Minelab Digisearch Meter

[Celtic Dragon]

Does Minelab manufacture the Digisearch meter or does someone else make them for Minelab? Does the manufacturer have a website where it shows different views of the meter? Does the meter only show the target id # or does it also show the depth of the target?

Thanks for your help,

CD

 

[CCadrin]

There is no depth reading. It the item is deep your reading is difficult to lock on when you do the wiggle. It will bounce around on least on my 550 meter. The 180 meter may lock on better since the range of number are 1/3 less.

If you wiggle and the number is the same than the item is usually pretty shallow or it can be a larger object bigger than a coin.

 

[Neil]

Depth is pretty easy to gauge on coin sized targets as the audio volume will tell you. you can get thrown off by larger deeper targets and shallow small ones.

Your right CCadrin, the 180 meter locks on better. also I would say they are the manufacturer of it, the design goes way back to the early 90s, they have just modified the internals as time went on.

I think the meter is the best accessory you can get for the Sov.

Neil

 

[Donny nj]

n/t

 

[Critterhunter]

Place a Want To Buy ad in the detector classified forum here on Findmall. It's all the way near the bottom of the forum listings of the various forums. That's how I bought my GT, and my 15x12, and my 12x10, and my S-5...And I got them all at really good prices because when you initiate the ad yourself looking for one some people who don't care to list stuff for sale might jump on a ready buyer and be done with what they want to get rid of. Also, before buying from somebody click on their name and then click on "See All Their Posts" or whatever that option is and see how long they've been on Findmall and how trustworthy they seem to be by reading messages. In particular, see if they've sold stuff in the past on here and had good replies about that. That's how I knew I could trust the people I was buying from, and also how they knew they could trust a check coming from me....As nobody is going to linger and post on a forum for years just so they can one day scam somebody is the way I look at it.

Don't be afraid to look into other Sovereign models as they all get about the same depth. Some say the GT is a tad bit deeper and more sensitive to smaller stuff, but I have read a few guys swear a certain model is the deepest of them all for them. A few Elite guys, for instance, swear it's the deepest one...But most people say the GT is the deepest. Make sure you check the sticky at the top of this forum that overviews the pros and cons of various models. The GT can be a hard machine to find used, but even the older Sovereigns tend to be hard to find. That should tell you something, because they have sold MANY Sovereigns over the years. People who fall in love with and learn this machine tend to hang onto it even if they buy other machines too.

 

[otlew]

ON THE METERS

The other popular meter was manufactured or at least sold under the Sun Ray brand. I have both the Digisearch and the Sun Ray III which is unique in that it uses a 9 volt battery to back-light the LCD at night, otherwise it is powered off of the Sovereign's circuit like the Digiseach. There is no significant operational difference, in my opinion, between the two meters. The Sun Ray stands a bit taller and is a bit easier to see and the III has the back light. IF you hunt at night you will probably wear a headlight which takes away the back light advantage of the Sun Ray.

Once I heard that the Digiseach meter was going the way of the Sun Ray (both are no longer made), I bought one of each to reverse engineer, which I did, in fact I made one for a hunting buddy, it is not powered off of the control box but uses its on 9 volt battery. The simplest and cheapest way at the time.

I was going to etch my own circuit board using the design of the Digisearch, I choose Digisearch because the Sun Ray was unnecessarily complicated in its design. Shortly there after a few folks started making the meters, including a forum moderator and even a guy in the UK, both of which are most likely very good meters. In fact the UK meter looks very similar to the Digisearch. The UK meter is no longer offered, as far as I can determine.

The one thing I did different, I chose a multi-turn wire wound potentiometer to use for the calibration of the meter. It worked wonders, once calibrated the meter would hold the calibration between on and off cycles and was much easier to dial in to 180 during calibration. With the wire-wound pot, it was set it and forget. The multi-turn pot draw back, way more expensive that the simple wiper carbon resistor pots.

The Digisearch is a compact design and because the multi-turn wire wound pot is necessarily much more bulky in comparison to the cheaper pots, it could not be directly fitted into the Digisearch housing. So a new housing would be required, which would have required me to make a mold for vacuum molding if going for the Digisearch look. Sun Ray housing is what I used for the proto type mentioned above.

My occupation picked up and its requires a lot of travel, so I walked away from the project about a year or so ago and now I am selling the Sovereign.