RickUK

I keep about 500,000 give or take 'Apis Mellifera' in 10 National and WBC hives albeit only 2 near my home,the others are kept locally in a fruit farm and these ones down the farm and prolific honey producers but can be very stroppy,hence why i keep them away from local residence. But after i take the frames off when the Oil seed rape crop is in full flower they can get very angry when you go back to my 4x4 as they can follow you and try and sting you as much as they can,hence why i need to wear a veil even when going back about 1/4 mile to the truck,getting stung by them is a thing that one gets very use too,although when about 30 of them crawled up passed my elasticated leggings that did hurt for sure as it was concentrated all in one place. Trouble is when a honey bee sting it dies a very short time afterwards,as basically the sting is like a fishing hook and the barb with the pulsing protein sack still pumps into the wound after its been ripped from the bees body. Its a terrible shame when you hear about freak accidents like this,but these bees are not the norm,when a bee is say squashed or killed it produces a 'pheromone' although we cannot smell it,the bees sense this and then go on the defense if you like and hence that i feel is what happened with this Bee tragedy. Just my personal opinion of course.

John,that is far too technical for me,as we dont in theory detect nugget here in the UK the main gold items that i am after as most folks are either gold jewellery of in my case Celtic gold staters,so rather than work out the mathematics or try and use some alternative that 'could' possibly skew the readings i would fuse the real thing on a new detector or tweaking new settings on a old detector.. I always use a 1/4 and full celtic stater and a few bits of old jewellery that the wife has given me to use and of course many other items like hammered silver coins,we all do it in various ways,but i guess the end results are similar,if you are planning on going to Aussie land or Arizona on say a holiday then the lead/gold test would be a wise move. The same that if you only shoot for gold nuggets then folks would not tend to use a Viccy Penny or a Eddy hammered coin for setting up a GPX,that is the type of thing that i am getting at. I dig way too much scrap lead as it is,have had bucket loads over the years,it pays for petrol in the car but bloody heavy to carry around in your finds pouch all day

One of the main criterias that i use when buying a new detector or detecting related accessory is i always wait a minimum of 12 months from the launch date as i feel this gives me a very good indication time wise to see if any major design faults/flaws and see the feedback from genuine users rather than possibly 'distorted' reviews from testers. These are just my personal opinions of course,but its a criteria that i have never veered from and its never let me down thus far,these are recent observations ie Racer plastic component problems and software recalls on Whites machines,these are of course just examples and not aimed at these specific brands/companies.

The one i bought was 262440748133 from Ebay,quick postage and no problems what so ever. http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Universal-Golden-Mask-Telescopic-Handle-/262440748133?hash=item3d1ab00465:g:BxEAAOSwQJhUi43Y

Steve,that is the same shaft that i have been using since Christmas,absolutely love it,it works exceptionally well with it,only down side is you cannot mount the controller,but i wear mine on the wrist strap anyway. That GM shaft certainly gets my vote,its a quality piece of kit and when i bought mine it was half the price of a Deus shaft,cannot fault it. May try the reverse coil trick,as long as it works i dont worry about what it looks like,thanks for the tip.

One massive bonus with the Deus is the fact that i also bought another coil that i have mounted on a spare shaft that i had laying around which means then effectively i have 2 machines,one used by myself with the control and xp wired backphones which provide superb audio for a crazy low price,also the 2nd Deus user uses my WS5 headphones. So if i have family or friends that wish to use one of these machines they can do so,and i can use the other one. One of the biggest design faults with the Deus setup is the nose heavy 13'' coil,if only they had mounted the lugs near the centre of the coil rather than to the rear,but a special mounting block was made by a after market guy so that the coil is mounted on the block then the block is mounted on the bottom rod,this simple exercise only cost a small amount but it totally transfer the centre of gravity to the middle of the coil.

Must admit the Deus is rapidly becoming my favourite machine as well,the main advantage is the weight of the detector or should i say lack of weight,i can swing the machine all day long which i have been struggling with due too wrist problems,i do like the full tones and also the ability to use 4 freq's. I doubt that i will buy the new coil as the current 9'' one suits my style of detecting and my permissions.

John,the trouble with really trashy sites and using a larger coils can of course have a downside as well,especially with masking,all it takes is just one say small hob nail on a trashy roman site under a larger coil and that can totally mask out a very good target,Concentric coils on a VLF are 'generally' far superior discrimination wise but of course the extra large coil although it gives extra depth can still cause the biggest problem going masking. Although i love the 12'' Hotshot concentric coil,on certain sites i would still use a slightly smaller one say in the 89'' range to reduce the problem of masking a decent target,its a fine balancing trick really when to use a big coil over s slightly smaller one albeit not a real small coil that most folks would use. Decision like that have to be made from just pure observations of the ground and how the detector is reacting,a small coil would be my preferred choice certainly on freshly cut stubble and also a round one rather than a elliptical one,as a small round one would not catch on the stiff stubble as much.

John,i have used a similar setup or way of thinking for the last few years,albeit the Whites detectors we shoot from the hip are different ie mine is the DFX and you use the MXT,but i do also use a 12'' Concentric coil on mine most of the time the Jimmy Sierra Hotshot coil,but when mine runs in 15Khz they are pretty similar,both machines have advantages and disadvantages over the other. I am finding that the finds in the top 6-8'' are gradually getting harder to find and i am talking about non trashy sites here,the reason being over the last 30-40 years detectorist have picked the once productive top layer of finds,i will agree with you that on farmland that is regular ploughed and rolled does produce new finds each turn of the plough,so yes the cycle is pretty constant,also as tractors are getting more powerful they can drag a deeper plough which is once again good news. On pasture once the targets ie coins and artifacts have been detected once again in the top 8'' then we dont have the luxury of deep ploughing or very rare is it to get pasture ploughed,so this is why i use a much bigger detector/coil setup to get down to the next layer as i call it,i liken it to peeling the layers off a onion,the 1st layer of finds have been detected,so a heavy hitting setup is required.The machines that i would use for deep pasture would be say the T2 with a large SEF coil on,my Nexus with the dual 9'' coil and in recent times a PI mainly the TDI Pro. So yes i will totally agree with you that thinking outside the box is a good thing,folks still cannot really grasp why i keep going down the route of a detector either VLF or PI with larger than stock coils,the reason is i am 'thinking outside the box' so that i can get the next layer of coins or artifacts that stock coils just cannot get too,but it works,well it does for me anyway. I started going down the depth route about 5 years ago when we have located a scattered Celtic gold stater hoard,the scattered coins had been in a tight radius and the container had the top of the container taken off when deep ploughing,but although a normal detector with a stock coil would locate the scattered loose coins,it would not find the actual container,but a specific machine that is geared up will/has located deeper staters from this hoard which are from 55BC. Trashy sites also benefit from Concentric coils and also the DFX wins again but also followed by the Legendary Laser B3 with a 10'' Polo coil on,maybe 20+ years old but still a deadly machine,modern machines are very good machines but in a few recent topic on the forum VLF machines seem to have hit the buffers in terms of what they can do,but this is when thinking outside the box can really take you to the next league and increase your finds rate. The bottom line is the amount of good finds that go into your finds pouch as that is the barometer on how well we are doing,if finds are still appearing then we are doing the right thing,but if finds are drying up or not as prolific as once it was,then i personally step back and think 'why' is it because i have change my detector,my tactics and then change or adapt and hopefully the finds will start flowing again. Sometimes the latest 'all sing all dancing' machines are not always the answer,but 'thinking outside the box' can be,and also a lot of luck.

For situation like what you have mentioned i use a Deus with a 9'' coil mounted on a Telescopic Golden Mask shaft that collapses down too about 17'' so can be carried in a bag,you dont have to have the control box on the shaft as you can either just use the headphones which once are ultra light and can fold up. The control box can be carried in your pocket for fine adjustments or i usually just leave it in my 4x4,its about as light as a detector can get and very adaptable,albeit they are not the cheapest detector going.

@Jackpine,yep i also have a Mars Tiger coil for the T2 as well,albeit not used it much but it certainly seems like a very good coil,a coil in between a stock coil and a large coil,very well built quality wise,have noticed in the short time that i have used it that it seems to lock onto the signal better than the stock coil,thats the only way that i can describe it.

I use 2 NEL Coils on my T2 original,the 1st one is the NEL Sharpshooter 9.5''x5.5'' i use this instead of the stock coil,the reason being the original stock coil packed up and when searching around and borrowing one from a friendmit was not only cheaper but also far superior build quality wise.Performance wise although the coil is just a bit smaller,i honestly dont thing i loose any depth or if i do its not worth worrying about,but it makes up for it in being much more sensitive to small finds,better pinpointing and of course better in trashy site situations. The 2nd one is the NEL Storm,this is just a bit bigger than stock at 14''x13'' but is a beast depth wise over the stock coil,but the winning bonus is with this coil is its also very sensitive on smaller finds,this is unusual with normal slightly bigger than stock coils.It is slightly heavier but not over the top,infact i would use this one all the time for most of my open pasture and deep ploughed and rolled sites,but wrist problems reduce the usage to the Sharpshooter one. This is just my personal opinion on this brand and it certainly gets my vote from being a happy user with many hours on the clock,i also have the BIG Nel coil as well,but that is a real brute of a coil at 17''x15'' and only comes out too play on real deep targets,the weight can be its down fall but the other 2 coils are superb.

The main machines that i use for everyday use are the Deus,DFX,T2 and for really deep work the Nexus Standard SE with the dual 9'' coil on,of course my detecting sites are either pasture or deep ploughed and rolled,over time say the last 30 odd years the best targets have been found,so one then has to go deeper by using a larger coil.Or in some specific sites a Pulse will be the weapon of choice. Trouble is what works for one location and the targets that we hunt wont necessary work for others,in my case i am after real old finds that can be deep like celtic/saxon or roman coins or artifacts,over the the years these targets could have sunk below the ability of a normal VLF machine with a stock coil,hence the need for different tactics to recover these targets. Still plenty of hoards left to be found over here,just need the coil to go over them was on a roman hoard site a few weeks back and it was only about 30 odd acres size wise but had produced nearly 26,000 coins and still producing,albeit at a slower rate. Like yourself i did try using a CTX but it was not a joy to use,why ?? just the massive weight,it may well be one of the top 3 detectors being used in the UK but if it was to give me a 'hernia' swinging the heavy lump all day long then that is not fun.

I use 3 very similar UK made digging tools,the smaller one i call my sniping spade it can be used for quick recovery of shallow targets and the other 2 are much larger especially the big fella as that is the one i use for real deep artifact/hoard hunting on sites like pasture or ploughed and rolled. All of mine are basically built of pretty bullit proof stainless steel,why so heavy guage ?? we dont dig on manicured lawns ie parks,tots lots or what ever you call them neither the party lawns at Buckingham Palace If i am digging either single coins or a possible purse drop or scattered hoard then they could be deep,so a strong spade is required,during the peak summer months when the ground is like concrete then the only digging tool that will do the job is a ultra strong shafted specially designed spade for the job,the amount of pressure that you can put on a long spade handle can snap them like carrots if they are el-cheapo wooden garden spades or these plastic handle one are a total waste of time. Buying a decent stainless spades are not cheap,but will in theory last you a lifetime subject to them either not being stolen or you forgetting about them after celebrating about that ultra rare gold coin that you have just found In my finds pouch i also carry a Hori Hori knife for when say you are near tree route or need to peel back the odd turf on someones horse paddock,pinpointing is critical especially as i then once found the centre of the target,lets say a coin on pasture then i dig either a 3 or 4 sides flap of turf or soil and then remove it but going in from a wider angle so as not to damage a possible rare hammered silver or gold coin,that would be gut wrenching to find that you have hit say a celtic gold stater with a trowel or spade and a few choice verbal words into the bargain as well. Must be honest i cringe when i see folks recovering coins from a park across the pond with a screwdriver or knife,i can see that most would be modern change but one can never tell if its a rare date or gold coin as well. Prehaps i am over cautious,but i would rather do that than damage a nice celtic gold stater,these are of course just my personal thoughts and how i recover my coins,we all do it differently,but for me i use good quality stainless digging tools that have lasted me for many years,and they may even use them when they finally carry me out in a 6ft wooden overcoat

On the dry sand both will be equal,on the wetsand they are in totally different leagues,why because the Sovereign is multi freq the MXT is single freq,i am not say it wont be possible to use the MXT on the wet sand,it wont be happy or in its best enviroment and you may have to throttle the settings down to get it to run stable. The Sovereign will always win hands down on the wet beach,just see how many folks use one on the UK beaches and that will re-affirm what i am saying,the most popular machines of choice VLF wise will always be the old Sovereign and also other Minelab multi freq machines then possibly the odd DFX which is dual freq and then the dedicated beach bums use the PI machines.

I agree with John,the No1 beach VLF machine in the UK is the Sovereign range,why Mineslab ever stopped production of that machine is beyond me,they then bring out the 'kiddies toy' detector called the Go-Find that no one want and those that did fall for the hype cannot sell them, possibly the biggest white elephant that Mineslab have ever bought out. When a decent Sovereign come on say Ebay they command top dollar,with a WOT coil or other after market coils they just work superbly on the beach,if you do alot of beach work then its worth keeping,but of course if you plan on say doing the odd days detecting or just a bit of fun then it would be a waste of a good detector. I would also agree and i can only say from experience of UK detecting the MXT for the everyday machine and the Sovereign for the beach,best of both worlds and proven to fill your finds bag with quality finds.

The only Minelab coil/s that will work on a Whites machine are the GPX/GP on the TDI range,the Commander coil is the one that i am currently using on the TDI at the moment,but they wont work the other way around ie Whites on the GPX.

This may be a old thread but its relevant to me as i have just bought a new Hipstick off Ebay recently and this weekend is going to be the 1st time using it. I have a personal invite to go on a roman hoard/artifact site over the weekend,so decided that the big fella outfit will come out to play,this being the new TDI Pro and the 20'' Sierra Grande from Jimmy Sierra,which basically becomes a heavy old beast to swing for any length of time. I use either a full GPX harness or my preferred option a UK made full harness from Pro-Tectors,the harness on its own works great on coils sizes upto say 15'' but i find that it tends to pull the harness down on the one side that the bungee is attached to,so not sure what the Hipstick was like or even if it was going to work,but as mentioned above i bought this Hipstick brand new from a private seller including the Docs top model harness and some cable clips that fit on the stem,all for under half price. Last night i set the full harness that i had before up and added the Hipstick setup,this thing is a joy to use and totally transformed how this heavy rig swings,it does exactly what it says on the tin as they say,and transferred the weight totally off the shoulder to the hip and i can swing the real heavy setup with basically just 2 fingers. Very pleased with the decision to not only buy the Hipstick new at a very advantageous price but also with a load of additional items as well,this thing is simple to operate and install and does not hamper you in anyway in the ability to swing my 20'' Mono coil,infact i would say its 'possibly' easier to swing than using the stock coil without the hipstick,also have just tried using it with the Minelab 15x12 Commander mono coil on the TDI Pro and that could be swung all day as well. The Hipstick is a simple design but 'simply fantastic' to use.

Thats good news that you have narrowed it down to just 2 machines,this is just my way of thinking i would go down the route of a VLF and a Pulse machine ie MXT and GPX rather than basically duplicating 2 PI machines,you would then have the ability of 2 reliable machines that compliment one another. Just my input of course.

Must admit it looks a very interesting exercise,not exactly sure what you are trying to achieve with it though,as although it maybe be possible to get some indication on US coinage,but the vast variation on say UK silver hammered coins ie silver content wise would be very hard to get true figures. Gut feeling tells me the reason you have never found the information that you are looking for as i dont think one could make a viable reliable data base,of course i could be wrong,but the time spent trying to get the info together would achieve little benefit to you detecting,of course this is my personal opinion. TID readings on most detectors are not 100% accurate at the best of times,they do help that i dont deny,but i have always been a audio person rather than rely solely on meter reading which can be slightly skewed.To me having a decent set of headphones and listening to what the audio is telling me wins hands down every time,meters become very un-reliable the deeper you go and infact some items wont even show up on the meter,but audio will still give you a possible very low hint that a decent target is in the ground and those are the ones that you want to go for. If you have 2 folks with exactly the same 705 machines set up the same,but one goes just by TID and the other by audio,you would be suprised what you may have missed just by going with the TID option.

The Deus is a nice machine to use on trashy sites especially when using the 9'' coil,i use a modified either Deus Fast or GMP based prog,once saved in memory its basically used then as a audio only machine,although i carry the controller with me in my pocket but not used it on the shaft for nearly 3 years.Audio is king with this machine as the TID can start getting un-reliable the deeper it gets,but the audio still gives you the perspective on the type of target either say a small shallow one or a deeper large target,its a quality machine for that. It loves our silver hammered coins so this is a reason i tend to use it on ploughed and rolled sites,for really trashy roman/saxon sites then i tend to use a smaller concentric coil on either my DFX,my new Trident11 Extreme or the the classic old timer the Laser B3 comes out to play with the 7'' Concentric. If we get into the realms of deep pasture finds and sites like these will usually be home for out really deep quality hammered coins/artifacts then i will bring the heavy VLF hitter out to play the Nexus with dual 9'' coils or the T2 with the BIG Nel 17'' coil on,either of those 2 machines will punch deep and also the discrimination as well,but once a site is clear from using a VLF then the TDI Pro with the big 20' Mono would be used. Its all down to learning the site that you are detecting and the history and many other things,and of course gut feeling and trying to increase the reward to effort ratio in your favour,i am lucky that i live not all that far one of the greatest roman locations in the UK hence alot of my finds are roman and even celtic,the latter is my main targets ie the celtic gold staters as these are the Holy Grail that i am after.

John,most surprised that you have mentioned about going for a GPX ?? the reason i mention that its that in the UK we dont in theory have any prospecting ?? i use the TDI Pro as mentioned before for real deep hoard/artifact hunting only with a large coil on,and possibly the odd occasion for beach work,but for the most part the TDI will be more than enough for the type of detecting that i do. Must admit i am surprised about that one !! unless you are going back to Aussie land !!

Must admit i am seriously looking at getting the Whites 15'' Concentric coil as well for my DFX,it will work on that machine but only on 15Khz as i understand it,but for real depth with a VLF machine that crown still belongs to my Nexus with the dual 9'' coil. But when suggesting a PI machine,my vote would go for the TDI Pro,but as i dont nugget hunt i just want total depth on large artifacts or hoards and the TDI does that with ease,cannot see any advantage of the extra expense of using say a GPX machine. Also this is just my personal opinion,i certainly would not get in a situation of buying a expensive machine and possibly cause marriage problems if she found out,just not worth the hassle trying to chase the golden rainbow,i still say that for the most part skill of the operator on what ever detector you use is far more important than buying the most expensive detector as a newbie and expecting to become a over night skilled operator.It just does not happen like that i am afraid. The really skilled prospecting experts on this forum have taken years to learn the knowledge and i take my hat off to them as they make it so esy,but i put my hand up and say although i have been detecting many years i dont have those prospecting skills as we dont have gold fields near London,but i do have a fair knowledge of deep relic/hoard hunting and use the machine that are best suited for my needs. Of course these are just my personal views and observations.

@auminesweeper,John,any idea what the cut half coin is ??? looks like a Eddy.

Its one of those hypothetical questions that you can never really answer and basically because it has so many variables,we are after a metal target with a in theory primitive tool called a metal detector,as we are all aware they dont provide100% true information to the 'operator' because of various external factors ie ground conditions,various mixtures of contents in the item that we are looking for. etc etc So this is when the human brain and the skill/knowledge of the operator really applies,in my case for the most part i am hunting coins and artifacts over here in the UK,but as we are all aware folks in Aussie land and say Arizona hunt different targets with different machines and they have adapted skill sets to recover those types of targets. If i was say in a park situation when the main target would be coinage or jewellery that was in say the top 5-6'' then i dig according to the ground situations this being manicured lawns and the like,but if i am on say a deep ploughed farmland situation which my research tells me that possibly that deep targets are in the area,lets use the target as being a hoard then i have to take into account the 'reward to effort' ratio,as some hoards can be pretty deep but remember we are still using a relatively primitive tool to make our decision on,being either a screen/audio or a mixture of both and the deeper we go the less reliable it becomes. Some times you have to make a 'pure gut feeling' decision and go for the real deep target and just dig and dig until you set your mind at rest and find out what it is,of course it could be a scrap iron part of a plough at many feet in depth,but also it could be that 'Holy Grail' life changing find which could be say that massive gold nugget or a pot of celtic gold staters etc. But if you had decided to pass on that target because you dont like digging deep recovery holes,then this is the 'Crux' of the matter is 'He who digs wins. He who hesitates doesn't.' and only you can make that decision yourself based on that information that the primitive tool we call a metal detector has provided. This still wont answer your question but you can get some idea what we are up against,hence its one of those questions that can never really be answered.