Digalicious

Once I get the LG24 9.5x6, I won't be using the 11" ever again. I'm not sure right now if I'll even use the 6" again, but most likely not. The LG24 will get about the same depth as the 11", plus it's lighter, significantly better at unmasking and separation, and less susceptible to EMI and ground noise.

It looks like this UK distributor got at least the LG24, but sold out. Nokta Legend (LG24) 9.5"x6" Search Coil (lpmetaldetecting.com) EDIT: LG30 says sold out as well.

Yes, according to Dilek on Dec 16th, the new coils were supposed to start shipping "next week". That could very well mean shipping on Dec 23th. I don't know if they have shipped yet, or if the European distributers have them yet, but for those in the U.S., with distance and Christmas shipping bottle necks, I'm thinking the U.S. distributers won't have them until the first week of January. Again, if they have been shipped 🙂

Steve, Your paragraphs explaining that you don't know how to say things succinctly, was very succinct 🙂

Well that's interesting. Do you know if it wasn't fixed due to the issue being unfixable, the manufacturer unwilling, the manufacturer concluding it wasn't a problem, or something else?

Perhaps, but then again, detectors have become so complex, and hunting grounds so varied, that I think it would be impossible for any MD company to account for all contingencies. The saving grace is that these newer detectors are fixable via firmware updates 🙂

If I remember correctly, the iron was ID'ing as high silver. Similar to iron wrap around.

In a video that was recently posted about comparing in the ground signals between the D2 and Manti, Jimmy was given the suggestion to lower the sensitivity to stop the iron falsing. He reduced it 50% but the Manti still showed silver on 4 iron targets that the D2 correctly showed as iron. According to the D2 guy (Carson?), the site doesn't even have much ferrous trash. I don't think it's a big deal though. All detectors have bugs that need to be worked out. I'm sure Minelab will soon release an update to address this issue.

Thanks Geotech. Why wasn't there an emphasis on recovery speed at that time? I mean, for typical land hunters in trashy sites, I would think that high recovery and it's superior unmasking / separation, would have been a priority back then, as it is now. With that said, Chase already asked you the other question I was going to ask you 🙂

If a site was pounded with a CTX and/or Etrac, then due to their low recovery speeds, could you not use one of the newer SMF detectors and find a lot more coins due to the superior unmasking performance?

Thank you for the replies so far. Tom, When you said "going slow and really working you can find targets hiding with bbs, fbs but it's a slower process for sure", by "working" do you mean having to circle the target(s)?

Hello. It's my understanding that BBS and FBS have slow recovery, and therefore are not ideal in trashy sites compared to the newer detectors. As such, I have a couple of questions regarding that. 1) Does FBS and BBS have slow recovery due to the more robust frequency transmitting and receiving, or is it because they have slow processors compared to modern detectors? Or is it a combination of both? 2) With BBS or FBS, could a user match the separation performance of modern detectors by slowing their swing speed to a crawl? Thanks for reading this. I'm looking forward to the replies 🙂

That was a nice catch Phrunt. Especially because if I remember correctly, the Manti's specs say the lowest frequency is 4 khz. That high conductor mode seems like it will be even lower than the Nox's Park 1, and the Legend's Park M1. Perhaps similar to the Legend's MW SMF mode which is weighted lower than its Park M1 mode, and lower than the Nox's Park 1. More specifically, the Legend's MW mode is 4 khz and 10 khz, but weighted heavily toward 4 khz.

These types of tests can be very misleading. Not so much because of what IS shown and said, but rather misleading because of what ISN'T shown and said. For example, just because a setting on one detector is set at a particular number, it doesn't mean that same number on another detector has the same characteristics. Iron bias, frequency weighting, and sensitivity are examples of that. Any of those can seriously skew the results of these types of tests. Also, in these nail tests, and due to how a DD coil works, it's easy to make one detector fail, and another detector pass, simply by ever so slightly moving the nails closer together or further apart. Then there is the nail / gold coin test that allegedly shows the D2 hitting the coin (but with poor ID on the gold coin), yet the Manti and 900 don't hit the coin at all. I fully suspect that this is due to user error, or something he is overlooking. He then makes absolute statements about a non absolute test, and claims the D2 is "King" over the Manti and 900. There's just way too many variables involved to claim an absolute truth in these tests. Well anyway, here's a video of the Legend with the nails / gold coin test. The one nail is even longer than the one Calabash uses in his test. The Legend is hitting the gold coin pretty good, but even more importantly, it gives a proper ID on the gold coin. Plus, I think he would have gotten even better results if that pile of nails wasn't right in front of the test targets lol. EDIT: On second thought, in Calabash's video, the D2 is showing a ferrous ID on the gold coin. Is that because of that weird D2 disc / ID thing, or is the D2 not actually hitting the gold coin, but rather showing an ID of 7 for the nail(s)? Looks more like the disc / ID issue.

I don't think any manufacturer specifies the exact frequencies, let alone the transmit power of each frequency. Although the more frequencies transmitted, along with maximum power for each frequency, would mean either much less battery life, or a big heavy battery. Is that why FBS and BBS detectors have large heavy batteries? The lowest frequency SMF on the Legend is Beach Mode's MW. That's the SMF mode that is supposed to be duplicated for a Park SMF mode.

D, Sorry, but I only received the new SMF mode update, not the full update. I don't know much about the threshold, other than there is an individual threshold volume update on Nokta's site. I'm not aware of issues when ground balancing on highly mineralized ground. I honestly don't recall anyone mentioning such a issue, other than yourself. Were there others?

Once winter ends for me, I plan on trying something similar. I thought about it a while ago, but never tried it. Given what Strick posted, and how you plotted Strick's info, gave me even more incentive to try it. More specifically, I plan on going into a trashy park and just digging the ID's between nonferrous (or slightly above) and square pulltabs.

To elaborate on the above: It was found that when using frequencies of around 10 khz or above, many coins that are masked by nonferrous trash, will be dragged down the point of giving an ID below nickels. This was shown to be true on the Legend's Park M1 and the Nox's Park 1 (those are the lowest weighted SMF land modes on each detector). It seems to be all about the SMF frequency weighting, so I fully suspect it would be true for all detectors. The Legend's Beach Mode MW is the combined 4 khz and 10 khz, but weighted toward 4 khz. It was found that MW was giving a very high conductor ID on coins masked by nonferrous trash, but M1 was giving a below nickel ID on a lot of those same masked coins. How better will the new SMF mode be compared to M1 when unmasking in nonferrous trash? In my field tests at 4 city parks filled with foil and pull tabs, about 30% to 40% better. More specifically, around 30% to 40% of nonferrous coins that gave a high ID in MW, gave an ID below nickel in Park M1, and would have been missed. There is always a give and take when it comes to detectors though. If a detector is made to do one thing exceptionally well, then it typically suffers in another area. This will be true of the new SMF mode as well. The benefit of the new SMF will be phenomenal coin unmasking, but due to such a low weighted SMF, some bottle caps will give a much higher than normal ID. Also, the last I heard from Dilek, was that the new SMF mode will not be M4, but rather a modified M3. Although Nokta may have changed their mind on that. BTW- I'm practically drooling for that LG24 9.5x6 coil 😁

M1 includes 15 khz. The new SMF will be 4 khz and 10 khz, but weighted toward 4 khz. It's getting the frequency below around 10 khz that allows the much better coin ID's on many coins that are masked by nonferrous trash.

DSMITH, I, and a few others have already tested it. I have it on my Legend right now.

The new update is apparently going to contain a modified version of Park Mode's M3, or a new M4 for Park Mode. The new SMF mode, will be weighted lower than Park's M1, meaning it will ID a lot of nonferrous masked coins, even better than M1.

Yes Jeff, many of the videos are in backyards, but just as many, if not more so, are in parks, playgrounds, sports fields, etc. Generally, urban sites. In the countless videos I've seen, I've yet to see a video in all those urban sites, in which noise cancelling reduced the noise. Nor have I experienced that in any of my urban sites.

Pretty much everything JCR said. Run the main IF control as low as you can tolerate. By "tolerate", I mean as low as you can go without getting too much iron falsing. Be sure to keep rechecking the hole and plug. I typically run my IF at 2-4 and leave the fine setting at mid level 3. EDIT: Here's a short video to show what the IF does: New Nokta Makro Legend 1.09 Update - Iron Filter and Pitch Audio Testing. - YouTube

Are you familiar with how the iron bias (IF) control works, and how to use it to get even better iron unmasking?

So I guess I was on the right track when I mentioned that: I'm thinking SMF noise cancelling only works under a rare emi situation in which the emi is only at one particular frequency (or something along those lines) That would also explain why the emi noise reduction feature in SMF mode, typically has little to no effect. Regarding coil shielding: To block noise, doesn't the shielding have to be made of metal? If so, wouldn't that seriously decrease performance? Or, can coil shielding be a non-metalic shield on top of the coil that doesn't affect the field being emitted from the bottom of the coil?