Well, after reading digger27's review of the NEL sharpshooter, I think I may have decided to go that way. I like the idea of a sniper type coil in a slightly bigger package. I had a 4 inch concentric for my last detector and was able to get great separation with the cost of only having a 4 inch swing path. I truly hate only getting 4 or 5 inches of ground with each swing. One more question for digger 27, Is it different enough from the factory 11"DD to warrant spending the money? Is the separation that good??
The 11"DD is your deep coil, in great soil I hit as far as 15", definitely 8-12" easy and it covers a lot of real estate with that wide scanning field so it's hard to miss much.
In a pinch by lowering your gain down to below 40 you can fool that big coil into thinking it's a sniper coil and hunt in some real trashy sites very successfully.
I have even used it in insane iron infested sites on max power in disc and all metal and learned to find great non ferrous targets
In great soil I also used that 10" elliptical concentric a lot, learned to love that one too, but more often then not I used that 5" DD because I aim for the trashiest kinds of like picnic areas, basketball and volleyball court perimeters and more because I am a dedicated jewelry at my core.
In some areas that 5"DD got way deep too, shockingly deep, and even though most of my deepest targets average 6-8" there were a few that were deeper and I could hit those with the sniper too plus I got really deep depth readings using that thing from time to time like 11-12 and even 13-14" on a few but never dug them...too deep to go after them in the public parks I usually hunt.
I got into snipers after finding 3X's the great treasure with my 4" coil mounted on my old F2 than I ever did using bigger coils.
I became a believer after that experience.
I also made sure I had snipers for my Vaq and F70 too because of that plus I also own a 7" coil Compadre and a Mojave with the same size coil and those cover decent sized areas but also work extremely well just like snipers in trash and masking iron on Tesoros as far as I am concerned.
Moving to the SE. I now hunt in horrible mineralized dirt with insane amounts of iron in most of my public sites because of the history of this city and on my F70 I have put in many hours using all three of my coils, the 5" DD, the concentric and the 11" DD.
They all work well but here it is an even playing field regarding depth, all will hit the 8" area, the two DD's will anyway, which is fine for me as most of my oldest targets still average 4-6" anyway.
The deepest I ever got on a target around here is about 8"...could have been 9", and that was with the 5" DD on an 1800's V nickel that was worn thin as a dime.
I could hardly believe it but a friend I was hunting with who owns an E Trac really was shocked.
He held the coin in his hand, saw the still open hole it came out of and the small coil that found it and just kept shaking his head.
He has never come close to this depth in the bad stuff with his rig around here and he mostly uses an SEF coil about the same size as this one.
Because of all the trash and iron I deal with I still used that 5" more than the others and since it worked so well when a chance came up to trade away my Vaq which I don't use much anymore to a dealer and get some new toys with no out of pocket money spent my first thought was to try a different kind of sniper coil.
Didn't think I needed it but I was curious and I figured if it didn't work any better than my 5" DD no harm no foul but if it worked even a tiny bit better here, got even an inch deeper or unmasked any targets a little better it was worth trying.
When I got that Nel coil a few a few weeks ago I mounted it and haven't taken it off since.
It is doing everything that DD 5" was doing, just about as well too from what I can see and not sure about the max depth yet but I am hitting the range I need to be at easily and I did hit a 10" nickel in volleyball sand that still GB'd at 59-60.
Plus that quieter thing, I like to use higher settings a lot so this is a pretty big deal to me in certain sites where a quieter environment even on higher gain and thresh might be helping me to notice masked targets even better.
Also that little larger frame seems to make it feel like I am hunting with a bigger coil than it is and covering ground efficiently even when I wander into wide open less trashy areas.
It's not really huge but it feels like it is definitely bigger than that 5" round DD, in my head anyway.
The Snake would probably have worked fine but the dealer would have had to order it and he carried the Sharpshooter in stock so I went for that instead and I am now glad I did.
Serendipity.
I have bigger coils and use them but I don't feel my arsenal or any detector I swing is complete unless I have a sniper coil to utilize so yea, I think it is different enough to have both the big DD and a sniper at the ready.
That would be anywhere in good soil or bad but if you hunt in very trashy or iron infested sites a lot like I do a sniper coil is a must...or at the very least it makes everything easier.
Hunting in mostly public parks my F70 paid for itself very quickly in the clad and silver and gold it found...just a few months, and went on to do it at least three times more at least after that....maybe more.
Just the gold I found with it in the last three years at melt has got to be somewhere around $1000, add in the $200 to $250 worth of clad I averaged in the last few years and the silver jewelry on top of that.
The great old coins I have found with it I don't really count but there are silver dimes, silver halves and even a Peace dollar among a ton of others so just icing on the cake.
Each of those coils I used did their share and each paid for itself too along the way.
We are literally in a hobby that pays for itself if we get good enough at it and hunt the right spots, paying a little bit for tools that can make our job easier, more productive and fun is a no-brainer decision to me.
