GB_Amateur

Personally, a 6" (nominal) concentric, 4-pin 'delta'. My goals for the Vaquero are dense trash, both heavy small iron (nails) and heavy small aluminum (pulltabs). I'm quite happy with the ML Equinox (11" DD coil especially) for larger, open areas. Maybe the Eqx 6" DD (which I already have) will do as well, but there sure are quite a few people who swear by concentrics, particularly small ones for dense trash. I have some places loaded with pulltabs that I'm pretty sure are hiding coins. I'm still (playing Don Quixote?) in search of the 'Holy Grail' combo that will find those old coins without me having to dig out the thousands (literally) of pulltabs. I've found enough old coins in those spots to tell me that no detectorist who has hunted these sites has yet done what I'd like to do.

As a sidelight (not relevent to this thread title...), I'm curious to hear your experience with those as you accumulate them. In the 'catch-all brand detector' subforum, of course.

In other words, you're a scientist. No reason to be apologetic there, IMO. Nice writeup, written like..., a scientist would.

For those of us whose brains are stuck in the 'old' system of measure, that's 2 3/4 lb or 2 lb, 12 oz. Is it mainly the balance (toe heaviness, relatively speaking) of the XP's that's the culprit? I have similar experience contrasting my Fisher F75 and tiny (~4"x6" concentric) coil from my ML Eqx w/11" stock coil. I think (even with the factory shaft) the Eqx is a bit lighter but the F75 doesn't bother my back after hours of hunting whereas the Eqx often does. I haven't hunted enough recently with the larger coils on the F75 to make a statement there, but its reputation as possibly the best balanced detector ever made (not trying to start a brand loyalty war here...) was based upon a larger coil than the tiny one I use in heavy trash.

Wow, it's a small world. I once had a (not so serious) hypothesis that my brain only had room for about 200 faces and once I filled it up, every new person I met looked like one of the 200. Another datapoint in the confirmation category now since that 'Brian' (not his real name 😕) guy sure looks like someone I met at one of your (Gerry, Lunk, and friends) field training classes. And, what a coincidence, his name was 'Brian'! In fact, another rare coincidence, he looks like a poster here, and that guy is from South Dakota. Another nice writeup, Gerry. My only criticism (call it a jab/needle) is that I don't feel too sorry for you having to drive 1000 miles for gold. I drove twice that far to take your class (and, full disclosure, it was worth it).

Well, if he can find a coil somewhere....

Glad you noticed I was referring to you, Lunk. I could have just said it directly, but there can be disadvantages to doing that. As always your perspective is valued here, so I am (and many others are) pleased you chimed in.

Now I know why this site doesn't have a thumbs down end-of-post comment emoji. Sure coulda used one. Oh, but I guess there is the kind you can put in your own post. Here's to you and your Stinkin' Zincolns: 👎

My experience with undetected old homesites is that they run the full spectrum, from those with very few old coins to a couple with dozens, and everything in between. If I could only detect in one small area I would go for the clotheline every time. But I even got skunked under one of those (but only once). Excellent finds! Yours is one of the threads I just found -- still getting caught up with my reading. Savor that Walking Liberty Half!

With two coils? (I'm assuming the two coils are the 5"x10" conc. and the 7"x11" DD. I don't think W.J. specified....)

You can get a new Patriot for $400 (might be free shipping if you buy direct from Teknetics). Figure the second coil is worth (used) in the range of $50 to $75. So how much should you discount to cover the fact that there is no warranty plus some wear-and-tear (8.5 out of 10)? IMO, as long as you don't pay much (extra) for shipping, $300 sounds like a decent/fair deal. $350 is pushing past, IMO. I'm sure others here can give their opinions. I follow Ebay a lot but there are other sites (and even local clubs) where metal detectors are bought and sold. The best deals often come from those transactions. My numbers only reflect what I see on Ebay.

Steve's spent a lot of time writing up the highlights of most detectors made in the last 20 years. He also has more detailed reviews which are linked in the overview database. If you haven't read the writeups on the two detectors in question, I suggest it. One significant difference between the F5 and F70 is frequency of operation: 7.69 kHz for the F5 and 13 kHz for the F70. That puts the F5 in the coin-detecting sweetspot (especially silver alloyed coins and copper alloyed coins, not so much for lower conductive coins) whereas the F70 is considered "general purpose", meaning it's good for finding coins but also other detecting such as natural gold and cache hunting. "General purpose" means it's a jack-of-all-trades but at each of those many applications, a specialty detector will usually beat it at a particular application. BTW, if you end up deciding to buy a new Fisher F70, your money is better utilized getting the Teknetics Patriot, which is the same detector except for the paint job and the coil (7"x11" DD on the Patriot; 5"x10" concentric on the F70). If buying used, neither of these (AFAIK) has a transferable warranty so except for the coil supplied (and of course the condition), there's no difference in value.

It might not be long before it's just you and (maybe) the dog, and papers filing for divorce. When this question gets asked, the first reply is to give it a try with minimal risk before making such an irreversible decision. There are people here better qualified to answer than I, including at least one of the top experts at detecting for gold in the USA who spends half his year doing so, and investing way more than 4 hours per day. Why not full time? You can guess the answer. And note I said "one of the top..." meaning he's spent years improving his skills to get to where he is today. It's a fun hobby but a trying job, at best.

DoD recommended when cherry picking silver, to set the discrimination high (he did say above nickels). What about discriminating out small aluminum when hunting in dense aluminum trash such as around picnic tables where there are oodles of pulltabs (old style and new style)? Does this kind of trashy area give the Tesoro+concentric an advantage over a ML Eqx 800 or similar modern digital detector? (I'm willing to miss the jewelry -- my typical old coin detecting concession.)

You and dog must have stock in Tesoro. Oh, wait,.... I missed a used 5.75" concentric on Ebay a couple weeks ago (someone took the Buy-it-now price on an auction lot). There used to be quite a few out there, it seemed, but the source has dried up. SeriousDetecting doesn't have them anymore. I do have the 8"x9" conc. Maybe I need to give that another chance.

I'm not real familiar with stock coils on most Tesoros. Is that a concentric you have on it, or a DD? Will you be able to swap coils between the Compadre and the Silver umax? I do know there are 4 pin ('delta') and 5 pin ('epsilon') coil versions and I'm sure other early versions which aren't compatible with either of those standards.

I assume you're referring to me.... I didn't realize I was so important as to generate my own search party. Now you're going to give me a big head. Thanks, guys. I've been slow to post since starting to read a day or two after it came back up. And I'm getting pretty far behind in my reading, too. Personally I didn't mind the site being down for a couple weeks plus, just so I could focus on other things. (I can't seem to force myself away from the site when its up -- kind of addicting.) I have only detected a couple times since getting back from my western trip at the end of June. Between the rain, the heat+humidity, and those things causing the grass to grow before my eyes, the detecting conditions haven't been great. But worse is that I don't have a good site to hunt at the moment like I did last year. I have a potentially promising park but I've gotten mixed messages as to how old it is. I've found that detecting when I'm not fired up to do so isn't the best use of my time, nor is it good for my detecting psyche. Regarding numismatics, I broke down and bought the latest (2022, 75th Anniversary edition) Guidebook of US Coins (aka 'Redbook'). It's the sixth different edition in my collection, sixth I've bought myself (1965 was my first, likely from 12th birthday $), but it's been 21 years since I got my last one. It arrived 5 hours ago so some good bedtime reading tonight! Sorry I haven't commented on anybody's finds. I'll get back in high gear over the next few days.

They didn't start out that way. The new Gold Bug family and the T2 & F75 were developed after Tom Walsh bought and merged the three orignal companies. I have a different hypothesis. First Texas appeared to have tried to go in a couple directions: keep the legacy lines for entry-level and mid-level customers and swing for the fences to develop high-end products for the aficianados. There doesn't appear to have been any middle ground (such as upgrading the inards of the existing products as Jeff talks about). Remember the CZX (or whatever it was called)? They had (past tense, is it still present tense?) what appeared to be a load of experienced engineers to carry this plan out. For some reason (which we'll probably never know, even if they do) that high-end path ran off the rails. And what we have is the result. Will they get the train back on the track before it's too late?? IMO they need more than a crack water PI. It's going to be tough to compete with Minelab in the dry-land PI space. Even a low-priced unit will likely just spur ML to lower the price on one or more of its products. Wasn't that what they did with the Vanquish (aka: low end Equinox) when it became clear that Garrett was going to produce an affordable, modern simultaneous multi-frequency IB/VLF?

My answer: not very many, and way fewer today. You're old-school, Mike. (I consider that a compliment, BTW.) I find it interesting when people like F350platinum talk about brick-and-mortar specialized dealers. They are dying faster than the Brood-X cicadas (gone now) which came out of the ground here in the mid-Eastern USA earlier this summer. As an example, I was in Colorado in June, looking forward to visiting Gold'N Detectors in Golden (just up the foothills from Denver) which had supplied me in the past with small, hard-to-get items such as books (they had a huge collection to browse) and coil covers, literally many shelves of different brands and sizes. I walked in the door to find an antiseptic room, open in the middle (except for the money-handling station) and a few detectors hung on the walls. The previous owner had died and the owner before her had been running the store, but he was past retirement age.... Apparently the heirs sold it to a nearby (Colorado Springs) company that does most of their business online. I don't mean this mention to be a diss of that company but it ain't what it used to be and it sure wasn't anything I'm interested in. The person behind the desk was nice enough but I didn't get the impression he knew a lot about detectors. He seemed to realize quickly (probably because I was the 10 thousandth person to come in with that look on his/her face) that he wasn't going to make a sale. He made a couple suggestions which didn't help, not surprlsingly. Here's a question to think about: how long has Walmart had detectors on shelves? In the "old days" you had to either buy in a specialized store (or maybe a coin shop) or through mail order. We also had magazines that did reviews and had articles showing detectorists finding valuables with a particular detector -- silent advertising. I'm glad we still have Gerry, and he likes to talk (and give useful advice) over the phone, but how many Gerrys are out there? It's a long way from Indiana to Idaho, even if they're close to each other in my Rand McNally road atlas (another product on life-support?). First Texas has taken advantage of the changing sales climate. They aren't alone in that, for sure. I think kac asked a good question and I'm pretty sure we know the answer -- a huge percentage of detector sales (I'm tossing in my entry at 90%) are first time buyers, not readers of niche forums. If you want a profit you'd better be selling where those people are buying. While I'm on my soapbox, I'll throw out one more issue. This morning our tree expert came around to give us advice on a dying tree. He mentioned that he used to have 11 employees, he'd like to have 7, but all he has is 4 because he can't find people who can do the work. Most hires (which he tries hard to vet) either aren't reliable or can't handle the hard work. The USA has evolved into chair-sitters in more ways than one. Engineers? Well, they are a special class of chair-sitter but engineering takes hard work, lots of education and training, the right attitude, etc. I seem to recall First Texas Engineering Director Carl Moreland posting here that there's always an open chair there awaiting a good detector engineer. Criticizing companies from a distance seems to be open season here, and has been for as long as I've been a member. (Full discosure -- I'm a participant.) But one thing is true in 99.9% of those posts -- we don't really know what is going on inside these companies, and it might not be a fact that they are simply getting fat and lazy resting on their laurels as we often conclude.

What, the truck stop didn't have snake guards to match those slippers? Well done turning lemons into lemonade. I suspect most "in your shoes" would have just figured it wasn't their day and high-tailed it home.

Nice! It's seen some use (and slight damage) but it appears you found it before major corrosion set it. Maybe not what you were looking for (well, not a coin or piece of jewelry, anyway) but still has at least utilitarian value.

Is the pocket knife a Case?

Ah, so another member here whose site name I recognize but hadn't put the face with the name until now. Good having discussions at dinner with you and your wife and I enjoyed the interactions when you came out on Saturday to the GT we were camped at and detecting. I hope we meet up again at another hunt (and that goes for all the others, too).

I don't know that I can help, but one thing I learned the hard way -- make sure your ears are completely inside the muffs, not partially under them. Also, if you wear eyeglasses (like I do) figure a solution which doesn't have the eyeglass arms uncomfortably trapped and forced into your head. A little adjustment can go a long way. But not all headphones fit equally well on everyone. You may just be in a situation where you are incompatible with those Gray Ghosts. I wouldn't conclude that until you've delved deeper (as you are doing), though.

How far above the coins are you positioning/swinging the coil? How far apart are the coins when you do these tests? Do you have all dTID channels accepted or are your discriminating against the lowest (iron) channels? (Annoyingly, IMO, when initially turned on the ML Equinox defaults to discrimination settings rather than all channels accepted -- what Minelab refer to as 'all-metal'. They could make everyone happy and have it remember which way it was set when last turned off.... The 'horseshoe' button toggles between notched out and wide open.) I would expect the 90+% iron composition of all denominations below $1 to ID in the iron range, but I've not experienced detecting modern Canadian coins, only the historic versions. From a detectorist's viewpoint it's disappointing that governments contribute to the amount of (masking) iron trash in the ground, as if we don't already have enough of that to deal with.