0 Ground Balance

[Tometusns]

I watched a utube video of a fella running zero ground balance and thought I’d give it a go. That’s been over a year ago and still running zero. I haven’t noticed any change in finds numbers or depth of targets. I suppose it may be that the ground in this area doesn’t require any. The only reason I say that is what they say about running the deus and if the ground is below a certain number there’s no need to ground balance. I live in SW Missouri. 
 Thanks, Tom

[JCR]

In running the Legend I have found that for no/low mineralization Zero is fine. Starting with medium it is better to ground balance. In higher mineralization, an accurate ground balance is necessary for best performance.  This also applies to all of detectors, single frequency or Multi.

[Jeff McClendon]

I wish I could just leave it on 0 but that is just not going to work where I live. There would be way too much noise from the ground when raising, lowering or just swinging the coil. I just ground balance no matter what the soil conditions are. With the ground balance button right on the main keypad, it takes 10 seconds or less if the coil is over clean ground.

Whether ground balancing or leaving it on zero makes any difference in your soil, the only way to know is to try both on deeper targets or in trashy areas. 

[CTidwell]

7 hours ago, Jeff McClendon said:

I wish I could just leave it on 0 but that is just not going to work where I live. There would be way too much noise from the ground when raising, lowering or just swinging the coil. I just ground balance no matter what the soil conditions are. With the ground balance button right on the main keypad, it takes 10 seconds or less if the coil is over clean ground.

Whether ground balancing or leaving it on zero makes any difference in your soil, the only way to know is to try both on deeper targets or in trashy areas. 

So what effect does a zero ground balance have on targets?  Is it supposed to make the Legend deeper or something?  I'm curious.

[Jeff McClendon]

So, what value is 0 as far as ground balance on the Legend? I don’t know the answer technically.

Lots of people claim that the Legend is an Equinox 800 clone.

The Equinox ground balance default like the Legend is 0 but it can have values as low as -9. The Legend stops at 0.

Deus 1 default ground balance is 87.

Anyway, I don’t claim that getting a good ground balance will make a VLF detector go deeper. Getting a good ground balance will make a VLF detector less noisy sometimes, so that really small, poorly oriented, partially masked and deeper targets with weaker audio responses will be easier to hear where I detect.

[Badger-NH]

It takes less time to do a manual GB than it does to think about how the ground might be affecting the detector.

[phrunt]

While I don't own or know about the Legend I can safely say that with some metal detectors in very mild soil it appears to me ground balancing reduces depth and it's best left undone.  It can even make target ID more unstable than if you didn't ground balance.  The CTX is one such machine and the Nokta Simplex+ and Teknetics T2 are also the same.  

I think Minelab agree with me, from the CTX 3030 manual

Ground Balance Ground Balance (GB) allows you to easily adjust the detector to suit detecting in highly mineralized ground. In these conditions, correctly adjusted Ground Balance will help to find deeper targets that might be hidden by ground noise, as well as helping to stabilize target IDs. Ground Balance is best used in conjunction with Coin-Ground Target Separation. Ground Balance should not be enabled in most detecting conditions where ground mineralization is mild. This includes most beaches, parks and sports grounds.

And from the Equinox 800 manual, 

The default Ground Balance setting of 0 is recommended for Park, Field and Beach Modes because these locations typically have less mineralisation than goldfields. However, if the ground is generating many noise signals (and/ or the Sensitivity level is set very low), then using Auto Ground Balance is recommended

The Legend Manual only has a small mention of it.

The LEGEND is designed to work without ground balancing on most terrains. However, for experienced users and on highly mineralized grounds, ground balancing will bring extra depth and stability to the device.

Their wording about Experienced users is a bit confusing as experienced users would know it's better not to ground balance in very mild soils, that wording gives the impression that it is possibly better to do so it may give the wrong impression.

I'm sure if you go through other manuals you'll find similar.  Ground balance is bad in mild soils.  The same goes for PI detectors, far less depth with ground balance enabled. 

[Badger-NH]

Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. I will try leaving the GB at 0 for a while in my mild soil and see how that goes.

[Jeff McClendon]

On 6/18/2025 at 2:40 PM, phrunt said:

The LEGEND is designed to work without ground balancing on most terrains. However, for experienced users and on highly mineralized grounds, ground balancing will bring extra depth and stability to the device.

Their wording about Experienced users is a bit confusing as experienced users would know it's better not to ground balance in very mild soils, that wording gives the impression that it is possibly better to do so it may give the wrong impression.

All of these manufacturers recommend not ground balancing and claim their detectors can handle most ground. That has been the case for years. 

It just is not true. They are way overselling the capabilities of their detector's ground handling.

Some detectors like the original Legend are ridiculously easy to ground balance since the ground grab button is right on the front faceplate. No need to go searching for it in a secondary menu.

Experienced users actually know that it is better to ground balance their detector no matter what the soil conditions are especially if they are after a wide variety of target conductivity, target sizes, target depths and they want their detector to be well tuned for the situation.