Flaw with the GT

[Piero franchi]

Hi, having spoken to a detector shop about a new detector, they said my GT is it worst enimy, It has sort of stabed its self in the foot so to speak.

It is TO GOOD AT IRON rejection,

meaning if there is a good target next to iron, chances are it wont pick it up.

So I tried it for myself, got a pair of small wire cutters and a good size gold ring, it just nulled!!!!!!!!!!!

So I tried every conviable setting and still the same, best I could do was to run it in all metal, but I could not tell them apart when the ring was near the wire cutters.

Now I tried my other halfs X-terra 70, held the ring and the wire cutter at the same distance apart as I did with the GT and the X terra gave a 100% responce.

What have we all been missing with the GT ???????????????????????????????????????

 

[ejudasf]

How many times have you run into the NULLING of iron, and dug next to it to find a gold ring? Just a question.

There are TOO many variables to say that every time the Sovereign nulls over iron, you are passing a good target.

Being that you said "So I tried every conviable setting and still the same, best I could do was to run it in all metal, but I could not tell them apart when the ring was near the wire cutters.", Did you by chance try a different coil size? Smaller? or Bigger?

Not to sound funny or anything, but what time of the day was it?

Some Sovereign users know when their machine is nulling becasue of iron, BUT sometimes, there is an additional sound made, that only Sovereign users can hear, when that null-threshold tone come back to tell you that you might want to check it out after all.

Yeah, the Sovereign is a good machine that hates iron.

There are other machines that LOVE iron.

Can you imagine. The only real discriminator is your eyes. You never know what yopu really missed till you dig it.

laterz

ed

 

[Piero franchi]

I tried the experament with the tornado 8inch coil and my Sov Gt.

I am not saying that every time it hit iron, there will be a good find next to it, but I detect farm land in the uk, and on some if not most of the sites I detect on, all have plenty of iron.

I read your point about the threshold coming back with a differant tone than that of iron, but this never happend.

I will try that again but I think it only read the iron and nothing else.

I used to love my Sov Gt, and really want to keep loving it, BUT this could be a real problem for me and farm land.

As I said, the X terra did not have a problem with it.

So wyh dont you use the X-terra I hear you say!!!

Looks like I will, but then were does my GT fit in all this, is it usless???

 

[Murphdasurf]

Tons of variable here to consider. First off the xterra is not a BBS machine and may indeed do a better job as far as the iron mask feature goes.

Here is how my air testing goes. I use a cheap fork that I bought at a dollar store that the sov says is iron and nulls with zero disc and a thin 14k mens wedding band. If I use the enire fork and place the band behind it the sov has a tough time giving a single unless a vary slow sweep is simulated. Next to or on top of the fork there is always at least a "chirp" of a good signal.

If I reduce the size of the iron item by breaking off the head of the fork the sov has no problems giving a signal on the wedding band. This indicates to me that it is the size and probably density of the iron item that can beat the sov. For real field conditions I would think the sov is more than capable of indicateing a good target amongst iron unless the iron object is much larger than the good target and directly over the top of said target.

For me as a beach hunter this is good enough. I would not consider sacrificing the stability in wet salt sand of the sov and use an xterra on the outside chance I might miss a good target amongst iron. Relic hunting of course is a different animal.

 

[Gary Drayton]

Be afraid... be very afraid...

 

[Chrisjarvis]

Is your Iron Mask on or off? On I hope? The GT is in fact good at recognizing non ferrous items next to iron. When the Iron Mask is on you also get a little more depth.

 

[bottlebum]

Thanks everyone, for renewing my confidence in my new detector Probably should have gone with a Fisher.............

 

[Rick(ND)]

I have used my GT in spots with a lot of iron and have no problem, the iron is mostly nails and bottle caps and I can pick up a coin beside them and even on top of them. You must use iron mask on and go slow with the swing of the coil and one of the reason I say you have to run a threshold so you know it is nulling and listen to the small squeak of the good signal. Once you get that little squeak of a good signal you work just that small area and it will increase the signal if it is a good non ferrous target, you may even get fooled with some iron that will sound good. I feel though if the iron is big than it will null out a small no ferrous target as it will over power it like any detector will.
With my test on my bar floor which is loaded with nails I can get my GT to ID a coin much better than the X-Terras as the meter and tones will be jumping around.

 

[Piero franchi]

That is it.

Relic hunting is differant, I to would go with the stubility of a sov on wet sand, every day off the week.

Again, you are right, the bigger the iron the harder time the sov has at finding the good target next to it.

I do run with Iron mask on, and yes it does go a bit deeper.

What I have found, is the bigger the iron, the longer the Sov takes to recover from the nulling, and also the closer the iron to the coil, the longer it takes to recover.

Which leads me to think that the operating Freq is more suited to iron and other targets with in that reange??

 

[james1969]

[quote Piero franchi]That is it.


Again, you are right, the bigger the iron the harder time the sov has at finding the good target next to it.

What I have found, is the bigger the iron, the longer the Sov takes to recover from the nulling, and also the closer the iron to the coil, the longer it takes to recover.

[/quote]

Piero that is true for every detector on the market,your problem with the GT is that you do not understand the sounds it makes,that takes time,the old Sov hands know what to listen for to pull out the finds.

If your fields are very iorn laden then a Tesoro,goldmax or T2/F75 would be easier for you to use.

 

[Piero franchi]

Thanks fore your reply,

I do honestly appreciate then all.

But I really want to believe I have not waisted my money on this, my new detector,

I used to own the X terra 70 that my other half has kindly lent from me, it was with the x-terra that I tested it against.

The X-terra had no problems, with the iron on top, at the side or underneath.

I want to learn the Sov, but I don't want to waist my time if an other detector could suit me better.

Have heard a lot of noise about the goldmaxx power

 

[adam in cal]

[quote bottlebum]Thanks everyone, for renewing my confidence in my new detector Probably should have gone with a Fisher.............[/quote]


If you really want to dig nails then yea a fisher would be the unit to get,little crumb hoppers they are ........

 

[bottlebum]

Little crumb hoppers? You are too much!

 

[UK Brian]

Why not go on a U.K. forum ? Speak to those who use the machines in the same ground conditions. The Power is an excellent machine but I still prefer my Goldmaxx Mk I. I have a Sovereign but it rarely gets used on land. The Musketeer/Advantage/ XP's/and a few Tesoros are the machines of choice for the heavy iron contaminated fields in Britain. There's three thousand years of ferrous build up. Rapid shutdown between targets and minimum target masking is the name of the game.

 

[jbow]

It will work there but it is not the best machine for heavy iron. When doing research I talked with Tom Dankowski about this very thing and his thinking was that the best current machines for hunting in heavy iron are the T2 and F75 and they do very well in iron. The Sovereign is a good machine though. The best machine in high mineralization is the Explorer.
About all you can do to improve the Sovereign's performance in iron is to use the S-5 coil and go even slower...

J

 

[Piero franchi]

Thanks uk Brian.

Looks that way, sov for beach other for inland UK.

Do you know of a website in the UK to post topic.

Also why do you prefure the old xp to the new one.

One last thing.

Have you ever used a tesoro tejon,

 

[UK Brian]

Tejon's very good. Deep and sensitive. Excellent with the 5.75" coil in heavy rubbisn areas. Only drawback is the battery compartment door that falls off and it hasn't the best balance between high and low conductors.
I prefer the older XP (re chipped for improved ferrous tone) as it retains conventional discrimination mode, similar to the Tesoro. This can match, or on the odd site, be a better choice than the all metal discrimination mode. Better audio for me than the Power and only an inch less depth on my sites most of which I can gain back by accepting more iron on the discrim. control but I can still avoid by the audio response.

A good site for Minelab as regards U.K. conditions is www.minelabowners.com/forum/index.php
Also have a look at Gary's site for a general report on what machines perform best in Britain. http://www.garysdetecting.co.uk

Best of luck with your choice and the Sovereign does remain an excellent land machine in the right conditions. Unfortunately our most productive sites are those its not best suited to.

 

[Piero franchi]

Best of luck with your choice and the Sovereign does remain an excellent land machine in the right conditions. Unfortunately our most productive sites are those its not best suited to.

I could not agree more about the sov, good detector, but not around Iron.

Thanks for all your help Brian, mean it, Thanks