ID meter and or beep and dig

[WV62]

I am a coin and inland jewelry hunter and I have both types of machines metered and beep and dig. Fisher F75, Fisher 1270 and a Tesoro Lobo ST

Is there any need to hunt with a beep & dig machine in areas where the metered machines have hit pretty hard?

Kind of wondering if anybody has found a good use or need for both types of machines?

Have we become meter dependent and are we missing good targets that with a beep & dig we maybe wouldn't pass up?

Ron in WV

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Ron, your question has too many degrees of subjective judgement calls. For example: what type spots are you talking about ? Turfed parks (where some selectivitity *does* come into play), or relicky field type locations ? And depends on what a person's patience tolerance is ? Ie.: do you "strip-mine" a junky park "lest you miss an earing stud" ? Or do you forgo shallow foil and stuff, knowing that, "yes you might miss a gold ring, but on the other hand, you've passed 10000 aluminum signals".

Naturally the great TID machines will, OF COURSE miss an earing stud that some turn-&-go machines got . Because the TID guys are so spoiled they "poo-poo" the stuff that's not ID'ing as a keeper.

I can think of parks that have been hammered with TID machines, where , gasp, guys were angling for the deep silver. And sure, if you took one of the other machines you list in there, sure, you'd find more. But at what cost ? Heck, you can turn the TID machine into wide open (or go all-metal) and accomplish the same thing I suppose.

And for relicky ghost-townsy sites, I would not be concerned so much with TID accuracy (as the factor of what the choices are), but rather that Fishers and Tesoro you list are better at seeing through iron. Whereas the deep-seeker great TID machines (like an explorer) are not as known for nail-see-through. But if the question were limited to turfed parks, then no, I would not see much need to go through with the machines you list after great TID machines have combed it. NOT that there's not "something left", but because your ratio of junk to get any-more keepers, will eventually drive you to the point where you're simply better off choosing greener grounds, IMHO.

 

[REVIER]

I have hit areas hard with Fishers and gone back and found more with Tesoros.
Conversely, I have also done the opposite.
I have used a couple of different detectors and coils and gone back to the same sites with others and still found more and this happens all the time for me.
I believe it is not so much about ability of each platform, (or mine for that matter), but more about hitting targets from slightly different directions on different hunts and maybe different site conditions on different days, also.
I never obsess with thoughts in the back of my mind on whether I am using the right tool or the right coil ever, I know some do but that can just lead to second guessing, frustration and a less joyful experience over all.
I just go out, pick up one of my detectors and coil combos and commit to that 100% for the day with no looking back.
It doesn't matter what I find or don't find at all because I hunt mostly the same public sites over and over...if I don't find something great one day I might another day and I do realize that travelling far to hunt a one time only special site rates different thinking but I rarely do that.
I just go out and am happy I am out in the fresh air getting exercise.
Using metered and non metered are different ways to hunt and each is so much fun and that is my prime criteria for this entire hobby.
FYI been and dig doesn't come close to describing how accurate the Tesoros can be if you understand the language.

I use my F70 more often but the joy of switching to my Vaq or especially my Compadre from time to time is something I would never even think of giving up even if I use them rarely.

 

[WV62]

Tom in CA,
I mostly hunt open areas of park, and some of the wooded areas within the park. A lot of your comments hit home runs of thoughts that have went through my mind. Your strip-mine comment really got me thinking, that is what I am up against.

REVIER,

Your hunting conditions sounds like you and I are hunting the same spot. Where we differ is I am one of those guys that always wonder if I would have do or used this or that, I would do better. I need to be thankful that I have a park that allows detecting and commit to something a day at a time.

Ron in WV

 

[BarryL]

I have hit areas hard with Fishers and gone back and found more with Tesoros.
Conversely, I have also done the opposite.
I have used a couple of different detectors and coils and gone back to the same sites with others and still found more and this happens all the time for me.
I believe it is not so much about ability of each platform, (or mine for that matter), but more about hitting targets from slightly different directions on different hunts and maybe different site conditions on different days, also.
I never obsess with thoughts in the back of my mind on whether I am using the right tool or the right coil ever, I know some do but that can just lead to second guessing, frustration and a less joyful experience over all.
I just go out, pick up one of my detectors and coil combos and commit to that 100% for the day with no looking back.
It doesn't matter what I find or don't find at all because I hunt mostly the same public sites over and over...if I don't find something great one day I might another day and I do realize that travelling far to hunt a one time only special site rates different thinking but I rarely do that.
I just go out and am happy I am out in the fresh air getting exercise.
Using metered and non metered are different ways to hunt and each is so much fun and that is my prime criteria for this entire hobby.
FYI been and dig doesn't come close to describing how accurate the Tesoros can be if you understand the language.

Well said . like the old saying no place is hunted out there is absolutely no way anyone can cover every square inch of ground from the top to the max depth . I have hunted the same public spots for yrs and watched others take their minelabs and their Whites and others and still go back after them in the areas they searched and found a few nice keepers Luck you say could be But I know my machines . JMHO
I use my F70 more often but the joy of switching to my Vaq or especially my Compadre from time to time is something I would never even think of giving up even if I use them rarely.

 

[slingshot]

Watch some of the videos- or if possible some of the hunters in your area. It's almost always an eye opener. I've watched them skip almost a foot at a time-walking THEN sweeping instead of overlapping sweeps THEN walking. They almost always have at least $500 detectors! Also look up top ten metal detector finds- a post Revier put up a short time ago. The most valuable- #1 find was found with a Radio Shack detector! I still love this- "It's not the detector, it's the detector!"

 

[MarkCZ]

Well, part of what my big brother is talking about is in our city park we know there is still some silver coins around, and probably a little silver jewelry but this park puts a WHOLE new meaning to being hammered, its full of pull tabs, in the 80's it was a regular meeting place for detector club meetings. Now, in the past few years we (all three of the WV brothers) have been working the park really hard with metered machines and now the silver is near impossible to find. So, now we're trying different idea's trying to recover more of the old coins. At this point we're starting to dig any good responses even outside of the coin ID ranges figuring that the silver is being mask by other trash items. So, if I'm going to dig decent target responses and not use target ID then I'm thinking that some models of beep & dig machines may be better in the audio department then a good number of metered detectors.

So, if your down to taking out the trash in an area like a city park to unmask the old coins is a metered detector better? or a good beep & dig (no visual ID)?

If you've hunted an area with a metered detector to the point where in a day your not finding nothing good, but the area is still littered with trash would you be as well off or maybe better off to start working it with a good Non VDI detector?

Mark

 

[GroundScanner]

I , myself would not look at the meter and dig it all. I bet with all this trash , there is still silver under it. Jmo. GS

 

[slingshot]

I think in this scenario, we're down to a metal detector with a true all metal mode and listening for the faint whispers. My Whites MX 5 has a motion a/m mode and even that's found some deep coins. Some of the PI' s have iron vs. non ferrous indicators .

 

[MarkCZ]

Well, the "Dig ALL" idea, or using All-Metal would literally put you in a 20'X20' box for the next year or so! and this park is a little over 110 acres. What we're doing now is still trying to stay about the millions of tabs, thousands of aluminum screw caps, and other litter. Whenever we go out we are getting a good bit of these items but its not possible to CLEAR a 110 acres of a city park that's been a park sense 1920! it just has to much trash.
So, the idea now is that all the cherry picking is pretty much over with, all the 'Let The Meter Tell Me To Dig It Or Not' is history.
We're trying to drop are discrimination down to maybe the Zinc range, or screw caps and dig the repeatable signals. My thinking is that a good bit of what's left is tucked up tight to other junk items that are good conductors and so the coins are being averaged up or down enough to throw them out of their ID range of. So, how can you find a silver quarter with a detector that has Visual ID if the quarter is now being averaged down to a screw cap, or a zinc penny? It would seem to me that we are just going to have to set the discrimination to some point below the high conductive coin range and just cover the meter up and pick out the responses via an audio report. Now, if that's so then there is some reasoning to the reverting back to what some may call "Old School".

My brother and I have been tossing the idea around of him taking his 1270 and me firing up my 1266 and going back over some of the areas that are still radioactive from our,
CoinStrikes,
F5's,
Omega's
F75's
F70's
and so on_______________________________........................
and going for the decent responses from zinc's up.
This should put us at digging more trash, but if the good stuff starts to turn up more then that would be a better day than a whole day with nothing good.

Mark

 

[Elton]

Years ago when they came out..( True metered) coin range etc included, I knew I would never use a beep and dig detector again.. ( I haven't)
Over the years I have become meter dependent for my style detecting. It put more pleasure into detecting for me..

 

[slingshot]

Well, the "Dig ALL" idea, or using All-Metal would literally put you in a 20'X20' box for the next year or so! and this park is a little over 110 acres. What we're doing now is still trying to stay about the millions of tabs, thousands of aluminum screw caps, and other litter. Whenever we go out we are getting a good bit of these items but its not possible to CLEAR a 110 acres of a city park that's been a park sense 1920! it just has to much trash.
So, the idea now is that all the cherry picking is pretty much over with, all the 'Let The Meter Tell Me To Dig It Or Not' is history.
We're trying to drop are discrimination down to maybe the Zinc range, or screw caps and dig the repeatable signals. My thinking is that a good bit of what's left is tucked up tight to other junk items that are good conductors and so the coins are being averaged up or down enough to throw them out of their ID range of. So, how can you find a silver quarter with a detector that has Visual ID if the quarter is now being averaged down to a screw cap, or a zinc penny? It would seem to me that we are just going to have to set the discrimination to some point below the high conductive coin range and just cover the meter up and pick out the responses via an audio report. Now, if that's so then there is some reasoning to the reverting back to what some may call "Old School".

My brother and I have been tossing the idea around of him taking his 1270 and me firing up my 1266 and going back over some of the areas that are still radioactive from our,
CoinStrikes,
F5's,
You' ve answered your own question! But many of the newer detectors, like my MX 5 ID in a/m motion! You can sometimes, also pick up several objects close together. I understand the Makro Racer is making the news by picking out objects deep amongst trash and in the iron.
Omega's
F75's
F70's
and so on_______________________________........................
and going for the decent responses from zinc's up.
This should put us at digging more trash, but if the good stuff starts to turn up more then that would be a better day than a whole day with nothing good.

Mark

 

[MarkCZ]

You' ve answered your own question! But many of the newer detectors, like my MX 5 ID in a/m motion! You can sometimes, also pick up several objects close together. I understand the Makro Racer is making the news by picking out objects deep amongst trash and in the iron.

Well, the F70 and F75 and probably most others modern detectors also still ID in all-metal, but if your in a 10'X10' square and your in all-metal in many city parks and your trying to watch the meter your not going to get much time away from the meter, you have 600 targets that is going to ping the meter! what ones are you going to dig!

Lets not stray to far from the reason of this thread, Ron nor I are saying or asking which is the better detector, VDI verses Beep & Dig, we have both, what the real question is 'If you feel that a good area is worked out by VDI detectors, does anybody feel that it would be to any avail to revert back to the old school of beep & dig and work the areas again, or after a good cleaning with the VDI unit is the area going to still be clean on a revert back to the beep & dig'?

Mark

 

[WV62]

I am thinking that along with mask silver coins, almost all the the gold for the past 50+ years is still mixed in with all those tabs.

Ron in WV

 

[slingshot]

You' ve answered your own question! But many of the newer detectors, like my MX 5 ID in a/m motion! You can sometimes, also pick up several objects close together. I understand the Makro Racer is making the news by picking out objects deep amongst trash and in the iron.

Well, the F70 and F75 and probably most others modern detectors also still ID in all-metal, but if your in a 10'X10' square and your in all-metal in many city parks and your trying to watch the meter your not going to get much time away from the meter, you have 600 targets that is going to ping the meter! what ones are you going to dig!

Lets not stray to far from the reason of this thread, Ron nor I are saying or asking which is the better detector, VDI verses Beep & Dig, we have both, what the real question is 'If you feel that a good area is worked out by VDI detectors, does anybody feel that it would be to any avail to revert back to the old school of beep & dig and work the areas again, or after a good cleaning with the VDI unit is the area going to still be clean on a revert back to the beep & dig'?

Mark

The only reasonable answer I know is from the Dankowski experiment and that means digging it all. I agree with WV62 on this.

 

[slingshot]

Years ago when they came out..( True metered) coin range etc included, I knew I would never use a beep and dig detector again.. ( I haven't)
Over the years I have become meter dependent for my style detecting. It put more pleasure into detecting for me..

I know the exact feeling and only use a nonmetered machine in an area where I just kick the pebbles or tot lot medium aside with my foot. It's as if there's supposed to be a nail, or some kinda object blocking EVERY target and therefore no use in using such a machine.. Yet they can sometimes save hours of needless digging and you always have the option to check if the target sounds or id's differently.

 

[Mega]

Audio on any detector is far more reliable especially at depth,a meter starts to get a bit un-reliable and even not show any form of data but still give a reliable dig or no dig signal,especially on my old pasture sites here in the UK its best to have a decent set of headphones to hear the very feint deep signals that could be a very desirable old target.

I use a selection of detectors/coil setups for specific sites and some are metered and some are just audio based machines,if i am honest i do prefer a screen based machine albeit not for making the final dig decision but for the additional information that it can provide,but if a machine gives me either a definite dig signal or a possible signal then it has to come out to give me the peace of mind that it was a find of a lifetime that i missed for ever.

Audio is still king in my eyes and always will,but a screen is also nice to have as well.

 

[Dancer]

I believe the order to success is. 1 the location, 2 the hunter, 3 the machine. (Luck always plays a part also)
Location. No matter what your hunting, if it ain't there, you can't find it. Obviously , if your targeting deep Silver, relics, you got to put yourself in the right area.

The hunter. The experienced hunter will keep himself successful through research, listening to others, and being able to read the site.
He also knows his machines. What he needs for his area, and a backup.

The machine. I'm real comfortable with the machines I have for what I hunt. I'll admit it, I'm a clad, Gold/ Silver, park & beach hunter.
I find about 6 silver coins on a good year, but I know by only luck.
I also know that there are plenty of veteran beach hunters using a inferior machine that will flat out hunt guys like me using better equipment.

So meter or beep & dig? I believe your best experienced hunters have both.

 

[WV62]

Well it kind looks like we got a couple of months of bad weather to talk about it, then we can get back in there and try a couple of long beep and dig days and see what starts coming out of the ground. It can't be any worse than our zero find days last year. I will be starting with the 1270 and the little 3.75" coil, brother Mark says he may start with the 1266x and the 8" coil, not sure we can get brother Greg (SL52) to join in on this. He catches us with are back turned and turns that disc up and starts looking for silver.

Thanks for all the comments,

Ron in WV

 

[Mike Hillis]

I like having the meter available if I need to use it. Kind of depends on what I'm hunting for.

What mostly happens is that I start grooving on the tones and forget I have a meter.

HH
Mike