Facebook, Twitter and other similar social gossip sites.
Kapok said:
Someone told me that the Makro will never be hot on US coins because it's calibrated for European coins, unlike detectors from US manufacturers. I know the alloys of coins from different countries does vary so it makes a kind of sense, but have never heard any solid technical discussion of this topic. Just wondered if anyone had heard that or had any further insight into it
I personally don't believe it since my Racer 2 hits very hard on US coins IMO. But there were some know-it-alls in one of the Facebook groups saying that. I've seen it from time to time on different forums as well.
Remember that visual Target ID got started here in the gold old
back in 1983 when George Payne designed the then-new Teknetics CoinComputer 9000 and 8500 models. He then added Tone ID to the mix with their 'B' version upgrade. Back then we had more-or-less a segment or coin name reference for USA coins and other countries had to learn to adapt to what we called a Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter, Half and Dollar.
Within a short time we had noteworthy advances in TID technology to incorporate the VDI [size=small]
(Visual Discrimination Indicator)[/size] numeric reference, and that worked much better for everyone in every country. At least it works well for those of us in the countries that use a more noble metal in our coins. Once it was 90% silver for when we now call 'clad' with the sandwiched copper core. Out nickels [size=small]
(the 5¢ coins)[/size] are still made as they have been for the bulk of their duration, and the cents / pennies have gone from 95% Copper to Zinc with a copper wash.
Not necessarily the best metal comparison, but all of what we use here in the USA is more of a noble, durable metal as they are non-magnetic metals in nature. So many foreign countries, such as Canada to our North, use Steel, Nickel, and other magnetic-based metals, as do many foreign countries in their current or more recent coinage. That makes TID more challenging as the VDI numeric read-out can be more prone to instability, spanning a broader VDI range, and edge-pass sweeps generally reject those types of coins and produce a ferrous or iron audio tone and visual displayed report.
So in conclusion, countries with non-ferrous metals used to make their coins like here in the US are going to be able to have a more consistent and more reliable visual TID response. It doesn't matter if it Is an American coin or one from another country made of a good, non-ferrous metal, they will respond with a tighter, more consistent TID. All the operator needs to do is learn what numeric read-out their coins produce. The Makro Racer 2, its earlier sibling the 'original' Racer, and the sister company, Nokta's, CoRe, Relic and Impact are all excellent detectors that perform exceptionally well and give us very decent lock-on numeric TID's.
Most detector makers today have eliminated any named-coin reference, such as Nickel, Penny, Dime, etc., and have relied on the simple and efficient numeric read-out because that form of VDI is universal to all countries and any coinage.
Monte
