OLD WHITES VS NEW WHITES DETECTORS

[Hardy]

HI THERE, I hunt with a old 6000 srs 3 coinmaster with a 8 inch coil with good results. The past couple of years i have noticed that whites have went to the 10 inch coil and a so called high end circuitry . Back east I hunted mainly for Silver Coins and relics and never seen any other coin/relic hunters ; my average depth was 5 to 8 inches with the odd silver at 10 inches plus.

Big Iron I have pulled out at 14inches plus . Now that I moved out west here and had the oppertunity to hunt areas that I know that have bin picked over , yet I still walked away with good pickings and wonder how these were missed by other hunters that have the high end machines. Now I bought one of these Spectrum's with the 10 inch coil and gave it a full season
of Relic hunting and coin hunting and came to the conclusion that these models are designed just to cherry pick! I can walk behind a DFX and pick all the older coins and get as good and greater depths with the 8 inch coil vs the 10 inch coil.

Now I have a great friend that I hunt with for fur trade items and he also reports that the high priced whites cant produce
as well as his Fisher with the 8 inch coil , Now let me tell you that my bud hunts with no ear phones and no display and produces relics , coins and jewelry that would make you and me envy. my conclusion is that the 8 inch coil is by far the best universal coil and to pay no mind to the high end cherry pickers.

 

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[Digger]

Sorry but I don't get the connection between "muscle cars" and metal detectors.

It was a reference to the old belief that "they don't make them like they used to" held by some car enthusiast as do some detector users.

Usually more advanced technology is better and when we see it in today's detectors we'll acknowledge it.

See my above reference if you can honestly say you don't think there has been any advances in detector technology in the last 20 years.

 

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[jeff741972]

I am glad that alot of people use the old machines, they get tuckered out digging the junk then I swooop in with my V like batman to the damsel in distress and cherry pick the goodies

 

[Hardy]

$1600 plus for a V3 , I would realy love to hunt against that puppy to see what it can do. For the price that it sells retail, Is there a program that you can choose that will say COIN ,JEWELRY,BEACH ,RELIC and COOK MY BREAKFAST.

 

[Digger]

Is there a program that you can choose that will say COIN ,JEWELRY,BEACH ,RELIC and COOK MY BREAKFAST

LOL. I also have had the chance to test the V3 and found it to be very good. I bought both the E-Trac and V3 for the purpose of doing a head to head to decide which would work best for me, and then I would sell the other. I did a lot of testing between my old trusty DFX, my Tesoro Silver uMax the V3 and the E-Trac in the park I described above. What I found was the V3 and the E-Trac were in a class all by themselves. I would find a target and test it with all detectors and in 99.9% of all my targets, neither the DFX or uMax made a peep on signals both the V3 and E-Trac found. Most of the targets were from 8-12" deep.

I still like and use my Silver uMax and my DFX because I like them in particular hunting situations, but when it came to the very deep coins in the park without a doubt the V3 or E-Trac was far superior. Hands down no contest winners.

 

[Hardy]

OK , What about masking or Nulling out Iron in all metal mode , did you try any testing on this ?

 

[dneyedli@res1.mts.net]

This discussion involves different kinds of hunters here. Hardy is strictly a relic hunter and therefore will never have any use for an expensive cherry picker. Any true relic hunter doesn't need a machine that rejects "trash" and knows that there are thousands of variables in the ground. They have sifted through beds of iron mixed with other metals and know that no machine on this earth could only pick out the "goodies" in concentrated areas and that I will bet the farm on. We don't have mineralization problems out here though.

Cherry pickers are great for people who have limited time and are only interested in coins and rings.
I'm out 8 to 12 hours a day, all spring, summer, and fall and I have been hunting since the mid 80's. What you see above my avatar is all I'll ever need. I've gone head to head on air tests against $1500 machines and have blown them away for depth and sensitivity.


When all the hype clears and the wallet looks empty, pick up one of those good old VLF turn on and go mid-ranged$$$ detectors, learn the tones, and kick azzzzzzz!!!

 

[Hardy]

Spectrum says these are Bottle caps and pull tabs , 6000 says Dig it baby Even the Anolog showed a 40 on the Pin

 

[Digger]

OK , What about masking or Nulling out Iron in all metal mode , did you try any testing on this ?

Here is a picture of an object the E-Trac detected at 8". I was confused when I first recovered it because it usually does pretty well with identifying iron. I took it home and found it had a token used as a washer. I have also dug quite a few coins that were in with rusted iron.

Yes you can do very well "cherry picking" when that is what you choose to do, but adjust the discrimination for relic hunting and it does just as well in that area. Fact is pretty much any detectors will do a good job when used properly for the given task.

 

[Hardy]

This discussion involves different kinds of hunters here. Hardy is strictly a relic hunter and therefore will never have any use for an expensive cherry picker. Any true relic hunter doesn't need a machine that rejects "trash" and knows that there are thousands of variables in the ground. They have sifted through beds of iron mixed with other metals and know that no machine on this earth could only pick out the "goodies" in concentrated areas and that I will bet the farm on. We don't have mineralization problems out here though.

Cherry pickers are great for people who have limited time and are only interested in coins and rings.
I'm out 8 to 12 hours a day, all spring, summer, and fall and I have been hunting since the mid 80's. What you see above my avatar is all I'll ever need. I've gone head to head on air tests against $1500 machines and have blown them away for depth and sensitivity.


When all the hype clears and the wallet looks empty, pick up one of those good old VLF turn on and go mid-ranged$$$ detectors, learn the tones, and kick azzzzzzz!!!

Ya Muddyhandz is right ,I say Park hunting is better for the Cherry pickers and not for serious Relic Hunters to waste their time in.

 

[Iron Patch]

This discussion involves different kinds of hunters here. Hardy is strictly a relic hunter and therefore will never have any use for an expensive cherry picker. Any true relic hunter doesn't need a machine that rejects "trash" and knows that there are thousands of variables in the ground. They have sifted through beds of iron mixed with other metals and know that no machine on this earth could only pick out the "goodies" in concentrated areas and that I will bet the farm on. We don't have mineralization problems out here though.

Cherry pickers are great for people who have limited time and are only interested in coins and rings.
I'm out 8 to 12 hours a day, all spring, summer, and fall and I have been hunting since the mid 80's. What you see above my avatar is all I'll ever need. I've gone head to head on air tests against $1500 machines and have blown them away for depth and sensitivity.


When all the hype clears and the wallet looks empty, pick up one of those good old VLF turn on and go mid-ranged$$$ detectors, learn the tones, and kick azzzzzzz!!!

Well I think I have found enough to be called a relic hunter and do use discrimination, so am I doing something wrong? I have no need to dig small iron so why would I waste time hunting in allmetal? In fact, the way my explorer rejects small iron at low disc. but still lets me see the very small non ferrous targets is about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in a detector.

I definitely do not prefer old school for my first choice, but if I had to pick something else it could possibly be a Nautilus IIb.

 

[Iron Patch]

This discussion involves different kinds of hunters here. Hardy is strictly a relic hunter and therefore will never have any use for an expensive cherry picker. Any true relic hunter doesn't need a machine that rejects "trash" and knows that there are thousands of variables in the ground. They have sifted through beds of iron mixed with other metals and know that no machine on this earth could only pick out the "goodies" in concentrated areas and that I will bet the farm on. We don't have mineralization problems out here though.

Cherry pickers are great for people who have limited time and are only interested in coins and rings.
I'm out 8 to 12 hours a day, all spring, summer, and fall and I have been hunting since the mid 80's. What you see above my avatar is all I'll ever need. I've gone head to head on air tests against $1500 machines and have blown them away for depth and sensitivity.


When all the hype clears and the wallet looks empty, pick up one of those good old VLF turn on and go mid-ranged$$$ detectors, learn the tones, and kick azzzzzzz!!!

Ya Muddyhandz is right ,I say Park hunting is better for the Cherry pickers and not for serious Relic Hunters to waste their time in.

That is actually my problem with park hunting, I become a cherry picker and it drives me crazy because it's the opposite of the way I usually hunt. The funny part is I'm fairly good at it, but after an hour or so I've had enough. Think it has been about 5 years since I did a park hunt and not sure if I'll ever do one again.

 

[U.K. Brian]

Just to correct a point. Gary does have a fondness for the Silver Sabre but does use a whole range of machines....I think his point with the Tesoro was that it was pre the manufacturers wacking up the gain to the n'th degree so you can have a very pleasent time detecting at a lower depth than with later machines but with swings and roundabouts your digging less iffy signals that often turn out to be rubbish so cover more ground in a day and end up going home with more.

Re the old v new I have most of the old classics and most of the new machines as well. Until the floods followed by mole tunneling two years back anyone was welcome to try my three main test beds (low/medium and high mineralisation) and pit different machines against each other.
The result was I could always beat the new technology but the drawback was it would be on a specific type of site. The classic detector for iron see through would not have the depth to beat a new machine on clean ground. The better pasture detectors had little or no wet beach ability etc.

I have replaced one test bed which is called "The Heartbreaker" by those who have tried it. Its just the same type of coin buried an inch deeper every two feet. Run modern machines along it and it only takes a few inches of increased depth before I.D. is becoming inaccurate. Test the deeper targets and a pure copper coin I.D.'s as iron. Same would occur if I had buried silver coins, gold would have been worse. Many of the old machines do far better and yes I've either owned or tried the XP Deus/Whites TDI/V3/E-Trac etc.

 

[Digger]

I'm sensing a little inter-hobby rivalry?

I do a fair amount of relic hunting when I have nothing better to do. To each their own, but I find relic hunting to be less of a challenge than coin-shooting, and a bit on the boring side. But hey, thats just me. It may have to do with location. I happen to live in an area that has a very lively past so finding relics takes little more than picking a field nearby. Heck some of my locations doesn't even require a metal detector as you can eyeball relics on top the ground. Not like that would take much of a detector to find.

Here is a picture of just some of the some 400+ musket and mini-balls showing I do relic hunt.

You use the term cherry picking as if its a bad thing. Actually I believe its more of an envy thing because cherry picking done right takes a lot of experience. I'm done with my days of digging it all, and I've got boxes and boxes of worthless garbage to show for it. My time has become much more valuable than when I was new to the hobby. First and foremost of importance for the cherry picker is the right detector. Beep & Dig don't cut the mustard here, and experience takes second place to a good detector. I understand that in many of the other areas of metal detecting experience take top spot of importance, but in cherry picking experience won't get you squat without a good detector. One thing to remember is that while any good well featured detector can do relic hunting, not any detector makes a good cherry picker. I feel its better to have a little more versatility than limiting myself to a dig-it-all for all hunting.

You often see people saying if you discriminate at all you're missing stuff. Yes I agree, you're missing the junk for the most part, and isn't that the job of discrimination? Personally I've found this to be BS. Sounds all cool to say "I'll walk behind you cherry pickers and pull out the good stuff." but that would only be the case of an inexperienced cherry picker or someone trying to cherry pick using a beep & dig machine. Oh ya I know, you have this amazing ability to tell the difference between a clad penny and wheat on your beep and dig no ID detector. BS. I know a lot of very experienced generic detectors users who will admit they can tell a good target from a bad most of the time, but thats about the limits of being able to identify a target.

I understand that relics hunters have much less need for a technically advanced detector since they pretty much dig anything that beeps, but that sure doesn't apply for most of the rest of us.

 

[Hardy]

IRONPATCH , I do use a disc setting that allowes nails etc, about a #3 as nails help to date a site . Roseheads clinch nails date

a site to the 1700's and if I dig these I am happy. Allowing such a low setting enables me to then gauge the length of targets in

all metal mode and dig if need be. Nails sound slightly differant from awls and Iron points in this setting. and yes I want a

naughty 2B.

 

[dneyedli@res1.mts.net]

I'm sensing a little inter-hobby rivalry?

I do a fair amount of relic hunting when I have nothing better to do. To each their own, but I find relic hunting to be less of a challenge than coin-shooting, and a bit on the boring side. But hey, thats just me. It may have to do with location. I happen to live in an area that has a very lively past so finding relics takes little more than picking a field nearby. Heck some of my locations doesn't even require a metal detector as you can eyeball relics on top the ground. Not like that would take much of a detector to find.

Here is a picture of just some of the some 400+ musket and mini-balls showing I do relic hunt.

You use the term cherry picking as if its a bad thing. Actually I believe its more of an envy thing because cherry picking done right takes a lot of experience. I'm done with my days of digging it all, and I've got boxes and boxes of worthless garbage to show for it. My time has become much more valuable than when I was new to the hobby. First and foremost of importance for the cherry picker is the right detector. Beep & Dig don't cut the mustard here, and experience takes second place to a good detector. I understand that in many of the other areas of metal detecting experience take top spot of importance, but in cherry picking experience won't get you squat without a good detector. One thing to remember is that while any good well featured detector can do relic hunting, not any detector makes a good cherry picker. I feel its better to have a little more versatility than limiting myself to a dig-it-all for all hunting.

You often see people saying if you discriminate at all you're missing stuff. Yes I agree, you're missing the junk for the most part, and isn't that the job of discrimination? Personally I've found this to be BS. Sounds all cool to say "I'll walk behind you cherry pickers and pull out the good stuff." but that would only be the case of an inexperienced cherry picker or someone trying to cherry pick using a beep & dig machine. Oh ya I know, you have this amazing ability to tell the difference between a clad penny and wheat on your beep and dig no ID detector. BS. I know a lot of very experienced generic detectors users who will admit they can tell a good target from a bad most of the time, but thats about the limits of being able to identify a target.

I understand that relics hunters have much less need for a technically advanced detector since they pretty much dig anything that beeps, but that sure doesn't apply for most of the rest of us.

Experience will beat out any fancy machine.
My first 10 years I was a coin hunter and that got boring seeing thousands of the same coins and to finally hit a key date was like watching grass grow. I EVOLVED into a relic hunter. Worthless garbage? If you only knew buddy.
You think that because you have a great machine, you'll only leave the junk behind and cherry pick the good stuff? Iffy signals are the key here and I have taken my old "piece of crap" detector to hunted out parks and BECAUSE I am a relic hunter, I dug up the valuable non coin objects and found coins with bottle caps and the deeper "junky" signals, do in fact turn out to be good. No matter how much you think you know, You will NEVER know what's completely buried underground.

Overall, I beg to differ on the cherry picking part as I can out cherry pick hunters (with new expensive machines) with my old Fisher backed with 23 years of heavy detecting experience, and I do it quite regularly. The last competition hunt I went to, I found the most tokens, (for prizes) the most planted silver, and I almost found ALL the $2 coins that were in the Twoonie hunt! I was the only one using a 20 year old machine.
All my friends usually look at me with a smirk when some guy comes up to us bragging about his new $1500 machine. When he goes home skunked we all have a good laugh!

We shouldn't be fighting over this but the message I want to put out there is that you don't need to buy an expensive machine and with some hard work, you will learn your tones and be able to do quite well. Often better than those who rely on their screens and have forked out lots of cash for all the bells and whistles. EXPERIENCE is the most important thing here.

P.S. If you want to get rid of all that worthless junk you have from the "easy" relic hunting you did, then you can send it here. I'll pay for the shipping.
Dave.

 

[Digger]

Experience will beat out any fancy machine.

I'll take that bet! You use a MD-3005 and I'll let any newbie use my DFX. We'll see how far you get with experience. Don't get me wrong I agree experience is important, but the detector can also be just as important. More experience does allow a person to use a less featured detector and still get good results. Less experience can benefit greatly from a full featured machine. Take two people with the same experience and the machine WILL make the difference. Common sense!

My first 10 years I was a coin hunter and that got boring seeing thousands of the same coins and to finally hit a key date was like watching grass grow. I EVOLVED into a relic hunter. Worthless garbage? If you only knew buddy.

Hum? for me it was just the opposite. I started as a relic hunter and "evolved" into cherry picker. I live within 5 miles of 3 long gone forts and the 4th that remains was home of the Cavalry. Yes, I do have an idea. I can, and have, fill my pouch with Cavalry buttons, bullets and all sorts of relics. I still value them, but in my area, finding a coin from the early 1800's takes far more work and experience than the relics. Besides, finding a nice piece of gold jewelry that pays for your $1500 detector isn't bad either.

Two years ago I found an old carnival grounds and cherry picked it for the first year. Found lots of good old coins and jewelry but then cherry picking dried up. Last year I started going through digging everything hoping I could pull a few missed goodies, but you know what? So far not one single keeper has come from the site. I'm sure eventually I will pull something good, but so far I've found my cherry picking was very efficient. I give some credit to experience, but most goes to my DFX. I would have never been able to do such a good job with my Silver uMax. You might have, but I couldn't have.

You're right we shouldn't be arguing. For you and your type of hunting(to each their own) you value experience over features. For me and my type of hunting experience, is important, but not as important as the right detector for the right job. I'm sure we both do quite well and thats all that really matters right?

 

[dneyedli@res1.mts.net]

Experience will beat out any fancy machine.

I'll take that bet! You use a MD-3005 and I'll let any newbie use my DFX. We'll see how far you get with experience. Don't get me wrong I agree experience is important, but the detector can also be just as important. More experience does allow a person to use a less featured detector and still get good results. Less experience can benefit greatly from a full featured machine. Take two people with the same experience and the machine WILL make the difference. Common sense!

My first 10 years I was a coin hunter and that got boring seeing thousands of the same coins and to finally hit a key date was like watching grass grow. I EVOLVED into a relic hunter. Worthless garbage? If you only knew buddy.

Hum? for me it was just the opposite. I started as a relic hunter and "evolved" into cherry picker. I live within 5 miles of 3 long gone forts and the 4th that remains was home of the Cavalry. Yes, I do have an idea. I can, and have, fill my pouch with Cavalry buttons, bullets and all sorts of relics. I still value them, but in my area, finding a coin from the early 1800's takes far more work and experience than the relics. Besides, finding a nice piece of gold jewelry that pays for your $1500 detector isn't bad either.

Two years ago I found an old carnival grounds and cherry picked it for the first year. Found lots of good old coins and jewelry but then cherry picking dried up. Last year I started going through digging everything hoping I could pull a few missed goodies, but you know what? So far not one single keeper has come from the site. I'm sure eventually I will pull something good, but so far I've found my cherry picking was very efficient. I give some credit to experience, but most goes to my DFX. I would have never been able to do such a good job with my Silver uMax. You might have, but I couldn't have.

You're right we shouldn't be arguing. For you and your type of hunting(to each their own) you value experience over features. For me and my type of hunting experience, is important, but not as important as the right detector for the right job. I'm sure we both do quite well and thats all that really matters right?

You know what you can do and I know what I can do. The bottom line is I would still go hunting with you any day and we probably have more common ground than differences. (That last sentence I just wrote in the Religion forum!)
H.H.
Dave.

 

[Iron Patch]

I'm sensing a little inter-hobby rivalry?

I do a fair amount of relic hunting when I have nothing better to do. To each their own, but I find relic hunting to be less of a challenge than coin-shooting, and a bit on the boring side. But hey, thats just me. It may have to do with location. I happen to live in an area that has a very lively past so finding relics takes little more than picking a field nearby. Heck some of my locations doesn't even require a metal detector as you can eyeball relics on top the ground. Not like that would take much of a detector to find.

Here is a picture of just some of the some 400+ musket and mini-balls showing I do relic hunt.

You use the term cherry picking as if its a bad thing. Actually I believe its more of an envy thing because cherry picking done right takes a lot of experience. I'm done with my days of digging it all, and I've got boxes and boxes of worthless garbage to show for it. My time has become much more valuable than when I was new to the hobby. First and foremost of importance for the cherry picker is the right detector. Beep & Dig don't cut the mustard here, and experience takes second place to a good detector. I understand that in many of the other areas of metal detecting experience take top spot of importance, but in cherry picking experience won't get you squat without a good detector. One thing to remember is that while any good well featured detector can do relic hunting, not any detector makes a good cherry picker. I feel its better to have a little more versatility than limiting myself to a dig-it-all for all hunting.

You often see people saying if you discriminate at all you're missing stuff. Yes I agree, you're missing the junk for the most part, and isn't that the job of discrimination? Personally I've found this to be BS. Sounds all cool to say "I'll walk behind you cherry pickers and pull out the good stuff." but that would only be the case of an inexperienced cherry picker or someone trying to cherry pick using a beep & dig machine. Oh ya I know, you have this amazing ability to tell the difference between a clad penny and wheat on your beep and dig no ID detector. BS. I know a lot of very experienced generic detectors users who will admit they can tell a good target from a bad most of the time, but thats about the limits of being able to identify a target.

I understand that relics hunters have much less need for a technically advanced detector since they pretty much dig anything that beeps, but that sure doesn't apply for most of the rest of us.

Experience will beat out any fancy machine.
My first 10 years I was a coin hunter and that got boring seeing thousands of the same coins and to finally hit a key date was like watching grass grow. I EVOLVED into a relic hunter. Worthless garbage? If you only knew buddy.
You think that because you have a great machine, you'll only leave the junk behind and cherry pick the good stuff? Iffy signals are the key here and I have taken my old "piece of crap" detector to hunted out parks and BECAUSE I am a relic hunter, I dug up the valuable non coin objects and found coins with bottle caps and the deeper "junky" signals, do in fact turn out to be good. No matter how much you think you know, You will NEVER know what's completely buried underground.

Overall, I beg to differ on the cherry picking part as I can out cherry pick hunters (with new expensive machines) with my old Fisher backed with 23 years of heavy detecting experience, and I do it quite regularly. The last competition hunt I went to, I found the most tokens, (for prizes) the most planted silver, and I almost found ALL the $2 coins that were in the Twoonie hunt! I was the only one using a 20 year old machine.
All my friends usually look at me with a smirk when some guy comes up to us bragging about his new $1500 machine. When he goes home skunked we all have a good laugh!

We shouldn't be fighting over this but the message I want to put out there is that you don't need to buy an expensive machine and with some hard work, you will learn your tones and be able to do quite well. Often better than those who rely on their screens and have forked out lots of cash for all the bells and whistles. EXPERIENCE is the most important thing here.

P.S. If you want to get rid of all that worthless junk you have from the "easy" relic hunting you did, then you can send it here. I'll pay for the shipping.
Dave.

So are you saying there's absolutely nothing my Explorer can do better than your old detector? How about I'll start with one.

My Explorer has more accurate target ID (sound) at its max depth. If you've never used one I guess there is not much point to this because you wouldn't know just how good it is. I used to be fooled so much by deep iron with my GTI, fooled or at least had to chase it just to be sure. The explorer on the other had will false on shallow iron but has the strange ability to cancel/null it out when it gets deep. Most other detectors (actually all) I've ever used very deep nails are high tone hits, not for my explorer. On the average hunt at my early sites I might chase a few larger iron hits on purpose, but don't dig any small iron, none at all. My disc. setting is fairly close to zero (-14 of a possible -16) and of course I'm like everyone else, things get missed, but I hunt fields. I think a better way to put it, is do you think you could see targets I wouldn't be able to? I think not, and in all the guests I've had here have never been shown a target I can''t see, but have done that back to them many times. It's always the same scenario, a target very masked in iron. I say there's a good target there, they can't see it, I cut the plug and sound gets better, then they hear it. Anyway, there's not much point in going on, but I can't quite understand how you discount modern detectors just because of features. That would only make sense if they packed the old guts into the new units and added the bells and whistles, which I don't think is true. Also, it seems with these new detectors you automatically associate the term cherry picking and imply just because someone has a new detector the first thing they do is get home and spend an hour putting some type of fancy coin pattern together. You'd probably be surprised just how similar my detector and detecting is to yours. I use high sens., how disc., and dig! If I get in an iron patch that I have punched pretty quiet then I'll start digging some part tones and see what happens. They are very low % signals, but I guarantee when I'm to that point no one with any detector is coming in and scooping some good hits without hunting the same way. I have a term for it, call it "ripping the place appart." So now that I hope i made the point that we might not be much different in how we dig, the difference I believe is how much small iron I can leave behind because of the technology. The explorer does everything else very well too but it's digging every hole for a non iron item that is the winning ticket for me.

 

[Hardy]

Well , My BEEF is that Whites has built more expensive machines with larger coils and more bells and whistles that does not out preform the older models , yet the cost is way out there. Knob turning is less tedious then switching screens and analog seems
to be more accurate. I think the real key is HEARING whats in the ground then SEEING what a screen is telling you to dig.

In regards to the Explorer by Minelab , I am in no way qualified to put this machine down as I never owned one. Yet with the skilled hands and Hearing of Iron Patch , I would not doubt that its a deadly combo in the field on any type of ground.

[/quote]

IRONPATCH
So are you saying there's absolutely nothing my Explorer can do better than your old detector? How about I'll start with one.

My Explorer has more accurate target ID (sound) at its max depth. If you've never used one I guess there is not much point to this because you wouldn't know just how good it is. I used to be fooled so much by deep iron with my GTI, fooled or at least had to chase it just to be sure. The explorer on the other had will false on shallow iron but has the strange ability to cancel/null it out when it gets deep. Most other detectors (actually all) I've ever used very deep nails are high tone hits, not for my explorer. On the average hunt at my early sites I might chase a few larger iron hits on purpose, but don't dig any small iron, none at all. My disc. setting is fairly close to zero (-14 of a possible -16) and of course I'm like everyone else, things get missed, but I hunt fields. I think a better way to put it, is do you think you could see targets I wouldn't be able to? I think not, and in all the guests I've had here have never been shown a target I can't see, but have done that back to them many times. It's always the same scenario, a target very masked in iron. I say there's a good target there, they can't see it, I cut the plug and sound gets better, then they hear it. Anyway, there's not much point in going on, but I can't quite understand how you discount modern detectors just because of features. That would only make sense if they packed the old guts into the new units and added the bells and whistles, which I don't think is true. Also, it seems with these new detectors you automatically associate the term cherry picking and imply just because someone has a new detector the first thing they do is get home and spend an hour putting some type of fancy coin pattern together. You'd probably be surprised just how similar my detector and detecting is to yours. I use high sens., how disc., and dig! If I get in an iron patch that I have punched pretty quiet then I'll start digging some part tones and see what happens. They are very low % signals, but I guarantee when I'm to that point no one with any detector is coming in and scooping some good hits without hunting the same way. I have a term for it, call it "ripping the place appart." So now that I hope i made the point that we might not be much different in how we dig, the difference I believe is how much small iron I can leave behind because of the technology. The explorer does everything else very well too but it's digging every hole for a non iron item that is the winning ticket for me.
[/quote]

 

[Digger]

Well , My BEEF is that Whites has built more expensive machines with larger coils and more bells and whistles that does not out preform the older models , yet the cost is way out there. Knob turning is less tedious then switching screens and analog seems
to be more accurate. I think the real key is HEARING whats in the ground then SEEING what a screen is telling you to dig.

I believe the key in your statement is "My BEEF" Just because YOU believe "Whites has built more expensive machines with larger coils and more bells and whistles that does not out preform the older models" doesn't make it a fact or true for others. Personally I've been a White's user for the last 22 years, and that does include having owned the 6000, and I honestly see no comparison at all between the older models and the new ones. I cleaned out our city park with the older White's detectors, to the best of ability of the detector, and the DFX was able to bring it back to life. Six years with the DFX in that park and it dried up again until I took the V3 which brought new life to the park.

I didn't have a good experience with the Minelab SE but I see that others do, so rather than blankly state its a piece of crap, I say it just wasn't for me but realize it just might be the ticket for someone else.

What has always kind of chapped my Willie is the apparent lack of consideration for the new detectorist when it comes to answering that famous question of "What should I buy?" It never fails that you see people saying "its all about experience and the detector doesn't matter." OK, for those of us who have been detecting for some time, we fully understand the concept. We may not agree with it, but we do understand where its coming from. Telling experienced hunters that its all about experience and not the detector will do noting to convince those who have already made up their minds whether they like been-N-digs or want something more. What it will do is probably ruin the experience of the beginner. Is that what you are really trying to accomplish?

Common sense 101: Someone new to detecting isn't going to understand or be able to take that $100 beep-n-dig detector and hope to accomplish what it took most of us many years to accomplish unless they plan to have an experienced beep-n-digger by their side in the learning process. Telling some newbie they don't need to have all those "bells & whistles" just because you don't is a bit inconsiderate. You could a least be honest and tell them that a visual display can lessen the learning curve, and in time you will learn to identify targets by tone and no longer need a display if you choose so.

Thanks to some inconsiderate posts right now I see a newbie comparing the ACE 250 to the DFX. His question is why would someone spend $1000 for a detector when a $200 one does the same thing. Its just sad. There should be no need to explain such an obvious fact. Yes, some people just have so much money they prefer to spend $1000 on a detector that does nothing more than a $200 detector. Its like a game for some where the name of the game is to convince as many newbies to use your detector of choice no matter what. I seen a few of the poor people who gave up and got out of the hobby because they took the advice and bought a beep-n-dig only to be discouraged because all they found was junk.

And isn't it amazing how the best detector for any job is the one each of us uses?