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Infinium performances against Minelab PI detectors

E

ed217

New member
Before buying a Garrett Infinium, I would be sure that the performances of this unit are equivalent or better than Minelab PI units (SD, GPX...)

What are the real performances of the Infinium and is the discrimination effective (compared or not to Minelab's) ?

Thank you for your answers.
 
Wish I could afford a Minelab PI just to try one out but since owning the Infinium I have not felt the need for anything else.
Adrian SS
 
Minelabs will outperform Infinium but it should...ITS $5000...wow thats alot of gold/treasure to pay for it. I have almost paid for my new Infinium with nuggets after only having it for 2 months. Good luck.

Alan
 
Minelabs are very good on small nuggets but can be noisier than the Infinium in hot ground.
On large nuggets 10gms and up there is not a lot of difference between the Infinium and minelabs when each is fitted with the same type and size coil.
The iron discrimination of the Infinium is vastly superior to the minelabs in that it can discriminate very deep.
The minelabs produce more pleasing tones than the Infinium.
The minelabs can be tailored to the ground conditions and nugget size, but they can be confusing when trying to work out what settings to use.
The Infinium works great without the need to fiddle with programs or timings and it is waterproof and will operate in all ground conditions.

I suppose, in a nut shell, if you are really really, really serious about your gold detecting and you you spend months at a time out in the gold fields then go with a 6000 dollar minelab, but I tell you now if you want a way better than average chance of finding gold and you do not want to break the bank then the Infinium is pretty hard to beat dollar for dollar, versatility and ability..
Cheers,
Adrian SS
 
In fact I need a versatile machine to use inland where are many small iron trash, and on the beach,on the dry and the wet part of it and also underwater (just the first meter, I'm not a diver) ; I NEED the best discrimination, so I think the Infinium is the best choice, but I'm not totally sure for the moment.
 
Give the Excalibur and the Whites dual field PI some consideration and also the Whites TDI if you don't mind a bit of a learning curve.
The Excalibur is great in the surf and has good discrimination. The dual field is dynamite at the beach but not so flash in the gold fields, The TDI will do it all but is not waterproof. The Tesoro Sand Shark is a great beach machine but does not like hot rocks or lots of iron trash.
The infinium does it all and is waterproof but like all PI detectors it is super good at finding iron trash even though it has a good iron discriminator, you would need to use a small coil with the Infinium in high iron trash areas.,
If you will be working high trash areas then maybe you should consider a VLF with good discrimination and ground tracking ability but also remember that using any discrimination when looking for gold will guarantee that you will miss a lot of small gold in the gold fields and at the beach.
When I am beach hunting I will only use discrimination if I am looking for a particular range of target types.
Cheers Adrian ss
 
((((remember that using any discrimination when looking for gold will guarantee that you will miss a lot of small gold in the gold fields and at the((((( beach)))))
Adrian SS
is 100% on the money !
try not to use discrimination on the beach most pro beach hunters never do!!!!
 
Just make sure you know what wer're talking about when we're talking about discrim on the Infinium. It's actually reverse discrimination, hence the name. You can't walk around in reverse discrimination, unless you only want ti pick up iron and silver. When you get a signal that you want to check, you then turn the knob onto rev disc and then you analise that tone. When you're finished, you turn the knob back to where you had it before. I like this, very much.

I know people don't like it when people say these things, but for some strange reason, I don't dig a lot of iron at the beach, not much more than my Excalibur. However, the beaches in my areas are well searched.

As for gold, the name of the game is small nuggets deep.
 
The discrimination of the Infinium can be used like a basic VLF type discriminator but without the range.
When you get a signal keep scanning the tat get while slowly increasing the disc from zero and note the point where the signal drops out or changes from
HI/LO to LO/HI or visa Visa. By doing this as a bench test and testing various target types you will learn their response in the Infinium and so you can then use the discriminator to help get an idea of what type of target the Infinium is detecting but like most discriminators the results are a rough guide only.
The Reverse discrimination feature is primarily designed to separate gold from iron (in gold field conditions) when the disc control is cranked all the way round to the Iron Check position. Other alloy mixes of gold and silver and other non ferrous metals can produce tone change or signal drop out point at various positions of the disc control setting. I do not use this feature at the beach because I dig all targets; Sure I end up with a lot of trash in my bag but my good target return rate is much higher than when I use discrimination. When I want to find coins only, I will use a different detector that I will set up to respond to the coins That I am searching for and even then I tend to dig everything because beach digging is easy.
Cheers,
Adrian SS




























.
 
I just need to distinguish between iron and no iron, because I don't really believe that any detector can tell : "it's iron, it's copper, it's gold" ; too difficult and too hazardous...

So if then Infinium can tell me : it's iron - it's not iron, it's OK for me...
 
The only thing that the minelabs have is the coil size. They can find a tiny match head size nugget that is two foot deep. The best I can do is a .3 gram at less than 6inches with my Infinium. So I am going to pickup a GPX 4500 this fall From Chris At Arizona Outback He is a really nice guy. Dont worry I will keep my Infinium as I do use it in the rivers and on the beaches. When I go to the beaches I go for the gold not coins and junk. I have found one diamond ring over the years and it has paid for all the detectors I could ever need. almost 2 full carats. Boy did it sell well. I tried with ten different outfits to get coils made for the Infinium and no go I offered a lot of cash for it as well. I mean ten large to come up with a prototype is not chump change in my book.
73
dray
 
Hi,

"They can find a tiny match head size nugget that is two foot deep."

That is absurd. Nothing can find a match head sized nugget 2 feet deep. And yes, I have a GPX-4500.

Steve Herschbach
 
Hi,

Depends what you want to use the detector for. For water hunting the Infinium is the clear winner.

Or are you talking nugget hunting? The Infinium is roughly on par with the SD2100 if you use the stock coils. The SD easily hits bigger gold deeper if larger coils are used - coils you can't get for the Infinium.

If you are nugget detecting, the discrimination on both units is a close to worthless as it gets. Might not be the case coin hunting but for nuggets do not trust PI discrimination.

The Infinium is no match for the GPX-4500. Why would it be? It costs 1/4 as much.

Steve Herschbach
 
Hi,

Can anyone advise whether Minelab coils can be adapted to work with an Infinium if a cable adapter is made to to compensate for the different connectors and wiring between the two units?

I have been told that Minelab coils will work for a while and then the Infinium front end blows up.

I don't know how true this is. It surprises me to think that the front end would be susceptible to signal overload to the point that it would blow up ?

If anything, I'd expect that the driving MOSFET or transistor would be maybe susceptible due to a difference in inductance between the coils, the extra back EMF caused by increased inductance, or maybe due to lower series resistance causing an excessive current to be drawn on TX pulses ....

Any thoughts out there?

Has anyone compared the coils physically to determine what the differences are?

Thanks,

Echo.
 
Also Infinium coils are physically different and the discrimination and reverse discrimination function will not work with the minelab coils.
 
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