MXT and the beach

[imalookin2]

I love my MXT but after a long time sitting it is up for sale. I used the salt setting and it works OK on my salt beaches but since I bought my Sovereign GT it has collected dust. My question is how many of you use the MXT on wet sand and is there tricks to make it settle down? I kept hearing it was not the best wet sand machine so I bought a BBS ML. Since then it has just sat. I wish I had more areas for dirt hunting in my area but I live a few miles from the beach and there are few locations except for tot lots and such. I hope I am not making a mistake but who knows. I know there is a good following for the MXT.

 

[norbyx]

I was selling my mxt as well bacause I thought I wasn't going to use it much... well I changed my mind and decided to keep it. The fact that it's a superbly easy machine to operate and offers a great performance made me change my mind. I have used the MXT on the wet beaches and it does have a decent performance, it tends to overload easy if you keep the presets, you have to lower the sensitivity to about 7 and it will just be fine.

 

[Aarong81]

Its really common for users to set the sensitivity too high. Its easy to think the higher the sensitivity the deeper it will detect. Its hard for me to explain exactly why but in many cases you can detect a bit deeper if you lower the sensitivity a little bit. One case would be in heavy trash, another is detecting in hotrocks and also in high ground mineralization.

If someone on here can explain the technical reason why this is the case go right ahead.

 

[Smudge]

No single frequency detector performs well on wet salt sand. They just can't do it.

You can make the function, yes, but at great loss of depth and sensitivity. And how effective they are depends on the composition of the beach you are at.

But performance overall in a wet salt environment is poor and it does not matter what brand you use.

The wet salt sand remains the domain of PI and dual/multi-frequency detectors, and even they have their limitations.

PI detectors will find every piece of tiny rusty iron and tin foil flakes out there.

Dual/multi-frequency detectors have poor sensitivty to micro gold jewlery, but most will hit on small gold pretty well.

 

[Tom Slick]

The best example I've heard for using less gain or lower sensitivity in highly mineralized soil is that too much sensitivity is like trying to use your high beams when driving in fog. The high beams cause too much light to be reflected back into your eye's making it difficult to see. In fog, you're much better off driving with your low beams. Too much gain or sensitivity in highly mineralized soil does the same thing. It make the detector unable to see targets as well as lowering the Sens.

 

[calibil]

I agree with Mr. Smudge , single freq machines don' t cut it in wet salt sand, GT yes, Mxt does work well in dry sand, the only single freq machine I haveever had good finds with in wet salt sand was the detector pro 2.4 freq, it has no salt subtract that the mxt-dfx has when set in beach mode (dfx) or mxt (salt) the detector pro 2.4 hits treasure in that (mystery range) that even the excals or cz's-dfx can't.

 

[SaltnPeppersPlace]

In my opinion the 300 12" coil is all I use for beaches. Galveston TX Works fine just lower your gain to balance out the high mineral soil and you can be in the salt sea water.non salt water beach and water works great as well just be patient.
HH good luck

 

[bigtim1973]

Switching to a DD type of coil will help also in the wet sand as it will have a narrower signal foot. Everyone thinks higher gain is better but in some cases it is not. It is trying to "see" through too much ground when gain is set too high. I do not always turn up the detectors settings in milder soil either. It allows the detector to just "see" the target more instead of trying to adjust automaically to different soil conditions the same time while detecting a piece of metal in the ground. Tim