battries...

Turn your detector on, disconnect one terminal from one battery(either one), put your voltmeter between the opened terminal and the opened battery terminal: If it reads 9V, the detector's voltage is 9V, if it reads 18V, it's series, and 18

I would hate to guess wether they are wired in series or parallel & take a chance of burnig out your detector. I would email the company & ask them - the most they could tell you is if you do it you could void the warranty. Steve.

Ed it won't read that way, you'd be measuring current ( milliamps that way). Rob

rcasi44 said:

Ed it won't read that way, you'd be measuring current ( milliamps that way). Rob

Click to expand...

While you are connecting your meter into the circuit in series, and if the meter were switched to DC Amps, you would read the current, you can also read the primary power supply voltage with the tester in the DC V range. I just performed this test on my Bounty Hunter Camo LS, and it shows that the batteries are connected in series for a nominal voltage of 18 VDC(the detector's voltage drop and the life on the batteries result in the lower reading).

I believe that it is a 9V parallel circuit. Don't know of any detectors running on 18V. The reason for 2 batteries is increased milliamps which increases run time of the detector.

I'd let it go but I don't want mineseeker to screw up his detector. You can't measure voltage that way. First I taught electricity and electronics. For the fun of it I measured the voltage of a bounty hunter your way. Check the picture. It measured 17 plus volts. The problem is this detector only has one 9V battery for this detector and yet reads 17.27 volts. Rob

WThesing said:

I believe that it is a 9V parallel circuit. Don't know of any detectors running on 18V. The reason for 2 batteries is increased milliamps which increases run time of the detector.

Click to expand...

I also thought that the two batteries would be connected in parallel, but my tests show otherwise:
If the batteries were connected in parallel, there would be continuity between both negative terminals coming from the detector, and the same would be true for the two positive terminals, but this is not the case. The only continuity between the two battery connectors is between the negative of one terminal, and the positive of the other terminal, as would be the case if the batteries were wired in series. If the batteries were wired in parallel, with one battery attached, a voltmeter connected to the other empty terminal would give a reading of the battery's voltage, again, this is not the case.

I don't want to steer MineSeeker in the wrong direction, and as with any type of aftermarket alteration, I would advise him to proceed with caution. The easiest way to find out without relying on my advice, would be to email Bounty Hunter and ask them what the detector's battery voltage is.

Ed

rcasi44 said:

I'd let it go but I don't want mineseeker to screw up his detector. You can't measure voltage that way. First I taught electricity and electronics. For the fun of it I measured the voltage of a bounty hunter your way. Check the picture. It measured 17 plus volts. The problem is this detector only has one 9V battery for this detector and yet reads 17.27 volts. Rob

Click to expand...

I can take the criticism, so don't worry about offending me if you think I'm wrong, I'll be the first to admit that I've been mistaken on more than one occasion.

I agree that putting a voltmeter in series with the circuit is not the way to achieve a proper voltage reading, because the reading is minus the sum of all voltage drops in the circuit(Kirchoff's current law). In this case however, the purpose of the reading is not to accurately determine the voltage, but to see what the voltage is between a broken conductor of the circuit. If a series circuit is broken, obviously the two points become a positive and a negative, and in the case of a power supply circuit, are going to give a reading close to the power supply's source. I can't explain your reading of 17V, I did not have that result in my tests, and with one battery taken out of the circuit, I had a reading of around 9V.

As the picture below shows, I have a reading of 8.7 V between the two positive terminals, if the batteries were wired in parallel, the reading would be zero.
That's my take,
Ed
Electronics school graduate 1974-1976
Journeyman Electrician 1986
Master Electrician (Block & Assoc.) 1988
IMSA certified electronics Bench Technician 1997
Journeyman Technician IBEW Local 53

I'll let it go, but I should have gotten close to 9v on the BH quick draw which uses one battery if your theory worked. I wish he would let us know if it uses 9v or 18v when he finds out. The early classics used 3 - 9v batteries. It didn't run on 27v. As I remember the audio ran on on 9v and the rest ran on 2 - 9v in parallel. Good luck. Rob