting it handles different types of field conditions Detection..and has a good ID in depth .. -The main advantage of multifrequency ..
And while it looks ... he's doing pretty well ..
 
Equinox 800  Beach1 program- FFT -TX frequency 

Equinox 800 Park1 program   TX frequency- FFT

Equinox 800 Park2  program TX frequency - FFT

[Chase Goldman]

2 hours ago, EL NINO77 said:

Personally, I think Vanquish will use an optimized Beach1-like program ... as a basis ... And that's why it works very well on the beach ... and without any special program just for the beach.

I believe this too.  To maintain depth, they are probably not dialing back transmit power on the Vanquish like they do in Beach mode on the Equinox.  This may keep it from being as stable as Equinox on salt beaches with black sand.  But makes it a decent all around detector, especially on high conductors.

[Jeff McClendon]

Hi Hugh

other than discrimination and sensitivity, I was not attempting to set the 340 and the Nox 600 the same way. I prefer to use Park 2 for this park since most of the really good wheats and mercury dimes are at 7” deep or more and the ground is mostly frozen. I wanted to hunt with the Nox 600 at basically, except for discrimination,  my normal settings so I would be familiar with what I was hearing from the Nox since the ground conditions are already messing with what I normally hear. 
 

Jeff

[EL NINO77]