Signal Enhancer/Booster

[DesertNuggets]

Do they really work?

 

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[fozzyb65]

used to use a Depth Master on my old Garrett Freedom III and I would say that it did work. I t did increase volume from weak signals and also shunted the really loud signals from shallow or large targets, so you could turn up the volume on your headphones without blowing out your ears. I'm not familiar with ahy other brands, but I would recommend Depth Master if they still sell them.

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

Some companies - notably Fisher - have a boost or high gain circuit built in. They work.

If it's a headphone enhancer - yes, they likely work (unless your headphones don't play well with them or lack a limiter circuit to keep you from having your head explode when you overfly a soda can).

If it's a booster box you plug in between coil and control box - big maybe. Some coils (Minelab) have circuitry in the coil and a booster would have to be designed for a specific detector make and model. As would ANY booster that was going to do much. A poor design might fry something and you'd be SOL.


If it's some $20 decal you stick on a coil. Snake oil. Run away.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

As fozzie & charlie have stated, they're only an audio signal booster. They do nothing to increase the depth the detector is getting. It only makes "louder" what you "already" have coming from the machine. So unless you have a hearing problem, or cheapie headphones that lack volume for some reason, you wouldn't need an audio booster.

 

[Cool Hand Fluke]

As fozzie & charlie have stated, they're only an audio signal booster. They do nothing to increase the depth the detector is getting. It only makes "louder" what you "already" have coming from the machine. So unless you have a hearing problem, or cheapie headphones that lack volume for some reason, you wouldn't need an audio booster.
[/quoteit

It is one of the best features Fisher ever put on there metal detectors. Those super deep 8 to 9 inch silver dimes, wheaties, etc. are pretty faint, just a whisper on the machine. Without the audio boost amplifying the signal I probably would miss some of those deep ones. I aways crank up my audio boost to max when hunting areas where deep coins are around. If I had to crank up the volume insted of the audio boost I would have lost my hearing years ago. I'd blow out my ear drums. With audio boost only the deep signals are amplified, not the shallow or medium ones.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Cool hand fluke, if that's the kind of enhancer he was asking about, then you are right. I thought the question was simply for an audio boost. Like the kind that's available as an after-market device in your head-phone jack to boost all signals equally. They actually made such a thing years ago (and perhaps still do), marketed to md'rs. A lot of md'rs assumed it was somehow "beefing up" their depth, as if ..... as if it did something to make the detector more powerful. The magazine ads left it sufficiently unclear, to the untrained observer.

But if he's talking about the type booster you're talking about, that's incoorporated into the machine for *just* weak signals, then you're right. Some machines have them as a variable controlled setting, where the user chooses the strength. While it may seem a no-brainer to boost it 100% so that the deeeepest ones sound just like surface coins, yet this can be annoying, in that the user has no audio way to tell deep, from shallow (unless he studies his depth bar, etc....) On my explorer, I boost the deeper ones a little, but only enough that they are still tell-tale deep, so that I can make decisions on deep vs shallow (d/t some environments that plays into strategies in and of itself).

 

[Cool Hand Fluke]

I remember back in the late 1980's Western & Eastern Treasures magazine had some articles on a device called the "Depth Doubler". It was a strange contraption that had about a dozen metal stakes that were driven into the ground, all the stakes were connected with wire. The wires were connected to some kind of electronic box. After the ground was "energized" with current/voltage you were supposed to swing your metal detector over the energized ground. This was supposed to increase you depth by 100%! Never knew anyone who ever tried one one these. I believe the cost of this was around $300.00. Anyone remember this? Did it work?

 

[Tom_in_CA]

I tried one. They're kind of like the old way of causing worms to come to the surface for fishing bait, by shocking the ground with a charge After meticulously going through all the preparations, in a moist park turf environment where I suspected deeper coins were (because the oldest/deepest we could reach were turn-of-century losses, yet the park dated to the 1880s).

After doing all the preparations with a car battery charging the ground for an hour, the only effect it seemed to have, was to energize teeennssy little things to make them sound bolder. For example, you know how sometimes those pencil eraser top things can fool you into sounding like coins (if you're erring on the side of safety)? Well with this depth doubler thing, those little pencil eraser tops sounded even MORE like coins I got no deeper older coins though. So the jury is still out, but all in all, I'd say those were a waste of time.

 

[Cool Hand Fluke]

I tried one. They're kind of like the old way of causing worms to come to the surface for fishing bait, by shocking the ground with a charge After meticulously going through all the preparations, in a moist park turf environment where I suspected deeper coins were (because the oldest/deepest we could reach were turn-of-century losses, yet the park dated to the 1880s).

After doing all the preparations with a car battery charging the ground for an hour, the only effect it seemed to have, was to energize teeennssy little things to make them sound bolder. For example, you know how sometimes those pencil eraser top things can fool you into sounding like coins (if you're erring on the side of safety)? Well with this depth doubler thing, those little pencil eraser tops sounded even MORE like coins I got no deeper older coins though. So the jury is still out, but all in all, I'd say those were a waste of time.

Thanks, Tom. Very interesting.

 

[DesertNuggets]

Thanks everyone! Great info.