Digalicious

The sleep mode on the Quest sounds interesting, provided that the sleep process is initiated immediately upon setting the detector down, and the wake time is instant as well. For the purpose discussed, I'm thinking a simple mercury switch would be better, and it costs almost nothing. Yes, the Legend and Simplex have a mute feature. For the Legend, the Frequency button is held down to mute, then pressed again to unmute. I'm glad it has that feature, but it's just more damn buttons to push every single time a target is retrieved. I have the same "button pushing for target retrieval " ire for pinpointers. All SMF detectors should have said mercury switch or similar, and all pinpointers should have a magnetic switch holster. /end old man yelling at clouds rant 😁

I wasn't so sure about the silent EMI thing, but I am now. It's as though the coil's balance gets so "saturated" by the noise, that the target now has to present a notably more powerful signal to overpower that saturation threshold. Is that what you mean by target signal attenuation? On a side note, we would all prefer to not have to lower the sensitivity any more than necessary, and thankfully, the EMI noise is almost nonexistent when swinging the coil on the ground. However, once the detector is set down to dig, the annoying noise returns. That makes me wonder why detectors don't have a simple mercury switch or gyro, that you can enable or disable, and would mute the detector when it's horizontal. Heck, that feature would save on battery power too. Or, instead of muting the detector, it causes the detector to go into an "instant on sleep mode", which would save even more battery power.

No depth issues for me either. I also have low level mineralization. I'm also getting a little more depth and better ID's with the appropriate SMF modes compared to the appropriate SF modes. My tests are always with a silver dime and gold ring. Jeff, I was wondering the same about the boost mode. More specifically, the Legend already has a very high sensitivity ceiling, so any more will be an issue in EMI. However, perhaps the boost mode will mitigate EMI by increasing the Tx power and utilizing some sort of digital signal processing. Well, it will be an interesting enhancement none-the-less.

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.

That's a great haul Dave. I've mainly been water hunting lately, because I'm pretty much only interested in gold. I just don't have the physical or mental desire to dig large amounts of trash in the rare chance of finding dirt gold. F'n aluminum! lol With that said, I did try hunting a soccer field last week and disced out everything lower than copper and silver. I scored coins similar to yours, as well as a .925 Pisces pendant, and a .925 ring with 3 stones that check out as real diamonds, but I guess could be Moissanite. Sure I'm going to miss almost all small and medium gold rings, but again, I'm just not willing to dig that amount of aluminum trash. Discing out everything but the high conductors, means almost no trash, almost no EMI noise, and I'm still able to hit on most large gold rings😁 Do you normally cherry pick high conductors when dirt hunting?

All terrain general wouldn't be the best choice for Canadian clad. As Dave mentioned, try all terrain low conductor which uses higher frequencies. Possibly even better, try the single frequency of 40 khz. Reason being, 40 khz might be even more sensitive to Canadian clad than ATLC. Plus, 40 khz will be much quieter in EMI than the multi frequency modes, which means the sensitivity can be raised much higher (notably more depth). Also, the reason the lower recovery speed gave you a better signal, was because a low recovery speed allows the detector to get more information from the target (better target identification). Keep in mind that a high recovery speed will significantly reduce depth. A mid level recovery speed is a good starting point.

I repeated the experiment in the low EMI site. On both the silver dime and the large diameter gold ring, there was a 2-3" depth gain in all SMF and SF modes. Thing is though, the depth increase also occurred in the SF modes that had no audible EMI noise in the first mid level EMI test. Does that mean that EMI doesn't have to be audible for it to affect performance? Further to that, this experiment was comparing the air depth difference between low and mid EMI sites. I wonder how much more depth loss there would be in a high EMI site. With all that said, the depth loss for in ground targets, probably wouldn't be as significant as this air test. Reason being, EMI is notably reduced when the coil is swinging on the ground.

Thanks for the confirmation on that Dilek. I was told by from what I thought was a very reputable source, that the Score 1 only had 1 SMF mode, and no SF mode, To have you confirm what they actually have is helpful.

Hi phrunt. A video would have been better, because that way the EMI noise can be heard. There was so much EMI noise in the SMF modes and 4 khz, that it got somewhat hard to determine the target signal from the EMI noise, when the target was far from the coil. In 20 and 40 khz, there was almost no EMI noise to contend with. Then again, when the coil is swinging on the ground, EMI noise diminishes significantly. Plus, if the targets were in the ground, the actual depths could very well be different. I'm mainly trying to find out if EMI will affect depth, so the air test "should"? be fine to do that. I'm going to that low EMI site tonight, and really looking forward to seeing the results when I duplicate the test there.

Hello everyone. The following is an air test using the Legend with the 11” coil, all metal, max sensitivity, default recovery speed, on a silver dime and a large diameter 10k gold ring. I tested in my backyard that has what I would call “medium” EMI (3 medium power lines, and 1 low power line). I would consider being near those large power towers as “high” EMI, and out in the country with no power lines near, as “low” EMI. I’ll follow up tonight or tomorrow with the results of the same test in a low EMI area. Even though I tested using the Legend, I’m thinking the results would be similar with other similar detectors and the same testing methodology. M1 is mid weighted, M2 is high weighted, and M3 is low weighted. Silver dime / Gold ring M1 - 13” / 17” M2 - 13” / 19” M3 - 13” / 17” 4 khz - 12” / 14” 20 khz - 13” / 19” 40 khz - 13” / 17” I’m giving my margin of error as ½” either way, but realistically, there was no “oh wow” air depth difference on the silver dime using any SMF or SF mode. However, there could very well be a depth difference based on the ground mineralization. But, I’m testing EMI in relation to depth, so the air test will suffice for this type of test.

Good point, but Nokta has Dilek to get things going. She is like one those European mothers that can throw her slipper with deadly accuracy😁

Ya, the pinpointer itself would have to be modified, and it's too late for that. With so many devices conveniently being controlled by an app now, I would have thought that it be a no brainer feature for all new higher end pinpointers. Maybe Nokta already has the controller built into the pinpointer, and a few months down the road...Surprise!, here's a phone app for you! I'm sure that's wishful thinking, but then again, the new Score detectors are "surprise" x10.

With many of my sites, the ground is 1 step away from being mud. My detector, gloves, digger, and pinpointer are covered in it. No way I'll be able to use the screen in those sites. The screen is nice to have, but having a screen and a phone app would be ideal. Does anyone know anything about making phone apps? I'm thinking a phone app for a pinpointer would be very basic coding that would be child's play for an app developer.

Jeff's and Mark's post nailed it on all levels. SMF is "it" now, right along with waterproof. So, why Minelab didn't put the Vanquish guts into a Nox housing is rather head scratching. It could very well be that the Codan Execs, expected the low cost purchase of the X-Terra, be disappointed for the reasons stated, then upgrade. That's a classic marketing tactic, but it's also a profoundly risky marketing tactic that only works if the competition is weak. Minelab had little to no competition for many years, so price gouging would be the priority for any company in such a position. BUT, then arose Nokta.

I just found out that the Score models are indeed SMF!😯 I almost can't believe it considering both the U.S Nokta rep and Dilek didn't say SMF as they normally would. I also found out that: So, ya...the Vanquish line just died, and depending on how Nokta prices the Score 1 to compete against the X-Terra Pro, then quite possibly the X-Terra Pro will have a similar fate. Gotta love these detector wars! 😁