New machine finally arrived... (? for Cupajo/OBN)

[Crumble]

Ordered my Infinium LS last week, finally arrived last night. Took it to the beach this morning to test her out and try to get the hang of ground balancing it (more on that below), ran smooth, found a few really deep pennies... nothing exciting.

Question for Cupajo or OldBeechNut, when ground balancing this machine, do you bob the coil up and down, or do you just set it on the ground? I've read of people saying both ways... When setting it to fast tracking and bobbing it up and down over the wet sand, it wouldn't settle at a steady threshold, always a signal when I lower it. I ended up just putting it in lock and hunting.. the threshold was perfectly steady and I dug a few 15" targets, but when I raise the coil off the ground into the air it gives a tone, telling me that the ground balance is off..? In hindsight I'm thinking I should have just hunted in slow/fast ground track for a few minutes to let it balance, before locking it. So, how do you ground balance yours?

Anyway, tonight I'll be hitting the black sand beach that drives metal detectors crazy, hopefully this new machine can handle it... if I can figure out this ground balancing thing...

PS. My god this machine is heavy, my arm was trembling after 3 hours...

Here is a picture...

[CanSlaw]

Can't help with the GB, but the weight I can. I have the Sea Hunter, and I hip mounted mine right out of the box. Then I made a short straight shaft for it. It is now the lightest water machine I own. Six hour of hunting and I can still tip a beer after the hunt and the arm doesn't hurt a bit.

If you make a straight shaft the Garrett lower rod will not fit 7/8 in tubing. However a Whites lower rod works perfect and the Garrett coil bolts up with just a thin rubber washer added.

Good luck with the new Garrett they are nice machines.

[Crumble]

Ya, I'm tempted to hip mount it, but the coil is the heaviest part... also the hip mount pouch that came with it feels too cheap to use... and afraid of pulling on the cables. That 10x14" DD coil weighs like 3 pounds , feels like it anyway.

The Plugger straight shaft I bought came with whites lower rod and washers, no wobbly shaft for this guy.

[oldbeechnut]

AKA, Why did you get the infinium..It is the deepest Pi I have used but a real SOB to use also. I see you got the DD, never used it before..hear is is more stable of a coil...not sure. But many prefer the mono......Good Luck she's a real killer....Like that shaft, I may have to go that way...clean!

GB
Turn her on, Listen to battery check, Select Lock, and do freq adjust with coil on the ground, Select fast track and do ground balance, Select lock and away ya go. Do all this in the water if you are wet sand detecting.


Set threshold to around 5 or 6 or to whatever your hearing requires. Set the threshold as high as you can tolerate if hunting for very weak signals. An high threshold on the Infinium will not blank out small signals, it makes them sharper and easier to hear
Sometimes you have to increase the discrimination up to 1, 2 or 3 to quiet it down in the salt water.Ron lord GB's his in the first few minutes...

[Raphis]

My god this machine is heavy, my arm was trembling after 3 hours...

Did you try mounting the Infinium box behind your arm support instead of in front of it?
I think you would get a much better balanced (lighter feel) machine if you did. I've got the same shaft by Plugger, but have a Dual Field mounted on it (behind the arm support). I can swing it all day.....although your shaft (from your pics) looks shorter than mine....??? Doesn't seem to be much room behind your arm support....hmmm.

Hope the Infinium works out for you. I almost pulled the trigger on that machine, but I was hoping Garrett would make an update to this model. It's been 9 years or so since they came out with this machine. Plus, with my varying sand conditions along my beaches, I felt that I would be having to constantly tweak the ground balance to maximize depth and stability. I just wanted a turn on and go machine. I'm very happy with the DF. It handles my worst black sand conditions (and I didn't even have to turn up the pulse delay).

Good luck.

Raphis

[Crumble]

Originally Posted by oldbeechnut

AKA, Why did you get the infinium..It is the deepest Pi I have used but a real SOB to use also. I see you got the DD, never used it before..hear is is more stable of a coil...not sure. But many prefer the mono......Good Luck she's a real killer....Like that shaft, I may have to go that way...clean!

GB
Turn her on, Listen to battery check, Select Lock, and do freq adjust with coil on the ground, Select fast track and do ground balance, Select lock and away ya go. Do all this in the water if you are wet sand detecting.


Set threshold to around 5 or 6 or to whatever your hearing requires. Set the threshold as high as you can tolerate if hunting for very weak signals. An high threshold on the Infinium will not blank out small signals, it makes them sharper and easier to hear
Sometimes you have to increase the discrimination up to 1, 2 or 3 to quiet it down in the salt water.Ron lord GB's his in the first few minutes...

I have this one beach in my area, the most popular and one of the most historic beachs in my city, that has really bad mineralization. I had a Sand Shark and I couldn't even sweep over this sand, overload every swing, I've talked to guys with excals and they say they have to drop sensitivity way down and swing super slow to be able to hunt... so I figured the Infinium may be the key to hunting this beach, seeing that it does well in hot ground nugget hunting.

Also, I got kind of bored with a turn on and go, one tone machine... steep learning curve keeps things interesting.

Not sure what I was doing wrong ground balancing earlier, I freq adjusted out the emi, turned it to fast, bobbed the coil up and down like 30 times, and the coil always gave a signal when it got about an inch from the ground. I read somewhere a minute ago that in the hot ground gold fields to ground balance, go into fast, bob coil a few times then set coil on ground for 10 seconds, then bob coil a few more times, rinse repeat until steady threshold. Gonna try that tonight... hitting the badly mineralized beach for 11:30pm low tide... hopefully I can pull this all off in the dark...

[Crumble]

Originally Posted by Raphis

Did you try mounting the Infinium box behind your arm support instead of in front of it?
I think you would get a much better balanced (lighter feel) machine if you did. I've got the same shaft by Plugger, but have a Dual Field mounted on it (behind the arm support). I can swing it all day.....although your shaft (from your pics) looks shorter than mine....??? Doesn't seem to be much room behind your arm support....hmmm.

Hope the Infinium works out for you. I almost pulled the trigger on that machine, but I was hoping Garrett would make an update to this model. It's been 9 years or so since they came out with this machine. Plus, with my varying sand conditions along my beaches, I felt that I would be having to constantly tweak the ground balance to maximize depth and stability. I just wanted a turn on and go machine. I'm very happy with the DF. It handles my worst black sand conditions (and I didn't even have to turn up the pulse delay).

Good luck.

Raphis

Ya I had it behind the arm cuff first, but the damn thing was like 60" long and wouldn't fit in my car , so I moved the arm cuff and handle back and moved the control box forward a bit, then pushed the lower rod in to about the 5th hole... now it's only 54" and fits on my back seat...

I was tempted to get the DF PI, but I wasn't sure if longer pulse delay would be enough to be able to hunt this badly mineralized beach, didn't want to have to sell another machine. So I bought the only waterproof ground balancing PI out there... Hopefully it works...

[therover]

This is what works for me here on the NJ beaches....other areas it may be totally useless.

Do a frequency check ( since it is checking for EMI, best is to have the coil off the ground when doing this). Get the best setting with the least amount of interference/noise.

Set the discrimination to 0, threshold 5-6 range, GB on SLOW. Start to sweep, SLOWLY, over the ground (with the coil at the height you will be detecting) that you will be hunting. After about a minute, the unit should settle down a bit. Then do that same procedure with the GB in the FAST position. Once completed, set it to lock and off you go. The only time I use either the FAST or SLOW modes, is when the conditions are changing very rapidly. For 90% of the beaches I hunt, I LOCK in after ground balancing and everything runs smooth.

If the unit is acting erratically, I would first lower the threshold a bit. If still, then up the discrimination to 1, but keep the threshold in the 5-6 range.

The threshold and discrimination settings work independently of each other, and you can adjust each one to get the best results. I like to run mine with the threshold fairly high. I like it being on the edge of stability. Remember, the Infinium has tone ID. Dig the REPEATABLE hi/lo or lo/hi tones that repeat at different angles.

You will get some falsing and washed out, one way hi/lo or lo/hi signals that will stop you to investigate. If they do not repeat from different angles, and do not have the same quality of sound ( that is, they disappear one way, sound louder another way as opposed to the same quality from all angles), move on...it's a false signal most of the time.

I agree with the poster who stated to mount the control box as high up on the shaft as you can.

One other thing...you HAVE to get the 10x14 mono coil if you are salt water beach hunting. It just works way better, it's lighter, moves over the wet sand, suds and water easier and covers more ground. Once you learn how to pin point with it, you won't take it off.

[WildDigger]

I want to hear more from you as you learn this one. I want the LS to be my water machine when I upgrade....

[Compass]

I have never tried the Infinium but I have had my best luck in black sand with the Dual Field. Good luck with what sounds like a deep machine!

[chad27]

Congrats nice machine. I cant wait till my HH PI gets here

[Cupajo]

I learned to "settle" by living with some chatter which occurred even after G Ballancing in the air close to the ground, on the ground, bobbing in the air close to the ground, and doing the same in the water!

The LS often quieted down after a "warm up" period of perhaps 10-15 minutes, but there was always a bit of chatter. It didn't keep me from recovering 19 Gold rings while I had it!

GL with your Infinium and keep us informed of your successes.

GL&HH Friend,

CJ