Sunday April 26th will go down in the books as my first official hunt with the new Whites Spectra Vision 3 . I purchased my detector the day before from my local dealer who has had a lot of trouble keeping them in stock. He had three in stock when I went to pick mine up. Two of the original Vision branded detectors, and one Spectra V3 detectors. I decided to go with one of the Visions for no other reason than I liked the name. All the detectors had the most current revision software loaded into them (v1.1). I purchased it with the Wireless headphones. He expected the other two to be gone by the end of the day. I played a little in my coin garden but, the rain came and that was it for the day. I spent some time that evening roughing in a Correlate based program trying to emulate the one I use in my DFX as best as I could. Saving programs works very similar to how you save on the DFX. You have a lot more enhancements and can add your own programs to the main listing in the menu. Modification to factory programs stay in place now until you reset them. This is nice as theses changes would be lost on the DFX when the battery is removed.
I started out my first hunt with the Super12 mounted up and using the Correlate based program. I was very happy to see it respond just as I hoped it would. Nice and quiet, sounding off loudly on coin targets. I spent about 3 hours working a parkway strip that had been good to me in the past and I wondered over next to a city pool area. I found a lot of clad and really gave the DX-1 Sunray probe a good workout. The Sunray mounted up nicely and responded even better than it did on the DFX. So far no problems with the DFX equipment. Thats a good sign. I switched back to the stock D2 coil and hit a school near my house to play with the Best Data based coin and jewelry program. Other than turning on Tone ID and adjusting the Sensitivity to the hunting area and volume settings, I left all other settings the same. The first thing I noticed was how many nickels were popping out of the ground. When the Spectra locks onto a nickel there is no mistaking it. This machine is truly a turn on and hunt detector. Good job Whites! Don't be afraid of this detector if your thinking about a purchase. I used both the Wireless Head phones and a set of Grey Ghost Headphones on the unit through out the day. I have to admit I like the tone quality better on the Grey Ghost headphones. The wireless was not bad, just different. Other than a shallow ear cup the headphones where very comfortable. I have smaller ears so this did not bother me, but I can see where it might be an issue if your ears are larger. The audio from the Spectra was very much enhanced and finally the Modulation setting on the detector works as advertised. Deeper targets respond in an almost 3d surround distanced tone. I have never been a fan of using the Modulation setting on the DFX but, this was actually kind of neat. Well, thats about it for the first few hours of hunting with the Spectra Vision 3. Just thought I would share what I have experienced so far.
Keep Swing'in
Jack