A friend of mine wanted to get into detecting, so he asked me for my advice on what detector to get. I wanted him to get something fairly easy to start with, and fairly versatile, so I suggested a 6000 di pro. As you know, that's a fairly easy and versatile machine, verses the tooty-fluty and more expensive Explorer. It's also still very popular, and holds its own against lots of machines with more bells and whistles.
As time went on, we started hunting more and more, side by side, in various sites. One particular site we would hunt, was some row crop fields adjacent to a very historical site. This field has turned up Spanish reales, buttons from the 1700/1800s, relics, etc... for us. Hunt after hunt, I kept spanking him 2 or 3 to 1 on better finds. But when we'd count our conductive period targets (green copper blacksmith slag, pistol balls, period indicators, etc...), we would invariably be very close to the same target count. Why then was the Explorer always more buttons and coins, and leaving him with the more of the other stuff? He assumed I was cherry-picking, since the Explorer has tone ID, but the 6000 Di pro. only has a meter. I assured him I was not cherry picking, and that I, like him, was in total relic mind-set at an early relicky site like this.
So the mystery went on. We couldn't figure out why the Explorer just always seemed to do better at coins & buttons, verses other similar conductive targets out there. Certainly depth had nothing to do with it, since it was a plowed field, and there was no correlation of age to depth. And besides, our ending target counts were not so far off as to explain it either. True, I might have 50 targets to his 40, which, statistically, still doesn't explain the 2 or 3 coins to each 1 that he would find.
Eventually, to try to understand the mystery, we looked closely at the type and feel of each of his conductive targets, verses mine. True, he did seem to have more flitty little cr*ppy stuff, which seemed to point to the fact that I was passing some junky sounding conductors (ie.: cherry picking). We eventually figured out what was going on: Since this field was not lacking in targets to choose from, I was subconsciously ignoring weaker cr*ppy sounding targets, but NOT on purpose, since afterall, this was a relicky dig-all kind of spot. But when there's no lack of signals to choose from, it becomes easy for the mind to sort of float from good signal to good signal, when you have tone ID. Contrast that to a 6000 di pro, where it either beeps, or doesn't beep, with less tell-tale tone differences. They have to rely more on needle bounces to discern conductivity, sharpness, etc...
Needless to say, he immediately went out and bought an Explorer the very next day. It was an interesting illistration of the value of the Explorer, EVEN when a hunter has no intention of purposefully pass any conductors.
As time went on, we started hunting more and more, side by side, in various sites. One particular site we would hunt, was some row crop fields adjacent to a very historical site. This field has turned up Spanish reales, buttons from the 1700/1800s, relics, etc... for us. Hunt after hunt, I kept spanking him 2 or 3 to 1 on better finds. But when we'd count our conductive period targets (green copper blacksmith slag, pistol balls, period indicators, etc...), we would invariably be very close to the same target count. Why then was the Explorer always more buttons and coins, and leaving him with the more of the other stuff? He assumed I was cherry-picking, since the Explorer has tone ID, but the 6000 Di pro. only has a meter. I assured him I was not cherry picking, and that I, like him, was in total relic mind-set at an early relicky site like this.
So the mystery went on. We couldn't figure out why the Explorer just always seemed to do better at coins & buttons, verses other similar conductive targets out there. Certainly depth had nothing to do with it, since it was a plowed field, and there was no correlation of age to depth. And besides, our ending target counts were not so far off as to explain it either. True, I might have 50 targets to his 40, which, statistically, still doesn't explain the 2 or 3 coins to each 1 that he would find.
Eventually, to try to understand the mystery, we looked closely at the type and feel of each of his conductive targets, verses mine. True, he did seem to have more flitty little cr*ppy stuff, which seemed to point to the fact that I was passing some junky sounding conductors (ie.: cherry picking). We eventually figured out what was going on: Since this field was not lacking in targets to choose from, I was subconsciously ignoring weaker cr*ppy sounding targets, but NOT on purpose, since afterall, this was a relicky dig-all kind of spot. But when there's no lack of signals to choose from, it becomes easy for the mind to sort of float from good signal to good signal, when you have tone ID. Contrast that to a 6000 di pro, where it either beeps, or doesn't beep, with less tell-tale tone differences. They have to rely more on needle bounces to discern conductivity, sharpness, etc...
Needless to say, he immediately went out and bought an Explorer the very next day. It was an interesting illistration of the value of the Explorer, EVEN when a hunter has no intention of purposefully pass any conductors.
