Tony,
VLF detectors fall into classes and they are General Purpose, Gold Prospecting, Coin Hunting, Relic Hunting, and several others that are not of interest to your question.
General Purpose detector do a good job of providing the user with a detector that can be used in most of the above but will do better in some area than others. As an example one that is designed for coin hunting and gold prospecting will most likely not do well in both areas. The demands of a Gold Prospecting detector to find flour gold or tiny gold nuggets and best operating frequency is not often found on a machine for coin hunting. The demands of a detector for Coin and Relic Hunting are similar so you often find a detector will do just a good in one of these areas as the other.
However, you ask about Coin Hunting and the Explorer. The Explorer series and new Quatro are desinged primarily for relic and coin hunting. As such they have adjustments that enable them to excell in these areas. (Attached is a photo of detectors I am currently using.) I have been very involved in using and testing detectors in my retirements so might be able to help you with question about others that are not in the photo. All of the major manufactures have outstanding detectors. I don't have negative comments about any of them and think personal preferences and skills are major consideration in which machine we prefer.
These following are reasons why you might want to consider a Minelab Explorer series or the new Quatro. The new Quatro seems to me to be more specific to Coin Hunting and has less adjustments and keeps the high performance standards of the ExplorerII. As you know these are multiple frequency detectors which have advantages over single frequency machines. A major advantage is they way they respond to soil minerals. Multiple frequency machines can be better balanced to not respond to iron oxides and wet salt.
The Explorer series are great discriminatiors and my personal preferece for high trash coin hunting. I believe that is due to the number of frequencies used to probe a target and the power of the microprocessr to ID the types of metal. It appears to me that there are approximately 512 or more notches that can be set to accept or reject a target. This is a major advantage as most coin hunting is in areas where there is a lot of trash meatals to contend with. The Iron Mask mode is of tremendous value in areas of hunting where you find a lot of refined iron that you want to detect for relics or reject if the interest is coins in a trashy area.
Depth on a dime is anwhere from the surface of the soil down to about 11 to 12 inches depending on user experience and soil conditions. When I say soil condition it is interesting that detection dept is most often increased if the soil is damp instead of dry or has a lot of rock and rubble. These conditons are the same for all machines so this is common to all brands. Most dimes I have found in about 40 years or so of detecting have not be deeper than around 8 inches. The vast majority were no more than 6 to 7 inches. I am talking about older dimes, seated, barber, and the like.
The Explorer will do an outstanding job of discriminaiton, has great depth, is well designed, and will give you years of good service. With any detector it takes a little time to learn how the machine responds but is well worth the time spent to learn how to use the detector. If you look at the finds posted on the forum you see just how effective many have become with the Explorer.
HH, Cody
