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Vanquish 540 Behavior After A Recent Rain


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I metal detected my front yard, which has been heavily pounded with my Fisher F2 and Vanquish 540.

Currently, I detect with my 540 in a modified coin mode, where it's basically the  stock coin mode, but I've notched out some lower numbers. Basically, if it doesn't hit 16 or so, I won't/shouldn't hear it.

All day Saturday it had been raining, although most of Sunday was sunny and dry. So the ground today was nice and moist, but not wet or soggy at all. When using my 540, it seemed like my entire yard came alive with a bunch of targets hitting 17 or more. Some of these were solid and some were iffy. To put it in perspective, normally when using my 540, I rarely get any strong signal in my front yard over 17 due to heavy hunting done so far.

However, when I dug the strong signals, about half the time it was a medium-size rusty nail and half the time, it was a penny.

So I have the following questions:

1. What's going on here? I've heard that wet or damp soil can improve the depth of your detector. But I went from barely any 17+ signals to tons of them. I was even able to find a dime in the curb strip in front of my house. Normally, unless I'm in all metal mode with my 540, hunting that area results in ZERO signals; pure silence. Now, I get a dime and some solid iron targets? It's almost as if I had never hunted that curb strip before.

2. Whatever is going on here, will getting an Equinox 600 help me handle it? On the one hand, getting 4 pennies and 1 dime in a heavily hunted area is great. On the other hand, I was digging up more iron than normal. My first thought was that my soil had mineralization whose effects were amplified by the recent rains. So would the Equinox's ability to ground balance make a difference here and if so, how much?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I bought a 540 for my wife and I have been using the EQ 800.  I rarely dig a square nail but she is digging tons of them with the 540.   It seems to have a bit of trouble with the ground as well.  She became so frustrated with it that I gave her the 800 and I bought a DEUS to try.  I am wondering if the 540 tracks the ground at all or is it just a fixed GB?  

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29 minutes ago, CVISChris said:

I bought a 540 for my wife and I have been using the EQ 800.  I rarely dig a square nail but she is digging tons of them with the 540.   It seems to have a bit of trouble with the ground as well.  She became so frustrated with it that I gave her the 800 and I bought a DEUS to try.  I am wondering if the 540 tracks the ground at all or is it just a fixed GB?  

All the Vanquish have fixed GB. In mild soil the Vanquish has an excellent iron disc , impossible to dig nails with it in mild soil. So the pb perhaps comes from your soil mineralization . 

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The 540 comes with different levels of iron bias similar to Nox and unlike 340/440. Have you changed your iron bias from high to low by chance?  I still get rusty nails with my 600 even at highest bias setting but I get a lot more in lower settings. I see you list having a 340.  Do you have the same issue with that unit?  I believe 340 and 440 are locked in at higher setting of the 540 from what I have read.

Wet ground may amplify conductivity of all targets or create halo people talk about making the detector react to it differently than when dry. So you may find that deep or weird angle dime you missed before or other junk that was filtered well in the dry.  Pennies for me are all over the place on the 600. Zinc depends on condition, generally 18-19 but can be as low a mid teens or high as 22-23. Coppers seem to depend on depth and angle, generally 25-26 like dimes but I get them all the way up to 29-30 thinking I found a quarter or silver. Wetness of ground could affect this as well. 
 

I’ll also note that I don’t ground balance my 600 and leave it at 0 as it is yet another variable and my ground seems to be mild where this should be of little consequence. 

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Yes it is pretty hot ground. 

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8 hours ago, CVISChris said:

I rarely dig a square nail but she is digging tons of them with the 540.

Given your hot ground, what do you think the difference maker was b/w your 800 and wife's 540? The 800's ability to ground balance?

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9 hours ago, kac said:

Wet ground is conductive. Good read is this from Dave Johnson, part way in he describes wet ground.

http://www.fisherlab.com/hobby/davejohnson/HaloEffect.pdf

Yes wet ground is more conductive than dry ground. But I have never had any issue with either my 540 or my 340 in mild ground , either dry or wet. Looks like the above "false signals" pb is a combination of very high mineralization + wet ground . However I am not a specialist of hot grounds we have only mild grounds over here in the north of France ...  Slavomir ( El Nino77 ) do you have hot grounds in Slovakia ? thx

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