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Hard to describe the mixed feelings here. From initially seeing it come out of the sand and going.. "GOLD!"...then feeling the weight and being ehhhh, then getting to the car and not seeing hallmarks..but then saw no worn plating..but then it's very light...but also "well if it was brass, it's so cheap, why hollow it out?" "hmm looks pretty clean tho" . Ughh. Went straight to the scrap gold buyer with the XRF and was more than pleasantly surprised to hear that it was testing between 17 and 19ct gold!! Wow what a relief. I was hoping 9ct at best lol. Didn't sell, just holding it for now. The links are hollow and it's super worn, like hanging on by a thread of gold. Definitely for the scrap pile. I was soo thrown off by the weight. Being hollow links I thought maybe 13-12 grams, but not even close, 37.4 grams!! Although there has to be a little sand and water in the links so maybe closer to 35g. Still over 1oz and my heaviest gold to date. Up at 5:40am, left at 6am, got there 6:30am right at sunrise and left by 8am. Made roughly $2700AUD in scrap gold hehehe. Overall, terrible conditions in the water, super rough, 5m vis, very very strong current and big waves. I found a small patch and found a silver 2 shilling coin and a silver ring as well which was nice. Was hoping to snag a gold ring too in case the chain was fake but it was hard going after sunrise so I just left. Tides weren't ideal either. HH Edit: full video here: I added a gold ring in the clip as I found it at the same spot the next morning but didn't have enough footage to make a full video out of 😄

Today I got out for my first beach hunt with the AlgoForce 1500. I used a CoilTek Platypus Mono that I've had for many years. I recently repaired it because the wires at the top were frayed and we put new heat shrink on it. They are completely sealed so nothing can get inside the coil and if the leads break off the coil is toast. After the hunt I took off the coil cover and noticed some sand trapped inside. I need to put some silicon window seal inside the entire coil cover if I use it again. With all of that out of the way, I found trash ... lots of it and just 4 coins and a pin! All of the finds were a bit 'soft' compared to my other detectors. This is my first use other than with the Sadie in NZ. The target depths went up to 10 inches I'd say. Most was more shallow as I was digging everything in a well raked and groomed sand area. I tried a bit of wet sand but the conditions were not good for targets there. The threshold was stable but there were no targets. I was using Large Gold. The Algo will only let you choose a setting that is labeled gold but it will find other metals within those settings. I varied the sensitivity from 14-20. Most of the bottle caps came in as a 3 on the ID scale. The aluminum bits come in at 1. My 4Runner comes it at 99! haha I've got more to learn than I know just now about the target IDs and settings. (5/15 Edit: I was not in Pinpoint Mode. I could not get a target ID. The numbers I stated are ground numbers!)

If you have one too sell can you let me know

Love that gold in the scoop!!!

😆 I swing the M15 for 5 hours easy in the water. Sand hunting is a different story. I find myself taking short "pauses" after an hour or so resting the coil on the sand for a moment. Haven't tried the counter weight thing yet. My stork leg shaft being longer than the standard Manticore shaft further throws it out of balance. Another thing that helps in the water beyond buoyancy is that I tend to scrape the bottom a lot more than when I'm dry hunting since you don't have to worry about collecting sand on top of your coil. Really love covering the extra ground with it in the water. I feel like I'm covering twice the ground than the other hunters in the same amount of time. One step ahead of the competition!

Good day to everybody Here goes nothing been reading this forum for years yet i never sought advice until now never 2 old right. I have been reading through most of the black sand post but still undecided what to do.I mainly do underwater searching and some land also . To cut the story short im looking for a machine that will work in the most terrible black sands and hot rocks. for salt I use an excal 2, sov gt, or garret m2 none work or sometimes maybe 2 inches. Out of the water burning hot sand and black mineralized beaches just ruin my day nothing works not even pulse pinpointers machines go crazy. I dont know if sand is as bad as in hawaii but this whole place came out of the ocean by volcanic activity. So i was reading about 2 detectors one the atx working well on black sand and the other fisher impulse detector. On one hand i think the atx is old but seems to do well in this medium the coils are expensive and id imagine repairs also. And then we have the fisher impulse that looks flimsy with the thin cables but also has good feedback and is a newer machine and lighter. I had a third option but did not find any used dual tdi just to test and see if it will function and who will repair. will upload pics of sand for ref all my pacific coast is loaded wit black sand and volcanic rocks, atlantic side is a breeze location panama. I am open to any suggestions!

Ok, so this charger is giving me fits. May be because my metal detector barely loses a charge it doesn't pick it up, unsure. So - I plug the charger onto the back of my MineLabs 800 Equinox, no green light blinking. I have to play with it forever. Changed chargers once, it worked for about a week, now it will not charge again. I fiddle with it trying to get the green light to light up, it lights up sometimes but doesn't look like it is making a good connection. Any ideas? What I have done - Tried another charger - Tried to air duster clean the ports of both charger and detector - Tried different ports When I changed the charger wire itself, it worked like a charm with a new wire. I do mainly beach detecting so making sure no sand is in it. It's a relatively new one.

Just curious how many of you use pinpointers on the beach. I've been a beach hunter for over 40 years and have never used one on the beach. But nowadays I see a lot of hunters using them to pinpoint coins which I think is pretty silly. I can find any coin with my sand scoop no problem. I get it if you are hunting for micro gold on the dry but otherwise to me it's unnecessary. What do you folks think? Bill

Thanks TBB, I'm sure this is a hotbed of detecting later in the year, I'll find out soon. There aren't many fancy hotels along this strip so I picked the best. Even ran into a couple who bought a friend's boat, happens all the time here. Even at low tide there is just a steep slope to the surf, it would have been quite a beating to try and hunt the trough in the waves. I'm too old for that so I'll hunt the wet sand and the high and dry. There was nothing at all in the wet sand, but it was nice to see low mineralization, unlike Myrtle Beach. Switching to Tekkna really did the trick with its higher recovery speed and "magic number" discrimination. There is a version for the beach, but not having the salt and some other adjustments wouldn't make it a beach program for me, just a trashy spot program. 🤔

You'll find with some time with it, that in some places you'll just need for a smaller coil... Aniway the M8 isn't the all round coil, like it isn't every other one... Conditions dictates which one can suits better for the job... Eroded patches among rocks with multiple targets concentration and You need an M8... Thick new sand and large spaces to cover and You need the M15... Casually the M11 in the box can do almost the same thing being in the middle...As soon as You realise what You want, then will be the time to choose one.And one more, and one more again🤣... As an example, I'm beating my right hand to avoid buying the brand new M9... I don't even mentioned it among what's available for a reason....Still trying to understand when and where to obtain a payback for it.

Sand sharks needing repair.

Based purely on my experience with the Manticore, even if I own it since April 11th only, there are a couple of key things missing trough some settings details. Talking about the "Nasa Tom" setup, an upper limit of 4 and a lower limit of 0 seems to create this "special power" on the machine and following the mentioned setup that You can find somewhere here in the forum, maybe even allows to raise the sensitivity some points more... But, there's an undeniable reality about the place and and time factor to give the answer time by time.... I mean, if you try to go over the 25 level, the noise/signal ratio will be increasingly noticeable and at that point, your resistance to falsing can make all the difference. I never used this setup with discrimination for a good reason. In spite of thinner or larger ferrous limits what you don't want It is to make mute the machine. An identical ferrous volume like the general volume, creates a strong audio filter which helps to clearly define a good non ferrous tone, by an "iron dirty" one. You don't even need to look at the 2D panel unless You want to know the ID or possibly the shape due to the related trace. At this point let's talk about the audio theme...I hardly found the prospecting theme to be effective with the coil submerged in the water, I'm sorry, especially cause I LOVE true treshold whispers instead of a threshold interruption in favour of a signal... Step by step We are now landed to the most similar setup which (maybe) will give You this magic without to get crazy... Beach LC General vol.25 Ferrous volume 25 Upper F.L. 4 Lower F.L. (Do like You want, cause depth will come in a second) A l l M e t a l Red ID activated Gb tracking or manual (I don't complain) Separation speed up to 7 if You want to listen for a signal among falsing over the 26 sensitivity level...(I hope with the M8 otherwise don't mind this and 5 should be ok till 22) Audio theme Depth Treshold 0 Min pitch 40 Max pitch 60 Ferrous pitch 1 U.w. boost only if You're under the surface That's it.... And this might be not the perfect potion due to y o u r environment, black sand thickness, old iron patches, hot rocks and Emi out of the water... Hope this helps 🏴‍☠️

This afternoon I finally put on the 11" Commander MONO. It performed better than the other beach coils. I searched in generally the same type of dry sand beach. There are few coins. I suspect it has been gone over many times with VLFs (I've done some of that myself) and what is left it trash. There was one earring (magnetic) and one ring (also magnetic) with the assortment of other beach trash. Conditions aren't right for wet sand hunting. Waves and tides are small.

Yesterday it was time to go for a gold hunt. I took the AlgoForce 1500 with the Commander/11/DD and the Nugget Finder/8x6 Sadie. I also took my GPZ 7000 and new to me 10" Xcoil. Thursday I only used the Algo. The first half of the day was with the DD because it was on from beach hunting and the second half I put on the Sadie as I had done in New Zealand with Simon. The location was in Southern California at a spot that has been well hunted and 2/3rds of the time I get skunked! I can't depend on the area to give me gold. Only one area out of many has produced for me. I didn't start in that area with the Algo. I tried a couple of new 'hills' with a friend. We both got trash but no gold. We started about 8 and at mid day we moved to a third location and I put on the Sadie. I continued to find trash. I would go for long stretches of no trash working locations where I was told others found nuggets. No trash sometimes means that it has been thoroughly worked. This is an example of the trash the Algo will see. My hearing is bad so I use headphones, but my hunting partner used the Algo a bit and could also hear these targets while I was on the headphones, and he could of course hear with them on and on the speaker. After the third stop he had found 5 pieces with his 6000 in a different location than where I was hunting. At the end of the day we took his smallest piece and buried it to test the Algo. I tested it much like the video that is posted using the 4 different gold settings. It let me learn more of the Algo's capabilities. I did not make a video of that 15-minute session as it was impromptu and would be incomplete. I'm still a bit jet lagged from my New Zealand trip so we called it a day and I went to go sleep in my 4Runner. I was out from sundown to 4 AM and didn't get out detecting until 6:30 or so. It was a little cool and no wind, but it was warm compared to New Zealand. I had slept near that area where I had found gold in the past. It was time to give the Big Dog a walk about. The 10" round Xcoil was ready to work. My partner of the day before said 'that is a good combination' and you'll find gold with that. This was my first use and I agree. I've found many pieces of gold with its cousin a 15" CC coil but it can't fit around many of these little plants and bushes. The 10" is very well suited for it. I wish I had one for the Algo. We discovered that the 11" Commander DD (only operating on half according to Simon) has touch sensitivity at the point the wire enters the coil. It was not a problem on the beach but it was a problem when hitting the low little bushes in the desert. I'm in search of a bigger coil than the Sadie to make it see a bit deeper and because my coils are damaged in some ways. The Algos DNA is in looking for small nuggets and to put on a small nugget coil makes it a double whammy when patch hunting I'd say. Well, the Xcoil doesn't have that problem and it senses things way off the coil. When the coil is over a target it is very definitive and much easier to pinpoint than the 15CC. Here is the trash I was finding with it. Note some of the same trash but also note the tiny bbs. The ground feedback is better. Both detectors were not bothered by hot rocks. I had more hot rocks in New Zealand. (Don't tell Simon.) This posting is not meant to be a comparison posting. I'm giving the details so that it gives context to the next part of the day. I wanted to find some gold and I could feel that it was going to warm up and I wasn't going to last and I wanted to use my new coil so I did. About an hour into the morning hunt I had collected a bit of trash (some is lost) when I came upon a target that sounded like more trash, but it wasn't. I looked in the scoop and it was a nice nugget. It was only down a couple of inches in dry sand in a place where nuggets are supposed to be. It was at the bottom of a little swail/previous water drainage. This area had been thoroughly detected. How was this missed? One of my first thoughts was I wished I was using the Algo. I just wanted to find a nugget with it. Maybe it would be the first in the states? I don't know. There are probable a few others here. My next thought was ... I could 'act' like the Algo found it. Nah, that is not what happened. So, I did the next best thing. I hiked back half a mile to the 4Runner, got the Algo and reburied the nugget. Could the algo see it now? You betcha. I took a picture of the setting first. After I took this picture I used my phone to create a "What if I had been using the Algo video!" After I redetected this nugget I used the Algo to search the area. I found one piece of trash that is in a video. I didn't make a YouTube of that yet. If someone wants to see it let me know. Other than the piece of trash, everything was gone. I went back over the Algo area with the Xcoil and did not find anything 'missed' by the Algo. Shortly after I decided to leave even tho it was only 10 AM. I didn't want to deal with Friday traffic. It's not possible to get all of the experience in but this is an idea. It is a nice, rough nugget! I see Goofy in it.

I would have posted this on the Canadian metal detecting forum but for some reason when I post from my iPhone it always comes back with an SQL error, and I don't have access to my laptop at the moment, so I'm here hoping there is someone who sees this and either lives near me or knows someone who does. I’m moving and cannot take this detector with me. I’m aware that it is a collectors item and may one day be worth a lot, but it is what it is. I don't use it anymore and it just sits collecting dust. Hopefully, someone starting out can get some more mileage out of it. It doesn't look like much but it's a worthy detector, especially for coin shooting. I won't post a picture, most ppl know what the compadre looks like and I'm too tired from all the packing, anyways :). I used it for about 3 years, then got a Legend that telescopes down super small. I think there's a bunch of sand in the cam locks on the compadre because I can't get the shafts to telescope like on the Legend, which is why I can't take it with me. So, it's free. :hd2: I can't ship it anywhere, but if you're in the Kitchener Waterloo area and want it, dm me and I'll send you my address. Otherwise, and it will utterly kill me to do this, on moving day, I will have to set it out with the trash 😭. So, please someone take this off my hands. - Keith Edit: was able to quickly add a photo. Before Tesoro went out of business and their detectors started becoming sought after, I decided to seal the coil cover to the coil to prevent ingress of black sand to prevent falsing, etc. At the time, all I had on hand was Permatex Ultra Blue gasket maker, which is why the coil looks the way it does. On a side note, it has done its' job beautifully and the silicone has held up really well. oh, it's the 5 3/4 sniper coil, I have ctrl box cover, hand grip cover, and garrett 1/4" headphones for it as well. It really is a good detector....

It would be some trouble but if one could mix the 97% down to 5% for a “ standard” 6-7 bar FeO3 test medium, that would prove very useful for testing and be closer to real life “ bad dirt”. Any idea what a heavy Black Sand beach would be % wise?

My feelings exactly! I've strained my eyes looking in the sand for the tiniest bit of metal that the Manti responds to. I don't use a pinpointer on the beach but find it really useful when dirt hunting. I'm doing that type of hunting at the moment.

I totally can envision your results on the small nuggets because I have found just as small pieces of aluminum using the 11". It's really fascinating how small a piece this machine sniffs out. Most of them I never find because I don't use a pin pointer. Once I have the target in my hand buried in a small clump of sand, I go through it with my finger and most of the time, I don't find it even though it's in a small bit of sand. When I do find one, I'm like "What? That's it? Are you kidding me?". Ha! 😮

Oh you have no idea what I have seen out in the field. A guy detecting with wife in tow carrying a full size shovel, a classifier, a gold pan, and a spaghetti strainer. Not a plastic scoop anywhere to be found. They had been detecting for three years and had never found a nugget. They do, however, apparently eat a lot of spaghetti on their outings. 😆 Doc

Garrett Seahunter MK2 handles black sand well. We have similar conditions along with hot rocks in the Rockport and Gloucester beaches. Machine is heavy so any extensive beach combing I'd recommend the hip mount that is included. Stock coil isn't super deep but will do much better than a vlf with similar coil size. I usually use the 10x14 for that. Downside is you can get a little falsing on swing with the hip mount. Can be emi sensitive. I can hear chatter when people put their wifi alarms on even a few hundred feet away from the houses. Larger coil seems a little floaty in the surf Larger coil not that sensitive to small jewelry Can't discriminate out iron but bottle caps and pieces of lobster traps sound awesome!

I made this target ID and audio ID video comparison a little over a year ago. I was on crutches so my swing technique kind of sucks for all three detectors. There are 5 targets. A surface US nickel, a 4" deep US nickel that I put into a removable sleeve, a 6" deep well established US nickel, a US clad quarter on the surface and a 6" deep well established US clad quarter. XP ORX, Garrett APEX and Nokta Legend try to detect these targets accurately. It’s a roughly 4 minute video. Apex starts at 1 minute 20 seconds. All three detectors detect the surface US nickel and the surface US clad quarter accurately. After that the severe up averaging and target responses tending towards iron are pretty obvious. To reiterate, the deepest targets used are a well established 6" US nickel under the white label to the left and a 6" deep well established US clad quarter under the white label to the right. The test area is moderate to highly iron mineralized dirt that I went through carefully to a depth of 12" about 5 years ago and removed any target that could be picked up by a handheld pinpointer. The sandstone flagstones protect the area from being contaminated and are local and do not have any detectable targets within them just rust colored sand from the Fountain Formation like you see at Red Rocks Amphitheater.

The coil I used today was the Commander/11/DD. All I can say is WHAT A DIFFERENCE! This coil Bangs on the targets. The old, maybe damaged CoilTek coil made everything soft. I felt like I had to 'baby' the combo. You don't need to baby the DD. Swing away at normal beach speed and catch a little piece of the target and zero in. Once again I was in Large Gold, dry sand. This time was near yesterday but some volley ball. I dug deeper targets. The pliers were over 12" and I don't know why no one had dug them before. There was an extra good thing about this session. I forgot my headphones. I used the onboard audio (maxed at 9) but I could hear it. I would be able to wet sand hunt without headphones but in the dry was good and if I was in a park it would give me the choice of phones or no phones. This Commander coil came with my GPX 5000 from Chris Gholson in 2010. I didn't know what I was doing when I got it (still don't much of the time) but I was told the DD was not a coil to use much. I used it some looking for gold but I have to say that today it sounded better on targets than any time in memory. I'm excited about using the Algo today. Yesterday I had my doubts. The screws you could hear the breaking signal with the edges. The nickel sounded 'round' and the little wires were hard to get as they were dropping through my 1/4" basket. That is a good problem as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps another setting or sensitivity (I stayed on 20 for the hour I was out) would let me ignore the tiny stuff. It is still a bit of a puzzel the ID number. I can't ID iron vs other metal yet. (5/15 Edit: I was not in Pinpoint Mode. I could not get a target ID. The numbers I stated are ground numbers!) This edit should be red but it doesn't show up. I need to look up my 11" Mono and the 8" (which may have an issue based upon Lunk's opinion about 5 years ago) and try them out. Maybe I'll look online or drop by a shop or two as I travel around the next couple of months in West with my Xcoils and Algo.

Addressing a couple of things brought up here. In mild to medium ground in ATHC zinc pennies are pretty dang solid. 59-60 average. I've hunted some of the mildest ground you could possibly hunt and turning up the sensitivity really has not helped on detecting depth. Hunting silver in basically very fine sand which grounds balances in the single digits I don't see any noticeable depth increases past about 24 to 35.

I've got one of the first ones and have massive time on it and have no idea what your talking about regarding calling good things iron ,i hunt ocean beaches with the Reaper coil and it's as deep as anything unless one of those few times when the sand is so black all multifreqs suck and you have to go pi

At times of the year, I really struggle with Black Sand in my location. This year was no different. I have done more comprehensive testing on updated machines. On many days I hunted half days on each machine so I could tell differences in same conditions. [thanks to my wife delivering machines] I want to outline a few general recommendations: 1. Slow Down, 2. Use Tracking GB, 3. Sensitivity set so you hear just slight Black Sand interference. 4. Look at your fringe targets with a couple more points of sensitivity. 5. Don't trust your machine is working well with moving water, wave wash. [do checks]. D2> So much to unpack here. First, the D2 is a tale of two machines. One [the devil] in Black Sand, the other, [the angel] in non-Black Sand. The positives> Light to hunt. Fair separation of iron from non-ferrous. Good separation of targets. Good at noise canceling. The negatives. Noisy. The Menu. Clipped target sounds at depth for non-ferrous. Moving water takes D2 out at any depth. Must look at many targets from Mutiple directions[time consuming] . Equinox 800> Not much to unpack. The Positives> Better Black Sand handling. The Menu. Good separation but under the D2. GOOD sounding targets [not clipped]. MUCH better target sounds at depth. Better and faster deciding iron from non-ferrous. Works with moving water unless target is deep. The Negatives> Lousy noise cancel. Heavier to hunt with. Waterproof issues. Sometimes loss of targets in the hole. Hunting summary> For about a week I hunted the D2 exclusively, I really wanted to get a gold chain hunting in Beach Sensitive [which I think is better than Equinox Beach 2.] [no gold chain] Then had the Equinox out a few times. Then updated the D2, and started hunting both machines daily. Every day I started with the D2 and switched to the Equinox. There was not ONE DAY that I wanted the D2 to remain with me. I find the D2 ear exhausting, both in how it handles Black Sand and in deciphering targets. The clipped and bite-y sounding nonferrous targets at depth are a real PIA. The range of pull-tab numbers are ridiculous. Tough to make headway with the interrogation needed on some targets. Not much difference in hunting with a max frequency of 24 or 40. Maybe 1-point sensitivity lower with 40. ANY moving water would completely wipeout the detection field of the D2 in both Beach and Beach sensitive. At best I could only pull a 91-sensitivity setting, but most detecting was done at 87-89. The Equinox> So MUCH better on handling Black Sand. Most hunting was done at 21 even with water contact. Detection field works in moving water but not on targets of depth. With the Horseshoe mode on telling the difference between Ferrous and nonferrous is MUCH easier and quicker. The unmistakable double ring of iron is clear and smooth. Target investigation time is cut down. I don't think there is a winner in the small bit category. Both machines seem to find small bits well. While I did not do any head-to-head burying of targets. Both machines seem to have their moments of man that was shallower than I thought and also the holy crap, that was deep moment. NOT trying to make this a one is better than another, your conditions may provide different results. If you have compared other machines to the ones I have PLEASE post! I will answer all questions of settings or conditions or ??? In the picture: ALL of the larger jewelry was found with the Equinox yesterday. Only a few small bits with the D2. This has been a bit of a trend. I give the nod to the Equinox's ability to tell ferrous from non-ferrous at depth. Most of this jewelry was deep with negative numbers but had clean one beep hits. My D2 will be in the closet until the black sand subsides.