Single Frequency Vs Multi

[Bohemia Miner]

6 hours ago, crow said:

What evidence is there that a MF loses depth in MF mode?

What do you mean by a MF machine will be 'noisier'?

I'm looking at getting a MF detector, currently have the Nokta Simplex but don't like it as there is too much chatter even with low sensitivity and ground balance.

The MF machines I'm looking at are the Minelab Vanquish 540, Minelab Equinox 600 or 800, or the new Garrett Ace Apex. There is unclear information about what frequencies they use then in multi-frequency mode, and what difference it makes. The Apex doesn't have 40khz for example. 

I recently took a Simplex for a test drive and it ran quieter then my Nox 800.  Found more treasure and less trash also. 

I have Apexes on order.*  I'll let you know what I link after I take one out a few times.  The highest frequency is 20.  I believe this is more of a Coin, Relic and Jewelry machine with no prospecting mode as it operates in Silent Search (no Threshold) only.

*  I talked to my Distributor and he couldn't tell me when the Apex will be released.  It keeps going back to the Field Testers who give suggestions.  Garrett tweaks the machines and sends them back out.  According to him, the AT Max's software was completely redesigned as a result of such.  Nice to know Garrett isn't going to sell something that's not ready for market.  They surely have and deserve my respect!

[RickUK]

17 minutes ago, phrunt said:

In what was was the Simplex quieter than the Nox? this puzzles me as the Nox has so many ways to ensure it runs silent, you've got the noise cancel, along with all the modes and frequencies to choose from and it has manual ground balance, multi frequency which tends to handle bad ground better than single frequencies do and last but not least you can lower your sensitivity a touch,  a Nox with lower sensitivity still out performs my maxed out Teknetics T2 I believe.  I'm always confused when people say some single frequency detector runs quieter than a Nox as you can virtually emulate that detector on the Nox. 

Saying it found more treasure and trash means very little, that comes down to operator / location more than detector more often than not on a bulk of targets.

I'm yet to find a single frequency detector I'd use over my Nox.  I have tried hard.

In theory i would agree with you,but in practice of using my original green T2 which i have owned since 2006/7 and the Equinox for possibly 15 months,the T2 has found me the most artifacts and coinage including the most gold coinage than all my other detectors.I certainly would not class myself as a novice or anything like that.But of all my detectors which for the most part are single freq machines machines the T2 has that certain magic that other machines have not produced,the only other machine that has come close to find the celtic gold staters that the T2 has is my DFX which i have owned since 2002/3 that has had 1000s of hours of use under the belt and although that is a dual freq machine most DFX including mine is usually run in 15khz.

The Nox using multi freq excels in certain situations like say wet beach conditions,some of my roman sites that have ultra high mineral content,great depth on pasture but my T2 does not hang about depth wise on pasture either when using AM mode and big NEL coils.

For pure depth and the Equinox even if used with multi freq or even single freq just wont come near what either of my Nexus machine can get depth wise and those are single freq and running low freq's as well.

So although multi freq do have some advantages and i do use them accordingly so also some single freq machines can perform as goo as and in some cases exceed what some multi freq machines can do.

 

[kac]

For larger coils I find in areas with more minerals and iron the more counter productive they are. In mild dirt you do gain more depth. As a comparison in Air test the Nel Big 17W X 15L goes approx 50% deeper than the stock 8 1/2W X 11L dd on my AT Pro. In the field and actual use with all the hours I swung the Nel Big I only found 2 silver dimes @ 14" in mild mud. In other grounds where there is a lot of iron like my back yard I could barely hear a dime at 9" with that big coil. My point being the coil can hurt a machine no matter how good or bad it is. Really have to find that balance. I'm dying to take my MK to the beach and see how it does, that skinny stock coil really impresses me in bad grounds and emi areas.

Still don't know why they don't make an elliptical coils for the Nox or even a small concentric?

[GB_Amateur]

This thread has me wondering about the performace difference between the Nokta/Makro MultiKruzer and the standard (14 kHz fixed frequency) Kruzer.  (I realize most of this discussion has been comparing simultaneous multifrequency, not selectable multifrequency as the MultiKruzer is -- {5 kHz, 14 Hz, 19 kHz}.  From an experiemental standpoint, both have 14 kHz.  Are the coils interchangeable between those two?  That could be good or bad for the fixed 14 kHz unit, I guess -- making a coil optimized for a single frequency as opposed to making a coil which can operate for multiple frequencies.  I think this is one of the things Carl was getting at.

I would think that for as long as the Kruzer family has been out, someone, somewhere has done such a comparision....  Whether it's been done under enough varying conditions (e.g. different ground conditions) is another story.

[Tom Slick]

Both the Kruzer and the Multi Kruzer use the same coils. 

[Bohemia Miner]

3 hours ago, phrunt said:

In what was was the Simplex quieter than the Nox? this puzzles me as the Nox has so many ways to ensure it runs silent, you've got the noise cancel, along with all the modes and frequencies to choose from and it has manual ground balance, multi frequency which tends to handle bad ground better than single frequencies do and last but not least you can lower your sensitivity a touch,  a Nox with lower sensitivity still out performs my maxed out Teknetics T2 I believe.  I'm always confused when people say some single frequency detector runs quieter than a Nox as you can virtually emulate that detector on the Nox. 

Saying it found more treasure and trash means very little, that comes down to operator / location more than detector more often than not on a bulk of targets.

I'm yet to find a single frequency detector I'd use over my Nox.  I have tried hard.

My home was built in 1900.  My backyard is polluted with rusty iron in different sizes and stages of deterioration.  When iron becomes rusty, the metal detector no longer sees it as such.  So, Iron Mask and Discrimination can’t do their job.  It reads anywhere from foil to gold to silver. 

My thought and the reason for the thread in the first place is that I’m guessing that because it’s all over the VDI Spectrum, each frequency that excels on the numbers that they react to best, are seeing it (rusty iron) as targets.  As a result, all I’m getting is a lot of noise. 

I ran the single frequency Simplex and that noise was GREALTY reduced.  Having said that, I set my Equinox at 10 kHz only with far better results than Multi.

The whole point of Multi-Frequency is so that targets aren’t missed.  The biggest complaint I received from customers who purchased the 14kHz Whites MXT was that they weren’t finding any deep copper or silver coins.  However, I had a friend who declared that his MXT would spank his Minelab Explorer on gold rings every time.

So that brings me back to my original question, is there a “trade off” in performance between single frequency and multi?

[Rick N. MI]

I'm using the Equinox in the water and Orx on land.

[GB_Amateur]

7 minutes ago, phrunt said:

I've just got back from using my Equinox at my local field, I was in 4kHz the entire time other than testing targets as I really wanted to give 4kHz a shot, I didn't find it worth using at all.  I found whenever I switched back to multi it saw every target 4kHz did, but it had more stable ID's, not just a little bit either, a messy ID in 4kHz was solid in Multi.

Was that your first hunt with the new 3.1.3 update?  I put in 4 hours today but I'm not ready to report.  We're having a fantastic mid-summer cooldown (highs in the 70's, lows in the low 50's -- that's like mid 20's & low teens for the rest of the world's thermometers).  That continues the next 3 days and I plan on detecting every one of them.  By then I should have enough 'data' to report my impressions with my settings (Park 1, etc.).

[Bohemia Miner]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

Sounds like your yard just needs small coils, ideally small elliptical coils, I believe that would benefit you more than the frequency of the detector, multi frequency or not.   By noise now I see what you mean is the noise of targets in the ground.

Everyone's opinion maybe different but that is mine, I'm sure some of the more experienced people could express their opinions on the subject and they may differ to mine.

The 6" coil was even worse.  I had to lower the sensitivity down to 10.  Yes, that's what I was talking about.  All those marginal "Rusty" targets.  I once had a pipe cap read as a 50 cent piece.

Whether you believe your knowledgeable or not, I've enjoyed your input the short time I've been on the forum.

[King-Of-Bling]

Very interesting topic and I don't know if I'm off base here but will compare a MF against a PI on a beach. Granted , a PI is a completely different animal. What I do know is a MF can have great discrimination but in heavy black sand it can overload. Basically rendering it useless ! It won't work. Depth is also an issue. Under these same conditions , my PI can struggle as well. I may have to raise the coil 6" off the sand and go very slow. But it works ! Of course discrimination is an issue compared to a MF. A MF machine does not "reign supreme" on all beaches. In fact , it may not operate at all. What many don't realize is that we have different styles of hunting , which can change based on conditions. And that should be in direct correlation to what detector you choose for the job.