Since it was such a nice nite tonight, I thought I'd pop down to one of my old standby sites to do a bit of beeping before it got dark.
I turned the machine on, and did a quick fast grab(or so I thought), and started swinging. The 75 was almost intolerably noisy, and when I tried to GB it again, it simply wouldn't Gb. (fast grab). Even when I tried to manually GB it, it wouldn't work. Well, I ran the gamut of things to try...made sure the batts were good...reset the machine. (factory settings reset)turned it off and back on abour a dozen times, went to three or 4 different sections of the farm where I KNEW it worked fine before. Nada, nothing ,,,,,,,,zilch.. At this point, I'd been detecting about 45 minutes and hadn't dug one single target! Well ,as I was just about to throw it across the road (remember, I'd already had one bad machine, and I thought,,,"here we go again") I happened to reach down, and check to see if the knurled nut the holds to coil wire to the control box was tight. While it wasn't REAL loose, I was able to turn it easily about an 1/8th of a turn, and WHAM, it was like I'd just kicked in the turbocharger! It GB'd perfectly after that, and the ground came alive. I didn't dig anything that you might consider good, but dug a few pewter spoon frags that were at LEAST in the 13-14 inch range. I also dug a few little flatties, and a bit or two of lead. all in the space of the 10 minutes it took from me finding the problem, to the time it got dark. Now, it would have been REAL easy to throw that machine in the truck, call it a few names, and then make a nasty post about it when I got home, INSTEAD of trying to take the time to really try to figure out what was wrong. The point of my post is, try to make sure the problem isn't YOURS before you trash ANY machine. Now, I wouldn't have though that the coil connector only being a wee bit loose would have caused the problem it did, as all of you know, its REAL hard to pull the coil connector loose even after you unscrew the nut, so the problem wasn't the pins connectors, but it seems the nut itself may provide a ground path or something, and if it isn't 100% tight it WILL cause you problems. When I was in Va last week, the 75 worked well till the last time I had it out, and it acted different when I turned it off in the field to take a break, and then turned it back on. The audio got quite a bit quieter, and I had to turn up my phones to compensate. Didn't think much of it at the time, but I'll bet anything the connector was a bit loose THEN and I didn't notice it.
Anyway, I hope this little post helps a bit, especially if YOU encounter a problem in the field. Try to eliminate anything YOU have control over instead of going home and writing the manufacturer a scathing letter, and sending it in for nothing. Its a proven fact that over 80% of returned electronics have NOTHING wrong with them!! (when I was a mechanic, a Delco rep told me that 90% of all vehicle computers returned to the repair center had nothing wrong). kinda makes you think dont it??? Streak!
I turned the machine on, and did a quick fast grab(or so I thought), and started swinging. The 75 was almost intolerably noisy, and when I tried to GB it again, it simply wouldn't Gb. (fast grab). Even when I tried to manually GB it, it wouldn't work. Well, I ran the gamut of things to try...made sure the batts were good...reset the machine. (factory settings reset)turned it off and back on abour a dozen times, went to three or 4 different sections of the farm where I KNEW it worked fine before. Nada, nothing ,,,,,,,,zilch.. At this point, I'd been detecting about 45 minutes and hadn't dug one single target! Well ,as I was just about to throw it across the road (remember, I'd already had one bad machine, and I thought,,,"here we go again") I happened to reach down, and check to see if the knurled nut the holds to coil wire to the control box was tight. While it wasn't REAL loose, I was able to turn it easily about an 1/8th of a turn, and WHAM, it was like I'd just kicked in the turbocharger! It GB'd perfectly after that, and the ground came alive. I didn't dig anything that you might consider good, but dug a few pewter spoon frags that were at LEAST in the 13-14 inch range. I also dug a few little flatties, and a bit or two of lead. all in the space of the 10 minutes it took from me finding the problem, to the time it got dark. Now, it would have been REAL easy to throw that machine in the truck, call it a few names, and then make a nasty post about it when I got home, INSTEAD of trying to take the time to really try to figure out what was wrong. The point of my post is, try to make sure the problem isn't YOURS before you trash ANY machine. Now, I wouldn't have though that the coil connector only being a wee bit loose would have caused the problem it did, as all of you know, its REAL hard to pull the coil connector loose even after you unscrew the nut, so the problem wasn't the pins connectors, but it seems the nut itself may provide a ground path or something, and if it isn't 100% tight it WILL cause you problems. When I was in Va last week, the 75 worked well till the last time I had it out, and it acted different when I turned it off in the field to take a break, and then turned it back on. The audio got quite a bit quieter, and I had to turn up my phones to compensate. Didn't think much of it at the time, but I'll bet anything the connector was a bit loose THEN and I didn't notice it.
Anyway, I hope this little post helps a bit, especially if YOU encounter a problem in the field. Try to eliminate anything YOU have control over instead of going home and writing the manufacturer a scathing letter, and sending it in for nothing. Its a proven fact that over 80% of returned electronics have NOTHING wrong with them!! (when I was a mechanic, a Delco rep told me that 90% of all vehicle computers returned to the repair center had nothing wrong). kinda makes you think dont it??? Streak!