PI verses VLF

karslake

Greenie
Sep 23, 2006
10
1
Hi
My name is Richard.
I have a question for someone who can help me.
Having made many PI detectors and a few VLF balance induction and TRs plus having owned six traditional makes of VLF detectors I can roughly say that PI´s are easy to operate no fuss and for a copper coin these can detect them on non mineralized soil at a depth of around 5 inches maximum.
For VLF´s the penetration is not more than 4 inches at best and once the discriminator is slammed in, this distance is reduced at aproximately 2 inches also at best. These detectors have been in my opinion difficult slow and painful to use as the signal needs to be constantly zeroed and the threshold set but this setting is very dodgy depending on mineralization and distance the search coil is passed over the soil no matter how much or less tuning sensitivity or ground control is acted upon.
I always keep my eyes reading and observing every schematics I can get my eyes on....but the other day a chinese detector fell in my hands, and tried it out. It is sold in USA as the MP5 proswift or swiftseeker. I could not believe the amount of penetration it possesed. It could detect a copper coin buried at around 10 or more inches into the ground in the pinpoint mode. Not to mention bigger targets. It triples all known vlfs know by me up to date an doubles my PIs... Plus it is dead easy to use. The way it works is simply by an increase of pitch in the audio signal , a signal that is terribly sensible to metal only and it surely rips through the soil very well thank you. I read somewhere that this is called APC pinpoint. The machine has auto tune and a mode where a switch connets a buzzer when encountering metal every time the search head is moved. This mode is also quite amazing being able to detect a very smal coin very deeply in beach clean sand. Beer cans at about 20 inches deep into the sand. I have not been able to try the discriminator or was faulty... because it was not working. Anyway this pinpointing mode is far good enough for me and in order to use it kept my finger pressing the button all the time. I can´t understand why manufacturers did not till today produce this analogic ample spectrum readout signal on VLF´s .... to let the ear resolve whether there´s metal or not instead of that anoying threshold zero tune that is obviouly designeg to bring the treasure hunter into craziness and to loose treasure.
Obviously technology in metal detecting has developed quite a bit since good old days and my question is. Are American top detectors as good as this one? Because this one left me in blank.... Needless to say I found very deep two huge relics in my first outing....upon a terrain that had been scanned with my PIs before.
Or maybe this detector is using another type of wave, and frecuency or technology.. Microwaves for example allthough they point that it works with 12.5 Kh. Does anyone know?
Cheers
Richard.
 

U.K. Brian

Bronze Member
Oct 11, 2005
1,629
153
Detector(s) used
XLT, Whites D.F., Treasure Baron, Deepstar, Goldquest, Beachscan, T.D.I., Sovereign, 2x Nautilus, various Arado's, Ixcus Diver, Altek Quadtone, T2, Beach Hunter I.D, GS 5 pulse, Searchman 2 ,V3i
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Have to wonder if this is a wind up post when the MP5 is mentioned.
Re P.I.'s I was getting over twelve inches in ground depth twenty years ago...performance is now far better and the weight problem due to high battery consumption has been solved. Then look at VLF's and depths in excess of the figures you quote can be obtained from base models of all the major detector manufactures with no 'zeroing' or messing with the threshold. Go to any mid range or higher spec machine and depths way in excess of what you quote can be obtained.
Modern machines may offer tone I.D. or a discriminating VDI or both and do not suffer from the main problem of the few Chinese motion machines that do have much in ground depth in that the response time is so slow that they are almost impossible to use in ground where targets are close together. A known brand whether U.S. or European will also have discrimination that works.
You pay peanuts and you get a monkey.
 

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