Omega 8500 Chatting.....

[Mike Hillis]

Been thinking about my 8500

Now the 8500 has it warts, but it has some good things about it too. One of the 8500 warts is that it really works better with concentric coils. I don't know if it was designed that way or not but that is just the way it is, so I don't put DD coils on it any more. My frustration level with the 8500 is way higher when running DD coils. So I quit using them on the 8500. My preferred concentric coil on the 8500 is the 8" round Tek coil. It gives the best stability and target id accuracy, including on nickels. 

Another wart of the 8500 is the 8500 operating manual, in particularly regarding sensitivity settings. The Omega 8000 manual tells you what is going on with the sensitivity control settings. The 8500 manual doesn't and so you get in trouble right away. On the 8500, just like on the 8000, Sensitivity settings of 1 to 70 are GAIN settings. 1 is lowest Gain, 70 is highest Gain. In other words, a Sensitivity setting of 70 is MAX GAIN. If site conditions (EMI, trash, ground minerals) allow, you can raise the Sensitivity settings above MAX GAIN into the HYPER THRESHOLD settings of 71 to 99. Since the operating manual doesn't spell this out, the tendency is to try and run up into the HYPER THRESHOLD settings thinking you are only running 75% to 80% power when in reality your are running 100% plus, and in most cases, site conditions don't allow for it, resulting in some major frustration. 

I find that sensitivity settings around 55 to 65 work best for most sites in Deep 1,2, and 3. Deep 0 setting often allows the most use of HYPER THRESHOLD settings but Deep 1, 2, and 3 work best if you keep below Max Gain (70).

A sensitivity setting of 55 in d5 (non modulated audio tones) with the 8" round concentric is good for a hard hitting 8" dime, which is pretty decent, and leaves room for power increases if the site allows.

Some of the pluses I like about the 8500 is the full control of the segment audio. Instead of the normal disc or notch discrimination, I can just manage each segments audio volume. This gives me disc/notch capability while still seeing full display responses. When I combine this with the Primary and Secondary TID feature it allows me to focus on what I'm hunting for, which for me is nice gold jewelry.

I've already found some nice gold with the 8500 but now I think I'm going to specialize the 8500 as a large gold ring finder. Just going to cut the audio to all the segments except the Tab and Screw Caps segments, put it in VCO and hunt matching Primary and Secondary TID signals in places where men are most likely to loose a ring. Should be a successful strategy for larger gold.

Gonna find out. I'll let you know how it goes.

HH
Mike

(might be a few weeks before I report back, forgot this weekend is going to be rainy and honey-do's are already lined out for me. 

Teknetics Omega 8500 Data & Reviews

[Steve Herschbach]

The Omega 8000 / 8500 has always tempted me Mike but never pulled the trigger. It is a fascinating study in First Texas model variants and revisions with much debate online about which version was best, and not everyone seems to think the 8500 was an improvement over the 8000. I don't know personally but I have always liked the feature set for the price.

[Jeff McClendon]

I've had a used 8000 for 6 months, hoping that I would figure out how to keep it from being so sensitive to EMI. I have not been successful so far. I took it out last week to four sites that I have hunted with my Nox 600, Deus and F44 with absolutely no issues. The Omega 8000, with two different DD coils, was so overwhelmed by EMI that I could only detect at one of the four sites no matter how low I kept the sensitivity (30 or less) and ground balanced often. It is a great detector obviously as is the 8500 from what I hear, but the susceptibility to EMI is not acceptable. Sadly, I'll be selling it soon...........

 

Jeff

[BeachHunter]

I agree! Great report on the 8500.

[Mike Hillis]

Tell you what.   Let me do a few large gold ring hunts with it first and then I'll turn it into a review,  the good, the bad and the ugly.  

How about that? 

HH
Mike  

 

[Mike Hillis]

Sorry everyone but I sold it to fund other things.

Mike