reflecting on detecting

[dan b]

As the season winds down I've been thinking back over the years and I've noticed a definite pattern. Back when I started detecting back in 1990 I had a Garrett Freedom 2 which was a dual discriminator "beep and dig". I had so many great finds with that machine including a gold ring and a WW1 medal. It was a great detector. Then I figured that I needed a display so I bought the GTA 1000. The quality of my finds dropped off. In hindsight, I relied on the screen too much and missed digging the good stuff. Then years later I jumped on the band wagon and bought the Ace. Same deal. Coins, mostly modern clad, but nothing to get excited about. Then I tried the Tejon. I retraced my steps where I took the Ace and popped out over 100 more coins, 2 rings and a silver medallion. Over the next year I found another dozen or so rings, 1000's of coins and was just generally having a great time. I dabbled with multiple tones with the Golden umax for a bit and snagged a couple more rings and was still having a blast. Then I did it again. I thought I needed a machine with a display, and sure enough the rings stopped. I tried a variety of machines (all with displays) and have not found a single ring. Sure, they're great for coins, and it's great to leave the zincs in the ground, but after a while just finding newer clad loses it's appeal. I know it's my fault. I know that I trust the display too much. If it says it's a pulltab I believe it. I dig everything when I first get a new machine and after the display tells me pulltab and it's right for the 100th time, it gets hard to keep digging these. Pulltab number 101 was probably a gold ring, but I'll never know. I can't help it.

So now I have a Tejon again, and I'm excited about what's in store for next season. Sure I'm going to dig more, but part of why I like detecting is the exercise. There's nothing else I can think of that would get me doing 200+ deep knee bends in one morning.

Has anyone else gone down this road? Anyone gone full circle and returned to the simplicity of a "beep and dig"?

Dan

 

[TabWhisperer]

I'm heading in that direction myself. I wish I had one detector with all the stuff I wanted that worked the way I wanted. I picked up a Tejon. I'm not crazy about the single tone but it does have many strengths. Mainly picking up the gold rings without a lot of fuss.

 

[mrwilburino]

After going from a beep and dig machine to multiple tones the amount of good stuff vs trash went up quite a bit. Haven't really noticed any difference in the quality of my finds. I'm pretty happy with my current machine.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Dan, you can certainly get a bells-&-whistles meter and tone ID machine, and elect STILL dig all, if you want. Ie.: you can have the best of both: If you go to a relicky site, or place where you are not needing to cherry pick, then elect simply to not rely on the screen. Presto. Problem solved. The bells & whistles machines will certainly do the job of a "beep and dig all" non-tone/non-TID machine, as long as you don't start relying on the tones and meter, right? So what's the problem? And then if you get to an area where you want to cherry pick a little (and pass surface clad, or surface tabs, or whatever), then presto, you have the tools right there in your hand.

There is certainly areas where the curstor/meter/tones DO come in handy. Maybe not for upping one's gold rings finds (because we all know that foil/tabs/canslaw are identical signals to a myriad of gold jewelry items), but certainly for upping coin finds, in junky sites (as an alternative to strip-mining). I can think of a park, for instance, we un-fondly call "wino-cap park". While it is in a blighted park of town, with thousands of booze screw-caps, foil, tabs, etc... yet there is silver and older coins mixed in. At first, it was just assumed that if you wanted to get the old wheaties and silver, you had to dig the screw caps (since, afterall, screwcaps read up at zinc penny to penny-ish, right?). But lo & behold, by watching the screen of an explorer, a difference can be clearly seen on these. Not on the up/down axis, (conductivity), but on the left right axis. So a buddy of mine, outhunted those who were "strip-mining", by passing all the screw caps, that always hit a little to the left, on the screen. I'm sure that the strip-mine people (if they could even keep their sanity, to begin with), would get masked targets, or whatever. I'll grant you that. But day after day, hunt after hunt, the fellow relying on his screen to aid him, in this specific hunt type site, would out-hunt the other guys, who were just ready to give up on this park.

So while this is not advisable for relicky dig-all sites, or the beach, where jewelry is the sole goal, yet the screens and TID's do have their place, for certain evaluations. If that causes a hunter to get less finds than he was having with his no-frills machine, then it simply means he doesn't know when to mentally switch out of relying on it, for certain environments, where it's not warranted.

 

[RLOH]

Dan, that was an excellent post. I too have relied on meters and screens way too much. Most are very accurate to six inches and when I see a pull tab vdi or icon on the screen, I usually pass on it. Recently I have been ignoring zinc penny signals on all of my ID detectors. One day I started digging the signals out of boredom and I found a really nice Indian Head at less than four inches deep. I have rehunted the entire area and I have found 11 Indian Heads, most from the 1880's. Sure I have dug a hundred rotted zincs, but it was worth it in the end. I think any ID detector gives a false sense of being foolproof, but a "beep and dig" detector will find as much or more great finds that are questionable signals. I too had a Golden Umax several years ago and I found more gold rings with that detector any of the ID detectors combined. Every piece of gold that I have dug with an Id detector has always been a surprise, in other words, I did not expect the target to be gold. I guess the "dig everything" motto will produce much more gold. It seems that the silver coins are getting scarce with all of the extremely accurate high end detectors being made, but I am 100% sure that there is still many pieces of gold jewelery in the ground. The people who dig it all are going to be the ones who find them!

 

[norman maassey]

[size=medium][size=large]How Right you are. My first detector was a used $29.95 Radio Stack back in1985.I picked for a payment on a BAD LOAN (the only way I could get part of my $75 back). At the time I wanted to Collect it with a Louisville Slugger, At the Time I just know I was Scr--ed.

That little detector was just 3 knobs and a nettle. In 2 or 3 years it paid back that $75 many many time over in Platiunm , gold and silver. and the clad paid for a used Whites 5900 and a new GTX 1000 ( still have some of it in Saving) but I dug enough trash to build a B-52 bomber and enough iron to level a good size city if dropped frmm that plane. from the 1000 .to a XLT to a Fisher 1236-2 then a DFX. In way I to missed beep and go but Now to Damed old to do all tat digging. I dig about $500 a year in clad

For the Money that little Ace in clean area is a KILLER.

Looking back I DO NOT if gaving the chance I f came across that Ahole if i would shake he hand OR Grab my Bat![/size][/size]

 

[dan b]

Hi Tom,


Me!! I find it hard to ignore the screen!

I guess that's why it's great to have choices. My F5 is a coin magnet. But for relics and other trinkets I think my Tejon will produce better results. But, again, that's just my experience.

RLOH,

Your experience with retracing your steps is very interesting. I'm going to go back over a few areas with my Tejon and see what I missed while using the ID machines.

Dan

 

[Hombre]

n/t

 

[BarberBill]

I agree with Dan and Tom, both. I find it pretty easy to rely on the screen a bit too much and have worked at forcing myself to concentrate on the audio, then refer to the screen to enforce my decision to dig or not. Numerous times a tone that was a bit different, combined with a junk ID turned out to be a goody that I was glad I retrieved. However, as Tom mentions, there are areas where the ID is a great convenience and worth having. That said, I'll add that I'm glad I cut my detecting teeth on several beep and dig machines before I got one with TID as that trained by ear to recognize small nuances in the audio that I might never have picked up had I started with a visual ID.
BB

 

[crazyman]

That's one of the reasons why I like the Minelab Sovereigns especially the GT. I can use it with or without a meter. I don't use the meter when beach hunting or relic/ghost town hunting but I carry it with me just in case I feel like doing a little cherry picking at one of the old parks.

 

[jbow]

As you can see... I have tried many machines. I started out with a SovereignGT and made all sorts of good finds with it. Next was a Tejon and it is also a great machine (the only one I have that routinely ignores small iron and finds bigger iron relics) Those are my favorite machines once again. I will have to admit that neither of them, nor any other machine unmasks targets like the E-TRAC, it has a greatness... but the SovereignGT is about as good, if not as fast. The ET is more forgiving of swing speed etc.

I agree about the Tejon, it is almost like some sort of magic wand... sometimes I dig good targets with the Tejon and can't tell you why. It has the ability to breakup the audio on most junk targets after a few swings while more pure metals will stay solid on the audio. The Tejon really rules the roost in iron.

I would highly recommend that you give the SovereignGT a try when you get a hankering for another machine... it rules the roost if you want to hunt in pure audio... ithas many subtleties in it's audio and even the AM audio has a breakpoint where the tone goes from low/high to high/low. Add the 180 meter and you get a solid VDI number and that is all... nothing else ever on the screen. Also if you hunt in disc you never have to GB. You do have to pay attention to how fast/slow you swing and you have to either use AUTO sens or be careful, in minerals or trash to not set the sens too high or too low, it has a sweet spot.

In any case, I am with you... getting ready to sell some detectors and getting back to the basics. I even made a little flap Friday evening using a small piece of cardboard and some electrical tape.. to cover the 180 meter on the GT... so I will have to lift the flap to see the meter... I want to force myself to better learn the tones.


Good for you! I think you're on the right track. Someone recently said that it seems like most higher end machines have screens filled with info to discourage you from recovering a target. Not by design but it is what ends up happening.


J

 

[jbow]

I've never even held a Golden but I have been interested for a while... Tesoro makes good stuff if I can judge by the Tejon. IT has one tone but like I said in another post, the audio seems to breakup on a target with iron mixed in and stay good on a more pure metal. I had a Cortes and did not care much for it, it worked ok but I spent too much time looking at the screen and still not knowing what was in the groung.

I would like to try a Golden and a Vaquero.. just to see how they work. I'dlike to have a Compadre one day too if I can find a used one cheap.

A freind told me he went last week with a friend to a CW site to hunt some ivy and kudzu vines. He took his F75LTD because it is supossed to work well with the coil a few inches off the ground... however his friend was using a Cibola and one worked as good as the other in the ivy and kudzu...

J

 

[dan b]

Well, it's a done deal. The F5 is gone, and it's beep and dig from this point on. Too bad the season is winding down!

I had a Golden before I got my Cortes. It was a fun machine, a real pleasure to use. It had okay depth, not spectacular, but okay. I believe my last ring was found with the Golden. Coincidentally (or maybe not), that was the last beep and dig machine I had before getting another Tejon, and was the last ring I found.

My oldest boy (8 years old) wants a Tesoro, so this might be a good reason to get another Golden. He'll lose interest soon enough, and it will be all mine!!

Dan

 

[Elton]

When I statarted you dug it all..and pushed a little red button on the handle to stop the drift LOL....

 

[gilfordberry]

NO, but I sure know what you're getting at. With my xlt a couple years back, I decided to "dig everthing" at a local park one day. All those trash targets I would normally pass by met the business end of my digger. The result - three!! of the first four or five targets I dug were RINGS! Unfortunately, they were all junk rings, but hey, it could have been otherwise. There is a lot to be said for 'beep-dig' and forget all about discrimination. Wouldn't detecting be a blast if it weren't for about a zillion pull tabs and bottle caps? I've often thought we outght to be able to sue CocaCola, Pepsi, Bud, Miller, etc., for pollution that damages our hobby. lol. (Hey, if McD can be sued over hot coffee.....)

 

[Mtnmn]

Having used several beep and dig machines and then having gone to a display model, I for one will never go back. Will admit my first year with the X-T 70 the jewelry finds were far and few between, but with an added year's experience the jewelry finds have increased dramatically and I've only been able to get out half as much as last year. To me learning what your machine is telling you is far more important than what make or model it is, be it a beep and dig detector or the display type.