Mike Hillis

Haven't hunted much this year. I think this was my second or third outing. This is a weird site. I started hunting it back in 2004. Back then I was just starting out and was happy to get lots of clad and this site gave me a lot of clad back then. It has been stingy on jewelry but I found foreign coins there ( I like finding foreign coins) and so I'd hunt it three or four times a year. I'm not a clad snob. It pays for my battery money and I enjoy the extra hundred bucks every year. Anyway... My first gold ring from this site came out of there back in 2017. In 2018 I found another, and Sunday morning I found two more and a little silver locket. So the gold finds have been recent. Guess I should have taken a picture of the Canadian dime and 50 cent Euro coin I found too but I didn't. The first ring is small. 10K JTS hallmark. Don't know if its a diamond or a topaz. I suspect its Topaz as its white in the light. Its child size or could be tiny woman. The second ring is 14K, and looks to be part of a set. Its woman sized. The locket is .925 These were found with the Tesoro Compadre running the Cleansweep coil (I modified my Compadre so I could swap coils). Both rings were one way signals and at least half flattened. I worked them back into roundness. Anyway....I love coming home with gold in my pouch. Even better with two gold and some silver. HH Mike

Nice gold. Is that a gold spinner ring? HH Mike

Just to update,,,,come to find out the Gold Kruzer isn't really a micro jewelry detector. Small jewelry was ok, but micro jewelry was out. I know....unexpected but true. Texkenzie on Tom D' site did the testing for me and it fell flat. The EQ800 with the 6" concentric tested well, as did the ORX, but the Gold Kruzer couldn't compete. So I'm looking at Whites GM 24K, it seems to be very promising. Hopefully I'll be able to order one soon. HH Mike

Thanks Jimmy, I think it will do what I want it to do. I liked what I saw on Tom' video. It appears to keep it hots even at low gain settings which is important to me. I don't want to have to run max gain to pick up my little chains and earring studs. HH Mike

I've been looking hard at what to pair up to my F75 for jewelry hunting, specifically Micro jewelry hunting. The Whites 24K is under consideration for this. I like the audio boost features, the iron cancel, hot rock cancel and the non-normalized TID number spread. I also like that it has a concentric coil offering. I guess the main question is, will it actually detect micro jewelry good enough to make me choose it over the Goldbug II. My Micro jewelry measurement target is a 3mm 4-prong 10k White Gold earring post. Any feedback is helpful. HH Mike

I bought a 3 n 1 Treasure Wise digger back in 2004 and that is all I use for plugging. I got a Lesche in a detector special one time but it wasn't compatible with my pouch so I passed it on. I use a Sidekick pouch, just one big pocket with a mesh bottom that holds my screwdriver , pinpointer, digger and all my finds both trash and treasure. Well....I do slip the extra special finds into my back pocket but other than that all goes in the pouch. Works for me. Some pics. I don't use the sheath. Don't even think I have it. And my sidekick pouch doesn't have the Kellyco logo. HH Mike

.....all the winch talk is making my come-along seem so out dated. I guess I could tape a 9 volt to it somewheres....... I think Jim_Alaska qualifies for a guest appearance on the Red Green show! That was very well done! HH Mike

Remember the ALAMO!!! Sorry, had to say it before it gets labeled hate speech. My big dividing line was "tone id" or "single tone". tone id = different tones used to signal different target conductivity levels. Typical tone id is low tone for iron, med tone for low & middle conductors and high tone for high conductive coins. This would equal: iron is a low tone, foil/nickels/tabs/zinc is a middle tone, copper cents, dimes quarters, half and dollar coins are high tone. . single tone is one tone for everything. Everything doesn't necessarily sound the same but there is no distinct tone changes based upon conductivity. Some people prefer the single tone units, others prefer the multi tone units. I personally discovered that I dislike the single tone units and did much better with tone id and that, of course, changed what detectors I looked at. You and your wife are going to have to do the same discovery. Do an ebay search for metal detectors, sort by price, see what catches your eye, then read the operating manuals and field tests and then come back here and get our opinions on what caught your eye. My nickel. HH Mike

Mark, I bought the electronic version off of Amazon and have it loaded on my Kindle Fire. It is a good read and an excellent technical reference book. I'm looking forward to the sequel. HH Mike

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

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

Phrunt, I bought one of the brand new Sport package deals that come with the little 5x8 coil for $400 + $25 buck for the headphone adapter = $425 total new. I'm happy with it. I will need to pick up a larger coil for it at some point as there are times I like a little more ground coverage. It is very EMI resistant (more EMI resistant than my Gold Bug Pro) and sensitive enough for the majority of my target needs. If I had jumped on the Equinox band wagon I probably would never have looked at the AT series as I wouldn't have had the need for one. shrug HH Mike

I was hunting in a light drizzle a couple of months back with a bag tied around my detector and thought, you know, I should really get a wet weather detector for days like this. I didn't want or need another full time detector, as I'm happy with the ones I already have. I just needed one for those occasional wet weather days. So looking at price vs use, the ATPro fit the bill. The price was good enough that I wouldn't fret if it only got used a few times a year and I have enough confidence in it that those few times I would use it wouldn't be a bust because I hadn't enough time on it to learn it. That was my reasoning. Very happy with it, too. HH Mike

Xterra 705 a money pit? Yes it is is. Go buy coils. Go buy the low frequency coil sizes and types you want, then go buy the high frequency coils sizes and types you want , then go buy the medium frequency coils sizes and types you want. Adds up real fast. But, then again, if you can make do with just one or two total coils then I'd guess you'd be ok. Some aftermarket mfgs are building dual frequency coils you can switch with a nine volt battery so that cuts down coil prices a little bit. The ATPro works fine and does exactly what I need it to do. Speaking of coils I do need to get a larger coil for it. Can't decide what to get just yet. HH Mike

Man, I really like that specimen ring. I like finding the gold but the unusual gold is the best gold. Good article! HH Mike

That would feel nice in the hand! Great find. HH Mike

Thanks for sharing the pictures. HH Mike

I kind of like the ORX data sheet when I'm comparing it to the GoldBug 2. I'm in the market for ultra HF elliptical and so I'm doing the weighing hands thing. Proven performance Gold Bug 2 vs some additional versatility ORX. I dunno. But I'm watching. HH Mike

This is another of my favorites, the Golden Sabre II. Whats really nice about this one is that it is a true analog audio and the tone break point really mix. Sometimes that mix tone will make me shiver....... HH Mike

I like my little Compadre. While it looks overly simplistic its actually a pretty decent metal detector with a full range disc circuit. I bought it for my wife but then I modded it with a connector so I could switch out coils and now I run my Cleansweep coil on it. I just set the disc to accept my lowest reading ring and go beep and dig with it. Since I'm only hunting the top 5 inches of dirt or woodchips I don't need a manual ground balance and the sensitivity setting on mine is just right for my EMI and depth requirements. The 12 kHz operating frequency combined with the full range disc is plenty sensitive to the targets I'm after. And if you like to tinker, its a cheap detector to mod with. I like it and can recommend it to any and all. HH Mike

The video was what I needed. Thanks Tom. Evidently I was experiencing an ID.10T error. I didn't know what I was doing. I'm now back on vibrate and good to go. the TRX is working fine, its the operator that has the problem. HA. HH Mike

4" x 18" DD coil for my V3 would be very nice. Doesn't have to be figure 8. Just a normal DD would be fine. Doesn't even have to work at all three frequencies. Even if it only worked on 7.5 would be ok with me. HH Mike

I normally run my pin pointers on vibrate only. At some point in the past 3 months I managed to change my TRX to beep and vibrate. When I got tired of it I found my instructions to change it back to Vibrate only and low and behold, the current option is the only option it will give me. When I try to cycle through the target response options it only cycles through the beep and vibrate mode. Will not cycle through all the options. I thought it might be low batteries but a battery change out made no difference. I've never submerged it so water wouldn't be a issue. Any ideas? Guess I'll have to cough up some money and send it off to Whites to get fixed. Bummed me out, I can tell you. I had to leave it at home and start using my Tek-Point which I don't like to use for jewelry hunting as it isn't as sensitive as the TRX on the small gold items. HH Mike

I hate hate hate buying a new detector that doesn't LOOK new. Pet peeve of mine. Send it back and tell them you want a new one, not one some other customer has returned. HH Mike

F5 might do it at shallow depths with the stock elliptical concentric coil with a 50/ +6 Gain/Threshold setting. wouldn't necesarryly ignore the nails but would most likely flash a non-ferrous ring TID number in the mix. I dunno. HH Mike