What a big carton compared to the X-Terra's! Assembled the T-2 around noon Friday, plugged the headphones into the aft jack (where it should be) and took it out on the beach. Since there were some kids playing football in the dry sand, I decided to give them a wide berth and didn't turn on the T-2 until I came to the high tide line. Good light feel and balance. I used Fastgrab and found the ground cancelled at 75 (later found the ground phase number in the dry sand at the boardwalk here is 86 and at the water's edge is 2). I left the sensitivity and discrimination at presets, but used 3 or 4 tones most of the time. Played around with all of the settings later. The T-2 was very quiet as I began looking for a promising area, headed south and closer to the water. Heard some slight falsing as I moved toward the water, so I pushed the trigger forward, pumped the coil and noticed the ground phase number was now 61. A little closer to the water, 53. Even closer, 46 and then I couldn't use Fastgrab anymore - had to do it manually. I soon realized I would need to work parallel to the water to avoid ground canceling so frequently. I'm really spoiled - I normally use a turn-on-and-go-anywhere Sovereign - and I found ground canceling annoying. One can live with the faint false sounds, but many of them sound just like (deep) targets and require another swing or two to verify. However, once I altered my usual up and down beach zig-zag search pattern to a more parallel one, the T-2 behaved well and was nice and quiet. Ground canceling is very quick and easy - I just don't like to do it often. I remember using a Garrett Groundhog on the beach in the 80s that had to be ground balanced every few feet if searching perpendicular to the shore and it was time consuming - I almost heaved that detector in the water more than once. It really was a very good detector almost everywhere but the wet sand (for me). Anyway back to the T-2, after about 10 minutes I finally got a nice solid (crisp the way I like them) sound with a 78 readout. A beautiful corroded beach zinc at about 6". I really like the way the T-2 responds to targets. I'd been in the same general area with the Sov the day before and found the coins few and far between, so I headed farther south and worked up the beach a bit. Hit the coin line up in "Fastgrab" territory. The T-2 beeped strong on coins at 7" to 10" deep and all but two of the coins in the photo came from that range. I worked the line back to my house and found a couple more small coin pockets at the same depth on the way. Only found clad, two good sounding crown caps and one pulltab. There are plenty of nails in the area, but the T-2 ignored them. I'm afraid I rarely looked at the screen as I was relying on sounds, but I saw accurate readouts on the few coins I checked. I also can't report much on the pinpoint except to say the few times I tried (just to see if it worked) it seemed to work fine. I almost never use pinpoint on the beach. I didn't put the coil in the water, but did swing over it for a while with no falsing (g.c. at 2). Tried all metal on the dry sand walk back to my house and found the T-2 to be very sensitive to small stuff. The LCD screen can be difficult to read in high angle sunlight too (I think Mike reported it was a bit of a problem in low angle light). The coil size and shape are great, but the fins make more areas for dirt/sand/water to enter the cover. I should have written this post Friday afternoon instead of Sunday night, because I've forgotten some of what I wanted to say, but I'll be out on the beach with the T-2 this week and probably report more later. So far, so good.
Ralph, if you're reading this - I put the first scratch on the coil cover. Two joggers ran by me within a foot and startled me just as I was swinging over a broken mussel shell. I grazed it and later noticed a 5/8" scratch on the cover - at least I think that's when it happened. Ralph sent me an as new unit and I was tempted to put a protective bag on the coil like he did, but I know many people on the beach and would have spent all my time explaining what's in the bag.
There is one more thing - depth:
After reading a post on the other forum classifieds, I was curious to see how deep the T-2 would detect a dime. I went out on the beach and buried one exactly 12" deep about 15 feet below the high tide line. The T-2 was in preset sensitivity and discrimination, but I set it to 4 tones and ground canceled manually (66). It hit the dime no problem - this was without headphones blocking the wave noise and the coil was at least an inch above the sand. I buried a quarter at exactly 15" with the same results. The readouts on both coins were too high, but the sound was right on.
<br><center>[attachment 16611 0127b.jpg]</center>
Ralph, if you're reading this - I put the first scratch on the coil cover. Two joggers ran by me within a foot and startled me just as I was swinging over a broken mussel shell. I grazed it and later noticed a 5/8" scratch on the cover - at least I think that's when it happened. Ralph sent me an as new unit and I was tempted to put a protective bag on the coil like he did, but I know many people on the beach and would have spent all my time explaining what's in the bag.
There is one more thing - depth:
After reading a post on the other forum classifieds, I was curious to see how deep the T-2 would detect a dime. I went out on the beach and buried one exactly 12" deep about 15 feet below the high tide line. The T-2 was in preset sensitivity and discrimination, but I set it to 4 tones and ground canceled manually (66). It hit the dime no problem - this was without headphones blocking the wave noise and the coil was at least an inch above the sand. I buried a quarter at exactly 15" with the same results. The readouts on both coins were too high, but the sound was right on.
<br><center>[attachment 16611 0127b.jpg]</center>
I'm glad to hear it is doing well for you. Managed to finally get an afternoon of hunting here close to home using the new little xxxxx, and came home with a total of 291 coins after a 5 1/2 hour hunt Sunday. I was bushed from all the bending and stooping, but had a great time digging clads (and managed 6 silver dimes in the mix). So many machines, so little time........