frustrated with 2500

[Mike in Dana Point Ca]

hi all,

i've had my 2500 for a while now, and have made some good finds with it. however, recently i have been hunting with some buddies who have minelab ex2's and explorer SE's. we do a lot of signal comparisons, and i am about ready to sell the machine and go minelab. they've called me over to a 6"+ signal dozens of times and asked what i get on my machine. 90% of the time i can't even hear it. i go to all-metal and hear something kind of, but it doesn't ID as a coin. then they dig it out and most times it's a silver or wheat. their machines are right on with the ID all the way down to 9 or 10 inches. what gives?

any help is appreciated.

Mike in Dana Point Ca

 

[John-Edmonton]

n/t

 

[Uncle Willy]

Ever notice the difference in the size of their coil and the size of your's? And when you go to all metal do you ground balance?

Bill

 

[Mike in Dana Point Ca]

hi bill and john,

i'm not sure what type of soil it is. typical southern california park soil. i know it varies place to place, but i'm not sure.

as for the coils, their coils are either the stock 10" or the 8". i'm using the stock 9.5" imaging coil. when i go to all-metal i don't manually ground balance- i use the fasttrack button. but i don't like the idea of having to use manually grounbalanced all-metal to find the oldies. especially since all-metal has no tone ID. their machines just seem to have a little more UMPH.
it happened to me again today. i was hunting with a friend who has an explorer SE. we were in a park which has a fair amount of iron. he called me over to hear 5 signals he thought were silver. i did not get a solid lock on ONE! three of them i couldn't hear at all. i would have passed over ALL of them. and they ALL turned out to be silver dimes. he was getting a clear, high flutey tone on all of them. he ended the day with 8 silver dimes and 20 wheats---i found two wheats, both of which were at 5-6".

i think that this may have been the last straw. i have used garretts for 4 years now, and i keep getting out-hunted.

 

[topknocker]

give it up. minelab explorer is in a higher class.

 

[Uncle Willy]

Have you tried the big coil on your 2500? Might match you up with the Minelabs. But whatever floats your boat.

Bill

 

[swingman]

I'd be frustrated, too. I have both the Explorer SE and the 2500, with years of experience on the Minelab Sovereign and 15" WOT coil. There's a place for each of these machines, if you can afford to have more than one.
For some reason that 'lousy' 2500 (I've had it since December) has been able to find deep silver that I passed over with the Sovereign - 6 times so far, and those sites were hammered, from all different directions! I like to go back over old sites that have payed off for me, with different machines/coils.
The SE is no doubt a better all-around machine. Please remember that the COIL TYPE is different for each. Sometimes just switching from a DD to a concentric coil and vice-versa will get you additional finds.
I love the Imaging feature of the 2500, and use the 12-1/2" coil most of the time. So far I have not detected in all-metal (more depth), but that will come.
Here's how I use the 3 machines, at this time: Sovereign with WOT - beaches, woods, farmfields...anywhere where coverage is important and tagets are likely to be spread apart. Still excellent depth.
2500 - yards, parks with a lot of targets...anywhere where I want to dig only coin-sized objects first. Then the second+ times over a site, I'll go to the SE. I go very slow with the SE, so I usually avoid it the first time through a yard. I can get a sense of a new site faster with the 2500. I am a coinshooter first and foremost.
For hammered sites and rocky saltwater beach areas where digging is tough, I go with the SE. It is, on average, the deepest machine I own. It is superior where there is soil/sand mineralization. That may be the case where your Minelab friends excelled. Hope this helps a little.

 

[Hightone]

If 6" is all you're getting out of the 2500, there is a problem with something other than the detector design. I have friends that find good targets at not only 8" to 10", but even lower (though the imaging doesn't work that deep). Are you in factory default settings and your buddies ML set for depth by customizing? I know Minelabs go deeper, but not double the depth.- Dan