Advice On Some Machines For *wicked*black Sand Coast In 2024

[skywatcher]

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!

[DSMITH]

2 hours ago, skywatcher said:

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!

welcome to DP, i am sure someone will pipe in, with some suggestions, that is some nasty looking black sand, not sure you will find a detector to see through that, and I have never dealt with black sand like in your photos to give you any good advice but I am sure there are some here that have.

Again welcome to DP

[CalReg]

My Equinox 600 gets real chatty on black sand, but my Tarsacci is whispery quiet. Doesn't seem to affect the depth much either. Your conditions look extreme, so I'm not sure you'll get the same results...good luck!

[skywatcher]

Thanks !

 

Im sure there are people here who have dealt with similar conditions.  This black sand patch covers about 200km of beaches and very nice resorts who for many years have been undetectable by anybody i know of so they must be loaded .  Some people have tried using fisher cz, deus 2, gpz 5000 ,sand shark , many have the ctx but no use .  sea hunter works in some patches of sand  but like 10% of what i would like to search. Detecting in the morning before sand gets hot does help minelab machines do better but not ideal.

I read on alot of post that  pi machines that have pulse delay and gb doing better and i just have a flicker of hope . Should of bought a  White's TDI BeachHunter when i had the chance just to try it out that would of given me  me a rough idea if better pi detector will punch through that sand and remain stable even at low depth settings.

[Pyriteboy]

I would consider the Garrett Infinium with the 8" round mono. Ground balancing PI that handles mineralization well and is not sensitive to small gold targets. Hard to find a good used one these days.......

-Jerry

[midalake]

14 hours ago, skywatcher said:

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

Ah, Panama. This is the reason I never bought a place in Panama. 

My Black Sand is nowhere near that bad. I think your only choice would be a PI machine, which I have no experience with. 
If I had to rank how the newest machines worked on my beach it would be. Tarsacci, close second the Equinox and Manticore [TIE] and the worst is the Deus2. 

We will soon be testing a Rutus. 

[skywatcher]

3 hours ago, midalake said:

Ah, Panama. This is the reason I never bought a place in Panama. 

My Black Sand is nowhere near that bad. I think your only choice would be a PI machine, which I have no experience with. 
If I had to rank how the newest machines worked on my beach it would be. Tarsacci, close second the Equinox and Manticore [TIE] and the worst is the Deus2. 

We will soon be testing a Rutus. 

Well u have atlantic and pacific oceans lots of shipwrecks and treasures lurking in the jungle . Issue is that strip of the country full of that tar looking black sand that glitters magically during full moon. I dont want to spend 3k on a machine and if i do will it work🤔

equinox 6 and 8 will die on the spot, the manticore and even the deus 2 will fall very ill in these beaches . The Tarsacci ive always seen in kelly store but i dont know anybody who owns it so i cannot say.

Advanced Pi is my only option that or aquamans echo location.

[EL NINO77]

If you are talking about a situation where VLF detectors can no longer work reliably on black sand... we are talking about a case where the concentration of magnetite in Black Sand exceeds the value of 30% or more...

another thing is that even if some VLF detector is able to work with such a concentration of magnetism/ in the case of a reduction in RX gain, or the use of a coil that is less sensitive to the X signal/ ...according to my experience.. the range of the VLF detector will be severely limited..

If I were you, I would try a PI detector with ground balance, which has a timing setting... for example Garrett ATX, where another plus is its water resistance..., and another advantage is that you can also use coils from the PI Infinium detector/ which are of classic DD construction of various sizes/ and the detector is still waterproof...

using the ground balance and timing settings of the PI detector will help you eliminate the signal from magnetite... as well as the salt signal on the beach... while still maintaining a good range and sensitivity to small targets... which is already a problem with VLF detectors in such conditions. ..

 

[geof_junk]

skywatcher

Way back in the 1980s I managed to work a similar patch with a Garrett Deepseekers ADS VLF detector. What I did was used the TR discrimination knob and tuned it to the black sand like normal method by TR knob and not the ground balance knob. This work good but had to dig every signal, and got a large number of Aus. coins from it that other could not work the spot.  

[RONS DETECTORS MINELAB]

I wish Minelab would release a water resistant version of the GPX-5000 as it can handle some extreme iron environments especially with the small DD Joey coils. I believe there is a need in the market for what you’re looking for and Minelab has come close to it with the 5000 but it lacks the ability to keep the electronics from being harmed in the corrosive salt and wet environments.