F
fueller
Guest
Hello again everyone. I posed the coil size question last night and would like to say thanks for all the responses. They have given me some points and ideas to mull over. I'm following that question up with a few more, I hope some of the veteran hunters here will wade through this and hopefully understand what I'm trying to get my mind around.
First, I'm using a Minelab Advantage. I did some homework this year when I finally decided to buy a m.d. and that's what I ended up with. No use second guessing myself, I could have bought used or tried another maker or 100 different things but I got the Advantage because it seemed like that was one of the best machines I could buy new for the price. In 3 months I've almost worn the hand grip off, so it has seen good use and it's introduced me into the world of metal detecting and I've really enjoyed it. There have been ups and downs and days when I wanted to throw it in the trash and days when I hoped the sun could somehow stay up a few more hours so I could keep detecting and I've found a whole host of items and would not go back and do anything differently up to this point. However, in some ways I'm starting to get annoyed that I'm not finding more of the kinds of coins I really want to find. Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes and silver quarters, all these have eluded me. I've found a handful of wheat backs, and 6 Roosies, and several dozen very old bullets and a Missouri tax token, a dog tag, rings, keys, garden tools, carriage wheels, pewter roosters, birds, toys, watches, locks, and on and on. Oh, and last week, (see an earlier post) I found the best yet, a holed 1878 seated dime at about 6 or 7 or 8 inches (very weak signal, the kind I'm currently trying to find instead of the loud bleeps of close to the surface clad) and a bucket load of clad. Your probably wondering where I'm going with this, so I'll now try and get back on track with the question, but I put in the above to show that I've really given a lot of time to this hobby. I would think that by now I should have found, with the one exception of the dime, many more older coins. Mercury dimes and silver quarters and such. So, here is the question. I know the posters here are generally careful to not bash specific brands, and I'm not looking for an opinion on one brand vs. another but I'm curious how a well known brand detector (Fisher, Minelab, Garrett, Whites, take your pick) actually makes the different models they sell as related to their price point. In my case, I bought the Minelab #3 model. The Advantage. It's about $300 dollars. Now, instead of buying the upgrade coil (the 10" that would replace the 8") as I was going to do, at a cost of around $150. (or half the cost of the detector) I have decided it might be wise to keep what I have for a year (it's almost winter anyway) and upgrade the detector. For the sake of this post I'll stick with Minelab products, but you could replace that line with any other, they all have low end, middle, and high end models. Next year I can replace the detector with the Sov. elite for about $700 or I could go for their best and get the Explorer for around $1100. Options aside, what is it about a metal detector that dictates the depth range. All these models run on AAA batts. so is it just a matter of soldering in the correct resistor at the factory? If the coil is the same size and make, what is it that makes one detector reach 7" and another 12"? It seems to me that the power output of the detector must be set or governed by a resistor and that if you changed that you would change the possible depth. I wonder if my coil is sent something like an 8 volt signal, and the more expensive model might get 9 volts and the explorer 10 (or whatever it works out at). Am I on the right track here? I know it's not magic, and there has to be something that dictates the depth achieved on a given model.
I realize that it's pointless reading advertisements because they all claim the best depth. Advantage ads claim awesome depth for that class of detector, and I've heard the same from other sources but I'm trying to figure out what that really means when compared to a more expensive model. Does the Advantage stack up as a toy when compared with the Sov. elite or Explorer, or can it hold it's own and if so to what extent? I'm curious what I really would be buying by laying out $600-$1100 dollars (a fair amount of money in my world) next year instead of $150 for a bigger coil now. Sorry if this is post is overly lengthy, and I hope some of you can make sense of it. I really would like some well thought out replies, it would help me, and there might be others here with similar questions.
First, I'm using a Minelab Advantage. I did some homework this year when I finally decided to buy a m.d. and that's what I ended up with. No use second guessing myself, I could have bought used or tried another maker or 100 different things but I got the Advantage because it seemed like that was one of the best machines I could buy new for the price. In 3 months I've almost worn the hand grip off, so it has seen good use and it's introduced me into the world of metal detecting and I've really enjoyed it. There have been ups and downs and days when I wanted to throw it in the trash and days when I hoped the sun could somehow stay up a few more hours so I could keep detecting and I've found a whole host of items and would not go back and do anything differently up to this point. However, in some ways I'm starting to get annoyed that I'm not finding more of the kinds of coins I really want to find. Buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes and silver quarters, all these have eluded me. I've found a handful of wheat backs, and 6 Roosies, and several dozen very old bullets and a Missouri tax token, a dog tag, rings, keys, garden tools, carriage wheels, pewter roosters, birds, toys, watches, locks, and on and on. Oh, and last week, (see an earlier post) I found the best yet, a holed 1878 seated dime at about 6 or 7 or 8 inches (very weak signal, the kind I'm currently trying to find instead of the loud bleeps of close to the surface clad) and a bucket load of clad. Your probably wondering where I'm going with this, so I'll now try and get back on track with the question, but I put in the above to show that I've really given a lot of time to this hobby. I would think that by now I should have found, with the one exception of the dime, many more older coins. Mercury dimes and silver quarters and such. So, here is the question. I know the posters here are generally careful to not bash specific brands, and I'm not looking for an opinion on one brand vs. another but I'm curious how a well known brand detector (Fisher, Minelab, Garrett, Whites, take your pick) actually makes the different models they sell as related to their price point. In my case, I bought the Minelab #3 model. The Advantage. It's about $300 dollars. Now, instead of buying the upgrade coil (the 10" that would replace the 8") as I was going to do, at a cost of around $150. (or half the cost of the detector) I have decided it might be wise to keep what I have for a year (it's almost winter anyway) and upgrade the detector. For the sake of this post I'll stick with Minelab products, but you could replace that line with any other, they all have low end, middle, and high end models. Next year I can replace the detector with the Sov. elite for about $700 or I could go for their best and get the Explorer for around $1100. Options aside, what is it about a metal detector that dictates the depth range. All these models run on AAA batts. so is it just a matter of soldering in the correct resistor at the factory? If the coil is the same size and make, what is it that makes one detector reach 7" and another 12"? It seems to me that the power output of the detector must be set or governed by a resistor and that if you changed that you would change the possible depth. I wonder if my coil is sent something like an 8 volt signal, and the more expensive model might get 9 volts and the explorer 10 (or whatever it works out at). Am I on the right track here? I know it's not magic, and there has to be something that dictates the depth achieved on a given model.
I realize that it's pointless reading advertisements because they all claim the best depth. Advantage ads claim awesome depth for that class of detector, and I've heard the same from other sources but I'm trying to figure out what that really means when compared to a more expensive model. Does the Advantage stack up as a toy when compared with the Sov. elite or Explorer, or can it hold it's own and if so to what extent? I'm curious what I really would be buying by laying out $600-$1100 dollars (a fair amount of money in my world) next year instead of $150 for a bigger coil now. Sorry if this is post is overly lengthy, and I hope some of you can make sense of it. I really would like some well thought out replies, it would help me, and there might be others here with similar questions.
