Is factory calibration necessary for new coil?

[mountainplayer]

I've had the Garrett Ace250 for a couple of years, and have been thinking of buying the sniper coil for it.

I've read on these forums that it is necessary to have a detector/coil combination factory calibrated. Some members have made pretty strong statements that it is critical that this is done.

Now, I know that a lot of detectorists have an arsenal of coils available for different conditions, and change them out as needed. I wonder if there is some gray area here....

So how important is it to have the factory tweak your machine for a new coil? And if you had a choice between buying a second coil and not having your machine factory calibrated for it, versus not buying a second coil at all, what would you do?

MP

 

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[LuckyLarry]

All factory coils are pre-calibrated for Aces.

The coils are merely wound for amplification and strength of EMF signals, not for anything else, in the case of the Aces. A dislodged coil though will need repairs.

Yes, PI's are of a different order but seldom need any re-calibration. Nautilus coils and many Compass coils have circuitboards/and/or other circuitry inside the coils that may need to be re-calibrated, but this is extremely rare.

Hope this helps.

LuckyLarry

 

[Michigan Badger]

LuckyLarry pretty much covered it all.

The coil is an antenna and Garrett makes each coil exact for it's intended model. The same is true with Tesoro and many others.

I've used Nautilus IIb detectors for many years and logged hundreds of hours on them. I found my biggest gold find with the IIb. I like them a lot but the coils are a pain. When working right nothing will beat them. The problem is getting them right.

Don't worry about those Garretts--they're 1st class quality.

 

[mountainplayer]

Thanks Badger and Larry.

Maybe what I read was meant to apply to aftermarket coils. I thought it was kind of funny that so many experienced treasure hunters were running around with "non calibrated" and therefore substandard coils!

MP

 

[luvsdux]

It's my impression that one usually doesn't have to worry about this issue, especially with machines that have either manual or true auto ground balance. This is generally pretty well true for preset ground balance machines as well if they are well set to where they should be. However, after talking to a Tesoro rep a few years back, he did mention that if one is using a particular coil pretty exclusively on a preset machine that it could be well worth sending the coil and machine in and having them matched as closely as possible. IMHO I'm thinking this would be of even more value if the coil is quite a bit different in size compared to the stock coil the detector was originally tuned with. My two bits.
Bill

 

[CWnut]

I asked Tesoro the same question several years ago and got the same response as luvsdux. I might add that the rep told me that if i felt like one of the coils wasn't performing up to par that i could send in all the coils and the control box and they would average the control box to the various coils.