Thinking of buying a sov gt question for current users

[Deese]

How does the sov gt handle aluminum trash? can you disc out pulltabs and still get coins? How about screwcaps? I worked a city park all day,different kind of trash for me I'm used to iron trash. I started with the nexus and if you disc out pulltabs you loose dimes,doesnt seem quite right to me. I switched to my ace 150 and it didnt disc out pulltabs in coin mode,every one hits on nickel.even broken pieces.Screwcaps give a belltone on the ace. I hear lots of good about the sov gt,plus i live at the beach and I could use it there also.

 

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[creeker42]

Hello Deese
The Sovereign GT is a great machine for the beach. It is considered by many experienced beach hunters to be one of the best for salt beaches. It does have a steep learning curve, but once you learn what it's telling you, you'll love it. The beaches I hunt have a lot of iron junk, and the ability of the GT to null this out makes it the machine of choice for me. As far as it's ability to disc and notch out junk and pull tabs, the GT does this well. But you have to keep in mind the "good" stuff you want to find falls in the same range as junk. To disc pull tabs means you may be passing over gold rings. Digging on the beach is easy, so I dig it all except the iron null. Even with the iron nulls I listen close to make sure there's nothing good next to it. Here is a VDI chart to show the numbers on a VDI meter to give you an idea of what you can miss by not digging what you think is a pull tab.
180 meter
180-177 1¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, $20 Gold, Large Cent
176-173 Zn1¢, IH 1¢(Bronze), S. Cap, $10 Gold, Half Dime, 2¢
172-169 $5Gold, Square Tab, Med Gold
168-165 Round Tab, Small Gold
164-160 2½ Gold, IH 1¢, Cop/nik
159-147Round Tab, Small Gold
146-141 New5¢, Small Gold
140-137 5¢ Buffalo/Liberty/Shield
136-133 Small Gold
132-129 $1 Gold
128-117 Small Gold
116-106 Foil, Fine Gold
105-095 3¢ Nickel
I own a Sovereign GT and love it. I upgraded from a White's M6. The salt beaches that I hunt on drove the M6 crazy. Lurking on metal detecting forums I quickly learned that many of the more successful beach hunters were using the Minelab Sov GT or for in the water, an Excalibur. For me the Sovereign was a good choice. If you just want a turn on and go machine you might want to go with something else. JMHO
regards
Ed

 

[leefields]

i love my GT for both fresh and saltwater beaches...i usually dig most targets....i dont mind pulling trash...i do it so some kids wont get cuts on their feet..

 

[Deese]

Hello Deese
The Sovereign GT is a great machine for the beach. It is considered by many experienced beach hunters to be one of the best for salt beaches. It does have a steep learning curve, but once you learn what it's telling you, you'll love it. The beaches I hunt have a lot of iron junk, and the ability of the GT to null this out makes it the machine of choice for me. As far as it's ability to disc and notch out junk and pull tabs, the GT does this well. But you have to keep in mind the "good" stuff you want to find falls in the same range as junk. To disc pull tabs means you may be passing over gold rings. Digging on the beach is easy, so I dig it all except the iron null. Even with the iron nulls I listen close to make sure there's nothing good next to it. Here is a VDI chart to show the numbers on a VDI meter to give you an idea of what you can miss by not digging what you think is a pull tab.
180 meter
180-177 1¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, $20 Gold, Large Cent
176-173 Zn1¢, IH 1¢(Bronze), S. Cap, $10 Gold, Half Dime, 2¢
172-169 $5Gold, Square Tab, Med Gold
168-165 Round Tab, Small Gold
164-160 2½ Gold, IH 1¢, Cop/nik
159-147Round Tab, Small Gold
146-141 New5¢, Small Gold
140-137 5¢ Buffalo/Liberty/Shield
136-133 Small Gold
132-129 $1 Gold
128-117 Small Gold
116-106 Foil, Fine Gold
105-095 3¢ Nickel
I own a Sovereign GT and love it. I upgraded from a White's M6. The salt beaches that I hunt on drove the M6 crazy. Lurking on metal detecting forums I quickly learned that many of the more successful beach hunters were using the Minelab Sov GT or for in the water, an Excalibur. For me the Sovereign was a good choice. If you just want a turn on and go machine you might want to go with something else. JMHO
regards
Ed

What do you mean by steep learning curve,would you mind elaborating on that a little. Yes I like the beach easy digging,I use a sand shark mostly at the beach so I dig everything anyway.Not much trash where I go usually only partly rusted away fish hooks.I am from central NC and go home often,the soil there is much different red clay mostly,I want a better machine for inland use.

 

[Deepdiger60]

I just got my Sov.GT a few days ago so far it seems pretty easy to use i did play with the notch and i noticed the different sounds made when over iron or pull tabs those i can ignore in notch i noticed the threshold faded out each time i passed over iron or pulltabs ,what i did was bury every piece of ferrous and non ferrous metal i have about 6 inches deep and played with the dials to get used to the sounds like gold and silver and copper its kind of cherry picking with a Sov.GT the fields i go to have a lot of iron ,on the beach that is a different story ,personally i think this Sov.GT is a lot easier to learn then my DFX was but learning the DFX helped a lot with the learning curve of the GT . Play with it learn all the sounds Good luck Dd60

 

[creeker42]

Hello Deese
What I meant about steep learning curve is, to use the GT to it's fullest you have to learn what the machine is telling you. Yeah, you can pull it out of the box and leave it on the settings Minelab tells you to start out with and it's easy. But soon you'll hear the one's that have been useing the GT a long time saying "listen to the sounds". After You use it a while you get to see what they mean. You said there's a lot of iron where you are. The GT will null that out real good. But after you learn the sounds, you can pick out good stuff real close to the iron. You also learn to listen to the treshold sound. Two weeks ago, I noticed a VERY slight
change in the pitch of the treshhold sound. Not the sound you get when you hit a target. I decided to dig it. Over a foot down I found a good sized silver ring. I too, hunt on a salt beach with iron junk. The more I have learned to listen to the sounds, the less junk I've been digging. I will always dig in the pull tab range, too many good things in the same range. On a salt beach it's hard to beat. As far as the GT being hard to learn, it's not. Learn what it can do and you'll love it.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

How does the sov gt handle aluminum trash? can you disc out pulltabs and still get coins? How about screwcaps? I worked a city park all day,different kind of trash for me I'm used to iron trash. I started with the nexus and if you disc out pulltabs you loose dimes,doesnt seem quite right to me. I switched to my ace 150 and it didnt disc out pulltabs in coin mode,every one hits on nickel.even broken pieces.Screwcaps give a belltone on the ace. I hear lots of good about the sov gt,plus i live at the beach and I could use it there also.

If you descriminate out aluminum trash you are also going to be descriminating out some silver as well as some gold. There are different basemetals used to make 10,12,14,18k jewelry and it will have been descriminated out.

Sov are fantastic machines personally I highly recommend you do not use any descrimination at the beach at all. I have found and seen others find gold that sounds just like pull-tabs and can slaw....

 

[mr_larry]

Is the Excalibur basically a waterproof version of the Sovereign? I can see that the two machines are laid out quite a bit differently, but do they have the same functionality? If you were used to operating a Sovereign, would operating an Excalibur be nearly identical?

I am soon to be in the market for a machine and was thinking of the Excalibur originally, but with all of the problems people have with them I'm thinking I could accomplish most of the same stuff with the Sovereign. I'm in Northern California where the water is cold and I wasn't planning on doing too much "up to my neck in the water" type of hunting. Do you all think a Sovereign might be a better way to go?

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Is the Excalibur basically a waterproof version of the Sovereign? I can see that the two machines are laid out quite a bit differently, but do they have the same functionality? If you were used to operating a Sovereign, would operating an Excalibur be nearly identical?

I am soon to be in the market for a machine and was thinking of the Excalibur originally, but with all of the problems people have with them I'm thinking I could accomplish most of the same stuff with the Sovereign. I'm in Northern California where the water is cold and I wasn't planning on doing too much "up to my neck in the water" type of hunting. Do you all think a Sovereign might be a better way to go?

The Sovereign GT and the Excal are not identical, but they are very simular. If you were use to using an Excal, a Sov would be easy to learn and visa-versa.....The Sov is not waterproof you would ruin it if you drop it in the water, and you would also want to protect it from the salt spray, with that said, the Sovereign GT is a FANTASTIC beach detector....Combine it with a WOT coil and you have a beach vaccum....

 

[Keppy]

I have been useing the Sovereign since 1992 ................................ Just got another one..................... AND no matter what they tell you there is no big or hard learning curve to the Sovereign......... I have no idea why they say that? .............

 

[Sandman]

I think the "hard learning curve" is from the ones that expect every sound to be the same according to conductivity. It isn't hard to learn at all and by starting out digging every target you soon develop an ear for the sounds, but sometimes ya just gotta dig the iffy signals that you would normally pass up. Some of my best rings had big rocks on them but were white gold or platinum and to much disc would have caused me to not dig them.

 

[johnnyboy25]

any of minelabs multi-freq. machines (sov, quattro, safari, explorer) work well at the beach. at present i think best bang for your buck is the quattro. they're selling used at around $400. they're deep, good target info and good build quality. although they have slow recovery speed (my explorer xs isn't the fastest horse in the race either) you want to swing the minelabs slower anyway.the gt is a great machine but as i said the above mentioned all work well and you can save a few bucks by going with a regular sov (any model) or a quattro. good luck.....hh....jb

 

[Woodland Detectors]

Is the Excalibur basically a waterproof version of the Sovereign? I can see that the two machines are laid out quite a bit differently, but do they have the same functionality? If you were used to operating a Sovereign, would operating an Excalibur be nearly identical?

I am soon to be in the market for a machine and was thinking of the Excalibur originally, but with all of the problems people have with them I'm thinking I could accomplish most of the same stuff with the Sovereign. I'm in Northern California where the water is cold and I wasn't planning on doing too much "up to my neck in the water" type of hunting. Do you all think a Sovereign might be a better way to go?

The Sovereign GT and the Excal are not identical, but they are very simular. If you were use to using an Excal, a Sov would be easy to learn and visa-versa.....The Sov is not waterproof you would ruin it if you drop it in the water, and you would also want to protect it from the salt spray, with that said, the Sovereign GT is a FANTASTIC beach detector....Combine it with a WOT coil and you have a beach vaccum....

Well said friend.