Joe Diggerall said:
Now lately been reading the 3030 forum and thinking about getting one. The thought crossed me"fool me once........"
Have any of you that have hunted a site for at least a year with the pro or etrac, gotten a 3030 and went back over these hard hunted sites and found more than a couple of silver?
I've dug 10 and 11' silver with the pro and etrac both using stock coils, would the 3030 do the same?
The garret AT pro is a fast machine, have any of you ran an AT pro and compared it to the 3030?
I have been hunting many of the same sites for the past 25 - 30 years. I've hunted them with just about every detector manufactured, including several Explorers, the E-TRAC and more recently the CTX 3030. I can say without reservation that the CTX 3030 will hunt as deep or deeper than either of the FBS detectors, when using stock coils. And the target separation of the CTX is unmatched by the Explorer or E-TRAC. These aren't wild claims on my part. These are "head to head" comparisons I made while Field Testing the CTX and "real hunting" with it since. If you go back through the brief 5 months of CTX posts, you'll find hundreds of posts from folks that have found coins with their CTX in places they had hunted with their Explorer and/or E-TRAC. Some were due to target masking and others due to depth of detection. I don't know how many of them actually had both detectors and made comparisons at the time, like I have, but their results are the same. Regardless of what comparisons you've read elsewhere, the CTX 3030 is a coin killer with the capability to find coins in places you thought had been hunted to death. But don't assume, since it is a multiple frequency Minelab, that it is just an E-TRAC with extra features. The technology behind the implementation of the smart coil in FBS2 has made the CTX capable of operating with more sensitivity while maintaining stability than previous FBS units.
I understand the "fool me once" statement. We've all been down that road at one time or another. Some of us more than once. To be blunt......even if depth was the same..... if you don't think you would benefit from being able to spend more time in the field by using a near perfectly balanced detector, if you never hunt in areas where there might be trash buried in the same hole as a coin, if you never wanted to adjust the ferrous and conductive "lines" to fine tune your discrimination levels, if you don't think you'd use Combined audio that allows you to hear both Ferrous and Conductive tones, if you never thought about assigning your choice of audio tones to the "bins", if you don't think actually seeing more than one target under the coil at the same time would be beneficial, if you can't imagine freeing yourself from the headphone connected to the detector by having wireless headphone capabilities, if you don't worry about getting your detector wet if you take it to the beach or if it starts sprinkling during your hunt, if you don't wonder whether or not you've "covered the area" and could benefit from using GPS and Mapping, if it doesnt' matter that you can update your CTX online for free, as updates become available, ... if none of these matter, depending on the sites you hunt, the amount of time you spend detecting and how serious you are about truly "beating a site to death" it could be tough to justify investing more money into this hobby.
A friend of mine has an AT Pro that I could use. Therefore, I've never felt compelled to buy one. Granted, it is a fast detector. But it don't compare to the CTX 3030 in discrimination capabilities, Target ID, adjacent target separation or depth of detection. JMHO HH Randy
