Digalicious

I hear ya. Last summer was my first time doing in water hunting. Total was 24 rings and 4 chains. 1 of the chains was silver, the rest were junkers, 3 of the rings were silver, and 3 gold. The remaining 18 rings were junkers (mostly Tungsten). Oh ya, got a few tiny earrings too, but meh. When I first started detecting 35 years ago, the majority of rings I found were gold. It's a total flip flop now. I can't blame the people who buy the TC rings though. If I wanted to buy a ring, that's what I would buy. The TC rings are very unique, and stunning. All for a tiny fraction of the cost of the real thing. Ditto for the gems. Silver coins are harder and harder to find, and most jewelry is now fake...but beautiful! Due to that and some other reasons, I'm thinking this awesome hobby is going down. Although, I'll never stop hunting until I'm physically unable to do so.

F350, Thank you for checking out the horseshoe meter. Have you (or any other D2 owners) hunted at a nail infested site with a very low iron bias, and started getting signals that gave a good nonferrous tone and a low nonferrous ID, but it turned out to be a ferrous object?

The thermal camera might be a really good idea. Heat the house up, then turn off the heat. As the house cools, a cache would retain the heat much longer than anything else in the walls, so it should be clearly visible with the thermal camera.

You think those are annoying in the school yards? Try the tot lots! I never used to hunt tot lots, but one year when the ground froze up, I was desperate to hunt. I spent a few hours hunting 6 different tot lots. I was digging everything nonferrous, and all I got was a few pieces of kid's junk jewelry, and massive amounts of pencil erasers and zipper parts. I didn't even think kids used pencils anymore! lol

Look on the bright side: You didn't yell out to him that you found one of his gold rings. That would have been awkward 🙂

Thanks for the replies guys 🙂 Every detector falses on iron occasionally, even with a high iron bias. Although the incidence of iron falsing increases dramatically with minimum iron bias, and I always run a minimum iron bias. With your D2's in a nail infested site, have you ever used a very low iron bias, and started getting signals that have gave a good nonferrous tone and a low nonferrous ID, but it turned out to be a ferrous object? If so, that's the situation I'm talking about in which the Legend's FE/CO meter will identify the target correctly as "ferrous" (but not if the signal strength is very weak). It's that scenario with nails, or even large iron, that I'm curious to find out if the D2's FE/CO meter does the same. I'm curious not just because it might be a good method to identify iron falsing, but also because I really want to know how in that scenario, the tone and ID can contradict the FE/CO meter.

Sizing the target is helpful, but what about the dreaded nails? I'm going to assume the fe/co meter on the legend, works exactly the same way that it does on the D2. More specifically, it shows the ferrous and nonferrous content, and works independently from any discrimination. When I'm in a nail infested site, I drop my iron bias to 0. I'm basically setting up my Legend so that I get the occasional iron false. That assures me that I'm getting the best iron unmasking possible. What happens then, is I'll start getting perfect nonferrous tones, and the ID will be a few digits below a nickel. Normally, I would dig that signal and expect a nonferrous target, yet in many of those instances, the fe/co meter clearly shows the target is ferrous, and contradicts the tone and ID. For some reason that I don't have a clue about, the fe/co meter has an ability to identify iron falsing in a way that tones and ID does not. Thing is, I've never seen or heard (even when asked), a Legend or D2 user, use the fe/co meter in that way.

In another thread, you said, "I've often seen the reverse where I will get a solid and loud 85, and dig a cannonball or an axe head"? In that scenario, I'm wondering if the FE/CO meter will clearly indicate that the target is ferrous. Granted, you probably want to dig those targets, but let's say the D2 is falsing on a nail. Would the D2's FE/CO meter indicate ferrous?

I don't own a D2, but I do own and use a Legend that also has a FE/CO meter. Anyway, I find that meter to be an excellent tool in identifying iron falsing. By iron falsing, I mean a ferrous target that produces a nonferrous TID and a good nonferrous tone, no matter how the coil is manipulated. When that happens with rusty iron, my FE/CO meter will show nothing on the CO side, and a few bars on the FE side. As such, it's very helpful in identifying true iron falsing. The FE/CO meter on the D2 should do the same thing. So, for you D2 owners: Do you use the FE/CO meter, and if so, how?

That's interesting. I haven't used a D2, but I've never seen or experienced a detector that didn't eventually ID a nonferrous target as ferrous, once it reached its detection limit. From what I've seen, a detector can't provide accurate TID with a very low signal strength, so it defaults to a ferrous TID and tone, although sometimes a ferrous TID with a nonferrous tone. I also asked you about the FE/CO meter on your D2, but please ignore that question for now. I'm curious if and how D2 owners use that meter, so I'll start a new thread on it 🙂

When that happens, does your FE/CO bar meter show some bars on the FE side, and no bars on the CO side? I'm also confused about the lifting the coil on a good nonferrous target, and the detector then ID's it as ferrous. I mean, every detector does that, because by lifting the coil, the target's signal strength is reduced to eventually reach minimum. All nonferrous objects will ID as ferrous when there is minimal signal strength on it.

In my tests, I didn't find any notable depth or speed difference between 1 and the default recovery speed of 5. All the difference was between the default of 5 and the maximum of 10, in which there is a gradual depth difference of about 4" from 5 to 10. I used to think a lot about recovery speed, but no more. I leave mine on 5 all the time now. Reason being, these newer SMF detectors are already extremely fast, even with the default recovery speed. In addition, the DD coils main detection field is a narrow strip from the toe to the heel of the coil, so that means the DD coils inherently have excellent separation. Put another way, going from 5 to 10 on the recovery speed, only provides marginal extra separation, but loses a lot of depth. To me, that significant depth loss isn't worth slightly better separation.

It will be interesting to see if they stick with the curved shaft. Also, are Garrett detectors just assembled in America? Meaning, are most of the actual parts made overseas?

I originally thought it would be priced near the Legend, not the 900. I changed my mind though, because with the cost of production in the US, pricing it near the Legend may not provide enough of a profit margin.

My guess for the new Garrett, is an SMF detector that will be priced around the same as the 900. The big question though, is will it have some new technology that notably outperforms all the other flagship SMF detectors? My bet on that, would be "no", but I hope I'm wrong. I'm also hoping they keep the landscape screen :).

Ya, that's one of the Holy Grails of metal detecting. With a detector like that, one could repeatedly hunt a beach, park, sports field, etc, and walk out with a handful of various gold jewelry. I'd pay an exorbitant amount of money for that detector. One hunter said he would remortgage his house to buy a detector that could distinguish between gold jewelry and aluminum 🙂 Too bad that distinguishing is not possible with an induction balance metal detector.

Well Jason, I'm glad you're trying to make it understandable for all, but I still don't understand what you're trying to say 🙂 For example, what does the control box have to do with EMI, given that the control box components can be easily, and effectively shielded? In addition, EMI is hitting the coil at random intervals, frequencies, and harmonics, so I don't see how any kind of timing or analysis can differentiate between that, and the random signals from metal in the ground. Granted, we know that EMI typically produces signals that are weaker than most coin sized objects in the ground, which is why reducing the sensitivity, effectively reduces EMI, along with losing good targets. We also know that most EMI produces TIDs that range from ferrous to just under zinc. Which is why discriminating out everything below zinc, when cherry picking high conductors, gives the illusion that EMI has been mitigated. I suspect that EMI and its relation to SMF has been a thorn in the side of engineers for a good 20 years, yet EMI is still a major problem. There's just no way to eliminate random EMI signals in SMF, without also eliminating a lot of good signals. In other words, true EMI mitigation, would be akin to "throwing out the baby with the bath water". 20 years of metal detector engineers working on the problem, seem to agree.

Jason, Multi core / thread processors are pretty cheap. Even fairly basic CPUs in computers have the computational "power" to easily run tasks, that are far more complex and resource hungry than what a metal detector needs. If all it takes to get much better performance out of a metal detector, is to add $200 to the price to get a "better" processor, wouldn't the engineers have done that by now? In addition, I'm not so sure about your EMI suggestion. I mean, the bottom line is that a metal detector doesn't know if the signal it receives is coming from EMI or metal in the ground. As such, there is no viable way to mitigate EMI in SMF modes, without losing performance in one way or another. Channel hopping with tiny 0.2 khz increments, isn't going to mitigate EMI, given that the EMI and its harmonics are wideband, and so is the receiver (SMF).

I doubt processing power is some sort of bottleneck or impediment to metal detector performance. I mean, even cheap processors can easily handle the meager computational requirements of a metal detector.

In the air, the LG28 gets about 2" more depth than the LG24 on a coin facing flat toward the coil. With an in ground test though, the depth difference on the flat coin is only about 1", which is likely caused by more ground signal with the larger coil. With the buried coin on edge, I found no depth difference between those coils. I suspect that's because the smaller elliptical coil has a denser electromagnetic field, that makes it significantly more sensitive to small targets such as coins on edge. Given that I doubt most coins are lying flat, the marginal depth difference only on flat lying coins, the much lighter weight of the LG24, much less EMI with the Lg24, and the superior unmasking / separation of the LG24, then I choose the LG24 over the LG28 every time.

That's a beauty ring Strick. There's nothing a woman finds more attractive than a guy swinging a metal detector. Even more so when they're hunting in the rain, and using one of these. A real chick magnet!

I hear ya. I love this forum due to it focusing on the more technical aspects of metal detecting. I use FMDF for more general discussions about metal detecting. Although there is also Geotech's forum, which is the epitome of "getting technical". I hope things work out ok with your situation 🙂

Captcha's can be a real PITA. Note that some may be case sensitive. The general rule, is that if the Captcha has lower and uppercase, then use lower and upper case. A good site will allow the user to choose a new Captcha, that hopefully doesn't look like a Rorschach test. Other things to check if you still can't get the Captcha, is to make sure the caps lock isn't on. If your answer to the Captcha is covered by asterisks, then check that the keys you're typing, are actually what is being registered. For example, try typing the Captcha in another program or browser search bar, etc. Anway, the first time I tried going to that site a couple of years ago, I saw that the formatting was horrendous, and everything seemed out of wack. It was obvious they were having some temporary problems with the forum...but alas, turns out that's the way it was supposed to be lol. Sheesh, the dial up BBS forums I used back in the 80's, were far better laid out and far more intuitive than that forum 🙂

Awww. What a lovely couple.