Sovereign modification (and modifiers)

[BlackX]

Do many/any of the folks involved w/ the Sov mods hang out on this board?

One of my questions that I've been unable to find an answer to yet--though I presume it's negative--is if there's a way to remove the high-coin cutoff on the meter and tones. i.e., that, with a modificaiton, one woul? be able to distinguish between a (clad or silver) dime, quarter, half-dollar, dollar, etc. I have yet to understand the logic as to why Minelab cut off everything at that one (550/180) point.

_Rich_

 

[chuck ky]

did you ask the question on the modification forum. i don't think you can tell a silver coin from a clad one by the meter. you might be able to by sound. some detectors you can tell quarters, halfs, and dollars from the dimes but i don't think you can silver from clad.

 

[Rick(ND)]

That was a discussion that I have seen many times over the years about the Sovereign telling the difference in copper, clad and silver as some want this. The Sovereigns don't have this as they put all the good coins in one category in tones and meter reading. This is no problem for many as we are coin hunters and any coin is fine and we can tell the zincs from the better coins too if we want. There is some that want to be a cherry picker and only pick up like the dimes and quarters and leave the pennies, but this can not be done with the Sovereign that I know of. Once you know your Sovereign well and with a good meter you can get a slight idea of silver verses clad, but not that accurate and wouldn't depend on it.
The only detector I have used that I felt could tell the difference in a clad dime or quarter and a silver one was the Teknetics Mark 1 that was built back in the 80s The meter would read slightly higher in the dime or quarter for silver over clad.

 

[w6pea]

Great info

As I said in an earlier post, I put my Sovereign Digital Meter on my GT
Now my question is why did it read -550 out of the box. I used the tuning knob and was able to get it down to -322 and it would go up to
-625 on the meter, why???

 

[Art (NWOH)]

Put it in disc mode, set sens to minimum, keep the coil away from metal, then turn it on. Next..calibrate to 180 with a dime or quarter. What you got was an iron reading. ...a negative number.

HH