What Are Your Plans With All These New Great Metal Detector Choices?

[blackjack]

Sorry old and frail and failing eye sight, the end of my first post should be 12oz. in two weeks, not !2 oz. in two weeks, pedantic as well I guess.

[mn90403]

57 minutes ago, blackjack said:

Sorry old and frail and failing eye sight, the end of my first post should be 12oz. in two weeks, not !2 oz. in two weeks, pedantic as well I guess.

Blackjack,

You can edit your old post.

Great story about improved technology.  Maybe some of it was 'missed' nuggets and some was 'unseen' nuggets.  Once you hear a new sound and it is gold then a new game is on.

[blackjack]

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

Blackjack,

You can edit your old post.

Great story about improved technology.  Maybe some of it was 'missed' nuggets and some was 'unseen' nuggets.  Once you hear a new sound and it is gold then a new game is on.

You raise a very good point despite the advances in technology, the fact that locations just keep throwing up gold, must mean that gold is 'missed' on a regular basis. 

[Dick Stout]

9 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Well, well done.  And to think that it is only 5 years old!

Where in the SW are you now?

Texas....

[phrunt]

It's lucky we all don't follow that or manufacturers would have no reason to innovate, no reason to release new detectors and we'd be all stuck using old ones even if we didn't want to as without those of us that keep buying the new ones they could possibly go out of business or just become First Texas releasing the same detectors over and over again with new paint jobs and then that mindset would be 100% correct.  There is no point buying a new detector if you learn your old one as it's the same as last years model but this year it comes out in pink camo and called a Super Deluxe Edition 🙂  A lot of buyers especially at the higher end of the market are not first time buyers and keep buying the new models to benefit from the enhancements.

Would I do as well with my GPX 4500 as I can do with my GPZ 6000 if I knew the 4500 back the front? No.  It's simply not as sensitive as the newer detector and will miss a lot of the gold the GPX 6000 will find easily.

While I agree you'll do a lot better if you know your detector inside out, detectors have limitations and gradually newer models are breaking those barriers, the new technology does improve detection.

[GB_Amateur]

39 minutes ago, phrunt said:

While I agree you'll do a lot better if you know your detector inside out, detectors have limitations and gradually newer models are breaking those barriers, the new technology does improve detection.

Assuming this in in response to Dick Stout's blog post, I have a feeling you guys are in agreement.

What bugs me (it's worse on YouTube than here, but still happens here) is when someone gets a new detector, takes it back to a site s/he has previously detected, and finds some good targets -- THEN associates that result completely to the new detector.  I often go back to not only the same site with the same detector, coil, and settings but go over the exact same ground (well, 'exact' isn't quite true... please see the following) and find a good target.  So, can I credit the detector for finding it this time but missing it last time?  Nope.  Although there are exceptions, by far the most likely (Occam's Razor) explanation in my case is that I simply never got my coil over that target previously, even if I think I had already covered that ground.

I wish there were a 'service' that would show detectorists after-the-fact exactly where the coil covered and didn't.  IMO, an extremely large percentage of detectorists wouldn't have thought s/he had missed so much.  It's kinda like the answers to that standard question "are you an above average or below average driver?"  The accumulated answers will be far more 'above' than 'below'.  😁  There's an entire field of study called "behavioral economics" that exposes this kind of overconfidence.

But even if the entire coil covered the ground completely, the deepest detectable targets are only responsive if the center of the coil is over them.

When I got the Coiltek 5"x10" Nox coil for the ML Equinox 800 I went to a site (previously hunted, but not the part where I did the test) and three colored flags to mark finds -- yellow for those I thought were ferrous, red for non-ferrous, and orange for 'unsure'.  Then I went back to those tagged locations with the 11", for each flagged target making an overall judgement and subsequently digging to see which (when they disagreed) was more accurate.  I wasn't trying to compare which was more sensitive but rather which gave the more accurate TID.  (You can do this for comparing sensitivity but you must, IMO, divide the area in two and give each detector/coil the chance to be first.  Most here know why -- it's a lot easier to pick up a target if you already know it's there.)  This isn't the perfect experiment by any means.  The biggest potential flaw when comparing two different detectors (as opposed to same detector with different coils) is some combination of sub-optimal settings and simply asymetric knowledge of the two competing detectors -- i.e. one you know like the back of your hand and the other you just acquired.  But there are other weaknesses as well and the better those are known the better chances of getting a good answer.  Finally, allowing "can't really tell" has to be among the possibility of results!

[phrunt]

I have no doubt there is a placebo effect when people get new detectors, I hate the term "found stuff in hunted out ground".  I've detected spots a lot, so have others better than me and yet I can still go there are scratch out a nugget or two on the exact same ground.  You try harder, you dig more iffys, you focus more, you try get that coil into places you likely missed, there are many reasons you find something missed other times.  I do know newer technology does help though, that's a fact.

[Kostas 13]

for the kind of research I do (WWII relics and treasures) I'll stick with the GPX5000 with the plethora of coils it provides... I think there is currently no substitute for it that meets my personal needs.

[phrunt]

5 minutes ago, Kostas 13 said:

for the kind of research I do (WWII relics and treasures) I'll stick with the GPX5000 with the plethora of coils it provides... I think there is currently no substitute for it that meets my personal needs.

The Axiom maybe a substitute soon 🙂

 

[Kostas 13]

9 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Το Axiom ίσως αντικαταστήσει σύντομα 🙂

 

I don't doubt it especially now that aftermarket coils have come into play 🙂 everything shows that the axiom is a reliable pi in both construction and operation. I always wait enough time when a new machine is released to see reviews in various research situations to make the safest possible conclusions to make the right decision.