At The Beach With The New 18.75 kHz Coil

[wpaxt]

Well, after having received the X-Terra 50 18.75 kHz coil just before Christmas, I finally had a full weekend set aside to run it through a field test.

And if any of you saw the Rose Parade today, you can see that timing is everything. Naturally I picked a weekend that featured the worst weather we have had out here in quite some time. Rain, rain and more rain, coupled with high winds.

So my testing at a few local parks obviously didn

 

[Eddie Currents]

I'm intested in knowing if the high frequency coil can find small gold jewelry items such as small chains (without pendant).

Do you have a small gold chain you can test the machine with?

Thanks,
EC

 

[wpaxt]

But in the meantime you should check out Mike's excellent post from Dec. 23rd:

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?55,258638,258638#msg-258638

Bill

 

[Mike Bearden]

Late yesterday afternoon I had a friend call to make sure I would be home before he came to visit. His family owns a local pawnshop and jewelry store and I asked him to bring over as many gold chains and small gold objects as possible. Anything from medium to very thin link designs including rings,studs,loops, and cuff links. He knows I detect and was eager to help for curiosity sake if nothing else
When he arrived we put on a fresh pot of coffee and took everything outside. He brought a good mix of targets, matter of fact I loaded every one of them that would register into my EX II for obvious reasons and saved it.
I only tried the thin chains on the Explorer, X-Terra, Tejon, and the MXT as they are the ones I find the least of.
Out of 47 thin chains, the X-Terra 50 w/18.75 coil hit all of them but 3.
Using the same 47 chains, the MXT only missed 11 of them.
The Tejon missed 19.
The Explorer missed 19.
Exact science ? NO
I simply set up each detector where they ran stable with as much sensitivity allowed and ZERO discrimination .... period !
I only had one detector turned on at a time.
I started at a measured 5" from the coil and continued down the scale until the detector did or did not give a "dig me" signal.
The X-Terra not only hit the MOST targets but it hit them from further away and it hit many targets that the others simply DID NOT.
Granted, most of these finer link chains did not hit until they were at least 3" from the coils, some even closer.
But the smallest, thin, 10K gold wedding band will simply blow your ears out from 8-10" away with the 18.75 coil. It's impressive.
I'm looking forward to the upcoming season when others will take the X-50 out with this coil and post their results, it should be interesting.
Now, will I sell my other detectors because of this little test ? Of course not, they all have their place but if I'm looking for jewelery the X-50 is what I'll reach for first.
Again,
Time will tell, it always does.
H.H.
Mike

 

[Ralph Bryant]

Hi Mike,

Were your tests "air tests" or did you do them against the background mineralization with the items lying on the ground ?

The 18.75 and X-50 are sounding like an awsome jewelry combo.

Ralph

 

[wpaxt]

First bad pun of the New Year.

Nice work, Mike. The possibilities of the X-50 with the 18.75 kHz coil are very intriguing. Now to find a spot where there is some fine gold waiting to be found...

Bill

 

[Ralph Bryant]

A bunch of guys walking around the dry sand beaches with magnifying glass head gear and flour sifters. Maybe they will release a 5 inch high frequency coil before long. Would be great for that "micro-gold" hunting, and I would bet would put those 3 undetectable chains of Mike's back in the plus column. "Micro-gold" hunting has always been an interesting pursuit with the Gold Bug II, but this is beginning to sound almost as good.

Ralph

 

[Mike Bearden]

I did the test on a patch of ground that took me more than a week to get cleaned up for a coin garden. Everything was tested with the targets on the same piece of ground, one at a time.
I don't mean to imply that the X-50 w/18.75 coil will be better than a dedicated gold detector by any stretch of the imagination, however, the results I'm getting are far better than I hoped for in a multi use detector by a long shot.
My local ground is fairly hot, the X-50 ground balances at 3-4 before it goes neutral. The Explorer will just about stay in a constant null over most of my property if that tells you anything.
H.H.
Mike

 

[Ralph Bryant]

Thanks Mike,

If it beat out the MXT on small gold, that is saying something !

Ralph

 

[dirtdog]

Always nice to have friends with a stash of loot. Did you happen to record the ID Numbers, that would be interesting

 

[Mike Bearden]

No I didn't, but did notice again that almost all 3, 6, and 9 readings were on the small stuff. Bigger items like a mans gold ring hit like silver for the most part and I'm sure anybody would take it as a "dig me" type tone on the X-50.
H.H.
Mike

 

[idagon]

Ok, that does it!

I was going to order an MXT, but after reading all of this X-Terra business (especially with the 18.75 coil)

I ordered an X-terra 50!!

Can someone let me know when a dealer in the USA gets an 18.75 in stock?

My "X" machine should be here tomorrow

thanks,

Dan

 

[Eddie Currents]

My thanks to Mike Bearden for posting the info on the 47-chain test. Very, very interesting.

I'm wondering how those same machines would have done in all-metal mode?

Just a thought.

EC

 

[BobH]

n/t

 

[Mike Bearden]

I guess there's just to many variables between detectors and so many different compositions of gold and designs in the mix to ever know for sure. Especially with thin gold chains.
Like the EX II and the Tejon for instance, the 19 chains that each one missed were NOT the same chains. In other words, some of the chains the EX II wouldn't hit on out of that 19 didn't exactly match the 19 the Tejon missed and vice-versa.
I ran them all with zero disc with as much sens as possible and still have stability for the fairest test I could come up with at the time. Mainly because of the differences between the detectors all metal modes. Some are silent search and some are threshold based.
However, the EX II's threshold would break on some of the targets but I wouldn't call it a null as we know it. Iron mask On -16, 32 auto sens, faint threshold. The Tejons all metal mode is just to Waverly to get discernible results IMO.
Like I said, not exact science by a long shot but interesting and surprising results for me at least.
Before I got the 18.75 coil I was simply HOPING the coil would give somewhere close to the MXT performance and ended up getting pleasantly surprised.
H.H.
Mike

 

[BJ in Okla.]

For hunting coins in a iron and alum. trashy park ? HH...BJ

 

[wpaxt]

Hi, BJ.

Without a doubt the 7.5 kHz stock coil. I have found it to be quite good on coins in my trashy parks. The 18.75 kHz is too sensitive to small, lower conductivity targets like bits of aluminum. If the park is really full of aluminum trash I would go with the 7.5 kHz unless you want gold & are willing to dig a lot of little bits of aluminum to get it. I don't think iron would present a problem with either coil.

Bill

 

[Neil]

Hi Bill,
If you can, the next time you head over to the ocean take a couple of gold rings with you with some fishing line tied to them and do some testing that way in the wet sand. If youve never done this you might be in for a surprise.
This way you can bury a ring at a known depth and test your detector against it. Unlike when you are just hunting and rings or coins can fall into a hole deeper giving the impression of a super deep find.
I did this with a few detectors this past summer, my Sov being the first I tried it with and figured out which coils were best for it and some other info as well.
I used to live out your way in the early 80s and those beaches there were absolutely packed in the summer. Must be some good hunting during the summer months or after some storm beach erosion.

HH
Neil