It's interesting, to me, that you asked some more open-ended questions but narrowed the detector choices to two models of the same brand. Since we're on the Teknetics Forum and those are models you mentioned [size=small](the Tek. G2 and T2)[/size], I am going to add one more Teknetics model in my reply, and that is the Teknetics Omega.
Calnevaroy said:
Which would be best in older parks that have rusty iron targets in moderate to highly mineralized ground?
Older Parks: I have been hunting old parks especially since 1968 and I know a lot of the shallower older coins and targets were recovered. Sure, some were missed, but the bulk of the old stuff is just 'gone.' That applies to any older park that has been hunted since the hobby became popular especially since the early '70s.
So there are a few older coins left and I still find them. In the past fifteen years I have pulled silver Morgan and Peace dollars, Walking Liberty and Franklin silver halves, Barber, Standing Liberty and Washington silver quarters, and Seated Liberty, Barber, Mercury and Roosevelt silver dimes from grassy older parks ... and none of them were deeper than 5-5½", and most were at about the 3"-4" depth and several were less than 2" deep.
Why, some might ask? Because I hunt away from all the built up grass areas from mower clippings and leaf build-up, etc. I get into some older parks and 'bushwhack' the overgrown fringes in search of old pathways, blanket spots, view points and the like. Out in the more open and popular use areas there is often ground/grass build-up where others helped thin the targets out long, long ago, but I try to concentrate on working the out-of-the-way and less hunted places in older parks. However, I take the implication that older parks have older coins, and some do.
Then you add
rusty iron targets as well as
moderate to highly mineralized ground.: In the earlier days we encountered a lot if iron type targets such as women's bobby pins, church key and other type of pry-off bottle openers, and the run of nails and other small iron litter. A lot of it was recovered due to the detectors we used back then. But through the years I see less ferrous-based junk discarded [size=small](other than bottle caps)[/size] but a lot of modern-day higher-conductive litter, such as foil, condiment packets, and naturally an abundance of pull-tabs and pry-tabs.
All of these modern losses are going to be shallower than the "older coins" that might be around and a little deeper, and the target masking is going to keep us from finding most of the older good stuff. The best way to find the older and deeper desired targets is to remove the shallower and worthless junk. There is no magic detector and coil combination or visual display information that can defeat the ugly challenges we face.
I have owned and used the G2 since it was first introduced. Matter of fact, I wrote up an evaluation on the G2 on Findmall in late October of 2010 about the time you registered on Findmall. I owned other makes and models at the time, and I also had a Teknetics T2 and Omega then. I hunted ghost towns, homesteads, stage stops and other non-urban places, and worked city parks and schools and other locations including 'older parks' that produced most of the coins I mentioned early on, and all locations had challenging iron trash.
Of the two models you mentioned and the Omega, I had far more success using the Omega in "older parks" and in "rusty iron trash" over a wide range of mineralization. And what about
Mineralization?: Some of the old parks had a Ground Phase read-out of 85+ on the G2 and Omega and a high Fe3O4 reading as well. Sometimes I search at minimum Discrimination and recover a lot of trash, and that is necessary to get rid of masking targets and find the hidden desirables. Otherwise I use no more than Iron Nail rejection so I am ignoring some iron but still recovering a lot of it.
Calnevaroy said:
I'm looking for a machine that has a reputation for finding deep high conductors near buried rusty iron.
Here you're specifying a desire for a detector that has a reputation for finding "deep" targets that are "high conductors" that are located near "rusty buried iron." Gaining target 'depth' isn't always easy and a lot depends upon the search coil used, the ground mineral make-up, how the detector is GB'ed and other settings such as Sensitivity and Discrimination. Add to that the importance of using the most efficient sweep speed for the coil and ground environment and the detector's ability to process out both Discriminated trash as well as ground signal.
Target size, shape, alloy content and position are very critical to the target's detection, but the operator has to use the best detector, coil, settings and search coil presentation [size=small](sweep speed)[/size] for results to be impressive. Then you want to get those results on "high conductors" and that's what I especially like to find because I enjoy silver coins, especially. The Gold Bug Pro, G2 and new Fisher F-19 are not very good on higher-conductive coins as they are on lower-conductive targets like US nickels and gold jewelry. So of your two detector picks and adding my preference, Teknetics' G2 would be the weakest performer in this category.
Having owned two T2's and some Omega's, I have had my best success using the Omega, regardless of the target conductivity. The Omega has more search coil choices available for it, and in overall field use it provided me more of the better coins I found, and most of the deeper coins I found. It had a more consistent audio response on mid-depth to deeper coins, and it also provided a tighter and more responsive visual TID and VDI numeric read-out on targets that were not too terribly masked deeper than I could get with the T2's.
Most sites I choose to hunt at plagued with iron and other trash, but iron is the biggest offender. That's why I use the least Discrimination or no more than just enough to reject Iron Nails. There are many field test scenarios that can help us evaluate some of a detector's potential, but we can't always duplicate actual target encounters when they are at unknown position and association under ground and out-of-sight. That comes from in-the-field experience, and the only way to know what is down there is to accept everything and recover the good and bad targets.
To hunt in heavily mineralized conditions, and to deal with a dense scattering of iron targets, we can only hope to get any 'depth' between targets by using a slow and methodical sweep speed and a smaller-size search coil that might ferret out a good target. We can't rely on an accurate visual Target ID or VDI number because they are not always accurate on mid-to-deep depth targets, and can't be with nearby masking targets. The same holds true for those while like to use Tone ID, which I usually don't, because that will also be thrown off by mineralization, target depth and target masking.
Calnevaroy said:
I'm saying "buried" because I'm not interested in what a detector can do on top of the ground (nail tests, etc.).
I use my
Nail Board Performance Test because it is an actual, in-the-field encounter and is very typical of what I often come across in ghost towns, old structure sites like homesteads, stage stops, dance halls, etc., and many places where iron nails abound. Does it mean we are always going to encounter such a challenge? No. Does it represent conditions were older coins and iron targets are below the ground surface and out of sight in unknown positions or depths? No, of course not.
But it is a genuine method to test the performance of a detector and search coil where conditions are similar to that, and if a detector/coil combination has difficulty responding well to the coin when the Discrimination is set to
just barely reject the iron nails, then that certainly suggests something to me about how that detector/coil combo will work with out-of-site coins and nails. There is no such thing as a 'perfect' detector or a 'perfect' search coil, so we need to select what will work best for us.
As an example of results on my
NBPT, just this year on four different occasions doing some detector & coil comparisons with several people using new products, or models they had to check out, results were interesting. They were what I expected and have known, but interesting to all of those who participated with me. Very simply, you properly Ground Balance the detector, then adjust the Discrimination as you sweep the coil over the four iron nails on the
NBPT and set it to
just barely reject the iron. Just barely remain silent.
Then you place an Indian Head or Zinc Penny in the #1 centered position, just as an Indian Head was when I first encountered the coin and nails in a Utah ghost town, and sweep over it in the four marked directions going left-to-right and then right-to-left. That makes 8 possible hits you can get on the coin, and I consider 6 hits of 8 possible to be 'acceptable' for passing that test and providing the kind of performance I want in an iron nail challenged site. Zero good hits, or only 1, 2, 3 or possibly 4 is not considered to be a 'passing grade.' Many detector/coil combinations can't even get 1 or 2 good hits out of 8.
Folks can talk about "quick response" and "fast recovery" all they want, but in a dense iron nail challenge where you're just slightly knocking out the iron nails you also have to factor in how well the Discrimination processing works. I
/We have found many of the newer, more digitally designed detectors to be really terrible compared with some of the better performing analog detectors, and many models I like and still enjoy using for some hunting just can't pass that test and are not what I use in nasty iron challenged sites.
On our list of models that did not pass the
NBPT of getting at least 6-out-of 8 hits include the following.: Teknetics T2 w/5" & 11" DD coils, G2 with 5", 5X10" and 11" DD coils, every Greek series models with every available Teknetics coil and the Euro-Tek Pro with every coil. A Fisher F-75 w/5" and 11" DD coils, an F-5 with 5" & 5X10" DD and 8" round and 10" elliptical Concentric coils, and Gold Bug Pro w/5", 5X10 and 11" DD coils. The ONLY FBS model that gave at least 6 digable hits out-of-8 was the new Fisher F-19, and we used both the stock 5Z10 DD and my 5" DD.
Would it be one I would use in a dense iron infested site? Yes, out of all those FBS offerings. Would it be the detector I would use if after deeper located old coins? No, What about deeper higher-conductive coins? No, not for that either. Every detector and coil combo can have it's place, or can be a wrong choice. In your narrowed down selection of a G2 and T2, for deep silver in dense iron located in moderate to higher mineralization, I would not pick either of them.
We don't find bigger silver coins as often as we used to, but my last four silver dollars, three Morgan's and a Peace, were found with a White's XLT, Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, White's MXT Pro and Teknetics Omega, in that order. Oh, there's another thing to consider when hunting any older site, maybe not a park but other older places where we might encounter high conductive coins and that is small caches of coins. Not just ghost towns or homesteads or far away rural farms, but even more modern places.
There are folks who lived through the depression and even though we were in 'modern times' they still didn't always trust a bank and liked to have money available close to home, and I use one of my grandmothers as an example. She used to hide silver dollars and silver halves around the house in different containers. They would occasionally get moved around so kids, grandkids and company wouldn't find it. Some of us knew where it was most of the time, but we respected her decision, didn't tamper with it, and really envied her determination to 'be prepared'. We would stumble upon it in a linen closet or some other place, and she didn't even tell my granddad where it was.
In the '50s, '60s and '70s when they took a trip to Las Vegas, when machines spit out coins instead of paper, she would bring home 'left-over' small winnings of silver halves and dollars and secret them around the house just to be prepared for their next trip. Then about '82 she had a terrible stroke and although she lived for a while, she lost her ability to speak and her memory and was almost as lost as the hidden coins. Years later my mother found them when they were cleaning house to put my granddad in a care facility and sell the house. She also washed the drapes hanging in the living room and found old $20 bills in the bottom hem lining from end-to-end.
Remembering that and a couple of small good coin caches I have encountered, I set up another test scenario to duplicate an old silver coin cache. I used a plastic pill bottle and some silver coins I had found and I stacked them up inside. First a silver Morgan dollar, then a silver Peace dollar, then 7 silver Half-Dollars. This would make a nifty little silver coin stash to find and it provided an interesting test. Today I have the Peace Dollar in my 50-target test tube, but use the Morgan Dollar, 5 Walking Liberty and 2 Franklin silver halves to evaluate any detector. Since you are interested in finding high conductive coins, this makes a good detector test.
Not all detectors will signal on this stack of silver coins on top of the ground in a Discriminate mode, even at the lowest Discrimination setting, so you know 'depth' and 'bad ground' and 'rusty iron targets' are not going to help make the performance get any better. Passing different field test scenarios helps us make detector and coil selections we want, and that's why I like to have more than one detector in my personal arsenal.
I can't spend a lot of time on my feet to hunt a wide open older park like I used to and I select easier to work sites most of the time that are older. The only FTP model that works for me in my selected sites is the Omega, and that's also the FTP model that I found worked best for me when I was able to devote time and effort to working big grassy parks. I have had two T2's, two G2's and two Euro-Tek Pro's, but won't have another.
I've had four Omegas and learned their weaknesses, but also appreciate what they can do. The Omega can't pass the NBPT, but it still works pretty well in old towns sites and other dated places I like to hunt. I am not so brand loyal so as to limit myself and I own and use what works best for me. For the needs you want I could suggest several detectors to consider of different brands, but in respect of the Teknetics Forum I'll suggest you consider an Omega for what you're looking for of the FTP products as it just might work best for you.
Monte
