Ground Balance question

[kregh]

How do you know that a ground balance machine would be a improvement over what you have?

I have a Cibola and a ACE 350 - both seem to get pretty good depth and are working great for me. I also live in the Atlanta metro area with all the red clay - again - I think my machines are ding a good job.

So am I missing something here? When would you really need a ground balance? at the beach?

Thanks in advance for the enligtenment.

 

[coinscratch]

How much depth do you generally get when you hunt with your machines? Any difference in performance between the 350 and Cibola that you've encountered while hunting?

 

[GunnarMN]

you would have to do a side by side to see how but i can say it helps in my ground .

 

[kregh]

Coin scratch / GunnarMN

Neither machine have ground balance, and both perform about the same depth wise

Although I will say the Cibola is the deeper of the two...especially when super tuned

The Cibola gets a quarter at about 8 to 9 inches without super tune...

 

[MarkCZ]

I don't think there is ANY detector that doesn't have a form of ground balancing in some way or another.
What I mean by that is they either have,
Automatic ground balancing,
Fixed ground balancing, or
Adjustable ground balancing.

So even a detector that doesn't have ANY way to set or adjust for ground balance means that it has a "preset" balance. Its my understanding that they use an average in doing this and in most places this can be fine to even great!
Here is an example of what I mean.

Where I live and hunt I'm going to say that the ground is "Average" and here is why.
All the detectors I've had sense 1981 had manual ground balance controls (except for an F2) but they also had a quick setup to get you started hunting. The quick setup included preset marking on about all the controls including the ground balance. I found that with EVERY ONE of the detectors when I would actually ground balance them they ALWAYS landed right on the or just slightly to one side of the preset point. Most times the change could be accounted for by things like SUN and heat, by that I mean in the summer I could start out a little low on the balance in the early morning, but then farther into the day as the sun's solar energy charges the ground minerals the ground balance adjustments would change a tad to the other side of the preset point.

So, I think its pretty safe to say that you would have to go pretty cheap or pretty OLD to find a detector that has NO ground balance at all!

They're are many places here in the US where a detector with a preset ground balance will work GREAT! and a good number more that the preset would do well!

Mark

 

[BarberBill]

Mark covers it pretty well. The Cibola has an internal, factory preset ground balance which is set to an average at the factory. As he mentions, this can and does quite well in many locations. The rub is when you encounter an area with high mineralization the preset detectors may become difficult to immpossible to use well or get any depth, whereas a manual or true auto ground balance machine will adjust to the conditions and work considerably better in those conditioons.
BB

 

[Monte]

What is "Ground Balance" in the first place?Ground Balance is an adjustment to 'balance' or 'cancel' or 'adjust' the tuning so as to ignore the ground signal. Prior to 1974 (as far as hobby detectors are concerned), most models used operated on the Transmit/Receive principle and required the search coil be held a uniform distance from the ground during operation once tuned. The 'Tuner' control (a proper term for that function) would be adjusted just to the point where we heard a sight audio hum. That was/is referred to as the Threshold audio.

Most of those early TR's operated

 

[GunnarMN]

very intresting history Monty. I was playing in a rock band in 1983 and missed the tesoro machines

 

[Arizona Slim]

How do you know that a ground balance machine would be a improvement over what you have?

I have a Cibola and a ACE 350 - both seem to get pretty good depth and are working great for me. I also live in the Atlanta metro area with all the red clay - again - I think my machines are ding a good job.

So am I missing something here? When would you really need a ground balance? at the beach?

Thanks in advance for the enligtenment.

Living in a highly mineralized red clay area, you'll get 3" more depth with a Vaquero that you can manually ground balance. I know my answer is a lot shorter than Monte's but there it is!

 

[pecor]

Or open it up and carefully adjust it. Jay

 

[WV62]

It is better to have it if you need it, than need it and not have it.

That's kind of the way I think of GB.

Ron in WV

 

[knarfj]

n/t

 

[knarfj]

Great write-up Monte.

I just paid a visit to my coin garden with my Toltec II and instead of setting the ground balance, as I usually do, spot on or slightly positive, I set the GB a little negative and immediately gained a noticeable improvement in the audio response to a couple of targets that I've struggled with while in the discrimination mode.

Out of curiosity I went more negative until I reached a point where the Toltec became unstable and then backed it off until it became stable again. Can't wait to give it a try in the real world.

Thanks