My metered detector vs. Vaquero

[jabbo]

Today I used my Compass Coin Scanner Pro in a park. It has an analog meter (with needle). Haven't used it since I got the Vaquero last Feb. Comparing the two machines the Vaquero is no less acurate when I try to ID a target. The Compass is a good deep detector with 3 tones but it doesn't know a nickel from a pulltab or a piece of foil or a ring, the meter however will give the depth and acuaretly ID a penny, Dime, or Quarter, everything else is a guess. The Vaquero lets me know it's a coin when I twirl the discrimination knob all the way up. Now it seems that a meter doesn't do much for me. Would like to know if the Deleon visual ID is really helpful. (Revision - Found all I need to know about the Deleon TID in older posts).

 

[saika]

In a word, yes. I used a V last year and still think it is one of the best machines I have ever used. I really wanted to try VDI and picked up the Leo, the VDI numbers are very nice to use. The trickiest thing to learn is when they scroll and what the scroll range is telling you. It seems that junk like aluminum and foil vary a lot more than a good target like a coin or ring. The depth reading is also really nice to have in a city park setting.

The neatest thing that the V would do, in my opinion, was the way it responded to certain types of foil, it sort of fizzed. That is the only way that I can describe it. Also the V would see coins that were very heavily masked with iron or other junk, definitely more so than the Leo.

For fast park work the Leo is hard to beat, it would not be my first pick if I was going to hunt the beach, I find that there is a lot of falsing even at the lowest sensitivity settings in sand, this is in all metal mode. The VDI and depth still work in a.m. mode. This can be useful at times when trying to get a bead on a deep target. I would also mention that I only hunt with the sens set up to a maximum of 3 at any time and usually lower and regularily pull out dimes at the 4-6" mark. I have a sweet spot that I hunt regularily and it seems that the Leo has pulled out on edge coins better than the V could. What is really noticeable is the increase in US coinage that the Leo is finding for me, at times at the expense of Canadian currency. I have noticed that there are so many different alloys of Can. coin material, some of them read just above iron, expecially the dimes.

I would like to get another V in the future and hold both of these units in my arsenal. I would also like to try either the White's M6 or Fisher Excel and see how they compare to the Deleon for park hunting. I feel that the Deleon would really benefit from either autotrack or a manual GB that is effective in the am and disc mode as both of these other units have.

 

[jabbo]

n/t