More on coils

[Anonymous]

Since the Xterra coil has six pins, has anyone given any thought to the idea that the coils may have transmit on different pins depending on the coil and frequency? It could be that only four or five pins are needed for a coil to operate, and that is much cheaper and more reliable than a chip or two.
And people keep bringing up,"balancing out salt." Wet salt is a positive signal like metal, and must be discriminated.

 

[Cody]

You are making the points I have mentioned several times. Why put a chip in a coil just to switch frequencies?

Wet salt is positive and must be rejected for ground balance as is black sand or iron minerals. Black sand and wet salt are very different so no single frequency detector can reject both at the same point in time. This has been a problem for ground rejection from day one. Multiple frequency can use two frequencies to reject both.

So, a primary question to some users is how does the detector perform when working a beach with wet salt and iron minerals. This is mostly a problem when going from sand saturated with wet salt to dry sand with iron minerals. One does not want to constantly ground balance all the time. Auto balance attempts to address this and other problems due to changing soil minerals.

 

[Anonymous]

You know the Fisher 1280 Aquanaut has been around forever, and works about as well in salt as any, and it is single frequency, as was the old Whites Coin Master-5 which was a straight VLF circuit, non-motion.
Ground minerals give a NEGATIVE reaction to a detector, and wet salt gives a POSITIVE reaction just like metal. They are entirely different.
The Xterras have many interesting possibilities with the way they are set up. A logical progression might be to offer a loop that 'pin activates' both frequencies at once-you could almost consider this a modular approach, to updating the detector with new advances.
But I wonder, at this price level, wouldn't a person be better off with a Sovereign?

 

[Cody]

There are a number of ways to compensate for wet salt and iron minerals at the beach. One of the detectors I intend to keep is a Sovereign. My interest in the X-terra and a couple of others is not to "out perform" any of the detectors I am using. It is as a light weight detector to hunt in trashy locations. I will be swinging an Explorer11, DFX, or Sovereign at other times. I am looking for a really good light weight trash machine and this is one of two I considering. I have not traded from the Elite to the GT as I don't need ground track but that is a nice feature if you are looking at the Elite or GT.

Depending on preferences and intended purpose I would sure look at the Sovereign GT from what I am seeing in your questions.

 

[Anonymous]

I have the original Sovereign with the full panel of controls. More than a few people have told me they prefer that version over the latter ones.

 

[Cody]

I often hear the same thing and like the one I had. Sometimes I wonder why I have gone to another detector when I liked the one I had. You know how that is.........new detector fever.

 

[Anonymous]

Sometimes you just fall in love with the technology, and how and why it works. It would be nice to have the money to design ones own detector.
[Someday somebody is going to make a concentric for the Sovereign.]