Upgrade?

[Fishstank]

Hello Garrett watchers,

I have the Ace 250 now and love it but I'm curious if I'm missing something. John-Edmonton kills the sand and water with his scorpion and infinium. I live in Arizona and have horrible mineralization soil. Is there a better machine that will give me clearer signals and that
can better handle this type of soil. I have always wanted a White's DFX but does Garrett make something comparable. Sorry for the rambling.

Any feedback would be great.

Fishstank

 

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[vondrewvious]

I think being able to adjust ground balance is key. A dd coil also helps. infinium is a pulse induction which you may find hard to use if you have allot of iron targets in the ground. Pulse machines do however ignore mineralization. I'm sure I will spark a flurry of controversy here but if you have high mineralization, get a sovereign.

 

[Fishstank]

That could be an option. Thanks for the input.

Fishstank

 

[John-Edmonton]

If you have a high mineralization in your coil, that poses a challenge for pretty well all single frequency machines. Here are some of the things you can do to get some extra depth out of your machine(es). You can put a larger coil on the ACE, the 9 x 12 . That coil gets me a couple of more inches in my soil up here. It also maintains it's sensitivity to tiny objects. Another option, is to upgrade to a different detector, which can utilize a "DD" coil. They get better depth in mineralized soil then the standard round concentric/elliptical coils. Another option is to get a metal detector with the ground balance option. That way you can tune the metal detector to the particular type of ground you are hunting in. I do well with the Scorpion in my soil, because my soil has low mineralization, and the Scorpion has the ability to be ground balanced plus it has a true all metal mode. it isn't one of my deeper machines, but it just bangs hard on rings, round pull tabs and coins.

Below is a Garrett detector chart, where you can see the various options available between up to 3 detectors at a time.

http://www.garrett.com/hobby/techsupport/compare.asp

Below is another link to all the Garrett Detectors available. Just click on each detector, then the search coils available for each one to see which one can use the "DD" coils.

http://www.garrett.com/hobby/products.htm

 

[fatheadnc]

Garrett machines are good when no mineralization to little is present. Many other machines handle mineralization better. The older CZ's from Fisher, Whites MXT, the analog metered XL Pros, many of the Tesoro's etc... If you want a machine to better handle the ground in your area I would definately choose between the three makes listed above. The Tesoros are the cheapest and come with lifetime warranties and all handle ground minerals pretty well. Minelabs also handle bad ground very well but the price tag is kinda steep. I usually buy used and find a better value for my money all three makes listed above hold their value pretty well also. Minelabs hold value very well but their initial price tag is pretty steep. The CZ's have proven to to be deep seeking machines in many types of soils all across the US. Also the CZ uses two frequencies as does the White's DFX and the Minelab uses multiple frequencies. Another plus for the Tesoro's they are manufactured in Arizona so they know exactly what the mineralization is like in your area.

 

[EasyMoney]

From this detector EE, ET, and EM's viewpoint, Fatheadnc is pretty close to the truth.

Garrett Aces 100 through 750 and the 1250 through 2500 really DO suck in high iron soil, almost to the point of being embarrasing and a worthwhile trip to the nearest tavern to mull it over a bit. Even the F-2 and F-4 handle bad soil and hot rocks better than the Aces do, by far, and they do fairly well on high iron/salt beaches too. Hot rocks don't seem to bother them either.. Garrett's own charts (exclude) the Aces for beach hunting.

The MXT with the stock 9.5 coil has a real tough time in hot rocks and high iron soil. It's the 9.5 that ruins it, but a smaller or larger White's coil will do just fine in your soil. But a cz will go deeper.

ALL Fisher cz's do very nicely in your soil and even here - where the soil is even worse than there in AZ. And I mean CONSIDERABLY worse! Some of the soil here in Oregon and Washington has as much as 1/3 of a cup of iron filings in a cup of soil.

The lower priced Tesoros with auto ground balancing do very well in AZ, even better than the higher-priced Tesoros with manual ground balance. It's because Tesoro uses a lightning-fast-reference tank circuit - along with a super fast retune - plus a superbly fast return to (silent) threshold in the cheaper models which have no manual GB , all used in the 4 cheapest Tesoro detectors. . It really makes a big difference too. A well-designed auto GB is ALWAYS better than a poorly balanced manual one, and if you doubt that then go read Tesoro's own engineer's notes.. Tesoros higher end ones have a VERY tough time with high iron situations and you can't ever completely ground balance them in high iron soil at all, especially the Cortez and the Tejon. Tesoro can and will calibrate their detectors to your particular soil, but who wants to fool around with that?

MINELABS do handle bad ground well but do not go very deep in your soil - or here either, save for their PI's, no matter what person has which dream.. OR "vision" to the contrary. In fact, coil size for soil size my tests have proven that Minelab multis or any VLF Garrett are not capable of as good a depth as any cz ever made, and especially in hard soil full of magnetite or hematite.

The Garrett 1200-2500's though do very well for depth in very light or iron-free soils. It's because most Minelabs use too slow of processors - and the Garretts still use 1980's circuitry designed primarily for the eastern USA and Central European soils.. And don't believe the barnyard fertilizer stuff about ANY detector using more than one frequency at the same time, it's impossible. If they did it would make the detector sound like a popcorn machine running and a rock and roll song blaring, with a 5 year old birthday party going on in the background. Multi's use only one freq at a time and continually sample the soil matrix to determine which freq (might) work the best in any split second. This causes them to operate too slowly in bad soil and to have to be swung very slowly just to start with. Poorer-than-average-depth is commonly the result, and that's why many single freqs usually go deeper in high iron soils. The cz Fishers though are not the general rule of thumb due to their inherently fast processing, a patented circuitry concept.

The DFX is a fair depth machine but it is not as deep as a cz or an older Compass in (your) our bad soil.

A Nautilus will go VERY deep, and sometimes even deeper than a cz, but you would have to marry yourself to retuning it every 5 minutes or so, and it is a real heavy dude - at best.

Oh, and John, the DD was invented by Compass Electronics to compensate for "noise" AKA "interference", AKA as "false signals" from too much iron to discriminate against, be it in the ground, or from any other multiple iron items. Remember that the "ground balance control" is little more than a "rough "discrimination control", akin to the course adjustment on a short-wave radio - as compared to the fine adjustment on one. The concentric or stacked (coaxial) coils go deeper than a DD of the same diameter - but the DD's do handle bad ground better because that's what they were designed for.

*Just a little practical advice and info from a former detector engineer, electronics technician, detector repairman, and electronics mechanic.

Hope this helps

EasyMoney

 

[Fishstank]

Thanks John for your input.

Fishstank

 

[Fishstank]

Hey Easy Money, which tesoro do you like? I see you have a slew of them. I have the opportunity if I act fast to buy a White's Classic III.

Know anything about them?

Fishstank

 

[EasyMoney]

Yes Fishstank, the Classic III is a fun machine, but it does tend to like linear scrap iron (nails, screws, staples, and paper clips) a bit too much. All the Classics were the same in that regard. It's depth is not bad though.

And the Tesoro Silver uMax is the best detector for the buck ever produced - by anyone. It can match most of the $1,000 detectors for depth with an equal-sized 8X9 or 10X12 coil, and has superior discrimination abilities, plus is a premium cherry-picker, as all Tesoros do and are.

Ask MichiganBadger about the one he used to have, he can offer even more advice about the Silver uMax.

Hope this helps.

EasyMoney

 

[John-Edmonton]

From this detector EE, ET, and EM's viewpoint, Fatheadnc is pretty close to the truth.



Oh, and John, the DD was invented by Compass Electronics to compensate for "noise" AKA "interference", AKA as "false signals" from too much iron to discriminate against, be it in the ground, or from any other multiple iron items. Remember that the "ground balance control" is little more than a "rough "discrimination control", akin to the course adjustment on a short-wave radio - as compared to the fine adjustment on one. The concentric or stacked (coaxial) coils go deeper than a DD of the same diameter - but the DD's do handle bad ground better because that's what they were designed for.

*Just a little practical advice and info from a former detector engineer, electronics technician, detector repairman, and electronics mechanic.

Hope this helps

EasyMoney

Thanks for the trivia on the DD coil. I know everyone speaks highly of the Compass line of metal detectors. They too probably contributed a lot to get us where we are today. I specialized in electronics in high school in the 70's, just when the NPN PNP transistors were being utilized and replacing tubes. But my career took another direction and today I am in health care. I just wanted to mention that I really enjoy reading your posts, as they tend to be very unbiased, objective and just full of valuable information. Keep them coming!

 

[EasyMoney]

Hey thanks John, and you have my equal respect too.

And I enjoy reading yours too, just as I do many others such as MichiganBadgers, etc. Have you seen White's new TDI? What a powerhouse, and the discrimination isn't bad either.

Take care..

EasyMoney

 

[John-Edmonton]

Yes...I have been following it closley. The guys who have figured out how to properly use it have done quite well. I didn't think the writeup in Western and Eastern Treasures was a very good reflection of what it's actual performance could do. But, it probably has a bit of a learning curve to it.....

 

[EasyMoney]

I went over to White's main plant and looked at one of the TDI prototypes about a month ago. The depth capability of the thing really caught me off guard. In fact, it almost seemed like someone pumped steroids into it. I would have to give it a better rating than any other PI ever made for hunting nuggets, or coin-sized objects on salt/iron beaches. Erik Foster was the creator, and in my view that alone says enough about it's worthiness.

Have a good 'un.

EasyMoney