Recovery speed tests...waste of time??

[Nauti]

We've all seen them on u tube....bloke standing over a coin placed next to a nail and swinging the coil over both targets to see if the machine will pick up the coin.Some machines will pick up the coin next to the nail and some need the targets to be a fair distant apart.....like the sovereign.So according to this type of test the sovereign has a slow recovery speed and will not be the best machine to use in the trash.However,i've been out with my GT a number of times now and have managed to pick targets out of heavily iron infested ares....even pulled a small brooch out of the same hole as a 3" rusty nail with a hard hitting signal.I then placed the nail close to the brooch and ran the coil over both targets.....nothing....the machine would not register the brooch.It seems to me that these recovery speed tests are a complete waste of time and that when the targets are buried other factors come into play.Anybody got an opinion??

 

[Neil]

Hi Neil,

Yeah it really matters. minelab has sped up each explorer they have made for this reason. one of the big reasons the minelab advantage is so successful as a relic machine is its reset speed. it just makes sense if a detector is still processing one target and then you get over another target it will either not see it or mix it in with its process.
now the targets youve found in trashy areas, odds are your detection band coming off your coil was over just that target or what you found was a larger stronger signal versus the nail you mentioned. we have all found targets others have missed and thought it must be the detector when really it was ground moisture, angle of approach, having a detector set up right with the correct coil, some of these type of things. usually you can go back to the same area with a lot of other brands and pull a good target or two out.
the next time you think youve hit a good target in amongst alot of junk with your GT, switch over to all metal pinpoint mode and scan the same way as you did in disc, they you will see how much stuff your actually detecting at once.

 

[Nauti]

Cheers Neil...in the case of the brooch i think it may have been a stronger target signal like you mentioned,but surely if this was the case why would the machine not pick it up when i did a recovery speed test on the top of the ground.I approached the target from every angle and it did not give the slightest signal.This is the point i'm trying to make...that recovery speed tests above ground are not that accurate,like you say,it could even be down to moisture content.Thanks for the help and good tectin.

 

[crazyman]

Most of my hunting is in iron infested areas like ghost towns and logging camps and if you would have asked me 2 years ago I would have put the Sovereign at the bottom of the list of detectors I would use in these areas because of it's slow response time but today after learning the Sovereign tones and threshold nuances it's at the top of the list. Regardless of the detectors recovery speed you still have to go very slow in the iron even with a faster machine. There isn't a detector made that can see through iron. They have to see some part of the good target to respond and this is where a faster recovery speed helps but there are other factors also. If the good target and the iron target are touching or very close together some detectors will see them as one target and respond with a signal, some better than others depending on the detectors discrimination.The Sovereign is no different but the secret is in the tone ID and threshold when working in iron. Depending on the orientation of the target to the iron the Sovereign can give several different distinct responses that are noticeable at least to me and makes me stop and work the signal from different angles. While working the signal very slowly if the Sovereign sees any part of the good target the tone ID and/or threshold will tell me there is something else there. Even though I spend time working the so-so signals more than I normally do with other detectors it has been paying off with good finds missed by other detectors. The Tone ID alone on the Sovereign has worked so well when working in iron that my Advantage even with it's super fast recovery speed has been assigned backup duty.

 

[Nauti]

That's sort of what i'm finding now with the GT.Like you i would have totally dismissed this machine as one that could cope with heavy trash,but the more i use it the more i'm beginning to believe it can pull good items out of the iron.....i'm doing it too often for it to be just luck or coincidence.I've been working the machine with the iron mask on and relatively low sensitivity settings when confronted with iron trash and a really slow sweep speed.I also seem to be starting to understand what the machine is trying to tell me when i find an"iffy" signal but i still have a lot to learn.However,what i've learned so far has allowed me to pull small buttons from amongst the iron on a few occasions so i think i'm on the right track.Anyway,from what you have said i think i was right in what i was saying about not taking recovery speed tests too seriously and i certainly would not use one as a deciding factor to purchase a detector in the future.Thanks Crazy.

 

[JOHNMARKHAM]

interesting reading here on this topic, im really learning a bit here, thanks for info..

 

[Neil]

Cheers Neil...in the case of the brooch i think it may have been a stronger target signal like you mentioned,but surely if this was the case why would the machine not pick it up when i did a recovery speed test on the top of the ground.I approached the target from every angle and it did not give the slightest signal.This is the point i'm trying to make...that recovery speed tests above ground are not that accurate,like you say,it could even be down to moisture content.Thanks for the help and good tectin.

Hey Neil...you must have dug iron bits with the sov that sounded good in ground and once out of the ground they nulled the machine? deeper iron can fool the sov as well as certain soils. perhaps thats what happened with the broach, maybe the sov read the iron as good(mixed in with broach in your soil) and then above ground gave a more accurate reading.
I do think that recovery speed test above ground is accurate and that the guy wasnt messing with anyone or rigging that in some way.(Im not saying you think he was). Just like when you do above ground testing on different targets, its accurate but in ground sounds on the same targets might be off a bit due to the ground or other conditions. the sovs reset speed certainly doesnt speed up in the ground so I would look for some other way to explain this find you made.
I would consider it a nice upgrade if minelab increased the reset speed on the sov/excal as well as putting on a knob that allowed an iron mask adjustment, and get rid of the fluff they have on it now like silent search and iron mask on/off toggles. I know some found the noise band useful but it never did anything for my hunting areas. Good post Neil, not many posts on this particular of the sov/excal series.

 

[Rick(ND)]

n/t

 

[Nauti]

Thanks to everybody that's replied to this subject....it's nice to get opinions on the subject and the replies i've had are helping me get a wider understanding of what's happening.You lot "over the pond" seem to delve deeper into the technicalities of detecting (more so than the forums over here) and it's very helpful.Keep up the informative posts and thanks again,Neil.

 

[Critterhunter]

I've recently touched on this in a few messages, and not just in this forum. There are pros and cons to a slow recovery speed, and the Sovereign seems to have a "secret" weapon that allows it to do things that other machines can not...even if they have a super fast recovery speed.

The pros to a fast recovery speed are of course better target seperation. The cons to a slow recovery speed would in general be the reverse. However, (and there are exceptions) in general a slow recovery speed will allow you to notice and also lock on better to a deep target. If a machine is very fast at it's recovery it can tend to smooth out very deep coins, or at least not be as likely to draw your attention to them. A slow recovery helps to lock onto the target and produce a better response. Again, in general and not a hard and fast rule for every machine.

As I've said I own a QXT Pro which has about the fastest recovery speed I've ever used. This makes it a dream to sniper out coins in heavy trash or iron without as much of a need to go to a smaller coil than the stock 9.5". I tried using the 5.3" on it and found no increase in seperation because of this. The only plus to using the little coil was it was more sensitive to smaller targets and also gave better audio harmonics to decipher if the target was trash or not. For instance, I can hear the traits of a pulltab on the small coil better. In fact, when using this coil I could hear the two holes in a pulltab as I passed over them. It made avoiding those much easier than with the larger coil, and so the small coil would be a good weapon if ring hunting in shallow trash. Now, I found on the 6000 pro xl that it's lack of high tones and more slugish response made the 5.3" coil a big plus in increasing seperation of targets in trash.

Anyway, back to the Sovereign...Yes, it's response time is much slower than the QXT for me but I'd prefer the slower response on deep targets to better hear and investigate them. While it's response time will never compete with the QXT it does have a few weapons that give it certain advantages in certain respects. Namely, the Iron Mask ON feature really does seem to offer something that no super fast recovery can. In my tests I found that this machine will give a perfect audio and VDI for a coin with a nail next to it or even laying directly on top of it. That can't be said for the QXT, which will average the two targets together when they are this close. On the other hand, if I swing the QXT just right I can pull a clean coin ID out of a silver dime that is touching a nail laying at it's side. Sweep over them both, together, though, and the target will average somewhere in between, or be discriminated out completely on many machines if you are using any kind of discrimination.

The GT is the only machine I've ever tested that was able to produce a clean and proper audio/vdio response with iron laying directly on top of the coin. That is very impressive, and something that no amount of sweep speed can compensate for. Iron Mask really does seem to be a "window" into iron, allowing good targets to produce a good response. As I said elsewhere I didn't even see this kind of ability with the supposed iron mask feature on the Explorers I owned.

The other thing I found somewhat remarkable on this machine was it's ability to see a coin with a notched or discriminated out non-iron object placed over the coin. For example, I notched out a pulltab and then placed that over a silver dime. The coin still sounded off with good audio and a solid ID lock, though the VDI # was a little lower (like 175 or 176 instead of 180). It still gave me a good clear high tone that I'd dig.

The point being that the GT has other abilities that in some ways are even more powerful than a fast recovery speed. Iron mask, along with the multitones, will point out coins that other machines with a fast recovery can't see IMHO. Different machines have different strengths. In the ring the Sovereign might be a slow fighter, but it packs a powerful right punch under the right situations.

 

[labeachbum]

For Salt water beach combing The GT is TOP DAWG!!! .............. There's no other Detector to match it................... But for my Local City Park Hunting and Tot Lot's for Recently Lost Jewelry and Clad, The GT is NOT King there, But I do have good luck with the GT Hunting large Sports Fields where the Targets are more spaced out.

 

[Nauti]

This topic is proving very interesting....some are saying the gt is good in trash and others are'nt.I'm definately coming down on the side of those who think that you can work the trashy areas with this machine because i'm pulling to many targets from such areas for it to be just luck.I think there is something a bit special about this machine,even though i don't fully understand what it is(yet).....perhaps only the minelab engineers will ever know the answer to that.I will keep taking the gt to trashy areas because i'm enjoying the challenge of pulling those nice targets out of the iron and one day i might find out the answer to why such a slow recovering machine is doing well for me in the trash.Until then......good hunting to you all.

 

[Critterhunter]

For Salt water beach combing The GT is TOP DAWG!!! .............. There's no other Detector to match it................... But for my Local City Park Hunting and Tot Lot's for Recently Lost Jewelry and Clad, The GT is NOT King there, But I do have good luck with the GT Hunting large Sports Fields where the Targets are more spaced out.

What do you consider the GT to be second dog to in the parks, and are you basing this remark on just shallow trash/clad hunting or for older/deeper coins too? What I'm saying here is that the GT is never going to compete in sweep speed to some other machines, but it's multi-tone and iron mask features will produce coins and other good finds in the trash that other machines can't, regardless of how fast their response time is. This is both based on my own personal testing and also a few finds I've already dug being a relative newbie to this machine- at sites that friends and I have pounded hard with several machines over the years, including the Explorer.

Mainly these are either targets that were masked by iron that blinded the other machines (and I mostly hunt with zero discrimination at these sites to avoid masking with the other machines I've used), or targets that were so deep that nothing else would touch them. I've pounded a few spots with Explorers over the years time and time again with a multitude of settings to insure top performance. Yet, here I am going back to these spots with not nearly as much experience on the GT and producing deeper coins I missed with the Explorer and other machines, deeper than I think I've ever dug on any machine. I've also found that the GT for me works better in iron or highly mineralized ground than I ever was able to do with my Explorers. Not sure why, but as I said for one I think the Iron Mask on this machine is much better.

A lot of how a detector performs is of course based on how well the user is able to handle and understand it. If you don't know how to take advantage of the strengths of a machine you'll never get the best out of it. Some are stronger at certain things than others. The trick is not trying to make one machine do what another is good at. Find and use a machine's strengths and it will do things others can't. I'm just impressed that this machine seems to have carried my weight to some good finds already. All those I give the machine credit for thus far, as I'm still very new to it.

Having owned and used most of the machines out there over the years, I had to ask myself which would be next. I wanted more depth and high tones are a MUST for me on any machine as I mostly hunt by ear with zero discrimination (when coin hunting, anyway). My third criteria was that there had to be larger coils available to push coin depths even further. That option didn't exist for me with my QXT. All the lower frequency Whites models (XLT, QXT, 6000, etc) have a very limited assortment of coils to choose from. I looked at the Xterra and watched it's use in the field, but the lack of a 10 to 14" low frequency 3khz coil to hit hardest on silver/copper eliminated that. Minelabs FBS and BBS technology along with a large variety of coils already makes them the deepest on the market. It was then a matter of which one to buy. Since the Explorer again was out, and I've played with the Quatro but wasn't impressed, it was then down to an Etrac or a GT. That Etrac address many of my problems I had with the Explorer, one of which is the weight/balance issue, and I was shocked to see it hit loud a good 2" deeper than a QXT and 6000 on undug silver dimes. However, it's currently out of my price range. If the GT doesn't continue to impress me with next year's hunting season I'll end up selling it to buy an Etrac. Right now it has been nothing but stunning, though. I'm seeing it do things that others haven't for me, but again that's based on my experience and how I use of all these machines.

 

[labeachbum]

No no no no I'M Referring To Recently Lost Jewelry That's no more than 5 inch's deep ......... Not old coin Hunting........ If I was a Old Coin Hunter , Yes I would then use my GT because it's know to go Deep and maybe I would check into that Signal Amp that Rick ND Uses ..................... I'M a 100% Jewelry Hunter and when I hunt my Huge Local 388 Acres Park, Time is Money and I need to do a lot of Digging....... I did find a Woman's 1 K Diamond Ring last February using The GT on the Soccer field near the goal net.

 

[kered]

For thorough checking of a site, the Sovereign, Explorer and Etrac are excellent, for fast coverage of a site in search of fresh relatively shallow targets or even localizing an old habitted zone something like the f75, T2,DFX V3 and numerous other machines would be better, i use the F75 and can cover the same zone in 1/3 of the time compared to the Sov or Etrac(pretty deep too) its what i use in summer for the fresh dropped items, later i go over it with the etrac or Sov this time of year and pick up a few deeper things i missed, after that the whites dual field pulse for the old deeper stuff(and unfortunately some nails etc)In the water i use the Excalibur then the PI when things go slack. Horses for courses, different detectors excel for different kinds of hunting and places

 

[Critterhunter]

Yea, I could see wanting to use a "faster" machine for more shallow seperation or also to scout out new areas quickly. In fact, I am hanging onto my QXT Pro for now just because I prefer it when scouting new areas, mostly in the woods where you have to cover a lot of ground fast until you find nails or other such trash that suggest it was an area of activity. Not to mention that the QXT is also so much more lighter and comfortable to use. Even with my GT hipmounted I still get fatigued faster with the 10" coil than I do with my QXT.

Another factor about sweep speed that Kared got me thinking about in another thread when discussing DD versus concentrics. I remember a few people on here saying that you're in for a real treat when using a tiny DD coil to hunt in the trash. After a little thinking on the subject (DD versus concentric) I can see distinct advantages to the DD design for trash seperation, deep or shallow. The concentric will have a bigger cone near the coil while the DD has a fairly thin detection signal going from the front to back of the coil. It's obvious that a DD requires less sweep overlap without missing targets due to this, but what wasn't as obvious to me without some thought would be it's seperation abilities. With two deep targets close to each other the concentric will do well, but as they get more shallow the cone is bigger and thus would tend to blend them together. I always compensated for this by raising the coil on more shallow trashy spots to try to seperate them.

With the DD the thin detection line would help to seperate both targets regardless if they are deep or shallow. The trick would be to rotate around a "junk" signal until the line of detection is only covering the good target versus the junk (like say iron). If you had the two targets directly in line with the detection line I could see how they would tend to mask each other, but if you rotate around the junk signal or iron null (moving slightly off center of it so as not to have it in the detection line anymore), you would be able to hear the good target while eliminating the trash from the signal. After thinking about that, I believe it might be very important to not just rotate around the junk or iron signal with it directly under the coil, hoping for a better signal, but rather to move off center from it. In other words, sweeping around the sides of the junk signal while rotating around it to try to seperate a good signal.

For all the above reasons I'm really anxious to get out with my new (used) S-5 coil. I plan to do some depth and seperation tests on it and the 10" in my garage over the next week and will post the results.

Bottom line to the whole message is this...Sweep speed isn't going to be important at all with a DD coil in most situations when trying to sniper coins next to trash, Coil placement would be the critical factor here. Work the edges of the junk from all directions and if the detection line is placed right you'll easily seperate the good from the bad. I guess that would be along the same lines as using the "Sovereign Wiggle", in that you are putting the coil directly over what you want to investigate while avoiding anything else nearby.

 

[jbow]

If you go really slow with the Sovereign then recovery speed isn't much of an issue. If you swing it like you would an F75 or even an E-TRAC then the slow recovery time will cause you to lose finds, unless the ground is really clean, then the Sovereign will usually still signal but the coil may be a foot past the target.
It is no problem, just swing slower. My favorite coil on the GT is the 10" Tornado. If I go slow, I have no problem with it. In trash you really have to crawl and a smaller coil will help but if you go from different angles and crawl... the 10" will work fine most of the time.

I see videos of people testing recovery time on a Sovereign and they are swinging it W-A-Y too fast so the test means nothing. The Sovereign will hit on a dime right next a nail if you go slow enough. Then turn and check it from the side. Pinpoint will hit the larger trash or iron if it is present. So, a good signal that pinpoints off to the side a bit isn't always an indicator of junk, it could just be iron or some other piece of trash close by.

The Sovereign will almost always signal two ways on a good target if you swing slow enough or wiggle. One way signals are almost always a cut nail or other small iron... in my experience and i've dug enough of them...

J

 

[crazyman]

If you hunt those iron infested sites long enough you start recognizing those odd signals that sound like iron on the first pass but as you sweep again with short slow sweeps the target changes and sounds like it wants to climb but doesn't but is still repeatable. Someone once described this signal as an aggravated signal and I've found it to be a good description. I was hunting an old ghost town last week and got one of those aggravated type signals and was pulling the coil back heel to toe over the target to size it and as I pulled it back I got a good repeatable high tone off the last inch or two near the toe of the coil. Different than a high false coming off large iron. As I moved the coil forward again I lost the high tone and got the aggravated signal again. I pulled it back until I got the high tone again and then pulled back a bit further and pinpointed it in the discrimination mode and when I dug down I saw sticking out from the side of the whole what later turned out to be a handle from an old wood stove. About two inches deeper and about two inches to the side of the handle was a 1898 Indian Head penny. I didn't try to to hit it at another angle at the time because I already knew there was a good target there. It's a slow process when hunting in thick iron the but it's paid off and Sovereign has been consistent at finding good targets in iron for me.

 

[nick hunter]

Today's motion type metal detectors provide features and capacities we could only dream of 15/20 years ago.

But iron infested sites will always be a problem.

The best way to search those places, imho, is to hunt first with your regular unit, and then with a TR detector. Yeah ! An oldie will do a better job, finding goodies near, under of above iron, while still ignoring iron trash.

Besides that, i love my Sovie.

HH

 

[Critterhunter]

As with most machines the GT will sometimes produce a false coin spike from a piece of iron. The normal way to investigate it would be to pinpoint it. If the target has moved from where the "coin" signal was then it's most likely a nail or some other forum of iron. That's a good point, though, that when a coin is right next to a piece of iron pinpoint might only see the iron and cause you to think it's another false coin spike. I'm sure there are probably other ways to determine if it really is a coin, perhaps by how the tone sounds, or just how much the signal goes bad at various sweep angles. I'm still learning the machine but from my experience with other units there are certain things you can pick up on to make the decision.

One of my favorite ways to tell if it really is a coin next to trash on the QXT is to go into pinpoint and check the depth of the target as I move from the "coin" signal to the trash. If the depth would increase as you moved away from the coin and then would increase as you moved toward the trash then it indicated that two targets were indeed present.

I think the best way to learn which of these "iffy" signals is more apt to be a real coin is by taking your time and sweeping at it from different directions, then digging a lot of these to see what they really are. If you take the time to listen and watch how the target reacts for several minutes before digging it you'll have a much better idea of how to identify what is what.