I hear about high end performance in metal detectors.Im just confused on what people consider high end performance?
Is it the ace 250 finding gold rings,or the Etrac digging 10 inch nails?..lol..Don't get me wrong here cause I really like the Etrac and Minelab,I'm just throwing a dig at people's views,not machines.
I'm thinking a lot of people have this hobby all wrong,and I'm not just talking newbies.Seems the worst information comes from the ones who act like they know the most.Sure,I read a lot but take it all with a grain of salt and hope there's somthing there I can learn from in the posts.
Having owned and ACE250, then an ACE350, and now an ATPro, I can tell you each one of them was "higher performance" than the last.
Whether or not something CAN find an object is actually only at the low end of the equation.
The ability to do more of the following increase the performance of machines:
- Find something more easily (higher frequency machines hit "harder" on gold, whereas lower frequency machines hit "Harder" on silver. Your ACE250 and ACE350 will be MAGNETS for quarters and silver. A lot harder to find smaller gold with them) "Higher performance" machines often have variable frequencies, or even dual frequencies. This enables them to hit "just as hard" on small gold, as well as small silver. Uncompromised.
- Enable the user to personally "discriminate" out trash by sound of signal. With the ACE series, you get a belltone. It only tells you "something is here!" and you have to dig it up to tell what it is. You have a VERY limited amount of sound information, but even still, it's useful. Think about how a bottle cap grunts at the edge, and you can tell it's a bottle cap by that sound. Add fully variable sound to a "higher performance" system, such as the AT Pro, and your ability to understand what is in the ground enables you to SKIP digging trash. Why is this so important? Because when you're skipping digging trash, you're spending MORE time searching for legitimate targets. As I indicated, it's not whether or not you CAN detect a target. In this case, it's how often you encounter "good" targets, versus time spent figuring out or digging TRASH targets.
- VDI (numbers on the display) This just adds more information, like sounds do, to your ability to determine what is under the coil. Just like you look at the notches to tell what something is, VDI gives you MORE information to process.
- Adding more function. Depth, water proofing, neat features like Iron Audio or even All Metal Mode. All of these things enable you to hit more targets more often.
Higher performance leads to just one more thing:
MORE GOOD TARGETS FOUND IN THE TIME YOU HAVE.
That, by any definitions is a GREAT measure of performance. Your ACE series will find stuff... but I guarantee I can cover more ground, dig less trash, and ultimately dig more good stuff with my AT Pro in the same 3 hours than you can.
Back to high end performance..I'm on the edge of buying a eurotek pro or a ace 350 and going to a few permission yards I have,and getting busy.And I'm sure I'll be posting pics of silver and coppers.So,I gotta ask you guys here,
Do you really think high end performance is the price you pay for your rig,Or the reward you actually get in good finds?
My answer,your rig plays only a small part of your finds.i mean like 20 percent.Your location plays 80 percent.Thats my guess,so I'd love to hear a few more uneducated guesses.lol
To answer the question in bold. It's in actually getting good finds. There's too much evidence of someone coming BEHIND someone else with a lower end machine and pulling out even more stuff. Combine that with the fact that low end machines will result in you spending more time with the trash, and even the best location will result in two things occuring with a low end machine:
1) More time spent detecting for the same stuff, possibly 2x to 3x
2) More "missed" stuff
You can think 20%, but I can tell you in the SAME locations I used to hit (I only do modern parks and schools), with the AT PRo, I've more than DOUBLED my take in the same amount of time, over what I was doing (competently, might I add) with the ACE350.
I simply find more stuff, miss less good stuff, and have a much better time. The cost of ownership of a better machine is in offset heavily by the increase in finds, often, such as in my case, the better equipment more than pays for itself.
I can think of at least FOUR gold rings that I could not have found with the ACE series. They were in areas flooded with EMI (power lines). The ACE series was going nuts (my son was using, and had to move away from the location). I was using the AT Pro, and simply switched channels. Four of the 5 gold rings in that location were found in the zone of interference. YES. Higher performance machines CAN help you find more stuff. And YES, they can do it in less time.
Someday, you'll upgrade, and then you'll post something like this, to someone using an ACE series machine, too.
That's the beauty of the forums like this. GREAT questions like yours, have answers!
Cheers, and happy hunting!
Skippy
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