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Observation Target ID machines All Brands
- Thread starter Elton
- Start date
Ed in SoDak
Member
I'm happy on my fence and can see advantages to both sides. My wife and I like coinshooting, prospecting and hunting for relics. I've kept all my old detectors and only upgraded when it became obvious something better was needed and we could afford the upgrade.
My first machine, a 1980 TR/Disc First Texas Search Master, had poor depth and falsed a lot on wet grass. It worked ok in some spots, but in many areas it was near-worthless. However, it's an amazing unit for air-testing stony meteorites!
As an upgrade, I did a lot of research and decided I wanted a Tesoro, but my wife went to a gold show in Phoenix and got sold on a Gold Bug 1. By Tom Massey himself, no less, from the Outdoor Channel and GPAA.
How are ya gonna argue with that? 
It didn't take long and I was impressed with the GB's depth on small metal. Like one-inch long bits of fence wire at 7 inches deep. Ack! Old sites here are infested with nails, wire, rusty tin cans and to top it off, many of these sites have been party spots for years. Not having at least iron disc made hunting for anything way too frustrating. The Gold Bug is a good detector, but it's just too trashy here. It can also serve as a decent all-around meteorite seeker, but for my locale, it needs some disc!
The Bounty Hunter Time Ranger (r2, 2001) has been a good answer to IDing trash, but it has its drawbacks, too. On the plus side, it has 4 levels of iron disc, also iron targets have no numeric ID. Any target above iron gets an ID number, so if the Time Ranger says iron, you can be quite certain of it. Iron may false higher, but, other than certain meteorite types, I've never seen a good target come in without an ID number. With a numeric ID range of 300, it separates targets by conductivity rather well. It can tell ID on dimes versus copper pennies, for example. Silver coins come in just above their clad counterparts. Rusty tin cans and pop cans read 299, well above even dollar coin signals.
I'll start hunting an area with disc off and dig all targets till I get a feel for the types of trash. Once they begin to annoy, I set a preset or notch out the specific trash items. Mostly I hunt wide open and go by tone and ID to decide to dig. I like to call targets by their ID and dig for confirmation. The TR has its limits and can be fooled, but it's pretty amazing how often ID is correct.
At an old school site, the Time Ranger with zero disc was hitting everywhere, a constant series of blips. With disc on, there was just a false or two. I sat down with my pinpointer to find out why. In a single square foot I recovered no less than 14 targets, including nails, a pull tab, a button, a watch winder, and other items.
The Time Ranger's shortcomings are ID averaging and poor target separation/masking . Even when disced out, iron and trash can false on the edge of a sweep, causing you to waste time rescanning to verify it. It takes careful sweeps to pick a good signal out of trash, and two nearby items will give a single, averaged ID, though it's much better with the 4" coil. So if you ignore "trash" targets above iron, quite possibly you're skipping potential good targets. Thus, while you might not dig much trash, you may be leaving many good things behind. My Time Ranger r2 is also not too sensitive to small gold nuggets and is a poor stony meteorite hunter.
So I got me a T2 a couple years back. I still hunt with disc as low as tolerable. It will hit on tiny gold and separates targets well. It can be a chatterbox, especially when compared to the silent hunting Time Ranger. To me, it still seems a bit high-strung. I'm looking forward to thrashing it out on some gold sites this year. The new small coil is on my wish list.
If you find yourself in the field scratching your head and looking around for help, you didn't take the time to learn your machine beforehand. I'm a strong believer in air testing and checking samples in the yard. Learning your machine's unique responses to common objects will go far when you encounter an unknown target in an actual hunt.
Even with the shortcomings, I'm hooked on ID machines. Why accept only the most basic technology, when there's so much more info available in the new detectors? It's good to have a selection of multi-faceted machines to chose from to fit differing situations, and comparing them helps point out their strengths and weaknesses in your own favored hunting spots.
-Ed
My first machine, a 1980 TR/Disc First Texas Search Master, had poor depth and falsed a lot on wet grass. It worked ok in some spots, but in many areas it was near-worthless. However, it's an amazing unit for air-testing stony meteorites!
As an upgrade, I did a lot of research and decided I wanted a Tesoro, but my wife went to a gold show in Phoenix and got sold on a Gold Bug 1. By Tom Massey himself, no less, from the Outdoor Channel and GPAA.
How are ya gonna argue with that? It didn't take long and I was impressed with the GB's depth on small metal. Like one-inch long bits of fence wire at 7 inches deep. Ack! Old sites here are infested with nails, wire, rusty tin cans and to top it off, many of these sites have been party spots for years. Not having at least iron disc made hunting for anything way too frustrating. The Gold Bug is a good detector, but it's just too trashy here. It can also serve as a decent all-around meteorite seeker, but for my locale, it needs some disc!
The Bounty Hunter Time Ranger (r2, 2001) has been a good answer to IDing trash, but it has its drawbacks, too. On the plus side, it has 4 levels of iron disc, also iron targets have no numeric ID. Any target above iron gets an ID number, so if the Time Ranger says iron, you can be quite certain of it. Iron may false higher, but, other than certain meteorite types, I've never seen a good target come in without an ID number. With a numeric ID range of 300, it separates targets by conductivity rather well. It can tell ID on dimes versus copper pennies, for example. Silver coins come in just above their clad counterparts. Rusty tin cans and pop cans read 299, well above even dollar coin signals.
I'll start hunting an area with disc off and dig all targets till I get a feel for the types of trash. Once they begin to annoy, I set a preset or notch out the specific trash items. Mostly I hunt wide open and go by tone and ID to decide to dig. I like to call targets by their ID and dig for confirmation. The TR has its limits and can be fooled, but it's pretty amazing how often ID is correct.
At an old school site, the Time Ranger with zero disc was hitting everywhere, a constant series of blips. With disc on, there was just a false or two. I sat down with my pinpointer to find out why. In a single square foot I recovered no less than 14 targets, including nails, a pull tab, a button, a watch winder, and other items.
The Time Ranger's shortcomings are ID averaging and poor target separation/masking . Even when disced out, iron and trash can false on the edge of a sweep, causing you to waste time rescanning to verify it. It takes careful sweeps to pick a good signal out of trash, and two nearby items will give a single, averaged ID, though it's much better with the 4" coil. So if you ignore "trash" targets above iron, quite possibly you're skipping potential good targets. Thus, while you might not dig much trash, you may be leaving many good things behind. My Time Ranger r2 is also not too sensitive to small gold nuggets and is a poor stony meteorite hunter.
So I got me a T2 a couple years back. I still hunt with disc as low as tolerable. It will hit on tiny gold and separates targets well. It can be a chatterbox, especially when compared to the silent hunting Time Ranger. To me, it still seems a bit high-strung. I'm looking forward to thrashing it out on some gold sites this year. The new small coil is on my wish list.
If you find yourself in the field scratching your head and looking around for help, you didn't take the time to learn your machine beforehand. I'm a strong believer in air testing and checking samples in the yard. Learning your machine's unique responses to common objects will go far when you encounter an unknown target in an actual hunt.
Even with the shortcomings, I'm hooked on ID machines. Why accept only the most basic technology, when there's so much more info available in the new detectors? It's good to have a selection of multi-faceted machines to chose from to fit differing situations, and comparing them helps point out their strengths and weaknesses in your own favored hunting spots.
-Ed
Bill in Texas
New member
Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, ring - Beep, dig, Coin - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, tab - Beep, dig, Coin - Beep, dig, ring - Beep, dig, Junk - Ohhh now I see! They actually sound a little different on some detectors and my ears don't lie to me any more than the meter. Yep I have had the fancy ones, but I don't have one now. I found 3 gold rings the past weekend and I am not a water hunter (no beaches here). Bill in Texas
BarberBill
New member
Bottom line in my opinion - if YOU like it, use it. Whatever model or style it is.
BB
BB
Went out w/my Ace 250 yesterday and after posting about it-relived it! Got a tab signal but I was looking for gold rings and it was at a place where they were possible. Well, it was a zincer COVERED by a nickel. The ONLY machine I've had that could not be fooled by this was a BH tracker with the tones set to split at tabs. It ALWAYS gave a high tone, even when the coin was covered by several nickels or under pulltabs.
I used beep and dig detectors for the first twenty year's and tid units since 1992. Regardless of which one uses, one still has to learn and know that detector. Personally, I am not a "dig it all" detectorist and not being one, I do know I am leaving some gold for those that are. I do, though, insist, that my detectors will id nickels accurately. Many of the so called good detectors of today still don't. Although gold rings will read all over the scale, many do read in the nickel range, so having a good nickel id'ing machine does greatly improve one chances for gold. Like many, I, too, go by tone first and last on whether to dig. Target Id is just another tool and I personally like it. HH jim tn