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One Detector For All Things


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1 hour ago, auminesweeper said:

Yeah it's pretty wild for a machine of that kHz range, I have found bits so small that it took me 20 minutes to locate them, A 48khz machine might be a little noisy in hot ground where as a 14khz machine will handle it better and as the bits get bigger it will also go deeper and on a machine like the MXT there are about 30/40 coils made for it,

I've been learning that Frequency isn't everything.  The amount of energy the machine puts to the coil is also a big factor as is the size of the coil.  

By the time I get a detector I'll have Bachelors degree in Metal detectionology!  

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On 20/04/2016 at 2:07 AM, fredmason said:

Argyle...my kind of guy, no mincing around! I really liked my x-70 but I have played with a couple of x-705 machines...If I had to go to only one do-it-all machine it would have to be xterra-705 as first pick...especially with three coils.

Slightly off topic-which coils do you use and for what purposes?

fred

Hi Fred...

The inventor, Professor Lawrence, that improved the XT18000 and then Eureka, went on to discover VFlex, I reckon is a genius.

You know, a heck of a lot of guys sold their 705's and re-purchased a good used XTerra70.

Where you coin hunting as well as prospecting with your 70?

Even though the 705's are more refined across the board, and the tonal superiority they have over all other detectors is an absolute pleasure to listen to, there was always something very stable and crisp along that first range of XTerra's, 30, 50, and 70. 

But the 705's have little secrets and nice quirks regarding judgement of trash targets that you get used to over time, and really appreciate.

 

Across the XTerra platform I've had literally dozens of units.

And out of the Minelab and Coiltek coils I favour the 6" concentric 7.5kHz for multipurpose use as they are one of those 'hot coils' that you find amongst many manufacturers ranges.

They are very deep for their size, and isolate and separate targets far better than the same size DD. When prospecting mode is brought into play you can really push that threshold through right to the very edge of the receive cone tip.

I also use the 6" concentric on reef workings, following gutters along old tracks or over natural formed gutters on the goldfields and there can be some pretty hot ground to deal with, but handled easily.

A lot of guys bag the 705 for prospecting. That's fair enough, we cant all like the same machines. And most certainly wouldn't use a concentric, but I like them.

 

The stock 9" concentric that comes with the coin-pack or the twin package is easily the most underrated coil. It's deep, and isolates far better than even the 6"DD. Most guys don't use them, as we all quite often do, we tend to blame the stock coil on most machines for different reasons and quickly buy another coil.

The stock 9"concentric has a perfect sized inner receive ring. Not too big like the old Fisher C's, not too small like stock Tesoro's.

Minelab made a huge mistake in making them an open design though. Getting caught up by every little twig. Be much better if they'd have been a closed coil so you could gently glide them along the ground and give your arm a rest.

 

The stock 10"x5" elliptical in 18.75kHz  I have distinct hatred for. I don't like the skinny elliptical coils on any machine. As they cause a quite a big loss of depth and misses of signal response due to the blade of the DD moving back to the centre in a queer way. But some rate them as their favorite. I do not like the 10.5" round either, badly balanced and the 9" stock leaves it far behind it I think.

 

I favour the 7.5kHz coils all told, because the XTerra's run true in this frequency. The other two frequencies are merely digital equivalents.

 

Coiltek's All Terrain 14.5" are fantastic, as are Minelab's new black version of them. I do not like the new ribbing on them though, the earlier WOT had much better balance.

I use them for general gold detecting over hot or mild ground, and for open lightly junked areas for non-gold detecting.

The 6" 3kHz coiltek is a bit of a dud. Attracts EMI terribly and aren't very deep, which you would think would have been the opposite.

 

Nel have a fantastic range to boot. All sizes and all DD.

 

I've played a lot with audio pitch modulation changes on the current 305, 505 and 705 in the form much similar to amplifiers/dampners, utilizing the push pad manual ground balance mode, the mode you open up when manually ground balancing. 

It's the Purest form of an All Metal Mode ever engineered on a detector. Depth is unbelievable.

 

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Great commentary argyle!!

The elliptical coil I believe just depends how you look at it. Most people think of a 10" x 5" coil as a 10" coil with lousy depth. I look at them as being an elongated 5" coil with depth I would expect just slightly better than a 5" but with better ground coverage.

We have moderate ground in Alaska and small gold, and so the elliptical DD was popular. But when guys started showing up at Ganes Creek chasing larger gold with the 705, everyone started using the 10.5" round DD. The ground there was fairly mild, and I told them the 9" concentric would not only get more depth but have better ferrous discrimination. They would not believe it. Try it, I said! Nope, everyone was convinced that heavy DD coil was a good one. It found gold of course, proving it in their minds.

And the all metal prospecting mode is second to none.

#¥%£#%!! Stop it - now I am getting X-Terra cravings!

The only reason I dumped the X-Terra is I like the live metered target VDI information the Gold Bug Pro offers while in all metal mode. I wish the X-Terra could do the same. Nothing terribly rational at work there, you have the iron mask on the X-Terra. Just a personal preference thing.

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Thanks again Argyle.  Appreciate you passing on many years of knowledge with these machines to me/us.  If I were to buy this model it could save me time and money in buying dud coils.  

35 minutes ago, argyle said:

the 9" stock leaves it far behind it I think.

So In the 18Khz you like the stock 9" coil

But you like the 7.5 Khz freq the best.  

So did you find the 18khz freq useful for prospecting at all?  

What was your Favorite Freq and coil combo for 1 gram and under nuggets?  

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Too many people jump on the DD band wagon, Concentric coils are so much better I always use them first because of the depth advantages and the sensitivity and even more so because of what they do to the ground balance and they can do so much more like pin pointing , Target ID and the list goes on and on.

john

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46 minutes ago, argyle said:

It's the Purest form of an All Metal Mode ever engineered on a detector. Depth is unbelievable.

Really good to know.  Do you run it a lot in all metal mode?  

Also I see your detector has heat shrink wrap tubing on it.  You must not plan to remove that big coil for a while?

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6 hours ago, Mike Hillis said:

If I was forced to make a single detector do all my land hunting needs I'd keep my V3.

Mike,

Do you prefer the V3 over the V3i?  Have you ever prospected with it or used it on a salt beach?  

Thanks.  

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1 hour ago, Roughwater said:

Really good to know.  Do you run it a lot in all metal mode?  

Also I see your detector has heat shrink wrap tubing on it.  You must not plan to remove that big coil for a while?

 

I use cohesive horse bandages Terry, on all my units. They only adhere to themselves and have a nice spongy grip.

 

Because my units units spend a fair bit of time on the ground, the bandage helps me grab the detector quickly to check holes.

 

I'll pop a post up in a few hours and run through my thoughts and use on the XTerra's and that'll hold most answers to some questions you've asked.

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9 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

The one machine for everything question can actually make a person crazy so that's about all the thought I am putting into that!

 

You're not wrong there Steve, that's for sure.

It's always 'close but no cigar...

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2 hours ago, Roughwater said:

Thanks again Argyle.  Appreciate you passing on many years of knowledge with these machines to me/us.  If I were to buy this model it could save me time and money in buying dud coils.  

So In the 18Khz you like the stock 9" coil

But you like the 7.5 Khz freq the best.  

So did you find the 18khz freq useful for prospecting at all?  

What was your Favorite Freq and coil combo for 1 gram and under nuggets?  

 

No I like the 7.5kHz across the entire coil range Terry, prospecting included, but more especially on coinage as the 705's processor runs 'truer' for want of a better word, when working around that frequency. And the Auto Ground Tracking behaves better in that frequency on hotter ground types (the noise cancel function is merely a frequency shift of . point whatever of a kHz above and below) but you stay close to the 7.5 regardless.

Fav freq/coil combo for under a gram is still the 6"concentric in 7.5kHz. But I do not specifically target sub gram pieces.

 

Download the manual online, it's an extremely well put together users manual. And while it may seem hard to get through at times, it's very simplistic when you have a machine in front of you.

The rest I'll pop in a post soon mate.

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