allgirls:
Interested in best overall depth in benign soil some hot soil every now and then Fors Relic or Fors Gold+ I now this is a general question and each machine has a different application but out of the truck what is a better machine. I have watched you tube air testing and it looks like the relic has a slight depth edge. Thanks.
i Coin Hunt and Relic Hunt, but devote the bulk of my time to working old, out-of-use and forlorn old places. Translated, that means I Relic Hunt. You brought up the word 'depth' and it doesn't matter how good or bad the soil might be, most of the places I hunt old coins, trade tokens, sheep ear tags, buttons and military insignia, and all sorts of other typically smaller-size artifacts, they are not located very deep. The bulk, like ± 80%, are located from surface to about ± 4 inches. There's not been enough activity to reposition dropped or discarded objects, so they are not all that deep. Yes, there is an occasional keeper in the 4" to 6" or even a rare 8", but those finds are in the minority.
Also, I don't know the types of places you search or amount of discarded trash there might be, especially ferrous junk, but where I spend most of my time, the amount of unwanted and unpleasant trash is so abundant, you're not going to be able to achieve any functional increase in 'depth-of-detection' until the masking trash is removed from the site. Matter of fact, my favorite Relic Hunting units generally keep a smaller-size search coil mounted ... full-time.
I have four or five detectors I have assigned to my Relic Hunting Team, and my most-used pair of detectors are the Nokta FORS CoRe and FORS Relic. They both keep their smallest-size search coil mounted, and they perform wonderfully. My most-grabbed or you could say my first-grabbed detector at most of the old sites in my FORS Relic w/5" DD, and that's is due to the amount of Iron Nails and other Ferrous Junk I am confronted with. When I work the fringe area or where there is less making trash in more open-areas, then I like the mid-sized 5X9½ DD open-frame coil.
Monte