I purchased a used Goldquest V2 from Ralph C and it arrived Friday. This machine is like new ( THANKS RALPH ) and the craftsmanship is amazing. This unit is shaft mounted with the 10 inch coil, and I swung the unit for about 3 hours yesterday and my elbow and shoulder, which bother me, felt great. Light as a feather.
I took the machine to a beach loaded with black sand and iron garbage. This beach over the last several months has not produced anything..not even junk targets. I have had machines here that either null too much ( Excal), hit the hot rocks constantly ( X5), have to run them with low sensitivity ( BHID300 ) or cannot run a smooth threshold ( HH PI).
No such thing with the GQ. This machine had a very smooth threshold the entire time, and there was never a time where I did not think it was sounding off on a target. I had the machine with Reject at minimum and the SAT in the middle. I experiemented a little when I wanted to swing a little faster, and switched to filter 2 and SAT almost at it's highest and even then, when there was a slight change in the threshold, I slowed down and investigated the signal and the target sound got stronger. There wasn't any falsing and I did not dig any holes where there was not a target ! That's NICE !
The results were what I expected...lots of digging, lots of junk, lots of fun. The machine hits deep and even on small targets. Found several shoe eyelets and 1/2 fishing swivels very deep...at least 12-14 inches. There were several fishing lures I pulled out that had to be more than 2 feet down.
I was first using my all stainless scoop, but I had to switch to the Stealth Sunspot with the wooden handle because getting lazy, I was letting the handle of the stainless dip into the swing field and the machine was seeing it. Using the Stealth solved that problem...and with that scoop, I had dug those fishing lures out after 3-4 scoops and that scoop is long and wide so I knew the 2 feet + estimate is pretty good. Also, I had to give up on a few targets ( which I think were VERY deep, big iron targets or cans) as the holes were filling up. This beach has a lot of large iron pipes and iron bolts buried deep.
I started to be able to tell based on the wider signals that a target was big, but I dug everything yesterday.
Ended up with some clad, lots of iron wire, nails, bits, some washers. 2 clad quarters were pretty deep and the only nickel was about 14 inches down but was a very nice sound and smaller in size when I swept from different angles. It's still hard to tell the shallower small iron from the better targets...sounds the same to me but this is my first time using the machine.
All in all I think this will be my beach machine most of the time. The pin pointing was very good, I can swing it slow or fast and for hours without getting tired or elbow/shoulder hurting. I know there will be times when it's going to be a bear to use when some storms hit and the each had tons of nails on it, but I may still bite the bullet and use it.
I liked digging for a change, since the last few times I have not dug much unless I went up into the dry sand...which is now frozen anyway !!
Hopefully I can post pics of some good stuff in the future....didn't want to post a pic of only garbage this time.
JC
I took the machine to a beach loaded with black sand and iron garbage. This beach over the last several months has not produced anything..not even junk targets. I have had machines here that either null too much ( Excal), hit the hot rocks constantly ( X5), have to run them with low sensitivity ( BHID300 ) or cannot run a smooth threshold ( HH PI).
No such thing with the GQ. This machine had a very smooth threshold the entire time, and there was never a time where I did not think it was sounding off on a target. I had the machine with Reject at minimum and the SAT in the middle. I experiemented a little when I wanted to swing a little faster, and switched to filter 2 and SAT almost at it's highest and even then, when there was a slight change in the threshold, I slowed down and investigated the signal and the target sound got stronger. There wasn't any falsing and I did not dig any holes where there was not a target ! That's NICE !
The results were what I expected...lots of digging, lots of junk, lots of fun. The machine hits deep and even on small targets. Found several shoe eyelets and 1/2 fishing swivels very deep...at least 12-14 inches. There were several fishing lures I pulled out that had to be more than 2 feet down.
I was first using my all stainless scoop, but I had to switch to the Stealth Sunspot with the wooden handle because getting lazy, I was letting the handle of the stainless dip into the swing field and the machine was seeing it. Using the Stealth solved that problem...and with that scoop, I had dug those fishing lures out after 3-4 scoops and that scoop is long and wide so I knew the 2 feet + estimate is pretty good. Also, I had to give up on a few targets ( which I think were VERY deep, big iron targets or cans) as the holes were filling up. This beach has a lot of large iron pipes and iron bolts buried deep.
I started to be able to tell based on the wider signals that a target was big, but I dug everything yesterday.
Ended up with some clad, lots of iron wire, nails, bits, some washers. 2 clad quarters were pretty deep and the only nickel was about 14 inches down but was a very nice sound and smaller in size when I swept from different angles. It's still hard to tell the shallower small iron from the better targets...sounds the same to me but this is my first time using the machine.
All in all I think this will be my beach machine most of the time. The pin pointing was very good, I can swing it slow or fast and for hours without getting tired or elbow/shoulder hurting. I know there will be times when it's going to be a bear to use when some storms hit and the each had tons of nails on it, but I may still bite the bullet and use it.
I liked digging for a change, since the last few times I have not dug much unless I went up into the dry sand...which is now frozen anyway !!
Hopefully I can post pics of some good stuff in the future....didn't want to post a pic of only garbage this time.
JC
