What is the absolute deepest detector you have ever seen. (In your humble opinion)

[Dig]

What is the Deepest detector you have ever used or seen? Im just curious to hear everyones answer!

 

[Furious T]

Gee Whiz! I've been thinking for a few minutes (any longer for me becomes decidedly dangerous) and the deepest extractions I can recall have been with my Sea Hunter Mk II, Excalibur II and my Tesoro Eldorado Umax. Almost forgot a couple of holes with the Explorer II.

 

[UK Brian]

Standard machines or not ? You can go to the twenty foot mark with a few of the high power pulse machines if the item is big enough. I quote from my old Pulse Star II's handbook "Pulse signal is virtually unlimited (in depth) depending on target size". Its not totally true but you can dig holes that need a J.C.B. not a spade.

Generally for a normal detector if the grounds not to mineralised I would go for the old technology of the Nautilus DMC.

 

[Nauti]

Like Brian said,if the ground is nice and clean you won't get more depth than with the Nauti,but for depth in most soil conditions i think minelabs multi frequency units are virtually unbeatable.

 

[Dan-Pa.]

CZ-Troy X-5- Explorer series and Nautilus will all go deep of course depending on your neck of the woods and above all your expertise of getting the most out of your unit. ..Never used a PI unit but understand they do go deep. Question is how far do we want to dig and of course is the area you are hunting is there limitations without getting thrown out type of digging allowed. Last but not least we have to throw in your mineralization along with how deep do coins fall in your area..

 

[Beale]

Deepest I have ever used was a Vaquero, Beale.

 

[go-rebels]

... i think minelabs multi frequency units are virtually unbeatable.

My Fisher F75 LTD is deeper than my Explorer II in deep silver dimes in my red clay mineralized SC soil. I repeated the tests under many different detector settings and ground conditions in my test bed and was so convinced of the increased performance that I sold my Ex-II.

Previous to the LTD, the Ex-II was my deepest seeking coin hunter.

 

[Nailbender]

I think it would depend on the size of your target I once dug a hole 16-18 inches deep using my M6 and still hadn't found it, left it thinking it was probably a large chunk of trash, hope it was.

 

[Southwind]

The E-Trac with the Sovereign GT a close second.

 

[crazyman]

In bad ground, the Minelab Sovereign. In good ground, take your pick.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Dig, as others have told you, it depends on the type targets, and junk tolerance, and terrain type, that you're talking about. I can pick up a volkswagon 20 ft. away with a 2-box detector, does that count as "deepest"? And if you meant coin-sized targets, do you mean while achieving disc. at the same time? If not, some of the new-fangled nugget machines can pick up coins to nearly 2 foot away (but lord help you if you thought you were going to try to use that for coin/relic hunting, as you'd go crazy with every pinhead!) Or did you mean standard coin/relic discriminating units? Because even that is a loaded question. For example: a Fisher 1266 can easily pick up a dime to a foot deep. But you will cease to get that kind of depth in any ground that is moderatly mineralized, and you will spend all your time disciphering clicks and clacks to try to tell iron vs non-iron, etc.... So you can see, that even though "1 ft. on a dime" beats an explorer, what good is it if it's only usable on white dry sand beaches? There's just too many variables to say which is deepest. Because if that's all the question was, the answer is a 2-box detector looking for volkswagons.

 

[David]

Nexus(find the website yourself) advertised their detectors as the deepest hand units held available. Minelab SD/GP(X), FBS & BBS units, and Musketeer Advantage. Whites PulseScan TDI. Garrett Infinium LS. T2 LTD.

 

[silversmith]

Well, I once owned a Compass Coin Magnum. It would discriminate down to about 4-6 inches. Not bad, eh? I got rid of it 'cause it didn't discriminate below that and had me constantly digging up rusty nails 12-13 inches down while on discriminate. No fun

 

[dgerst]

I can only go from my limited experience. I've owned eight different detectors so far and the Discovery Electronics Treasure Baron with Cointrax II module is the deepest I've used with a Compass X-80 being a close second. I'm sure you'll get as many different answers as you do replies.

 

[goodmore]

I had an F75 LTD. Raw power. It was like hunting on the edge of stability all the time. Any person who can tame that beast has a very deep detector. In bad ground I think you better look at something else. Just my opinion of course. A very lite detector also.

 

[BarberBill]

I haven't personally been around enough different detectors to pin this down. However, as several have posted it's not a very straight forward question due to different sized targets and different soils, metals etc. In my own experience I've dug a large rusty can with a 7" DD coil on a Tesoro Eldorado umax at a measured 16" with plenty of signal left over and the rusty head of a horseshoe nail with a Tesoro Silver Sabre umax at a measured 7.5" that gave enough of a signal to sound like a much larger target even though it was about the size of a #4 lead shot. Considering the size of the target, I was more impressed with that find than I was with the large can at around twice the depth. My two bits.
HH
BB

 

[Doctorcoinz]

Ok you probably read all the hype about the depths that the explorers/e -trac can get , but the deepest seekers i have used to date are the explorer se and explorer 2. I found the dfx from whites can also get some deep stuff but the ground was fairly good on the deepest coins , best depth i ever got with the dfx about 8 inches (good ground) .. The deepest i ever got with an explorer was a medium sized coin at 10 inches (bad ground) with a little extra left and no way maxed out at this depth. On large coins there is no question about it - the explorers beat everything with depths to about 12 inches. How the explorers get so deep is truly amazing...
On large cans and similar largish things sometimes i give up becauuse digging past a foot deep is hard without a shovel which i don't carry. Getting past a foot with a foot assisted trowel is hard!

 

[deepnails]

Hi everybody! I've detected here in Otsego county most of my life. Otsego county's geography is unique, it consists of seven or so ridges which rise about eight hundred feet from the valley floors. The valley floors are only a mile or two wide and are filled with top soil. Some of it is rather rocky due to two hundred years of farming but has very light minerals. In the seventies with my coinmaster supreme V I recovered silver dimes to six inches and halves to eight inches +. My friends and I now use either a DFX or Explorer's and GTI 2500's. I have many hours on the 2500, DFX, less time on the minelabs, they are my friends speciality. Any way we find hundreds of coin and coin sized objects over a foot deep, it all depends on the site. Some examples from our last couple of fall hunts are Appx 14" seated dime with GTI with 10 X 14, large cents 14" + DFX 12" coil, and bob with his explorer recovered two AU quarters one seated one barber about three feet apart and about 18" deep!, My friend and I were amazed. If I'm deep coin hunting in a public park I love The GTI 2500, for relic hunting nail pits I love the DFX our expolers do test and find silver deeper but I use a soverign. let's see, this took me only twenty minutes to type! Good luck hunting everyone, Darryl.

 

[Hopskippy]

I recently picked up a new Tesoro Vaquero. I could not be more impressed or pleased with the depth of this machine on coins! I choose the Vaquero after much research on detectors of all makes and prices. If you know someone who owns a Vaquero, you should go hunt with them at least once. I never had that advantage when making my choice. As I said, I read every thing I could find on every detector within my price range. I called and spoke to a sales rep at Kellyco about the best detectors for coin and relic hunting. The person I spoke with told me to certainly get a detector with manual ground balance. He told me the ones that they carry with this option. I mentioned to him I'd been looking at the Vaquero. His words, " well, you will have to go along ways to beat that particular detector for the money, we don't handle them, but it is a very good machine" ! I thanked him and bought my Vaquero.
Good luck in your choice ! Happy hunting.

 

[Critterhunter]

DFX depth? Yea, if you tweak it just right for a very specific spot and all the planets line up properly. By the time you "think* you've got the DFX configured properly with all it's numerous settings at a site you'll look around and find it's night time and all your friends have left with the goodies. The Minelabs have far less settings that need to be tweaked in order to get it's depth to the very extremes. Never was impressed with the depth I saw the DFX get in the field, and the Spectra to me is just a spruced up DFX. The only thing the DFX impressed me with is it's ability to pull shallow silver out of heavy trash, but then again that was before I had a chance to work that spot with my QXT or now a Sovereign.

Having owned several Explorers I'll tip the hat to the limited time I've had on my Sovereign GT so far. It has got me an indian and a v-nickle that were deeper than I've ever dug with any machine, and this was in a spot I had gridded both directions with the Explorer previously and thought I had cleaned everything out. I was very surprised at how loud and good the two targets hit on my GT.

As I dug deeper I kept thinking "This has to be a large piece of trash" but then digging a little deeper out pops the indian. When I started to dig the nickle I also almost gave up but I'm glad I didn't on that one as well. They were loud with a perfect ID and deeper than I've ever dug those types of coins on any machine. Deeper than even any silver I've dug with the Explorer. I've had very little time on the GT thus far so I'm looking forward to seeing just how deep it's going to pop silver as well.

I've heard some say they didn't think the Etrac was any deeper for them in their soil than the GT. Even if it is let's remember the Etrac comes with an 11" coil while the GT has a 10". Throw on something in the 12" or so size range and I bet the GT will get deeper than the stock coil on the Etrac. If in the future I don't think the GT is doing as well for my style of hunting I'll sell it and pick up an Etrac, but so far I haven't seen anything that would make me think that.

If you're looking for max depth in just about any kind of ground conditions then the top three Minelabs are going to be where it's at, and the large selection of larger coils for them will get you even deeper if you feel the need to. That Fisher does sound interesting and I've heard enough people praise it to be interested. I may try one in the future but from what I've read it's still hooked on iron like Fishers always were, and once ground conditions get rough the depth will suffer more than a Minelab. I always felt Fishers were about ten years behind the competition in audio and discrimination. The CZ line used to be the standard to compare other deep machines to but I always felt they got that extra depth by having such a primative discrimination circuit. Almost like they were running in all metal past a certain depth. Didn't much care for the audio on them either, but I'm willing to see just how far they've come with this newer model.