Thanks for the input. I'm excited about going back to old haunts where I know there are deeper coins, or there is a lot of iron, or the ground minerals are bad. I have many sites that produced good coins in the past but I know have more to offer but are out of reach either due to the iron, ground minerals, or depth. The QXT Pro maxes out on a silver dime somewhere in the 7.5 to 8.5" range, depending on soil conditions. No larger coils exist for it than the 9.5", so this what a limiting factor that has caused me to move on. I'm in the market for a used small coil (I hear the S-5 is the best?) to sniper out coins in real heavy trash at some of my spots, a larger coil for max depth on coins in mild trash (still hear the WOT is the deepst, but hear the S-12 is better in trashier areas...?).
I've owned or used a slew of detectors over the ten to fifteen years I've been detecting. Even had 2 or 3 Explorers that performed well but took most of the fun out of my hunts due to the heavy and unbalanced feel and the fact that they are "high maintenance" machines in that I felt I had to keep on top of it at all times to keep it working at max performance. I've always wanted a wider coil variety, numerical VDI, and a variable notch. The QXT had 8 effective notches but no way to tune them slightly up or down the scale as they were in preset zones. Funny how many people take a variable notch for granted, which I had on some of my prior detectors that I didn't keep long. The ability to nudge it just to the right spot to cause a certain pesky trash target to at least crackle so you can ID and avoid it is a powerful tool in ring hunting on land. Sure, I mostly hunt with zero discrimination and listen to even the iron, digging most targets, to avoid target masking, but there are days when time or mood just makes me want to lean on a notch.
I'm a big depth guy and from my readings on the forums I'm pretty confident the GT will get Explorer and Etrac depth as some who have both have said, or at least can probably beat them in depth with the proper coil used. That's another biggie for me...I don't like using something that I know isn't going as deep as other machines can. From the looks of it the Sovereign is right up there at the top depth wise with anything on the market.
Another feature of these machines that interests me is the iron mask feature. I always figured this was just an automatic way to kick the discrimination up above iron but as I've read more closely into it it appears otherwise. I guess this feature is really some kind of iron "window" mode in which the machine can see coins in the iron that might otherwise be masked by using the regular method on machines of just upping the discrimination knob to kill the iron signals? I'd like to hear more on that from people....And your experience of what happens with coins in iron when using iron mask on/zero discrimination or iron mask off/high enough discrimination to kill the iron. Better yet, what about iron mask off and zero discrimination...How do the coins mixed in sound in that situation? Like I said, I like to hunt in disc. but with nothing discriminated out, then assign high tones to the targets I'm interested in. It allows me to listen to the trash low sounds and try to find a high one mixed in with the sounds to investigate. That's mostly how I hunt, and then I'll refer to the meter's reading just to gather further info on the target's potential.
I've owned Explorers with the Sunray probe. Hated it. Seemed like a big hassle to always throw a switch, turn on pinpoint or whatever, and unclip the probe with every target. I've not needed a pinpointer with most of the machines I've owned but I know it's a bigger issue on the Explorer. Does the GT pinpoint any better? If need be I'll pick up one of those Garrett probes (friend has one and they are awesome) or perhaps make my own as I have a background in electronics...can probably build one a lot cheaper.
Again, thanks for all the input and help. I do know my detectors and all the tricks and such from my years of detecting but of course I've got zero experience on a Sovereign and so need to trust and rely on the advice of seasoned owners.
