Ron from Michigan said:
Critter,the Sovereign is my favorite land detector.Always good news when someone tells me about their searched out park,because the Sovereign will continue to bring up some nice old finds.By the way left a message for JW like to purchase a 10X12 SEF coil for my Sovereign if any are left,you talked me into buying one.Thanks Ron
O-oh.....
Now my butts on the line. If you get a bad 12x10 or for some reason your soil just rubs it the wrong way I'll never hear the end of it.
I was going to force myself to part with it for a few weeks and offer to send you it this spring to try out, just so I could hear your opinion on it. Great that you are ordering one so now I won't have to suffer any separation anxiety.
Hope Kellyco ain't sold out of the current batch (anybody?), but for sure JW is the one to ask on that. He seems to know things when others might not. I suspect he's good about walking the warehouse and keeping track of physical inventory maybe.
The 12x10 is a bit different beast than a typical coil. Don't crawl with it and do some long general "hunting for next target" sweeps over something at fringe depth in your soil. Play with the ultra slow to what might be called approaching a medium Whites speed over the target. Not the Sovereign wiggle, as we all know that faster short wiggle will enhance depth for best ID/tone when investigating a deep target once found.
Your soil will dictate if a somewhat faster speed is what the 12x10 wants for max depth. Might be slow or fast depending, but I'd say about 8 out of 10 sand or soil sites for me it's a somewhat faster sweep to achieve max depth, and it'll still separate fantastic thanks to it's ultra sharp DD line which, believe it or not, speeds up reaction time somewhat in a sense.
Also, when doing the Sovereign wiggle, I find this coil wants a bit different timing than other coils due to it's ultra sharp DD line. Like strumming a guitar with a pic rather than your thumb. Takes a little practice to get in rhythm with it. Not hard, just different. All coils seem to have different "timing" particulars on stuff like that to keep step with the beat they are playing at, so to speak.
It'll PP dead center, or rather just a hair in front of the shaft mount for me. But it'll also wickedly PP with the tip of the coil by wiggling forward until the target just sounds off. Then it'll be right at the base of that "V" shape of the outer edge of the coil. The tail end of it does the same thing. Even though the center DD line is scaple sharp, if a target you are interested in is mixed heavily in junk or iron, wiggle the last 2 or so inches of the tip at it to slice and dice even more so. Gets even sharper right near the tip for me. Love it when I hear a hint of a high tone in a bunch of lows or an iron null, and then work at that spot with the tip to see what I can sniff out.
But back to the main purpose of your thread concerning the Sovereign- Besides the ultra depth of the GT, even using the excellent stock 10" Tornado in my soil/sands, and the "no fuss" smooth stability, what I think I also like most is the long detailed robust audio, which not only gives a lot of target trait info, but also makes it much harder to miss a fringe depth target, or say one mixed in with a bunch of junk. More time to catch my attention than a small peep.
Said it before, but I call it the best of both worlds- The numerous tone alerts of a Minelab, yet with long detailed audio like the best of the old analog units. Plus, for super deep stuff, it's "take it easy" type of long look it allows on super deep stuff I feel gives me more time to hover or something and drink in a harder hit from it. With some fast machines you just can't do that, where it's trying to cut your look short, and if you hover too long can start to impact the stability or target quality.
Then there's the super high *conductivity* resolution in the foil up to copper penny range. Fantastic for avoiding trash while after rings, buttons, relics, or certain old coins that read much lower on the scale. That's where most of the junk lurks, so I do like to split hairs on VDIs when in the mood and the trash is just pounding me at a site.
Most days I'm in for a slow approach to working "dead" sites and simplistic "feel" of switches and dials to tweak things "just right", but other days, here and there, I do miss more of a "digital" perspective on life. That's where I plan to fill that hole with an SE Pro fitted with a 12x10, because I do miss that mesmerizing VDI smart screen ticking away on my prior Explorers. Just something magic about that in it's own special way, just like the Sovereign is in it's own unique way too.
People shouldn't look at these BBS units as something "less" in a Minelab, but rather something different and unique in it's own way. Some days you want a dark beer, some days you want a light beer, and if you combine that beer with different tastes in machines to match the mood your in for a lazy day hunt on some private land, so much the better...
The thing is, all machines have certain differences that will produce some finds at dead spots in their own way. Even differences in the coils detection field from one machine to another can cause it to hit something just right, like say a coin on edge or masked in a certain way, where you'll scratch your head and go "How did that dime store machine find that at this place?" I've seen and heard of guys using what one might term entry level machines and start popping stuff at sites that have been worked hard prior.
Part of that though is them just digging stuff that all the seasoned detectorists thought better to know wasn't dig worthy. Whenever a site seems to offer nothing else, just by digging the stuff your sure is going to turn out to be junk or a iron hit giving a false coin signal, will produce some keepers. Seen it happen. Usually we term it beginners luck, but a better term might be beginners inexperience where he didn't assume he knew what not to dig.
So long as there is iron and trash left at sites, nothing is hunted out by a long shot, even if the soil there makes it impossible for the old stuff to sink beyond the depth of typical detectors. Even just griding from odd diagonal angles to land marks that rubs human nature the wrong way can make a dead site come alive with halfway decent coin hits due to masking that others have never seen.
I'm going to try to make this habit more of my routine rather than exception this year. Every time I forced myself to stop paralleling land marks like sidewalks or wood lines or buildings and such, and made the mental effort to keep going at odd angles, usually some keepers pop out. You'd be surprised how hard that is to do if you don't keep it constant in your head. A few minutes later you naturally find yourself back to the normal parallel or 90 degree angles without even realizing it.
The fun part is to then, before digging, swing at that potential coin hit from the normal angles- parallel or 90 degrees, that others usually use 99% of the time. When I hear it nulling at those angles or degrading badly into well below the quality of what others might take a chance on as a coin, then I get a bit more excited about the potential, because I know chances are most never even heard that potential coin.
We did this some last summer, a friend and I, and both his other Minelab flagship model and my GT/12x10, were finding targets when compared that at the normal angles were nulls or junk city. Often these turned out to be silvers or wheats or such. It was big fun, and this was at a spot that was a small patch of grass in a park right near the parking lot, where I'm sure it's been pounded hard over 30 years or so by many different machines and coils.
Just by us fighting human nature and working that spot at some odd angles, stuff started turning up. I even remember that we had gridded patched of that ground in normal angles on prior days, and yet we came back and worked it with an "X" pattern instead of the typical "+" one, and it was like we never even hunted it before...
HH Jim
