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Need input on Quattro

A

Anonymous

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Thinking about buying a Minelad. I'm not sure I want to go with the Explorer because I don't want to spend the next six months learning how to use it. I would like to know what people think of the Quattro. What kind of depth, how much learning curve, etc. Thanks, Tony
 
I have used the Quattro since January and now have an Explorer II. I had great success with the Quattro. I've been out 3 times with the Explorer II now and although I know I still have a lot to learn, I've already had two highly successful hunts with it. Now I'm not new to detecting. I've used a Garrett GTAx 750, Whites DFX, Fisher CZ-70 (still have that), Minelab Sovereign Elite, Excalibur, Quattro, and now the Explorer II. And I did read up on the Explorer and test it in my coin garden. It's not a tough machine to learn. And there are all the answers you will need on these forums.

My first 3 hunts:


http://www.findmall.com/read.php?19,159015,159015#msg-159015

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?19,159634,159634#msg-159634

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?19,159968,159968#msg-159968
 
The Quattro is a good detector and it get some excellent depth to it. Like any detector there is a learning curve and with the multi tones it may be longer than some like. Between the Quattro and the Explorer the Quattro is easier to use as it has less you can do with it compared to the Explorer. Switching between the mode of operation is much faster with the Quattro to check your targets. The Quattro only give you a visual display for conductivity where as the Explorer you have both the conductivity and the ferrous of the target.
One thing I did notice with the quatrro is slow recovery so some target audio will carry over to the next target, so you may have to stop and let the threshold reset if you notice too many targets sounding the same. I found when I got one to lock on to a good tone I would lift the coil off the target and let the threshold reset then go back to that target and get a accual ID of that target and not one of one it seen before. To pinpoint I found I had to wait 2 or 3 seconds after I got the threshold back before I could get a pinpoint signals and to most may never notice it unless they pinpoint fast after you move off the target.
Now I did notice that when comparing signals with my Quattro verses my freinds Explorer I got eveyone he did and some of the deeper ones seem to lock on better with the Quattro with it slower recovery.
Both are great and both have a learning curve that is differnt than one another, the Explorer you can do more with as you have more adjustments to adjust or misadjust, but if you start out in the factory settings I feel both learning curve will be about the same lenght of time to do. These both take time in accual hunting to get to know, so if you only plan on going out once a week for a couple of hours it will take you a while to learn either one. It is recomended to leave both in factory presets for 40 hours to get to know the detector and what it is telling you.
Either one will do well for you and the more you use it the more you will understand and the better the finds will be.

Good luck
Rick
 
great detector ideal land or beach, switch on and go ,easy to set up and use ,very good deapth ,much cheaper than the explorer, does the same job, as a detector hard to fault except for the weight ,but sliding it along the sand on the beach no problems .
 
Tony,

Not sure where you are in SC but if you are but if you want, get in touch with me and maybe we can get together and you can try both of them to see what you think. I'm near the NC border near Charlotte.

Andy Sabisch
 
Hello,

Purchased Quattro (1st detector) 1st of this year. Absolutely "love" it. I researced, read posts, etc. for a month before purchasing it. I had same hesitations as you seem to have trying to decide between Explorer and the Quattro. Do not have any regrets with my decision.

The Quattro goes DEEP at beach! I have "shagged" a lot of stuff 15" and deeper. It is easy to learn and operate. I suggest reading all the previous posts that you can find (Virginia Beach Mike's posts convienced me to go Quattro), read the Mastering the Quattro book and the Operating Instructions (which can be found and downloaded from Minelab Site).

I use the standard coil and found it to be satisfactory for beach hunting. Target Identification along with the pre-set functions makes it easy to operate. The PIN Pointing works extremely well.

Good luck with your decision.
 
I read your posts where you feel you're getting better results with the Exp II, but the Quattro is supposed to be, at least depth-wise, identical to the Exp II. The similarities are numerous and the differences, we're told are some programmability and other bells and whistles such as dual target ID, etc. You mentioned the iron mask adjustments as one reason, but are there some other reasons justifing a switch to the Exp II? Just curious.
 
My main reason is my quest for the ultimate detector, I suppose, and the fact that I felt I was ready to overcome my fear of the dreaded "Learning curve" of the Explorer II. Which I now feel is way overblown. I like a challenge and I like to "Tweak", so I wanted to see how it would be with the extra capabilities.

Now as for doing BETTER with the Explorer II, I never said that. If you've been following my posts here and earlier in the Explorer & Quattro forum (before this one existed) and on the Minelab forum as well as the Beach and Water Hunting forums, I've done extremely well with the Quattro. And since I've only had the Explorer II out 3 times, I would say it was a little early to say I was doing better with it. I'm doing very well with it, that's true.

In the short time I've had it, I will say this. They are both very deep on the beach. The Quattro MAY have a little depth over the Explorer on the beach. The Explorer MAY have a little depth over the Quattro on the land. It's too early to say for sure and probably too close to care anyway. I like the dual-digital display on the Explorer II a lot. I like being able to see the ferrous content as well as the conductive. I like the Smartfind screen and the better disc abilities of the Explorer II. But I also found the Quattro to be very fun to hunt with and a very capable machine. I dug some of my deepest targets ever with it...deeper than my CZ-70 and that says A LOT.

So, in answer to your question...um, what WAS your question again? :lol

 
Shagger, I'm very happy that you like the Quattro, particularly since I steered you that way. :) It's definitely a sweet machine and you now know firsthand what I said about it being amazing at the beach. The reason I chose the Quattro over the Explorer II as my first FBS machine was for the same reasons you cited. But it was during those early days with the Quattro, posting over on the Explorer forum, that the lure and the curiosity of the Explorer was ever-present. Now that I have it, I see it also is an excellent machine and not nearly as scary as I expected. You can't go wrong with either, that's for sure.

Now if Minelab comes out with an FBS water machine (Explorabur???) we are going to have a problem. My wife said if I get any more detectors, she's gone.

Man, I'm gonna miss her! :lol
 
Hmmm. Well, I read where you had visited a well worked area and picked up a few coins that you may have walked over (or near?) with the Quattro. So I surmised that it may pick up a few out of heavy iron junk that you couldn't hear with the Quattro, possibly due to the slower response, but not sure.
I've owned them both too, and only sold the Exp II only because of the weight/balance issue. After a few months of beach use, I developed tennis elbow and inflammation in my shoulder. Harnesses didn't help much. Still, it was no doubt the most accurate ID at depth of any detector I've ever used, and very deep as you mentioned. The Quattro is my second try with FBS (starting out with a harness this time) and since I dig it all anyway, the dual target ID on the Exp II is nice, but not essential. My aim of the question was to find out what other options on the II you feel might gain you depth and increase finds. BTW, I didn't find the controls on the II very hard to learn either.
 
Ok, well that's true too. I have a slew of places (as we all probably do) that I have hunted over the years. I started with a Garrett 750 and got lots of good stuff there...bullets, buttons, silver coins, etc. This I did for a year. When I got my DFX, I had "hunted out" all of these places. With the DFX, they started to produce again...fairly well. I hunted with that for about 6 months. I then got a Fisher CZ-70. And all the places I cleaned out with the Garrett and the Whites were producing again...almost like they hadn't been hunted! And yes, that machine is better than both of the others. But by that time, so was I. I had learned to be slow and methodical...I had many great finds under my belt and the experience from a few years of detecting.

So when I had beat these spots up with the CZ and got the Sovereign Elite, I didn't find MUCH there that I missed, but I did find SOME. But now I was hunting with a threshold machine again, like the Whites...but this time with significant depth too. And like I said, it didn't find a LOT of stuff the CZ missed, but it found some.

So when I got the Quattro, I immediately went to the same spots and found a few nice finds I had missed with all the others. Particularly at some sites that were iron-heavy. And it showed me that an FBS machine with serious ground canceling ability could do a thing or two a dual-freq (or even a 17 freq) machine couldn't.

Now here's the part I need to say to be fair to the Quattro. I didn't hunt these places with the Quattro the way I hunted them with the other machines...as in, again and again and again. I hunted them a couple of times each and found stuff each time. But by now the finds are VERY tough, because these sites were worked over by my friends and I over a long period with our best skills and machines. So it's tough hunting. I spent enough time with the Quattro (6 months) to know that I did want to go for the Explorer II...that I could master it. And while I have a ways to go to do that, I am doing well with it for several reasons. I KNOW these sites...and the spots there that have produced. I go S-L-O-W now, having learned that if you want to get what everybody else has missed, you need to be patient. And I have a machine that is arguably the top of the heap and is giving me more info than any prior machine to convince me to dig or dissuade me from it. And for me, the combination of the wider tone variance, the dual-digital mode, and the Smartfind screen...in conjunction with the additional Iron Mask capability (as well as the capability to completely un-mask it) is causing me to dig more stuff than any of the others. And a lot of that stuff is turning out to be good stuff.

Up until now I had one machine that I will keep forever...the CZ-70. I think I may now have another. You can probably add my Excal to that list too, but I hesitate because I feel that Minelab may come out with an FBS water machine. If they do, I may have 3. :)
 
I heard this exchange at a recent club meeting. The guy had just won two or three categories for find of the month.

"I found all these items hunting that old stagecoach line many of us hunted years ago."

"I thought you weren't finding anything there anymore."

"I wasn't, but that's before I got this Explorer II and started digging a foot for coins"

Before I got mine, I wouldn't have believed a remark like that but I do now, and you probably will too. I know I've dug several at least that deep (or deeper) on the beach. Personally, 15-18" is as far as I want to dig a target, and I have dug spoons, wire - even half dollars at that depth several times. You probably know digging that stuff out of wet sand is real work and not fun, especially for me because I'm still nursing a couple of damaged vertebrae (C5 and C6) from an injury a few years ago.
Have a gold weekend.
 
Yes, I do believe it.

This thing is starting to scare me. I'm becoming very confident that wherever I go I am going to find stuff I and others have missed. I was back at my well-hunted field today at lunch, just for 30 minutes or so. I dug ONE good target...a VERY worn Large Cent. I'll need to slick it with some olive oil just to get a picture of it...it's toast. But at that location, in over 5 years of hunting it on and off I have found many things, but never an LC. The signal was a beauty too. And it was only like 6" deep, but it was surrounded by iron. I had the Explorer II in IM -16 and was letting it sing it's song, not paying attention to most of it, when that 01 - 29/30 signal came through lound and clear. I knew it was good as I dug it, but didn't expect an LC. Picture later, but don't expect much. I'm just tickled though, because I know when I have more time that place is going to produce a lot more. I haven't even gotten warmed up yet! :)

 
Hi Andy. I am interested in purchasing a new detector and was wondering about the Minelab Quattro Mp detector. I have heard great things about it, and have talked to alot of different dealers too. I have heard that it has a learning curve to it, but I would'nt mind taking the time to learn it really well if that's what it takes. I was wondering how you felt about other detectors that use single or double frequencies, compared to the Minelab's multiple-frequecies? I have narrowed my decision down to either the Minelab Sovereign Elite, the Quattro, or a Fisher CZ 70 Pro. I have read that all are very good detectors. But I would like a dectector that automatically ground balances, and I know the two Minelabs I mentioned both do this, with the fisher needing to be manually set. I will mostly be hunting in "all-metal mode" since I like to dig "everything" anyways. I will mostly be hunting in large open farm fields also if that helps you in anyway. At the present moment, I have been leaning towards the Sovereign Elite, (really only because of the cost factor, not because I think one is better than the other). I know the Sovereign doesn't offer a digital meter reading of targets, like the Quattro, but I've heard most people eventually learn to listen to the tones more so than the readings on the screens. I was just wondering how you felt about the units I've talked about, and what you would suggest. I would'nt mind paying more if you really thought the Quattro was substantially better in some way. Thank's for any suggestions. My e-mail here is yogaguy1000@sbcglobal.net
 
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