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Only thing I would add is that after turning the connector around, I worked a bamboo BBQ skewer through the hole to make sure the wires were out of the way before pushing the metal screw through. I have no desire to nick the insulation on the wires!

That is in discriminate mode ... and I've found that even the grunts in discriminate mode that have a very narrow rise and fall signature on the tone are good targets to dig; even without going to all metal to check the response signature. Lets see what Clive says as he is more experienced with PI's than I am. I'm loving the AQ LTD now that I kind of have my head around it.

Hopefully they will do a 10 inch. Good to hear they are actually doing something to reduce the capacitance effects through the connection. Perhaps there has been some mitigation of EMI too. I have not found it terrible with the LTD, yet there are places it makes me turn sensitivity down to 2, delay up to 11 and ATS to 8 or 8.5.

Please keep us posted on what you observe with the small coil in salt waves.

Noga ... typos ... we all do it. Funny he is using a NOX. He hated Minelab. Haven't talked to him in years. I should though. He might be able to fix the ground balance issue with the CZ20 I still have ... it was his detector that I bought when he was going to a "new" CZ21. Pinpoint button removed and hole sealed to prevent the most common failure mode when in the water. He was doing a lot of CZ5s in waterproof boxes at the time I got the CZ20 from him. I got a CZ5 with a Sunray FZ12 coil when I was looking for the coil; bought the package so that I could get the coil and sold Steve the CZ5. Still have the coil on a CZ6A. A few years back was over a silver ring on wet salt sand with the CZ6a and the FZ12 ... had a guy I had talked to on a few trips to the beach who had gone from a CTX to the NOX and he could not hear a thing on the ring with the NOX; said there was nothing there. Gave him the CZ and he said, yup there is a target ... three or four scoops later, up comes the ring. The old CZs are no slouches.

A video you did a few years back with the CZ detecting a gold ring deeper than the other detectors in your test but the big thing went LOW tone .... that and a couple other things change me around to go all metal most of the time and use disc just as an information check ... added to depth and size information.

I'll PM you.

The two quoted sections are why my CZ20 was calibrated for nickles to give a mid-tone audio.

Bottle caps and washers can be difficult to eliminate with VLF's too. I'll leave it at that and just keep having fun detecting once we get moved and unpacked. All detectors are packed, ready to move to wide open beaches. Cheers!

I don't think it is a rust thing. Bobby pins and hair clips that spring back in shape are difficult at times. I think it has more to do with the alloy than rust. They act similar to the crab trap and fence pieces that have a continuous conductive loop ... but the hair pins, if swept from the right direction, give a very distinct double beep.

Yup. The type of trash it struggles with are iron wire "loops" ... like crab or lobster pot pieces or pieces of the fencing that is used at the base of dunes to help built up the dunes. If there are a lot of those and it is wearing on my patience, I go grab a different detector.

There are other videos that show gold under the nails, it detects the gold under the nails in mute mode very clearly with strong signal. I spent some time looking for one of those videos but am not finding one at the moment. The tricky part of setting it up is if the trash is twisted wire mesh pieces that are difficult, well closer to impossible, to get to go away with the AQ and the tone sound is mixed ... still hard to weed out gold from that ugly trash scenario. Working in that kind of trash becomes a dig it all or walk away from it scenario. I'm speaking of the AQ LTD version; only version I have.

The detector looks like the not yet released AQ with the batteries that drop in the tube. I would like to know what settings are used for the video. Would also like to know why the face plate still shows the same delay settings as the AQ LTD version when it has been said the longest delay setting is longer than what is on the face plate (I think it is 15 uSec and not 11.5). It any case; I can set the AQ LTD to not see nails like that and still hit on gold like the video shows ... just have to be careful as the more that is being rejected starts to push into the range of the big pig gold ring, although I don't have any that are really huge pigs to test with.

And same as Rick N. said .. Prayers are with you.

AQ in coin spill can have me walking away from it ... double blip from all directions ... but with the settings that put US coins all in grunt mode; if I get distinct double blips from all directions in all metal and then it is all low tone grunt in tone mode; when not real deep, it is likely a recent coin spill still in a tight grouping. Open beach that is, different hunting in the water where it is tough to circle targets and sweep from many directions; but then the target density is entirely different too. It's taking time to learn things with the beast; things that a VLF detector could tell me right away. Perhaps it is how I'm wired that is making the AQ learning interesting and fun for me.

Not all of us have Facebook accounts.

Using a web based translator (I'm an ignorant American too): Benchmark tests in progress, results coming soon… DEuS II VS EQUINOX VS LIMITED AQ BOOST ON WET SAND The 7 best points to compare metal detectors: #1 Best sensitivity to gold targets #2 Highly reactive system #3 Rock solid stabilizers #4 Ground effect compensation (magnetic ground) #5 High recovery speed #6 Iron Discrimination #7 Mitigation of all EMI

For you, cobill and possibly others: Unfortunate that your experience with the AQ LTD has not been positive. Mine has been. And as Steve mentioned, there is more potential to unlock. I hope that potential comes to market.

Did you read the disclosure statement for the LTD? It is at the bottom of the following post and acknowledging understanding of it was part of getting on the early buyer's list.

So here are some of my thoughts on what "useful discrimination" is related to the AQ LTD: Back when I got a CZ20 to start getting serious about finding gold at beaches, it was tuned so that nickels were mid-tone. I could choose to detect and dig only the mid-tones with the theory that doing so could maximize return on effort at the beach by only digging the range where most of the gold was. Thinking back on that recently, I was inspired learn what I could with the AQ LTD with respect to useful discrimination. I've been hunting nearly all in all metal mode with the AQ LTD. Shortly after I got the AQ LTD I took a trip to one beach specifically to see how the AQ handled a beach filled with hot rocks and learn a little bit on how I could handle them using its discrimination capabilities. I had not done much with discrimination since then until the last two weeks. Had a long trip to a wide open beach and I figured it was time to really learn the discrimination capabilities. One thing I previously figured out is that it is difficult to get rid of hair pins on any setting; I still found that to be true, yet they do give that classic double beep that makes them easy to walk away from. I decided to pick a couple of targets and set up to hear the tone shift in tone mode that would tell me to walk away from those targets that otherwise do not give a lot of clues. The problem targets I picked to set up with were some small screws that I had dug while thinking they were going to be good targets, but were not. Setting up to identify those screws as "no dig" in tone mode had me at Reject = 7; ATS just shy of 9. I spent a few days tweaking the settings but staying pretty close to those; ending up with Reject 7 and ATS just a hair above 8. If I chose to just dig the sweet high tones and none of the warbles or grunting sounds then about the only iron I was digging was the occasional hair pin and a couple of round washers. The hairpins were still walk-away signals because of the clear double beep. I was not digging tent stakes. I also wasn't digging pennies, dimes, quarters, lead sinkers or soda beer cans! I dug most targets for nearly a week to see what the audio was like. With those settings, zinc pennies, small fishing sinkers and most of the tent pegs were a warbling mid-tone, copper pennies, big sinkers, dimes, quarters, soda and beer cans and the rest of the tent pegs were low tone grunting. The biggest problem target remained bottle caps. I’m not doing well identifying them for what they are. After the last couple weeks I think I'm pretty confident that the AQ LTD does have useful discrimination and that if I want to just focus on the most likely gold range and not dig coins, cans, sinkers, tent pegs or .50 caliber shells; I can do that. There is a chance I will not dig that huge monstrous gold ring when set like I'm set, but the focus will be squarely on looking for the majority of gold jewelry and not digging otherwise. In the middle of fresh drop season, I think it could be a productive way to go!

I've got an underwater with the 12 inch NEL coil. The velcro straps on the arm rest very quickly came unglued. I replaced the arm rest with a Whites one. The Whites arm rest may hot be available now ... I've used them on a few shafts I've made. I used a Whites arm rest to replace the one on the HH Wader that I have too. They are sturdy and work well. My biggest gripe with the HH Underwater is the audio amplification. When ambient noise is low, very faint signals can be heard and yield fairly deep targets. I think the faint audio needs a boost. Shallow targets are plenty loud but when you get down a couple inches they become much harder to hear. I suspect that is an issue working with the headset fully submerged too but I have not run them fully submerged. Good luck with yours!

The first AQ I got has thicker power cables and red O rings for the connectors. The second one has the cables pictured and did not come with O rings. Appears that the orange plastic part is supposed to seat and make it "water proof". I added O rings like the first one had and have not has an issue so far. (knock on wood!)

Pumping the coil seems to work in the bay in helping sort out bottle caps; not so much in the ocean. I'll try to work on using that technique on faints over the wet sand when I'm down south. Thanks! I overloaded the AQ on a cell phone that was a couple inches deep in the sand in ankle deep water back in October. Had to raise the coil and it took a few seconds to return to the smooth threshold. Was then able to center the target with the coil about a foot above the surface. New Iphone 11 showing full charge but it was locked so I couldn't find an owner. Turned it in to security at the resort I found it in front of. Have had big iron chunks overload it too, but the cell phone really seemed to saturate some circuits in a big way until I got the coil away from it. With the Excal, did you power it off for a minute or so and then back on to see if it resolved?

Don't know what to say except it doesn't sound like your detector is functioning like my two do. Faulty? Water in the connector damaged it? Don't know. I'd certainly talk with First Texas. I enjoyed your Pulse Power book. Funny how I was at home very quickly with the HH Pulse (and Sand Shark before that) but took me a frustrating while to start hearing the AQ LTD edges for the clues in all metal to walk away from a target.

LOL I fire up the lawn tractor and chop them. Thought I was done for the season, but after two weeks in South Carolina, came back on Monday to a yard looking like I had never done anything with the leaves. Will blow out the gutters first (again) and then chop them up again!