Manual ground balance on a XL Pro?

[dward51]

Is there a way to manually ground balance a XL Pro?

For those who would follow up with the obvious question of "why would you want to..." I have a 15" Magnum Force coil that is a booger to set the signal balance on using auto ground balance. It goes deep, but getting it just right takes a little work when setting it up. There seems to be a very fine line between stability and loss of depth, so I was wondering if manually ground balancing might help or if it can even be done on the XL Pro.

Thanks...

 

[Butch in Colorado]

...There is no ability to manually set the GEB. It is done with the auto balance circuitry that the XL Pro is designed with. The only way you can acheive a manual balance is with a 5900 or the older manual balanced machines.

The 5900 can still be found on the second hand market. And you can find a good one for a reasonable price if you watch the forums and the bay. I have both 5900 and an XL Pro and I use them both quite regularly.

 

[Bill G]

I would say if you put the XL Pro in auto track , pump the coil up and down over clean ground let it balance with the bigger coil, check it by pulling the pin point trigger and pumping the coil to make sure it is balanced.. Then put it in the lock position to lock it in. This should be about as close to manually ground balancing the detector as you can get.

Take Care,
Bill G

 

[Monte]

occasionally use the stock 950, and regardless of the coil in use, I will ALWAYS prefer to set the GB and lock it.

My preferred method is to hold the coil about 8"-12" above the ground while in the GEB Normal mode (selected or with the trigger pulled while in the GEB Disc. mode), toggle to Air and after the immediate beep I lower the coil to about

 

[dward51]

Thanks Monte. As usual your advise is golden.

I'll have to try that the next time I take the 15" coil out looking for CW shell fragments at the local battlefield. They all seem to be in the 10-18" deep range which is where the big coil comes in handy. The shallow stuff has all been picked over as this is a fairly often hunted field. Those heavy suckers seem to plow right in deep. Right now it's tough digging in the hard baked red clay and it's too hot to do much deep relic hunting anyway.

Using the auto-ground balance the signal balance seemed to require turning "way" down (seems unusually low compared to the other coils I have, but they are no where this big either. I would estimate it required about 25% of scale range to be stable). That's why I was wondering about manually balancing the system.

 

[Monte]

that's because it sees a lot more ground. I can almost always run a much higher SB setting with a smaller coil.

Monte

 

[dward51]

Now that I think about you comment about coil size & signal balance, it makes perfect sense.

I guess this is one of the reasons I can run the signal balance considerably higher using a 4x6 DD bluemax in chips on the local playgrounds. Lower for the 15", well now that is a "doh" moment for me after you pointed it out. I never really thought about it before.

PS, I really like that coil (the 4x6 bluemax), you can sweep a playground chip area pretty quick and it will softly hit on stuff anywhere near the coil, not just beneath it (under the coil is rock solid of course). I know you are not overly fond of the the 4x6DD, but I've had good results with mine.