Was my MXT a good choice?

The MXT is definitely not a quiet machine. It really wasn't meant to be one either. If you're in really trashy areas, you might consider getting a smaller coil like the Eclipse 5.3 or Excelerator 5". I use the 8" Excelerator and find that I can get around the trash pretty good. If you're in an iron infested site, then you're in the same boat 99% of other detectorists are in. Highly trashy sites are the domain of multifrequency detectors like the DFX and ExpII. They do a much better job of filtering through the trash.

Thanks for the info.

A little bit annoying, is spending over $800 and knowing I need to spend another $150 or so, for a coil to suit my needs better. But oh well, I will get one.

Thanks again.

The MXT may just be a bit better than the 2500 in some cases and not necessarily harder to use. I agree with Okie that the smaller coil will be the way to go. That goes for any detector that has a 9"or larger standard coil. You can always lower your sensativity a litlle to compensate for the trash. Also , you should have been able to get the MXT for around 850.00 with both coils.

Steeler

I can't detect in trashy area's with my MXT it drives me insane...

I thought about a smaller coil, the 5.3 is an excellant coil. My hunting partner uses one on his DFX because we detect a very trashy area...

I lowered the sensitivity almost as far as it would go.  Only to dig/find an eraser head off an old pencil at 6 inches deep.


Oh and Tony.  I got my MXT, plus headphones, and a digger for $777, including tax.  When I said over $800, thats because I ordered a few extras including a Lesche Standard digging tool from you. 


Thanks for the replies.   I will absolutely get the smaller coil.  Tony, you have them?

Sorry I misunderstood . I do have the coils in stock.

Stick with the MXT. Sounds like you just need to learn what it's telling you and adapt to the noise. Took me six weeks to learn it good and another 6 months to really feel comfortable with it. It's rewarded my patience more than once.

I've been using an mxt for several years and it is a great and very
sensitive machine. By nature, it is noisy, but it can be tamed.

Let me begin by saying, the mxt is NOT a great machine in the wet
sands of salt water beaches, or for use on the surf line. It is too
reactive to the salt and the black sands we have here in CA. It works
just fine in the dry sand though.

One of the keys to taming the mxt is to tweak the settings some. It helps to understand that the sensitivity knob is multi-purpose. Once you go beyond 10
to the plus area, several things begin to happen concurrently. Not only are you adjusting
the sensitivity even higher, the mxt is also increasing the amount of audio gain and preamp gain, until at max setting you get full audio boost and lose modulated audio (all targets with conductivity above the discrimination setting will ring out at full volume). Because the mxt is a very high gain unit, cranking it to the max makes it very loud and very noisy.

I usually run mine at around 9 and only turn it higher when I hear one of the deep whispers, or when I want to firm up the VDI reading on a deeper target. The mxt goes plenty deep at a 9 setting, but the key is to make sure you have a stable threshold.

I set the threshold to were it is just audible. Just enough to hear it and be able to notice when it nulls out, possibly because of iron. This is an indication to slow down so as not to miss a target due to masking.

In areas where the odds are in favor of finding gold jewelry (playgrounds, ...), I set the discrimination to 2. If the gold odds are against me, I'll take it up to where a surface nickel starts to break up and then back it off a little. Using the lowest level of discrimination you can stand is very important (on any detector). First, indiscrimante use of discrimination costs you depth. Second, it can result in target masking and losing valuable targets.

Then I set the earphone volume to a comfortable level and let the phone's sound limiter do its job on the near surface larg trash items.

A great thing about the MXT is that it is very forgiving to swing speed. On the fairways you can swing it quite fast and cover a lot of ground quickly, while you can slow it down to a crawl on the trashy patches.

If you do a lot of trashy areas, a DD coil is a great investment. It also helps quiet the "beast" in mineralized soil. Also, if there is a lot of decomposing man-made iron in the ground, it is good practice to ground balance in a clean area and then lock the ground balance. If you can't find a clean patch to balance it, then use one the two factory built-in ground balance presets, as appropriate for your area.

Last, but not least, learn what the mxt is telling you. It "speaks" to you on many levels. The target sounds it makes in discriminate mode, the target size profile in all-metal mode and lastly the VDI indication.

Hope this helped.

Yes it helps.  I will get a smaller coil, but will take all of your advice in the meantime.  I have also ordered the MXD dvd to perhaps help some with my operations.


Great explanation, btw.   Thanks for taking the time to explain. I am going to print out your reply for future reference.   

The video is not very informative I'm afraid.

The owner's manual is also not very good in this regard either.

There is a lot of information in the Engineer's Report, but it is kind of "hidden". I mean, it requires multiple reads to extract the nuggets of information.

Your best bet is to download the MXT FAQs, written by Reno Chris. It is the best document on the MXT I've seen. A while ago, I got permission from Reno Chris to let us host the FAQ document at the Insurgent Gopher Hunter web site. You can download it from there. Just go to
http://www.ighunters.net/index.htm
and click on the Tutorials button on the left. You'll find the FAQs there.

Now that is some useful information. The best I seen so far.

I'll read that over, and over.

Thanks again.

You are welcome Steeler,

Just come back and post your finds.

Thanks Rudy! I just picked up the same detector. You have help me out as well. And TonyinCT has allready told me that the 5.3 coil would be a good choice for a second coil. I was just wondering do the coils ever go on sale? Buy one get the second one half off And whites coils are not in the coil section of Tony's web sight? I allso need to pick up a good set of headphones. I see whites sells a sticker to put over the speaker. I can see why. Thanks again.

Re: I forgot

Steeler,

When I posted my original reply, I wrote that if the ground was too trashy to get a proper ground balance, you could use one of the two factory ground balance presets and then moved on to something else. I forgot that setting the ground balance to one of the factory presets is not documented anywhere in the manuals, or in the MXT FAQs.

There are indeed two ground balance presets on the MXT and for a small fee I will show you how to engage them. Naw .... just kidding.

Actually, another MXT expert named Monte first wrote about it a couple of years ago. Here it is:

One thing I learned early on when hunting with the MXT is that I also hunt a lot of sites that are not only highly mineralized but quite trashy. This combination can really make it difficult to find a bare spot to establish an initial GB. Therefore, I like to use the "factory preset GB" settings to get into action and not waste a lot of time trying to find a clear area. I also go to the factory settings if hunting in that mellow 35-50 ground, too.

Now, some might think there isn't a factory preset GB to make use of, and if that's the case then they haven't worked with their MXT enough to learn it. The MXT has two factory GB setting options. They are 50 and 83.

If the ground you're hunting is rather mellow and you want to just set a low ground balance setting of '50', do the following:

With the detector 'Off' set the tracking toggle to either Salt or Ground. Hold the coil motionless away from the ground and turn the detector on. Immediately following the start-up screen, toggle into the 'Lock' setting. You will note (if using the Prospect mode) that in either of the 'tracking' options, the MXT starts at a GB setting of '50' and then it will be tracking up (or down) to the ground minerals in the area where you're hunting.

If the ground is highly mineralized and you cannot find a decent place to bob the coil to get a good GB, then do the following:

With the detector 'Off' and the coil away from the ground or any metal, toggle into the 'Lock' setting. Then turn the detector on and begin hunting with other settings. You will notice that if you turn the MXT 'On' when in the Lock setting, it is at an established '83' and that should compensate for just about any nasty ground you're going to hunt over!

Just so you know , most dealers are not allowed by Whites to advertise their products online. I do sell the coils at a discount however.

GRUMP said:

Thanks Rudy! I just picked up the same detector. You have help me out as well. And TonyinCT has allready told me that the 5.3 coil would be a good choice for a second coil. I was just wondering do the coils ever go on sale? Buy one get the second one half off   And whites coils are not in the coil section of Tony's web sight? I allso need to pick up a good set of headphones. I see whites sells a sticker to put over the speaker. I can see why. Thanks again.

Click to expand...

Hi Grump,

I am happy I was able to help you too. 

I have owned every one of the coils made by White's for the MXT/DFX and here is my experience with them (your mileage may vary).

950 stock coil
A good all around coil. Gives most accurate depth reading (the machine is calibrated for depth with this coil), easy to pin point with. Somewhat noisy in highly mineralized soil.

Deepscan DD1400
A very deep seeker!  Great in wide open spaces that are relatively free of trash, with excellent coverage per sweep.  I couldn't swing it for more than 2 hours at a time because of the weight.  My shoulder felt like I had played football without the armor.

The DD 6X10
My favorite all purpose coil. It is mounted on my MXT 90% of the time. The MXT just runs quieter with a DD coil than a concentric one, simply because the field it creates "sees" less of the ground matrix. In my experience with our local soil, I get pretty much the same effective depth with the 6X10 as I do with the stock coil. Much better target separation than with the stock coil. Harder to X pin point with (as with other DD coils), but there are other ways to pin point with them that are good enough and quick to do.

Eclipse 5.3
Actually 6" in diameter concentric coil. Better than the stock coil for trash separation. A little less depth than the 950.

Shooter DD 4X6
About the same effective depth as the 5.3 (because in my local grounds, I can run a DD hotter than a concentric and still have a quiet detector). Excellent target separation due to the shape of the field from a DD.

I sold the 1400 as I couldn't justify holding on to it and the pain in my shoulder from using it. Heck, if I was into pain, I'd buy an Explorer.

After testing the 5.3 side by side with the 4X6, I sold the 5.3. They gave me similar depth and target separation, but I found that with the 4X6 I could get much closer to chain link fences and playground equipment without undue interference.

Hope this helps.

I went to an old school site being torn down today.  School is over 150 years old, and the ground is screaming at me to find stuff.

However after 2 hours of old cans, an old cap gun piece, nails, etc, I came home determined to read more and go back soon.

Im going to re-read everything you posted and the links you gave also.
And I might try to run with the Disc. set at the preset and use a forward trigger selection (in the Relic mode). I read someplace to try that.


I'm a determined bugger.

Steeler said:

I went to an old school site being torn down today.  School is over 150 years old, and the ground is screaming at me to find stuff.

However after 2 hours of old cans, an old cap gun piece, nails, etc, I came home determined to read more and go back soon.

Im going to re-read everything you posted and the links you gave also.
And I might try to run with the Disc. set at the preset and use a forward trigger selection (in the Relic mode).  I read someplace to try that.


I'm a determined bugger.

Click to expand...

Steeler,

With a little patience, you should be able to tell a whole can, or other large object from a coin.  Here are a few ways:

A can will hit with a much louder volume and a bit broader sound  than a coin will for a given depth.  Lets say you got a good quarter or half indicator (sometimes even a dollar), but ... the sound is not quite what you usually get from a coin.  Pin point it. Again, a coin will pin point with a very compact sound (as you sweep in all metal mode, you'll go from theshold to max volume and back to threshold with very little coil movement) whereas the can will usually be broader. This is sometimes called sizing the target.

If you are still not certain, then, lets say the indicated depth was 3". Now, going back into discriminate mode, raise your coil ~6" and sweep over the target again. If you still get a very healthy sounding hit, it is NOT a coin, it is a larger target buried deeper than the indicated 3".

Now, can slaw is another story. 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Be aware that when you run in Relic mode with trigger forward, the threshold will null out when you sweep over a target whose VDI is below your disc. setting. It takes a finite amount of time for the threshold sound to come back. If you sweep past a good target that was close to the one that caused the threshold to null, the signal may not be strong enough to punch through ... and
you'll miss it. This is called target masking and can cost you the loss of good finds near junk. When you hear the threshold null, slow down. Investigate the area, sweep from other directions to see if there is anything else around the area.

In the end, it is your decision to put up with the grunts or risk target masking.

Rudy. Yet again you have been more help than I could hope for!!! Thank you very much!!! I think I will pick up the 6-10 and the 4-6 DD coils. It sounds like exactly what I am looking for. Rudy have you ever thaught about putting together a "How To Use The MXT" booklet? I think it would make great reading, and should come with every MXT off the shelf. When pinpointing with a DD coil, because of the longer narrower field would you sweep the target and then sweep it again at a 90 degree angle from you first sweep? And would this be as critical with the 4-6 as it would be with the 6-10 with the longer field?