Darkflight
New member
I am happy as a clam with this setup & wanted to share. No snarking on the 3300,I may have a hot one on my hands-you know built on Wednesday with the boss looking as I've heard lore of. But after I added the 10.25 coil it really came to life. Or I began to understand it.
Long story short I have 3 nice gold rings & a lot of change from spots I've done my very best on with my best machine-a Troy X2 with 10x12 & added GB modification. That machine still is the best in the trash but once I've cleared an area the 3300 starts to shine.The foam grips are mud soaked messes after a hunt so I used foam bandage tape for the grips. Just carved some of the old foam grip to use to make the handle more ergonomic. Much easier to clean & a better grip for nearly nothing.
Trick is I run it in pinpoint mode with the GB spot on. At next to max settings dimes at 10" are fairly obvious. ID is a different story but again-a trick to the rescue. Iron will almost always signal itself by size & tone of the target in pinpoint-but not always. Switching to motion all metal has the ability to ID & up to about 7" on a dime size target. Jumpier ID is likely trash but I'm digging it all. but the cool part is if I find a small deep target I get NO target ID on in motion all metal-then it's a probable coin or at least not iron.
Because the ID on the iron is very strong in most cases whereas the target ID on coins is only good to about 7" in my soil. Also nickles at depth ID very poorly but have the nice sharp sound of a coin in the pinpoint mode. I'm learning this all seat of the pants and its working very well in "worked " spots.I have hit dimes at 9" and also some very deep nickles.Not a lot of silver yet but the gold rings made up for that.
The cover is a folding dog water/food bowl we got from Petco as a giveaway. I don't think they still have them but baggies work also-just not as durable.
I also ended up keeping my pro-pointer under the arm. Just 2 zip ties & it is a lot easier to keep it handy without carrying it. I hate the belt mounts as I have enough issues keeping my pants in place dagnabit!.
I had some spare parts from a broken 2200 & made up an extension for the coil cable. I have a bag mount for wading the rivers or if I am going to get rained on hard. I just bag the detector in a large baggie & the cables run in through a hole cut in the bag.I also have an old Compass that is what I first used the shoulder bag for. I also mounted some varying size sticky dots to the touch pad controls on the 3300 so I can tell which buttons to hit w/o looking down. I mostly hunt by tone anyhow so I don't need to use the screen.
Like I said-very happy with this unit so I did it up my way.
The headphones are one side AM/FM Radio & the other ear gets the detector. For machines with soft tones this is not a good setup. But for this machine it matters not. That is due to the fact the audio is not modulated-a beep is a beep,It's all about tone & repetition. And the audio in pinpoint is very descriptive with good info on size & depth-but it's not subtle so one ear works fine.
Then I get to laugh at the talkers or listen to music while I swing. And while the 3300 is what I would call a slow response machine-in that it takes a slower swing than my Tesoro's-in pinpoint you can blaze along. You can't out walk the detector in that mode and I kinda insist on having a fast search machine- so while at 1st the 3300 kinda frustrated me-now it's my 1st grab from a nice bunch of detectors...
Long story short I have 3 nice gold rings & a lot of change from spots I've done my very best on with my best machine-a Troy X2 with 10x12 & added GB modification. That machine still is the best in the trash but once I've cleared an area the 3300 starts to shine.The foam grips are mud soaked messes after a hunt so I used foam bandage tape for the grips. Just carved some of the old foam grip to use to make the handle more ergonomic. Much easier to clean & a better grip for nearly nothing.
Trick is I run it in pinpoint mode with the GB spot on. At next to max settings dimes at 10" are fairly obvious. ID is a different story but again-a trick to the rescue. Iron will almost always signal itself by size & tone of the target in pinpoint-but not always. Switching to motion all metal has the ability to ID & up to about 7" on a dime size target. Jumpier ID is likely trash but I'm digging it all. but the cool part is if I find a small deep target I get NO target ID on in motion all metal-then it's a probable coin or at least not iron.
Because the ID on the iron is very strong in most cases whereas the target ID on coins is only good to about 7" in my soil. Also nickles at depth ID very poorly but have the nice sharp sound of a coin in the pinpoint mode. I'm learning this all seat of the pants and its working very well in "worked " spots.I have hit dimes at 9" and also some very deep nickles.Not a lot of silver yet but the gold rings made up for that.
The cover is a folding dog water/food bowl we got from Petco as a giveaway. I don't think they still have them but baggies work also-just not as durable.
I also ended up keeping my pro-pointer under the arm. Just 2 zip ties & it is a lot easier to keep it handy without carrying it. I hate the belt mounts as I have enough issues keeping my pants in place dagnabit!.
I had some spare parts from a broken 2200 & made up an extension for the coil cable. I have a bag mount for wading the rivers or if I am going to get rained on hard. I just bag the detector in a large baggie & the cables run in through a hole cut in the bag.I also have an old Compass that is what I first used the shoulder bag for. I also mounted some varying size sticky dots to the touch pad controls on the 3300 so I can tell which buttons to hit w/o looking down. I mostly hunt by tone anyhow so I don't need to use the screen.
Like I said-very happy with this unit so I did it up my way.
The headphones are one side AM/FM Radio & the other ear gets the detector. For machines with soft tones this is not a good setup. But for this machine it matters not. That is due to the fact the audio is not modulated-a beep is a beep,It's all about tone & repetition. And the audio in pinpoint is very descriptive with good info on size & depth-but it's not subtle so one ear works fine.
Then I get to laugh at the talkers or listen to music while I swing. And while the 3300 is what I would call a slow response machine-in that it takes a slower swing than my Tesoro's-in pinpoint you can blaze along. You can't out walk the detector in that mode and I kinda insist on having a fast search machine- so while at 1st the 3300 kinda frustrated me-now it's my 1st grab from a nice bunch of detectors...