Af E1500 Video In The USA

[Lead Detector]

@abenson just put out a new video. 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

I guess I'll cop to being the guy that has had one of these for several months and loaned it to Andy for a while. I'll be sending it to Gerry soon to give a spin for any comments he might have.

I have used the E1500 in the desert, found a gold nugget with it, first in the U.S. I suppose. Also have some time on the Tahoe beaches. My main thing was to check the machine for EMI issues in the U.S. and I can say the machine has none. In that regard it's as good or better than most PI detectors and works fine in urban parks. As far as my general thoughts on the machine I already spilled the beans in an earlier thread. People should know by now I very rarely opinionate without something to back up those opinions. I really don't have much to add to what I already posted so you can check it out below.

All in all the Algoforce E1500 is a great addition to the PI possibilities out there. I see it mainly as a first affordable step up for people used to what a good VLF costs and who do not think a good PI should cost much more. Hard core PI users will opt for the more powerful and more expensive options. But for the people out there who are mainly VLF users and who want a PI for a second detector without breaking the bank I can very much recommend the E1500 as a great place to start. The caveat being that for that to happen here it has to become available for sale in the U.S. and there is still zero word on if or when that might happen. That's my excuse for not posting sooner. It is all moot for most people in the U.S. until that day comes.

I guess I can add this one thing on coils. I used both the Sadie and Coiltek Elite for nugget detecting and in general prefer the Elite. It's the smallest spiral wound coil you can get and is the one you see in Andy's video. The Sadie is lighter but like most mono coils is edge sensitive and therefore has an uneven response on tiny gold. The Coiltek Elite is hottest in the center so acts more like people expect and overall performs better than the Sadie. For beach use on heavy magnetite I have had good results with the older style Nugget Finder 14x9 Advantage and a Coiltek 11x8 Platypus mono I managed to track down. With these older bundle wound coils the E1500 handled heavy magnetite better than more powerful detectors that tend to suffer from blowback in extreme magnetite conditions. I prefer the lighter Advantage for dry sand use and the Platypus for wading since it is weight neutral underwater.

My thanks to Andy for shooting some video and doing some things that I would never have got around to doing. I'm sure he will add further thoughts on this thread.

 

[abenson]

I'll add a few thoughts about my experience with the E1500. But I first want to thank Steve for lending it to me for a week to do some testing with it. After I tested it, we meet up in Nevada where Steve pulled the nugget. So yea, it will find gold.

When I got the E1500,  I tried it a few different places, including the park, relic hunting and some testing on small gold nuggets.

First go around was at a local park that dates back to the late 1800's. I was hoping to get over a deep nickel or silver dime. I dug several targets that I thought possibly could be nickels based on the target ID, all of which turned out to be Pull tabs or shreds of aluminum. I never could get over a target that had an ID similar to a penny or dime, so I finally resorted to using the Manticore to find a deep target that I thought was either a penny or a dime. The target ID was very jumpy on the Manticore, which indicated it was close to It's depth limits. Then I grabbed the E1500 and went over the same target. It sounded good. Giving a low tone, but the target ID came in at 99. Now my dirt is very mineralized. And so in that regard, I think the Manticore and the E1500 we're at edge of detection. The target turned out to be a wheat penny at eight inches.

The next thing I tried was relic hunting I took it to a few places. The first place I took it to was a field that is mainly full of bullets,  occasionally you'll find a button and some other items, but for the most part it’s all CivilWar era bullets. There's very little iron in this field. So I thought it'd be a good first test for the E1500 and its target ID. You can watch the video in the first post to see how that went. Next up was a field a few blocks away where the fort was located. This filled has everything from square nails to buttons to bullets to coins. A lot more challenging for the E1500 and like all PI's struggled with the dense trash. I found out very quickly that testing every signal in the pinpoint mode to get an idea of what's under the coil is very time consuming. In addition, like Steve has stated in past posts, there's lots of iron targets that ID all over the PI target ID spectrum. It dug a few U shaped fence past nails that have the same ID as a bullet.

Finally I buried some small gold nuggets in the very mineralized dirt near my house and used 4 detectors to compare signals. This dirt maxes out the mineral scale on the Dues 2. Below are the results.

Gold nuggets used
.03 about 1.5" deep
.063 about 1.5" deep
.15 about 3" deep
.22 about 3.5" deep

Results in order from top down
Manticore M8 coil YES YES NO NO
GPX 6000 5X9 YES ALL
AXIOM 7X11 DD NO NO NO YES
E1500 8" MONO NO NO NO NO

So not the greatest results overall in all the testing I did with the E1500 compared to other VLF and PI'S on the market. However, for the price I still feel like it would be a good first move for anyone wanting to buy their first pulse induction metal detector. 

[phrunt]

It's pretty good how the Target ID performs on coins etc even at depth, here it is far more stable and accurate than the Manticore and Equinox.

I assume you were in the large gold setting when looking for these bigger targets, it adds quite a bit of depth.

What made you choose an 8" mono for the gold depth tests? The Algo really benefits from spiral coils, I'd not choose a coil like the Sadie or 8" Commander to be coils of choice for small gold, my 10" full spiral X-coil makes the Sadie look terrible.  I think that Coiltek 9" Elite is a semi spiral of some kind, I've never seen inside it but have been told it wouldn't be viable to make it a full spiral in that size.  I've never used that coil, although I'd like to compare it to my 10".   A lot of reports are the 12x8" NF EVO can be a bit noisy and the 14x9" EVO is the better choice but the detector is really only as good as the coil on it so finding the best optimal coil for the task is vital.   I'd certainly pick that 9" Elite over the Sadie though for small gold just because of how much better it performs with Spirals.

And for the benefit of new users to the detector some tips.

It's very important to have a calibrated coil, especially if hunting in Ultra fine gold mode, I've forgotten a few times to calibrate as I change coils a lot in messing around and in ultra fine especially the difference is noticeable. 

The next is the threshold, you're notice the little signal lines bouncing around under the threshold, set the threshold too high and you'll lose faint signals, however having it higher like that helps with high EMI areas as you can keep the EMI from peaking above the threshold so it will run silent even in higher EMI areas, the lower you can get that threshold while remaining stable the better the small gold and faint deep signal target performance is.  I couldn't overly tell how high you had it set in the video but it did look pretty high.

First, it's vital for tiny gold hunting to be in the best frequency range to keep the EMI down, the Auto frequency scan works very well, but it's wise to experiment by using the manual chart and just testing the other very low frequency slots to see if they're better.

This is the frequency screen, and the selected frequency is the white one on the left, in this image the other good ones are slightly worse than that one but in the real world often there are quite a few that are very close being as low as the auto selected one, so you can manually select them and check, sometimes they will be the better selection.  Now the reason you want that EMI to be as low as possible is the threshold.

As you can see in this image.

You'll see in this screen the Detection threshold, any target that comes in under that line with the real time scrolling signal is silent, above that line is a signal.  It's a cut off for noise, so when you've got your EMI as good as it can be you can lower that threshold line allowing faint deep or small targets to break through the threshold.  This is why like all detectors the sensitivity you're in matters, you can in fact find faint tiny gold targets better in some cases in a lower sensitivity than a higher one by having your detector tuned properly in this regard.

Some people may go and up that threshold to make the detector run even smoother, but if doing so they'll lose faint deep and tiny gold signals.  The lower you can run the detector's threshold line the better and lower than default is better too.

The other thing you can do is hunt in pinpoint mode in heavy trash areas, just turn pinpoint on and leave it there, you'll have to re-tune occasionally as it can get thrown out but it speeds up the process a lot.  Pinpoint mode gets a bit less depth but when hunting in pinpoint mode you can actually turn up the gain a bit higher than in normal mode to compensate a bit for it.  I wouldn't recommend hunting in pinpoint mode in cleaner ground, just heavy trash areas to speed up the process.  Just remember to swing slowly for best results.

[abenson]

1 hour ago, phrunt said:

I assume you were in the large gold setting when looking for these bigger targets, it adds quite a bit of depth.

What made you choose an 8" mono for the gold depth tests? The Algo really benefits from spiral coils, I'd not choose a coil like the Sadie or 8" Commander to be coils of choice for small gold, my 10" full spiral X-coil makes the Sadie look terrible.  I think that Coiltek 9" Elite is a semi spiral of some kind, I've never seen inside it but have been told it wouldn't be viable to make it a full spiral in that size.  I've never used that coil, although I'd like to compare it to my 10".   A lot of reports are the 12x8" NF EVO can be a bit noisy and the 14x9" EVO is the better choice but the detector is really only as good as the coil on it so finding the best optimal coil for the task is vital.   I'd certainly pick that 9" Elite over the Sadie though for small gold just because of how much better it performs with Spirals.

Yes I was running large gold.

I didn't have a lot of time when I did the gold test. 8" commander coil was calibrated for the E1500 when I took it out to do the gold test. You guys that actually have one and can experiment with all the different coils will have to tell the rest if us what works best. From what you're saying, the 9" Elite would have probably have done better on the small gold. I'll just leave it at that. I personally was more interested in seeing how the E1500 would work for coins and relics. Based on what I experienced, if it ever comes available in the US I'd most likely grab one for relic hunting.

[George Kinsey]

I love the sound. Thank you for the video abenson. My home base is Central Virginia. My red dirt would love it.

I want one asap or before I throw a tantrum. 🫢😍