Detector Wars in Gold Canyon – The Evil Empire Lands!

[Rick K - First Member]

If anybody wanted to waste their time by crawling around the various forums under my handle lytle78 – they would probably see that I have expressed a certain skepticism about Minelab and the pricing policies.

On the other hand I am no dumber than your average rock and I knowledge that their current top-of-the-line model GPX 5000 is probably the world's greatest gold detector.

Not being an accomplished gold detectorist or prospector I'm not in a position to shell out five grand or thereabouts on the metal detector.

Last week and opportunity presented itself to buy a minelab SD2100 at an attractive price with an assortment of nice coils. It arrived today it works fine and I look forward to playing with it in my ground here in gold canyon Arizona – where there is no gold – and comparing it to my White's TDI.

So far only one thing has struck me. Although it's noisy as hell here in what are now becoming suburbs with underground electric service and lots of cell towers – I could by moving the tuning control around find a reasonably calm threshold.

When I tested the various coils on my 1.5 grain 18 karat gold bead – in air test – I got a very disappointing response. Needless to say having spent a nice piece of change on this thing I was disappointed! I then laid the test bead down the ground in the clear spot and found that the response was much better with the bead on the ground than waving the bead across the coil with the coil in the air. Clearly this requires further investigation and may be pretty good evidence for the old saw that PI detectors don't air test all that well but they do a lot better than the ground.

Standby for more data – and feel free to ignore it all if you see that is something I posted. Cheers to everyone - really like the new forum - look forward to learning a lot.

[Steve Herschbach]

Hey Rick,

Air tests completely miss why PI detectors exist. Your Gold Bug 2 will air test the heck out of the SD2100. Tests of VLF versus PI or PI versus PI in mild ground also is not very enlightening.

The old saw about PI detectors gaining depth in the ground is missing the real situation. The reality is that VLF detectors lose depth much faster as ground conditions worsen than PI detectors. The worse the ground gets, the better the PI looks by comparison. But as ground conditions worsen PI detectors struggle also. They just take the hit slower and handle it better than a VLF detector. The bottom line in milder ground and for smaller gold why even have a PI?

For what it is worth I am thankful Minelab had faith in and developed technology that US manufacturers turned their noses up at. They all thought PI would never amount to anything but a niche market not really worth their while. Minelab simply did what anyone with an undisputed lead does - they charged for it. If the other manufacturers had not been asleep at the wheel for so long competition would have kept prices in line. It is only after all these years with the introduction of the Garrett ATX that I am seeing competition serious enough to force Minelab to pay attention.

[fredmason]

Rick, the 2100 was very sensitive but I think you are asking alot of it to detect a 1.5 Grain bit...especially if you were using the 11 inch coil...

it is still a great detector...

fred