New to the Forum...

[Red Roadster]

Hello to all!

I'm new to the forum but have been detecting since 1970.
About 10 yrs. ago I bought 2 BH units...

1. QDII - Which I use almost exclusively.
2. LR - Which I rarely use as I find it almost impossible to get good repeatable signals with even in the preset modes. In fact I've only run 1 set of 9-volts through it the entire time I've owned it!

I bought the LR for my gold prospecting as I was told it would locate a pin-head sized nugget at about 4". I figure that weould be about the same size as the backing on an earing...well it don't in anymode if it;s any deeper than 1". I've been very disappointed with this unit. BUT...Now I'd like to start trying it for some Jewelry hunting.
I just find myself reaching for the QD II all the time and I've found lots of ringsd, earings, and coins with it.
Anybody else find themselves reaching for 1 unit over another "just because"?
Anyway...I am a gold prospector by hobby and a coin shooter out of necessity.

Oh...I live in Oak Harbor, WA
Nice to meet you all! HH!!
Terry

 

[Ed in SoDak]

I'd think the Land Ranger should be a step up from the QDII. Hopefully you didn't get an out-of-adjustment machine. Do test objects tossed down or waved in air tests read properly?

My Time Ranger confused me a lot at first. The confusion was mostly caused by multiple targets under the coil and sometimes coil-edge false signals.

For prospecting, we use the no-motion all-metal mode and increase sensitivity to where you get a little background buzz. You'll have to adjust that as you search to keep it low but still audible.

I don't know who made the claim about a pinhead piece of gold at 4 inches. My Gold Bug and T2 can't pull that off. The Land Ranger isn't as sensitive to small gold as those detectors, but it can detect fairly small gold at shallow depths. Narrow down your sweeps, the best signal will be in the very center area of the coil. The 4-inch coil will help if you own one.

-Ed

 

[Dave J.]

If the LR was of 2004 or later vintage, it should perform at least as well as the QD2 in coinshooting. Sounds like your unit has an ailment.

Even a properly working modern TR/LR is not going to do very well as a gold prospecting machine. Coinshooting, someone who has a cheapie machine and hardly knows what the heck they're doing can usually still find stuff, but in gold prospecting without knowing what the heck you're doing and without using a machine designed specifically for gold prospecting, you're gonna come home empty-handed unless you get extraordinarily lucky.

All this is discussed in my book "Gold Prospecting with a VLF Metal Detector", which you can find as a .pdf file on both the Fisher and Teknetics websites. In the Bounty Hunter lineup, the closest you get to a decent gold machine is the Platinum, for someone on a tight budget who is primarily into coinshooting but wants to go gold prospecting now and then. It's not a machine that would be a good choice for someone whose primary beeping interest is gold prospecting. For that, our lowest cost "real" gold machines are the Fisher GB and Teknetics G2 platform machines.

--Dave J.