Sovereign meters?

[crazyjz]

I pulled the trigger and bought a new Sovereign GT with the SunRay S1 probe. I am really looking forward to swinging a loop again. Since 4 of the last 5 machines I have owned have been visual ID equipped, I thought I would look into getting a meter for the GT. I did a search here and found some useful information but inadvertently got confused as well.

Apparently, there are no longer any SunRay meters available. I did a search on the Internet and was not able to find any for sale. I then found an analog meter with a needle marketed by "Patrick"? This reminded me of some of the meters I had on some of my "Whites" machines 10 years ago, hardly what I would expect for 2006.

The MineLab "DigiSearch" (sp?) seems to be about the only thing out there but does not really receive rave reviews. Something about being calibrated to 170 when the industry standard is 180? I'm thinking about getting the MineLab anyway just because it is made for my machine and the compatibility with the S1 but I thought I'd ask here just in case I was making a mistake.

Please let me know if you have an opinion with regard to this subject.

Thanks and happy hunting.

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Don't worry about the Digisearch 170 calibration. It was either a misprint in the book, or Minelab didn't want to make it look like they were copying the Sunray meters.

The Digisearch can be calibrated to 180. Will work fine.

The 180 calibration is not so much of an "industry standard" as it is a "user standard". When the first 180 calibrated meter was made, everybody just kind of jumped on the bandwagon.

You could calibrate the meter to anything you want. It's for your reference and does not affect detector operation.

You could use any meter on the GT, but may have to make an internal adjustment to the meter.
I put a meter for the Elite on mine, but found that it needed a bit of adjustment to get it calibrated (550). Would work "as is" on my 2a, but the calibration pot was about maxed out. Works on both now.

If you find a used meter that has been modded from 550 to 180 it should work pretty much the same as the Digisearch.

HH

 

[crazyjz]

Thanks,

I appreciate the clarification. I have not had much luck locating a used meter for the GT. E-bay is about the only (safe) source that I have found and the classifieds in most of the forums don't seem to have much traffic.

I guess I will pick up a MineLab model and be done with it. Any idea why the seemingly superior SunRay is no longer available?

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Once everybody started doing the mod on the Minelab meters it was probably not profitable to continue making the Sunrays.
Why buy a new meter when the old one can be modified for a few bucks?

HH

 

[Rick(ND)]

There is a few used Sun Ray DTI meter still around as we see them on the classified once in a while. Being you have a S1 probe coming it will probably be the one for the Elite and GT as this probe switching box will sit on top of the shaft and the meter will sit on top of the probe switching box. In this case the Sun Ray will sit too high and may wobble a bit, so your best bet would be to use the new Minelab digisearch meter that uses the 180 numbers, don't use the older Minelab meters as I understand they will not work on the GT as something was changed on the new meters. The Sun Ray will work with them all, the Night Hawk and the Patriot meter will work too, but the older Minelab meters are different and will not work right just like the new Digisearch meters will not work on the older Sovereigns either I been told.
Now when I had my GT set up before I sold it last fall, but plan on getting another ones I used the DTI 3 meter and the older style S1 probe that mounted under the shaft with a V Clip I had to put on. I found this worked excellent and if I can find another DTI 3 meter i will set my next one up like this, if not i will use the Minelab Digsearch and the Elite/ GT S1 probe set up.
The owners manual saying to calibrate the meter to 170 was a typo I was told, but give you a reference point like Art says to check every time out to see it is calibrated. At 180 I find my copper coins, clad and silver read 179-180 while my IH, some of the first Wheaties and the new zinc pennies read 176-177, but any deeper sounding 170 or higher I will check out too. The nickles if using freq 2 will read 144-145, freq 1 will read higher at 147-148 it seems and some of the war nickles will read a bit higher, but have the tone of a nickle. I have got war nickles as high as 151 which is normally a older round pull tab, but the tone says nickle. Most of my screw caps that fool other detectors seem to read 177-178 on the 180 style meter.
Myself I couldn't see using my Sovereign without a 180 meter and a S1 probe as this detector will come alive with the best ID I have seen on any detector with the best treasure to trash ratio.

Rick

 

[Rick(ND)]

I feel that was one of the reasons, plus I feel everyone was going wild about the Explorers at the time, so the time building the DTI's was used building the extras for the Explorers. I know my sales for the DTI's had dropped quite a bit after people started making meter out of multi meter and doing the rescaling of the Minelab digital meter. I will say the Minelab digital after doing the mod stayed calibrated much better than the Sun Ray did, but didn't have the fine calibration of the close tones like the Sun Rays did. The Sun Rays were touchy when calibrating as a little turn of the calibration made a big difference in numbers, but to me ID much better too.

Rick

 

[NamVetLesTreasureSeeker]

GREAT POST, Rick!! Very INFORMATIVE!! HH