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Somebody Should Make A Jewelry Detector


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The reality here is there are a lot of great do it all detectors that are fabulous for jewelry detecting. A lot waterproof beach detectors are for all intents and purposes jewelry detectors.

Yet as many people as there are for whom jewelry is the number one thing, I do not recall any company ever selling a detector that specifically targeted that market.

White's has a leg up in a way in my opinion. The DFX with BigFoot is my favorite park and field jewelry detector. The Big Foot coil is a large part of that, but the DFX 15 kHz raw "un-normalized" mode is hot on jewelry and the SignaGraph is one of the best jewelry hunting digital displays ever designed in my opinion.

I think there is a market for a premium price machine sporting a BigFoot type coil, running in a native 15 kHz type range. This does cause coin responses to lump up on the high end but spreads out responses on various aluminum items, allowing certain pull tabs etc to be better identified, and if need be, ignored. There has to be an ability to notch items, especially on the high end. One thing I do not like is machines with discrimination schemes that assume you are looking for coins and do not allow the high end to be blocked out. If I am cherry picking for gold jewelry, it is the high end coin range I am likely to block out, not anything in the low end.

A stripped down DFX would be the ticket, or, if White's does not want any new metal box designs, something similar in the MX Sport package.

Tesoro could easily come out with a machine that used a Cleansweep coil mated to a properly designed Golden uMax if they went for a tone based unit. Or, a machine with dual disc controls. One knob starts at the bottom and eliminates items as you turn it up, just like a normal disc knob. But I want a second knob that starts at the top end, and eliminates items into the coin range as you turn it down. These two knobs could either be straight forward reject item controls, or better yet, set the break point for three tones. Turning the one knob up sets the low to med tone break, and the other knob the med to high tone break.

I tried to get Makro to make a BigFoot coil, but nothing has come of it so far. Mated to a Racer 2 you would have a great unit. An X-Terra 705 in native 18.75 kHz mode with a BigFoot/Cleansweep would do the trick. A Fisher F44 with a Cleansweep coil - water resistant!

The key to all this is name the machine so that people know it is a jewelry detector, and sell it as a jewelry detector. The Jewelry Finder Extreme (JFX)! Given that nobody makes a BigFoot right now Tesoro could do this with more or less off the shelf parts if they desired, and it would help freshen up their lineup.

 

super-gold-jewelry-metal-detector.jpg

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Steve...A very good point about the ability to notch out coins and such on the high end of the conductivity scale.When I'm looking for jewelry I don't want to be bothered with modern clad or nails and screws on the other end of the scale.Maybe something like a Compadre with 2 disc knobs and a tiny 5 inch coil.And make it waterproof or rain resistant and lightweight. If this type of unit was marketed specifically as a jewelry detector it would fly off the shelf.

 

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I picked up a Golden uMax off Craigslist last fall. Definitely a very unique detector with what seems to be great potential as a fresh drop type Jewlery detector.   I threw a 3x18 Widescan coil on it and took it for a short spin one time before the snow rudely interrupted my detecting season.  I didn't find any Jewlery but was very happy with its performance with the 3x18 coil.  It was my first time using one and I was a little shocked at the speed you can cover ground with that type of coil.  Not sure why Tesoro stopped making the Golden uMax because it's a pretty neat little detector.  Extremely light which is a big plus for that type of hunting.    

Bryan

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Like you said Steve. Tesoro has the ability to put something together pretty easy.        The Tejon is very powerful, runs at 17kHz, and has dual discrimination knobs that you can trigger between.  Add another tone or two and a tone break and you could have a great detector.. Fix the weird All Metal mode and you would have a good nugget hunter too. 

Bryan

 

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The Whites V3i has real potential as a jewelry hunter, but using that potential is hampered by having to deal with a steep learning curve and manipulation of complex menus.  Here is a link to a long thread from Dankowski's forum on this topic. Highlights of this long thread are a post by Mike Hillis on the signagraph and another post referring to Tom Slick's innovative use of the fact that the bigfoot shifts the vdi #s of nickels and pulltabs upwards, but doesn't shift gold ring responses the same way.  Again, it takes sophisticated analysis to benefit from this.

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/discussions/read.php?2,82941,page=2

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take a look at this...

Link deleted since Findmall Forum update broke all old links

I agree with you Steve, on the need for a dedicated inland gold jewelry unit.  The issue is that there is a mistaken belief that a good relic unit makes a good jewelry unit.  Or that a high frequency unit makes a good jewelry hunter.  All bogus premises.   

A inland jewelry hunter's problem statement is, "how do I locate a low to mid range conductive target in a high EMI environment full of low to mid range conductivity non-ferrous trash?"

What we are given, for the most part, are what I call trash squealers.  High conductive relic units that are good in the ferrous.vs non-ferrous response but poor in the low conductor vs low conductor response.  You can find gold with them the same way you find gold with any detector but its not optimized.  It squeals, you dig and hope for the best.

The V3 is the first unit to come along that actually holds promise for a inland jewelry hunter, yet, as has been said it has a long learning curve.

HH
Mike

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Jewelry detector with a bigfoot style coil would be great. Expanded low end ID with ability to notch out the high end. And of course the ability to effectively ID/silence bottle caps without coil wigglin tricks. I also submitted a request to Makro regarding production of a bigfoot style coil which was "passed along" to the appropriate department. I tried really hard to like the V3i but there were just too many variables to contend with for me to find it enjoyable to use with such limited time. Loved the spectragraph. I have a Tejon I keep around in hopes of coming across a cleansweep for it but have not had much luck. Would pay retail for a used one at this point. I have seen many posts on just about every forum from people looking for a new bigfoot style coil to produced for just about any machine. I think/hope one of these manufacturers will get that "Eureka" moment soon and cash in on it. I would be first in line to buy one. I have done quite a bit of research on how to make VLF coils in hopes of one day being able to understand the concepts enough to produce my own for one of my machines. Unfortunately, not even close to being there yet and have yet to master even a decent PI coil. Even if the detector manufacturers don't pick up on the idea, it seems like Detech or Mars would have by now and put something out. The idea is there to cash in on. Instead it's relic machine after relic machine, over and over.

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2 hours ago, Mike Hillis said:

 The issue is that there is a mistaken belief that a good relic unit makes a good jewelry unit.  Or that a high frequency unit makes a good jewelry hunter.  All bogus premises.   

Could also be termed as differences of opinion depending on the desired goal. In my opinion micro jewelry does benefit from higher frequencies. Of course one can also debate whether hunting micro jewelry is worth the effort. As always, it just depends where you live and what the opportunities are near at hand. Hunting tot lots where I am for micro jewelry generally gets lots of aluminum and some low value jewelry. Hunting the sand at a high end resort might turn up a nice diamond on a platinum post.

Rings in turf though I do agree all higher frequencies do is light up foil that lower frequencies will ignore. I sure did like the V3i and frequency choices it offers, near perfect selection in many ways. In the end however the DFX at 3 kHz and 15 kHz seemed to get the job done just as well for me with less fuss.

I do admit that my technique very often is "It squeals, I dig and hope for the best." Also referred to in my lexicon as brute force detecting. It has the benefit of requiring minimal mental horsepower on my part. I often tend to overthink things.

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I have two objects that give the same phase response.   One is a piece of foil, the other is a little 18kt white gold ring.  At high frequency, the phase response is identical.  The spectra-graph response is identical...a nice tight signature.

What is the difference between the two items?   Mass.  The ring has a much higher mass than the foil.  So a specialty gold jewelry detector needs to be able to capitalize on this difference.   High frequencies cannot differentiate mass, yet we still need the higher frequency just because the targets are small.

Lower frequencies can differentiate mass.  With the V3 as the example unit, 2.5 kHz isn't very responsive to foil.  Foil doesn't have the mass to store the eddy currents long enough to report very well.  It scatters the spectragraph, and often doesn't even report at all. But the little ring will hold the eddy current and still give a good spectragraph signature.  

You can see this low frequency effect even on non-round gold items.  You can see this effect in the sizing screen in the sizzle of the line before and after the hump.

What I am getting at here is that a specialized gold jewelry detector can't be the normal thing we are all used to using.  It needs to key into the differences between our trash and our desired targets.  

Go ahead and give me the high frequency squeal but with that also give me the low frequency mass response.  And let me be the one who doing the low frequency dialing.  Let me see their responses at the same time.

That is just one requirement.   I also need to be able to run hot but with low gain, like on the F5 and V3 so that I can key into tiny targets.  Give me the additional tiny and large target response filters like the Berkut-5.

There is more, but this basically points toward what I'm looking for.

HH
Mike

 

 

 

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Mike

I agree on the lower frequencies being better discriminators.  Detectors such as the Fisher 1270 with an expanded disc range in the right area and a volume control that acts more like a threshold control can eliminate small foil bits easily by the audio response.  No screen needed.

Tom

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