Doc Chocobo
Junior Member
This is currently the cheapest detector I own. I have nicer, more expensive units, but this one was in a pawn shop for 40 bucks and for some reason, I wanted it. It reminded me of an earlier time when I was learning on an analog machine from RS. I've always liked the feel of analog machines and I have an ear for the sounds coming up from the coil. This little cheapo is far from anything amazing, but I was able to get it going quite well. I didn't expect much from this machine, so anything would come as a nice surprise.
I dug through the terrible manual that was mostly written in Ingrish, and soon had it balanced and running with a faint threshold tone. It can get a clad dime at about 3.5 inches, but you have to have a good ear, headphones, and know how to jigger the ground balance. I didn't even set the discriminator, because iron causes the tone to fade and the meter to swing left anyway. Anything above iron was fair game while I was testing.
So the first run in the yard was about fifteen minutes and I came up with 39 cents in clad (quarter, dime, penny x 3). Then a snipped piece of #10 copper wire, A coaxial cable end connector the cable guy must have dropped years ago, and an angry orchard bottle-cap. All but the bottle cap were under the surface from 1.5 to 3 inches. I found that copper and clad make that thing scream! However, it detects iron like it's made of honey or something. It picks it up way deeper than three inches. I heard that tone fade hundreds of times. There's a million nails in the ground around this house.
One of the tings I discovered out here is that the soil is very sandy and dry. Depending on the kind of metal, stuff comes up almost as if it was dropped yesterday. My second little trip out yielded a ton of clad which was black and burnt to toast, and a lot of old copper pennies from the old town part that looked like they came out of someone's pocket yesterday. There were obviously many toasted coppers as well, but picture shows my best specimens after ultrasonic cleaning. The rest went to Coin-Star. I don't keep the toast. I can't show the quarter, because it was Honey-Bunny's birth-year and I gave it to her.
The surface was white after I got the dirt off. There was still a little Shine showing, but mostly on the spots where it was worn. It had blackish funk on it when I dug it though. I was just happy to get it clean for her.
The thing is cheap, not very deep, but addictive. I have a Time Ranger I use as well, but I never really have warmed to the feel of it or any digital unit. I can find stuff sure, but I still love to use analog machines. When you get an ear for it, it's great to hear the stuff in the ground singing up to your headphones. Tap that balance now and again and tweak how your machine works to get you that extra little bit of perspective.
That thing's been a trip to my childhood. It was worth the pittance I paid.
OH, it's made by Pyle, and the model is PHMD1
I will henceforth call it "Light Tackle"
I dug through the terrible manual that was mostly written in Ingrish, and soon had it balanced and running with a faint threshold tone. It can get a clad dime at about 3.5 inches, but you have to have a good ear, headphones, and know how to jigger the ground balance. I didn't even set the discriminator, because iron causes the tone to fade and the meter to swing left anyway. Anything above iron was fair game while I was testing.
So the first run in the yard was about fifteen minutes and I came up with 39 cents in clad (quarter, dime, penny x 3). Then a snipped piece of #10 copper wire, A coaxial cable end connector the cable guy must have dropped years ago, and an angry orchard bottle-cap. All but the bottle cap were under the surface from 1.5 to 3 inches. I found that copper and clad make that thing scream! However, it detects iron like it's made of honey or something. It picks it up way deeper than three inches. I heard that tone fade hundreds of times. There's a million nails in the ground around this house.
One of the tings I discovered out here is that the soil is very sandy and dry. Depending on the kind of metal, stuff comes up almost as if it was dropped yesterday. My second little trip out yielded a ton of clad which was black and burnt to toast, and a lot of old copper pennies from the old town part that looked like they came out of someone's pocket yesterday. There were obviously many toasted coppers as well, but picture shows my best specimens after ultrasonic cleaning. The rest went to Coin-Star. I don't keep the toast. I can't show the quarter, because it was Honey-Bunny's birth-year and I gave it to her.
The surface was white after I got the dirt off. There was still a little Shine showing, but mostly on the spots where it was worn. It had blackish funk on it when I dug it though. I was just happy to get it clean for her.The thing is cheap, not very deep, but addictive. I have a Time Ranger I use as well, but I never really have warmed to the feel of it or any digital unit. I can find stuff sure, but I still love to use analog machines. When you get an ear for it, it's great to hear the stuff in the ground singing up to your headphones. Tap that balance now and again and tweak how your machine works to get you that extra little bit of perspective.
That thing's been a trip to my childhood. It was worth the pittance I paid.
OH, it's made by Pyle, and the model is PHMD1
I will henceforth call it "Light Tackle"
