Larry (IL)
Well-known member
I thought I would start a new post on the subject to help answer the question on the 10" DD Excelerator coil. Yes I have used the EX 10" for several years and it is a good coil. It is about equal to the White's D2 in performance. The characteristics of the DD and SEF coils are very similar, so when I talk about one, it applies to both. Because of the design of the coils you can expect your detector to behave differently if you are accustomed to the conical coils. The DD coils have a search pattern that is about an inch wide the full length of the coil right down the middle of the coil and the pattern will allow you to cover more ground at depth. The conical coil has a "cone like" search pattern that diminishes in width the deeper it goes, yet the search pattern is the full width of the coil for the first couple of inches giving you a better audio response than the narrow width of the DD coil. The advantages of the DD coils is you do not have to overlap your sweeps as much as you do with the conicals when hunting for deep targets. The DD coils also "sees" less ground at one time and often has less ground noise. That makes the DD coils a favorite in very mineralized ground.
The disadvantages of the DD coils is they take some getting used to with the pinpointing and they do have a reputation of making pop tops sound like a quarter. As a general rule, the conical coils are the better choice in low to medium mineralized ground and the DD/SEF coils seems to get better depth in very mineralized ground. This is a graphic from Kellyco that might give you a better idea of the search patterns of each and the depth is greatly exaggerated on the DD coil. For all practicable reasons, the depth should be more equal to each other, but Kellyco wanted to sell the DD coil in this case and wanted to make it look deeper than it really is.
[attachment 180572 5-inch-EXcel-std-compare.gif]
So really, one coil style is not necessarily better than the other, just different and one or the other may work better for you in your ground than the other. BTW, almost all manufactures put a stock DD style coil on their top of the line detectors now.
The disadvantages of the DD coils is they take some getting used to with the pinpointing and they do have a reputation of making pop tops sound like a quarter. As a general rule, the conical coils are the better choice in low to medium mineralized ground and the DD/SEF coils seems to get better depth in very mineralized ground. This is a graphic from Kellyco that might give you a better idea of the search patterns of each and the depth is greatly exaggerated on the DD coil. For all practicable reasons, the depth should be more equal to each other, but Kellyco wanted to sell the DD coil in this case and wanted to make it look deeper than it really is.
[attachment 180572 5-inch-EXcel-std-compare.gif]
So really, one coil style is not necessarily better than the other, just different and one or the other may work better for you in your ground than the other. BTW, almost all manufactures put a stock DD style coil on their top of the line detectors now.