For those about to buy an SE....or looking into one..what to expect and not to expect..

[azsh07]

I get a few messages a week asking what the SE can do...how is it on silver...gold...relic hunting and so on.

First off. I have been using the Gold Bug SE or its Cabelas verson since the first day they came out at Cabelas. I have owned 6 so far and currently have several on hand.

I have tested 3 Cabelas versions and 3 SE's....why I have multiple machines has to do with multiple reasons some of which are not important.

There are differences between the two versions. Each one has an advantage over the other in certain situations. However both operate basically the same and respond to targets in identical fashion.

The main difference between the Cabela's and the SE is in the audio. The SE has modulated audio ( deeper target are fainter) and the Cabela's is unmodulated ( all targets are a loud strong response. Also the SE uses VCO in the disc mode as stated on the box. Basically not only does the db level of the target change with depth but so does the tone. On deep hi tone targets the audio is a bit lower in pitch and softer in volume.

On the Cabela's the tones is the same and the pitch is the same irregardless of depth.

What is the advantage if any. Well there are advantages and disadvantages to both depending on where you hunt.

First off the Cabela's is an inch deeper on all targets almost universally. It hits loud on any depth and if you had an SE and a C version side by side and tested them with targets and measured air depth to farthest point where the target was repeatable AND audible...you would see an inch seperation across the board. I have several machines and it holds up on all of them.

I do not think the C version is hotter I think it is pure audio...but it is noticeable.

However, the C version is noisier. On the SE if you crank the sens and get a little bit of chatter it is faint. On the C version is it loud...same level as any target and it can be a problem.

So for pure raw depth I will use the C version if that was my goal.

With the SE, as you all know, the audio is modulated and this is a huge help in most situations. You don't have to look at the display and pinpoint to find out if it a surface target or not. With the C version you have to look constantly and that can be annoying.

The SE is far superior and far more enjoyable to use in cellar holes or heavy trash hunting. It is quieter....it is easy to tell surface trash from deeper goodies...and the VCO audio in both modes tells you far more info than the C version...which tells you nothing actually other than there is a target there.

Which one you would prefer is up to you and I guess most would like the modulated audio.

As for people asking how does it do on this and that target. Well this is rather simple I think. The machine is designed as a gold machine primarily. Therefore it hunts to its peak potential on similar ranging targets including small gold, small buttons, small brass etc. It will hit these targets as very nice depth....as matter of fact it will hit a cuff button as deep as a silver quarter in an air test. Don't believe me..try it. It will hit a regular coat button deeper than a silver half....don't believ me....try it. This is with the 11" DD.

Now you might say well that sucks. Maybe....depends on what you are looking for. I have tested this with 6 machines and it hold up on all of them. The machine was not designed to be the deepest on silver coins. It is not bad but....it isn't going to keep up with an E-trac with an 11" Pro coil in a field looking for 10" deep dimes. It is not designed to be that machine. If it was it would be no good at gold and that is it's main objective.

However, use it for most relics and it is a great machine. use it heavy iron trash and it is orgasmic. This machine will walk through iron with almost 0 falsing at max sensivity. you will NOT dig a pile of hammered nails that lie and say they are silver. It WILL pick targets out mixed in with iron and without having to fiddle through layers of menus to try and calm it down. I love Explorers and own an E-trac...but I hate fiddling with so many menus to try and figure out what works best in celar hole...same with my V3. Love em...and the rock in fields with deep targets...and are great in trash but you need to swap coils and programs. All fine but....so much easier to grab a machine built for that situation....THE SE.

I don't need to swap to the 5" coil in mind blowing trash..the 11" does just fine. Would the 5" be better...maybe but....I hate carrying extra cr@p half a mile through the woods.

Also...it is reported to be awesome on the beach. I have not made it there yet as I hate beach hunting...just a personal pet pieve. However enough people have testified to it.
It most definately is hot on small targets so jewelry hunting at the beach should be solid.

On the other hand it is NOT a PI machine. It is NOT going to hit that nickel at 16" so get over it. It MAY hit it at 11-12"...but from my testing 10-11" is more inline with the SE...(more for the C versions).

Again it is not going to replace your Explorer for deep silver. If you think it is you will be bummed when you test it with a silver half. Again it is good but it is not super deep on silver. The C version is an inch or so deeper. My first C version was very hot and would keep up with the F75 on silver but later versions I had lost just a touch.

Now some owners may have a little bit better depth but I would have doubts...again all 6 I owned were almost identical in depth.

Wether you chose to believe me or not I realy don't care. Take it or leave it. It is a great machine and very impressive in the areas it was built to operate in...and in the areas it was not it is just GOOD.

Again this is a remarkably stable machine...far superior to the T2 and any F75 versions. No EMI..no falsing...will walk through and behave itself and..most of all...not lie to you when it see's deep iron. You will no go nuts in heavy trash trying to "wiggle" you coil to try and figure what the target is...nor will you be endlessly changing Sens and disc levels in an attempt to shut the d@mn thing up due to EMI.

It will hit on stupidly small targets like they were coins on the surface.

But it won't hit that dime at 10-11" in the real world. So please do not buy one and expect to hit that 300 year old farmers field that you pounded with you F75's and expect the SE to pull all the deep silver you missed.....ain't happening. Do buy it to find all the stuff you missed in that last cellar hole or trashy field...or for that beach you like to hunt but the Explorer is too heavy to swing all day. Even better...for that spot in town that the T2/f75 would not shut the flip up in due to all the EMI.

......oh..and by the way....we keep forgetting...it ain't bad as a gold machine.

So if you buy one...you have idea of what to expect. No claims here that won't hold up in an area or ground. You may experience slight differences but...they will be slight. If you buy one and test it with a silver quarter and find it hits an eagle button deeper...well I told you. Worse..try a silver half verses a cuff button. Almost identical. Just keep the deisgn of the machine in mind when you contemplate buying one and all will be fine.

Now.....lets just think what the GB PRO will be......I think they might tweak it up just a bit....don't you?

 

[Deese]

That is very informative,thanks for that post.I have a site with alot of iron,may I ask what you run your disc level at in iron infested sites? Do you know if anyone is selling the SE with the 11"dd coil or do you still have to buy it seperate?

 

[azsh07]

For me....I never disc iron out completely as long as I have a machine with 2 or more tones. I set the disc control to 40-43. Anywhere in there is fine as iron drops off around 40. Foils kicks in as does gold around 44 or so.
With that said the two tone ID is now active. anything at or below 43 is a low grunt and above is hi tone. So now all iron is just a grunt and since none of it is blanked out there is no weird partial tones which I personally hate. Since we are relic hunting anything non iron comes up and since i have no civil war iron relics I leave most iron...usually.
Now it is just listening for hi tones through the iron and that is very easy...nothing odd you have to learn...no wiggles...no interpreting odd half tones. The only thing that takes a few times to avoid is the usually rusty objects that fool everyone. Suchs as rusty square or round nuts, bolts or rusty tin cans. They make an odd squirt sound that is a hi tone but very odd. Dig a few and you can tell from then on.....and even then it is not very often that you will be fooled...especially compared to other machines. There is no going over iron rusted targets multiple times to double check because they were throwing false hi tones.
If there is a bunch of foil targets that are annoying I just bump up the disc and make them a low tone....usually it is .22 shells. Even then I usually don't bother changing tones as they fall exactly at 48 on my machine and they are usually a strong hit but very quick. It is obvious it is a small shallow target and at 48 it is usually a .22 shell. The .22 bullets are higher ID but still are small hits.
Anyway that is all there is to that.....each person will certainly set the tone disc level to whatever fits there needs but that is how I do it. I think Keith sets his lower but he also has them civil war shells that are valuable so he likes to hear them as non iron. He posted where they fall. Anyway he just adjusted his disc so iron nails are low and the larger desired iron stuff was hi I think.
As for other settings there are non. Just gain and so far I have not found one location where it was not at 100%.
So basically it is turn on/ set gain, set disc level and do a ground grab and you are done.

 

[azsh07]

Everyone using this machine already knows that. The modulated audio on the SE is great but....that lowest volume level for deep targets is soft and you need a good set of headphones to hear them. Also the dynamic range of the headphones makes a difference. The hi tone when it is at it softest for deep targets is close to the sound of deep low tones. Not the same but close enough that you can just mistake it as a deep rejected target at first. I tested different headphones I had and I liked my Koss the best. Funny but the ones that were made for the F75 LTD in Camo I thought were not as good for seperating the tones. But that is also my hearing...I do not like headphones with a hi dynamic range...they make everything sound hi and tinny and I have tinitus and it makes it worse. Just be sure you have a good set of headphones and never ever ignore any little pip....it isn't static and it isn't EMI. this isn't the F75 that pips nonstop. If it makes a tick it usually something. If you ignore those soft little ticks you are passing up stuff....kick the ground clean and resweep. Get another 1" of dirt off and resweep and you will hear now if it is a low rejected tone or an accepted hi tone.

 

[Deese]

I think this is the machine for me.

 

[therover]

I don't relic hunt much and beach hunt much more, and I can attest to it's abilities on the beach...at least in terms of stability, target separation/recovery speed and the ability to hit hard on low conductive targets with very good depth. I have only used it a 3-4 times ( 11 inch DD )for only a few hours each time due to not being able to hunt much right now, but have found lots of clad, more nickels than usual and a few junk jewelry items in the wet salt sand. Each time there was no problem running at max gain. The only thing I have to do is re-ground when moving from wet sand to dry and what is great is you can get an idea of the ground conditions, numerically, from the ground phase and ground balance numbers.

I love the 2 tone ID where it's very easy to set the break point and you are correct in how some bigger iron makes a totally different sound when it breaks through. It is not the same as a shallow non-iron target. As I am learning this machine, I think you can get a lot of information from the target by altering sweep speed too. A lot of the fainter, softer, deeper ' ticks' as I call them, that do not vary too much ID wise, I have found to be deep dimes and deep, small, non-ferrous targets. Moving the coil pretty quickly over these targets gets the unit to sound off these repeatable 'ticks'


Plus like you indicated...I can hunt all day with it without any arm fatigue. I don't gold prospect, but do 'gold hunt' ie, for gold jewelry, and I think the small coil on the GB SE will make a killer tot lot combo. Going to try that set up this week.

Last thing that to me is very important...it is super simple to set up and use.

JC

 

[Deese]

I think I read in a Teknetics owners manual to use a brisk sweep speed,pretty sure it said not to slow the sweep speed when you locate a target. I dont remember which one it was though,I have been looking at T2 ,omega, G2, and the SE.. so I guess it was omega or T2

 

[azsh07]

Sweeping briskly over a deep target does make it pop a little more. Funny in that I was testing that last night in the house while testing something else between the two versions. I noticed a brisk sweep gave me a half an inch more. So used to slow sweep machines lately that I never thought about it. I don't own a Tek so I have not read the sweep speed thing but since the two machines are so similar it should apply...well actually your right...it does.
Those faint ticks are targets like you said. I had to re think that at first as I am so used to the F75 and those ticks are always present and usually ground minerals....so i was not paying close attention at first. Worse was coming from the C versions as it has no faint ticks...it is all loud. So i was passing over them....and doin so missing deep targets.

 

[azsh07]

...I would easily say now that the SE version is a superior audio. Now this is in contrast to my first thoughts when I got the SE. Ask Mr. Bill...I was hating the VCO disc audio....!!!
After using it for a couple months now it is far better than the C version.
While the C version has a bit more audio depth it has none of the audio personality the SE does especially in iron trash.
My first impressions was that the SE was 2" in depth less than the Cabelas version. However this was due to me not listening closely to the SE audio and ignoring the fainter ticks and blowing them off as F75 type interference.
I have both and use em but if I could only have one I would easily say now the SE would be it.
Since I have been asked this several times.................

 

[Detectorguru]

Good posts . I could never have used the version with a single tone relic hunting in iron.

 

[Deese]

Thats right I couldnt either,I have a Nexus and it's like a carnival ride.I never shuts up,I know that its just chirping on the edge of a piece of iron.I cant stand it,it sits in the corner more than any machine I ever had. Its for sale on ebay if you guys know any die hards that have been wanting to try one.

 

[azsh07]

I saw that one....they always looked interesting but I knew someone who had the higher end version and he wrapped it around a tree in frustration I thought.

I hate chirpy machines....it takes the fun out detecting and turns it into work!!
scott

 

[Cal_Cobra]

I hate chirpy machines....it takes the fun out detecting and turns it into work!!
scott

This is one reason the F75 LTD is a pain to hunt with....

Thanks for the report azsh07, very informative. While I'd love to try it in some of the iron infested sites I've hunted in the past where my other machines feel on their face, but I don't hunt them that often and if it's deep silver capabilities aren't better then the F75 LTD in BP mode, I'm hesitant in buying the GB....BUT I do want to try one....it seems like a great machine for what it was designed for.

 

[Deese]

Yeah thats mine,I didnt break it over a tree though.The shaft froze up solid and I couldnt get it apart.Must be a carbon fiber thing.

 

[Adam(Va)]

n/t

 

[Deese]

I cant tell if that was directed at me,but I have a bid on the nexus. I have a good job in the shop right now and one of them is going to afford me a new SE hopefully by the end of the week.