One last attempt at this. You suggest perhaps selecting part of a local park to keep returning to to try new settings/new coils etc. It still gets back to the fact that you may have cleared the area out or in the meanwhile someone with a more powerful machine or better technique has worked the area to death. So you don't really have anything to draw accurate conclusions from.
Metal Detector Benchmark Test
- Thread starter CyberSage
- Start date
YARDBYRD
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2006
- Messages
- 408
Brian, the area that I hunted several times yielded the Merc. I know the reason i didn't find it earlier was not because it didn't register but because I was frustrated with digging prior similar signals. It wasn't until I dug up all those other ones that I found the Merc. It may not be the best test in the world to go by but my conclusion to the test was that going over that same piece of ground several times taught me some about how each mode on my machine works. It taught me which mode and coil set up that I will use in most situations. I've gained some experience with the machine.......I have had a blast....... and I have a 1944 Mercury dime, a dateless Buffalo, and a handfull of wheat pennies that I wouldn't have had otherwise.
Is there an 18k ring there at 3" that a much less expensive machine could find..........Very well could be........But... if there is then it's because I haven't resorted to digging every signal yet which is the final round of the test.
If by the time I'm done, I have decided to upgrade to a more expensive machine and find several silver coins at 10" it will prove that the upgrade was worth it and that machine was capable of finding deeper targets.
On the other hand if i upgrade and find nothing new there it doesn't prove anything.
The best advice I think I've heard here is "Go slow and dig everything". Not that i always follow that advice and not that it will tell you which detector is the best but what it will do is teach you what you and your detector can do. I figure if a person can do that they have the battle won because we can debate what the best detector is forever and the truth to that question may be that we just may never know.
Buy the best you can afford and go slow and dig everything.
Is there an 18k ring there at 3" that a much less expensive machine could find..........Very well could be........But... if there is then it's because I haven't resorted to digging every signal yet which is the final round of the test.
If by the time I'm done, I have decided to upgrade to a more expensive machine and find several silver coins at 10" it will prove that the upgrade was worth it and that machine was capable of finding deeper targets.
On the other hand if i upgrade and find nothing new there it doesn't prove anything.
The best advice I think I've heard here is "Go slow and dig everything". Not that i always follow that advice and not that it will tell you which detector is the best but what it will do is teach you what you and your detector can do. I figure if a person can do that they have the battle won because we can debate what the best detector is forever and the truth to that question may be that we just may never know.
Buy the best you can afford and go slow and dig everything.
Best advice you have heard on the forum is 'go slow and dig everything'. Trouble is there's many beginers and they might do that and not get the best out of their machine. Its a bit like 'low and slow' for the coil. Applies to many machines but not all.
Any four filter machine, Spectrum, XLT, older Whites motion/non-motion models, DFX when used with four or more filters rely on a faster sweep speed to achieve depth and improve the discrimination. Go slow and performance is radically reduced.
The other often quoted bit of wisdom is to get the coil low. Seems to make sense on the face of it and with the majority of machines on average soil is the correct thing to do. On the other hand Garrett and a few other manufacturers with some of their models supplied a really deep coil cover to stop the coil nearing the ground. All detector coils pick up the ground in a non linear way. Almost brushing highly mineralised ground might get you an inch nearer to target but the increase in ground signal may be much greater than the signal response improvement from a deep target. This in turn reduces sensitivity.
Better to raise the coil an inch or so and preferably switch to a smaller coil.
Any four filter machine, Spectrum, XLT, older Whites motion/non-motion models, DFX when used with four or more filters rely on a faster sweep speed to achieve depth and improve the discrimination. Go slow and performance is radically reduced.
The other often quoted bit of wisdom is to get the coil low. Seems to make sense on the face of it and with the majority of machines on average soil is the correct thing to do. On the other hand Garrett and a few other manufacturers with some of their models supplied a really deep coil cover to stop the coil nearing the ground. All detector coils pick up the ground in a non linear way. Almost brushing highly mineralised ground might get you an inch nearer to target but the increase in ground signal may be much greater than the signal response improvement from a deep target. This in turn reduces sensitivity.
Better to raise the coil an inch or so and preferably switch to a smaller coil.
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