Jeff McClendon

On 9/20/2023 at 5:37 AM, F350Platinum said:

I personally like being called a "Treasure Hunter" by attractive moms on the beach explaining what I'm doing to the kids. ?

Most places I go hunting, I get sideway's glances from adults and lots of attention from kids. If an adult asks me what I'm doing I just tell them I'm a poor, homeless, street person looking for coins and recyclable aluminum with a detector that costs more than a good used car. That usually breaks the ice or sends them running in the opposite direction.

13 minutes ago, CPT_GhostLight said:

Dang it, Jeff, now I'm thinking I should probably get the 11x13" coil as well! ?

I've been real happy with the 9" coil, but since I got the 11",  I think I've been getting some targets I may have missed with the 9". I do like an elliptical coil, although the 11" seems to separate very well. ?

I'd like to hear some users' thoughts on the 11" VS 11x13". 

I can't help with the 11" VS 13"X11" comparison. 

Had I bought an 11" instead of the 13"X11" I may have had the same results. Who knows......?

I haven't even started deliberately hunting for deep gold jewelry yet at these same sites. That will come next when the thick spring/summer grass goes thin and dormant for the winter. Right now, there are too many recently dropped/shredded aluminum and steel alloy targets hiding in the grass at these local parks to make deep gold jewelry hunting much fun. In a month or so, I will actually be able to see most of this recent trash on the surface.

Take a strong magnet.

7 hours ago, Sinclair said:

Did you measure the weight with the lower shaft attached to the coil?

According to XP's website, the 9" has 345g, 11" 470g, 13" 570g

Lower rod was attached. 

The equivalent would be another V/Sat.

An updated version is the Garrett/Whites Goldmaster 24K. Outstanding detector.

https://www.detectorprospector.com/metal-detector-database/garrett-goldmaster-24k-r155/

I just have the 9" and 13X11" so I can't compare the 13X11" to just the 11".

I can say that the 13X11"at 668 grams (1.47 lbs) is much heavier than the 9" at 448 grams (0.99 lbs.) and it certainly feels heavier on the stock shaft.

Coverage is fantastic using the 13X11" and so is its ability to get through taller grass just by its sheer mass.

I haven't used the 13X11" at a beach yet.

The 13X11" that I have been using has been finding deep US silver dimes and deep wheat pennies that were missed by me with the 9". No doubt about it.  Whether the 11" would have missed those compared to the 13X11"......no idea.

Separation is still excellent using the 13X11".

The onboard pinpointer function is not as accurate when using the 13X11" compared to the 9"

I am using version 2.0 software.

The 13X11" has been a good purchase for me so far.

That’s the conundrum, if I use any Disc IAR I will miss small nonferrous targets like small gold since most gold at this location will initially have ferrous target IDs and ferrous tones if I have iron volume on. With Disc IAR off I hear absolutely everything. 
 

This area is best hunted with a pulse induction detector. Unfortunately there are large power lines in the area too so EMI is pretty bad. Using a DD coil with the GPX6000 would be ideal but the rugged terrain and the big 14” DD don’t get on too well. 

57 minutes ago, phrunt said:

The 900’s target ID stability is a fatal flaw for my needs, I’d take an 800 any day, if they keep the 800 alive I hope they put it in a 900 body, if they do I’ll upgrade my 800.

I am going to try to stay out of the Equinox 600/800 versus 700/900 debate as much as possible since I have owned both and my experience has been documented on this forum.

SLD appears to be fairly new to this hobby.

As a newer detector user, the Legend, Equinox 600/800, Equinox 700/900, XP Deus 2 would be a handful for most who have not used such advanced detectors.

In a dig it all situation like saltwater beach hunting and basic gold prospecting, the Legend, Nox 800, Nox 900 and Deus ll would be just fine as long as the Nox 800 didn’t have water ingress or coil ear problems at the beach.

Sounds like SLD might do some beach hunting a some point while nugget hunting is a no at this point.

However, for anyone needing accurate target IDs for whatever reason for their style of hunting, I absolutely would not recommend the Nox 700 or the Nox 900 unless their soil conditions are basically inert. The Legend, Nox 600, Nox 800 and Deus 2 have far superior target ID accuracy from my experience than the Nox 900 where I have detected with them which included mild to highly mineralized dirt and saltwater beach conditions.

Not crystals. Lichen/moss.

I would go with a hornblende type amphibolite or something similar. Lots of hornblende, amphibole glacier deposited rocks in the Lake Erie area especially with those being found unweathered in the Sudbury/Thetford Canada area north of Lake Erie.

2 hours ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

That's really good to know, Jeff.  I don't recall anyone, including Nokta, mentioning that aspect of the F pattern in high iron situations.

This characteristic is not limited to the Legend, like I said, Deus 2 and my Equinox 800 also will respond with intermittent iron tones of deeper coin sized objects along with giving ground noise feedback at target ID 11 Legend, 23 Deus 2 and +1 Equinox 800. Switching to a "ground subtraction mode" or adjusting the Legend ground suppression setting off of zero does not help. So this is related to high concentrations of magnetite plus volcanic material in the soil and not a flaw of some kind with these detectors that really do" see" just about everything really well.

2 hours ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

As to the bottlecaps, I have to run it.  LA must be the bottlecap capital of the world there are so many!  With that being said, and it's just my experience, my 800 rejects bottlecaps much better than my Legend.  It's really no contest.

I have dug enough steel alloy bottle caps to be able to call them before digging with the Legend, Deus 2 and Equinox 800 except when the have been smashed completely flat or a about halfway rusted out.

1 hour ago, Bill (S. CA) said:

Jeff,

Always love your write ups.  I'm curious about a couple of things:

1.  Why don't you run any bottle cap rejection?  I will be honest, I have played with my Legend and the bottle cap rejection really doesn't do much so I keep it low.
2. "When I switched to the F (ferrous rejected) discrimination pattern along with having the iron filter setting on default 8, the 3 flagged targets that were copper and silver basically disappeared. "  Do you think if you ran in F and lowered the iron filter to a lower value you would have hit those targets?

Bill

I only run the Legend bottle cap rejection when I have to.  Bottle caps are not a predominant target at the test location. 
 

Due to the high iron mineralization in the area, the Legend, Equinox 800 and Deus 2 all detect deeper non-ferrous targets with some intermittent ferrous responses. Running the Legend with the F discrimination pattern would cause broken up, sporadic responses on those nonferrous targets. 

38 minutes ago, Digalicious said:

Thank you for the thorough and objective experiment Jeff. You're one of the very few hunters that I trust for such experiments. 

I don't want to derail your thread, but as a side note to depth, Dilek recently stated that their head engineer has been working on a "boost" mode for the Legend, and that it will be an enhancement update.

I am aware of the announced version 2.0 software update which includes an M4 Beast or boost mode. Whether that has anything to do with some of these current complaints is doubtful. 
 

Several previous Nokta Makro detectors had “Boost” modes. In general they were effective in certain circumstances that were not hindered by high EMI or high mineralization. I did not get to use them much. 

I was able to do a second quick hunt today. I was willing to dig absolutely anything with a decent repeatable signal and with stable target IDs. I was at an elementary school that has thick sod with sod staples about 4" below the surface that are in various states of rust. Makes for a very noisy, iron false filled hunt but at least the staples are spaced regularly so I basically know when I am over one. Some of these targets were in the sod thatch so around 3 to 4" from the bottom of the coil. Others were well below the sod in the original soil. The grass was about 4" long and very thick so some of these targets were detected about 8" deep. None had weak audio responses or unstable target IDs once I had the coil properly centered over them. Like I said, I was searching for low, mid and high conductors including gold jewerly (skunked) and silver jewerly (got one .925 ring) and silver coins (skunked but I did get a Wheat penny). I was running the same settings as in the previous post. The Legend's iron mineralization meter showed 7 or 10 bars filled. Ground balance stabilized at 5.

1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

Yep.  This is what the updated Vanquish should be (abd should have been).  I always thought adding a middle of the road single frequency mode like Nokta has done with Score is a great move.  Adding a single general purpose Multi-IQ mode to the X-Terra Pro would fill the niche as well.

Hopefully Nokta will choose prudent default settings on the Score (especially the iron bias setting) and make it adjustable on the Double Score so that Facebook won't be chocked full of complaints like it is on some of the Legend pages. Nokta might have to double up on internal EMI mitigation too. Reminds me of the first years of the Equinox where users had to really learn how to metal detect as in learn what the settings do in positive and negative ways or else that were clueless and unhappy.

When you price high performance VLFs as low as the Legend, and price entry level but very capable detectors like the Vanquish, Double Score, Score and the X-Terra Pro/Simplex so low, people with very little experience will expect them to run perfectly even in tough ground conditions. Can Nokta make the Scores run as generally stable as the multi IQ Vanquish series??????

On 9/2/2023 at 12:22 PM, phrunt said:

I'm sure at some point you will get your wish Jeff, with technology hitting a wall all that's left now is various paint jobs over the years. ?

We will see lots of different design detectors with similar guts adjusted in small ways to suit the model.  At least with Minelab they'll embrace new wireless technology (and limit it too) and other beneficial features like modern screen and battery technology to improve detectors in other ways.

I got my wish but looks like Santa is leaving me a Nokta Score instead of a Multi IQ X-Terra Pro. Thanks Nokta!!!!

7 minutes ago, F350Platinum said:

Yikes, not for me for sure! Heck I pass on some deep targets on the beach because I draw the line at 6 scoops. ? There is one permission it might be useful, maybe two, but I think the farmer would take issue with craters, and the water table here can be too close for comfort. ?

Are the memorials id'ing around 90 still? All I got was Zincolns today. ?

IDs for common coins are ground balance and ground moisture level related where I detect. They can change by a number or two from day to day concurrently with a slight change in ground balance values. Sometimes I just don't ground balance if I am on dirt that I know is similar to the last hunt. So, I am still getting US nickels between 60 and 63, zincs between 82 and 87, clad dimes from 88 to 91, copper pennies from 89 to 92 and quarters anywhere from 92 to 97, all depending on slight changes in ground balance and moisture levels. So, I have not noticed a change after switching to 2.0. I am guessing that I have recovered around 200 modern US nickels, zincs, copper pennies, clad dimes and clad quarters total, since updating to 2.0 which gives me a pretty good idea.

XP's owner said that the pinpointing will be fixed on the WS6 with the next software update. Who knows when that will be????? Another 4 months like between 1.11 and 2.0 or next week.

I did send a huge thank you note to XP customer service for making my day with the 2.0 improvements to FMF Goldfield. They thanked me for my reports of the issue and for my patience with the process.

I figure either you F350 or Chase will eventually get their hands on the Xtrem Hunter so V2.0 will be a must anyway.

I have used 2.0 land hunting in high iron mineralization/wet ground for the past 5 days. 5 silver dimes, lots of deep copper Memorial and wheat pennies and no issues whatsoever running Sensitive or Deep HC. Absolutely loving the 13X11" coil.

I hope to get to a gold prospecting site either this Friday or next Wednesday to test the FMF Goldfield mode for real along with some extreme mineralization/square nail site relic hunting too.

10 minutes ago, Nokta Detectors said:

No, they are SMF. There are 3 Multi Frequency options as well as a single 15 kHz on both versions!

Thank you Dilek!!!

25 minutes ago, Ridge Runner said:

Jeff  

 I have the Legend and I thank you for your time plus the setting that came with it on nugget hunting.

 I was wondering if you ever had your hands on the Gold Monster 1000 . If so with both having the 6” coil who may be on top comparing the Legend against the Monster.

 Thanks again!

 Chuck 

I would give the same answer if you asked me to compare the Goldmonster 1000 to the Equinox 800. I can setup a Legend or an Equinox 800 and run it on highly iron mineralized ground very easily with just a few ground balances. I could take a Goldmonster 1000 with its automatic tracking on the same ground and I would be ground balancing constantly after every detected target if I could get it to ground balance at all. The simultaneous multi frequency setting for the Equinox 800, 900 and the Legend will handle more difficult ground conditions using their ground grab ground balancing way better than the GM 1000. A detector that ground balances easily, effectively and quickly will be much more likely to hear borderline/difficult targets. Plus, the Legend like the Equinox also has adjustable threshold tone, adjustable iron bias, adjustable recovery speed, adjustable discrimination settings, on screen target IDs, single digit notching, pinpointing, ergonomics, collapsible shafts, waterproof, wireless audio.......I could go on and on with the advantages of the Legend and Equinox 800/900 over the GM1000. And the most important of all, there is very little difference if any in the overall sensitivity to gold nuggets of many sizes between the GM 1000, the Legend and the Equinox 800/900. I like the GM 1000 and have owned more than one since it was released. It just isn't my first choice compared to the Equinox 800/900 or the Legend.

8 minutes ago, Rattlehead said:

Thank you Jeff! It was nice to check off beach detecting from my bucket list. I still want to try my hand at detecting for gold soon. 

You will need to update the software to V2.0. XP really improved Goldfield with that update.