F75 vs Simplex+

[Monte]

[QUOTE="JaWi:]Just wondering if any of you have both F75 and Simplex+, or have knowledge of how these two compare for coin hunting? A lot of difference in price but how about performance? Been hearing a lot about the Simplex lately.[/QUOTE]I've owned 3 different F75 versions, but my personal preference was the Teknetics T2 series. Of those I have owned and used perhaps 7 or more different units, and of them I preferred the T2+. Currently, I own 2 of the Nokta / Makro Simplex + devices.

You asked: "How do they compare for Coin Hunting" and "How about performance?" To answer it is both simple and difficult. The difficult part is that they have different ergonomics, different battery power source designs, and a few different adjustment features. Some folks will prefer one design over the other. One is not submersible and the other one is, thus catering to different hunting desires. One of them can be adjusted for more compactness, while the other uses only one knob, one button and one toggle-trigger to make changes in available functions, and that appeals to some more than the other adjustment system.

For me, I prefer 'simple' design that is comfortable, features that are 'functional' so a unit works well, and in the end I want to have acceptable 'performance. That I with any detector. I parted with my last F75 when I acquired a new T2+ after they came out. I have been without any T2's since this past spring, preferring my Simplex + I have owned since last November, and I bought a 2nd new Simplex+ the first of June. So at this point a reader might ask 'Why?'

The T2, and naturally the F75, have some of the absolute bet physical ergonomics in the industry with the rod design, grip, arm cup and location/position of the control housing and battery/speaker components. They also have one of the simplest set of adjustment control as well. Now it gets to be a personal thing. My age and health concerns and mobility limitations have me keeping all my detectors (I currently own and use 10 units) lighter-weight and comfortable to use. Also, while I am transitioning back to typical urban Coin Hunting, the bulk of my search sites since mid 1983 have been ghost towns, logging and mining camps, military camp and fort sites, homesteads, and a lot more old-use places where Iron Nails and a lot of other ferrous debris present quite a challenge. Smaller-size search coils, or occasionally a mid-size search coil in less littered areas, is what I have relied on.

I'm used to using smaller-size coils because my Coin Hunting years from early '65 unit mid-'83 were generally in the 6" to 6" diameter, but from time-to-=time I would make use of an 8" diameter coil in more open areas. I am not a big fan of bigger-size coils for most of my hunting needs, but I do compare any detector I evaluate with their 'standard' coils and with smaller coils. The T2 and F75 have an 11" BiAxial (aka Double-D) coil as 'standard' and I have never enjoyed good TID performance at mid-depth and beyond. My main-use coil on the T2's and F75's was their 5" DD coil which performed better in that regard.

In field use, in both a plowed farm field as well as working a couple of wide-open grassy parks, I had better TID lock-on with the Simplex + than I did with the T2's using their stock DD coils. I also preferred the audio target response with the Simplex + on mid-depth targets than I did with the T2. Thus, as I have worked to trim my detector outfit this year, I opted to let the T2+ go in favor of the Simplex+. To be honest, if I were a bit younger and healthier I'd add a T2+ back into my outfit, but things are getting pretty crowded. I'd do so simply because I like the T2+ w/5" DD coil, but I have other models that excel in very dense iron debris so the T2 is outclassed there, and with my current detector group, I have my Coin Hunting bases well covered. The T2 and F75 re proven performers, with perhaps an advantage in more favorable ground make-up than the high mineralization I typical hunt in. In the end it all boils down to personal opinion.

Monte

 

[REVIER]

I have the F70 so no DST, don't care...in my mind more filters means less depth.
I just got used to it that way and over the years kept turning it up higher and higher to insane levels.
The higher I went I found more and more.
My typical disc settings are 80-90 sense, thresh I can control so that goes between -2 and +2 and usually 1 tone since 1, 1F and 2F seem to be the most stable.
I found it you max out the disc it has an effect on stability and chatter just as much as the the sense and thresh controls do, I can notch back in 2, sometimes 3 regions, then the sense to 99 and max the thresh to +9 and it can be eerily quiet and calm...don't know why this is but it is.
My personal favorite settings, and what I use most of the time here in my iron infested and mineralized SE. soil is All metal with the sense and thresh maxed and with boost.
Yea, could be jumpy and noisy but after years of getting used to this I noticed that over good targets it will stop all that nonsense and let you know if you can learn to notice the tells.
I actually stumbled into this method by mistake, I was hunting in disc with low sense and thresh at the edge of a big park that had the most intense EM I issues in that one area that I ever experienced and It was there all the time on every visit.
A constant very loud pulsing like I was hunting next to a running diesel locomotive engine, to this day I have no earthly idea what caused it.
I happened to have those all metal maxed out settings in program 2 that I was just using as a check over some targets, don't ask me why I set It that way, I was very new with the F70 at the time.
Anyway, I flipped to those settings to check a target and forgot to switch back to disc to continue my hunt, in disc in that area even with low settings my detector acted almost the same with that EMI problem so hard to notice a big difference.
I continued hunting and I kept finding coins, they were short signals for sure but if you moved the coil just right over them they repeated every time in a very small range of numbers.
Eventually I noticed I was in all metal with the maxed out settings plus boost and I was doing better than I ever was in disc in that strange area.
I was shocked, but from that day forward I kept going to those settings more and more for short periods of time on every hunt in all my different sites until I got used to it.
After over 6 years of doing It this way It is now totally natural and second nature to me.
I call these my Blast Through settings and they work everywhere but unusually well in heavy trash and extraordinarily well in extreme iron.
It's like I can blast through all manner of junk and multiple iron targets and somehow still manage to get a tiny piece of good targets that are peeking through, around or from under masking junk.
Don't ask me how or why I can do this, it's not me it's the F75/F70 platform and programing doing all the heavy lifting here, I just noticed some odd and very useful behavior in some very difficult situations when you turn these things up.
That thing that everybody says about lowering the sense in heavy trash or iron to get better resolution on masked targets like most do using most detectors, the high beams in the fog won't work well theory...well on this platform that isn't true at all, just the opposite as a matter of fact.
You get better resolution turning it up, not less.
The engineers that designed this thing stated this, NASA Tom knows it's a real thing, read his massive F75 information because it's all in there.
I just discovered this and learned to use it to my advantage because hunting in nice black non mineralized low trash and iron sites just isn't what the MD gods had planned for me.

It took awhile to get used to this and learn to notice the repeating and very short good tones and numbers and pick them out of that cacophony of insaneness but to this day It is probably the most useful skill I have acquired since I entered this hobby.
That plus the wiggle and pull back thing over pop tops using DD coils, thing.
This might work even better if you have DST, I have no idea since those are just letters to me with no actual or practical experience with that.
All I can say there is for sure something to be said for hunting in a quiet, low stress easy environment, I still do that sometimes and it is enjoyable and it works, but if you have the courage to push it sometimes beyond your normal comfort level there might be some rewards at the end of the tunnel that you never knew were there and just maybe a shockingly useful addition to your skill-set you never even thought you needed.
You F75 guys just might want to try it sometime, what have you got to lose except a little bit of time.
All metal, max out the sense, toggle the DST on or off if you want but I know with no DST it definitely works...and works well.