OK, here's another one...

[Anonymous]

In the limited time I used it I did not see a difference in depth. However, after hearing so many meter readers saying it brings the ID of a deep coin back, that leads me to believe it does get 1-2 inches deeper on coin size targets.
Problem is I'm so used to the stock changing coils actually makes me dizzy. I tried that monster 18" for about 20 minutes, and after I was head spun for about ten when going back to the stock.

 

[Anonymous]

One park used to be a town square in the 1860's, I would say 70% of the field is nearly void of trash, even nails are sparse. One can detect for a good 100 feet and not hear a single target. I can crank my sens up pretty high there, 28-30 with the stock coil, 26 on the WOT and it runs stable. But this field is a sink hole in the spring and grass grows like crazy and its quite common to dig targets in the 9-12 inch range. I have dug many a harmonica reed and shoe tap in the 10-14 inch range, even miniballs.
BUT...turn your gain up to 8 and the faint high pitch falses that were barely audible at 7 are now loud enough to be a bother and you get one about every other swing. Pass the coil back over them and most vanish. Turn the gain to 9 or 10 and its an impossible falsing nightmare. It also renders the X1 probe useless, touch the soil and it falses. Thats just the soil condition there and it is a strange soil, very dense sticky muck.
Park 2 which is only about 10 blocks from park 1 is completely different. Its a light, very dark sandy soil and theres no shortage of iron. Trash is light but the soil hates a high sens or gain. Sens for stable hunting about 26 with the stock coil, WOT was not really usable there. Gain at 8 is like the gain at 10 at the other park, the X1 is also not usable.
So when I say you can't run your gain that high around here, its not a question of your expertise with the machine, its simply that the soil won't allow it. Don't you think I would be running my gain at 10 over at the 1860 sink hole where I dug a couple hundred old silvers if I could? You bet I would. If whatever is causing the high falsing would shutup I'm quite sure there is another layer of slightly deeper coins there to be found.
I have 2 Explorer XS and 1 Explorer II and they all react the same to those parks.
Parks 3 and 4 do allow a higher gain, the issue over there is the tons of iron nails. At park 3 they tore down 60 houses in 1860 to build part of the park, another good portion of it was a cemetary and so bug mondo rusty nails are everwhere. At park 4 the dumped 1800's era nails, bricks, chunks of iron all over the place. Some areas of these two parks are so infested with iron they are not even worth hunting until the ground starts to dry out and the iron shuts up a bit. The iron is so grabby at the coil its tought to get a signal even running IM at -16. Its tollerable using ferrous but conductive tones would result in high pitched falses virtually every swing, often several in a swing. I just don't see that being productive.
Another site I think a high gain would be tough is over in Mass near Tod where there are some serious radio towers blasting out the worse interference I have seen to date. You have to keep the stock coil flat to the ground, if its tipped up a little when you set it down to dig it goes nuts and I can't even turn the probe on.
None of this is meant to poopoo on your approach. In fact I think a setup of a gain of 10, with conductive tones, and deep turned off would result in finding deeper targets than any ferrous setup could hope to, its just not a setup that works at these sites and so the point is for others reading this is, no setup is ideal for all site conditions.

 

[Anonymous]

Lets talk DD verses concentric coils, specifically how the different geometries of the magnetic fields might be useful to us. Coils are just tools, attachments, different size coils have their proper place depending on site conditions but what about different coil geometries?
People will say the DD coil is superior because its more stable in bad ground and you can slice through trash easier with it. People will say concentric coils are superior because they go deeper and are easier to pinpoint with. Neither statement is true I think and rarely is the following discussed.
Lets pick a depth range, say 6-9 inches. Thats the "paydirt" as the gold prospectors say. Whats down there mixed with the good targets we are looking for? In my case a bunch of dang rusty nails. Lets compare a 10 inch DD to a 10 inch concentric...what is the detection footprint at that depth range? The 10 inch is about 2x10 inches but the concentric is maybe 2x2...which would be better able to pick between the nails? Easy the concentric, and since a 10 inch concentric will go deeper than a 10 inch DD the single will be stronger.
Another interesting way to look at this is, if your targets are say 10-12 inches deep, how much mineralized ground is a DD gulping at that depth? 10x2 yet the concentric...2x2. Granted in the 1-5 inch range the concentric is gulping more ground and if the good targets were in that range a DD makes more sense. But when you start thinking in 3D I can see a concentric having its place in my toolbox of coils.

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Charles,
Really want to try a concentric on my explorer. Are you going to go into business or do I have to wait for KellyCo?
Anyways, understand how the smaller pattern at depth with the concentric would help snipe out coins, especially if you overlap swings massively. But... What about all the ground sampled at the top of the cone for the concentric. My understanding is that any trash here would mask any goodies below. Does you experience suggest that that is not the case?
Chris

 

[Anonymous]

What I'm trying to tell you is after so many hours all that falsing racket makes sense to me. I guarantee anyone that's new, or uses ferrous on a regular basis, would never hear through all the falsing crap I hear. I have no doubt your park is brutal, but I'm telling you what I listen to is brutal. I look mostly for small buttons that come in low tone and no matter how much falsing there is I can still easily pick them out.
That's only speaking for the types of sites I hunt here which are different in the way that they have been disturbed. There is a very good chance I'd be a fish out of water in your park but we'd never know that unless I showed up someday to hunt. The bottom line is you can run ferrous high sens. and hear a million noises and know what they mean, well same thing for me in Conductive.

 

[Anonymous]

Thats the same thing I heard, those darn concentrics don't compare to the DD in trash because they pick up trash anywhere at the top of the cone while the DD just picks up down the center. Fact or fiction?
Wave a coin 1 inch over the outer edge of the stock DD coil and you will get a signal. Hey thats not supposed to happen whats going on here!!! Try 2 inches, 3 inches. The fact is the DD is strongest down the center but will pick up near surface trash anywhere along the windings. The coils are balanced in such a way that absent any metal, no signal is induced in the receive coil. Introduce a metal object and it disturbs the magnetic field (upsets the balance) inducing a signal in the receive coil and the detector responds.
So when we compare the top of the cone for a concentric, say the 0-3 inch range to the 0-3 inch range of the DD is there really that much difference? Not really. And if the trash is extreme then one would need to use a smaller coil in either case.
That said lets talk trash in the 4-8 inch range. When I tested my concentric coil last season it really surprised me, it was able to lock onto a coin 6-7 inches down, rock solid signal with no hint of any nearby trash, yet the first two targets I dug had a trash target above the coin...a trash target I had discriminated out! First was a button, larger than a nickel. I saw it and thought what the hell? I waved the probe over it and it nulled. Couple inches further down was the wheat cent. Second was a beaver tale, again I waved the probe over it and the machine nulled, again a couple inches further down was a wheat cent.
There had been no hint of either trash target when I was scanning the coin. I have dug thousands of targets with the DD coil and don't recall that happening, I usually hear both targets or get a null and a hit as I sweep. The cone shaped field just let me sneak by the trash target and lock onto the coin.
How might this be useful? Well certainly the concentric coil will pick off a few the DD could't get but also I think this will let me run some descrimination with less worry about missing targets due to nulling on nearby trash. The Explorer has great descrimination features, this coil might let me use them.
Of course we are talking about a certain type of hunting here, if you want to cover a lot of ground then the DD is king. But if you want to pick over a productive spot that you cleaned out with the DD, overlapping swings trying to get between the trash and good targets, a sniping concentric is another tool in the bag.

 

[Anonymous]

Charles,
Can't and won't argue the points you made as in my experience they are valid. I had a good laugh about a year ago when Dankowski made a post regarding the 10.5" CZ coil. It was a revelation to him that it would see stuff at mid range depths and a little deeper that the 8" coil would not due to masking. I had known that to be true for some time. I have hunted many sites where the larger concentric coil unmasks targets due to the size/shape of the field getting around the trash object and allowing a good signal to be heard. Many times they are only one way back and forth signals so you still have to hunt from different directions to get em all.
Last year I started hunting some of these same sites with the Advantage and DD coils. Guess what, it was able to see some really deep stuff that was masked to the concentrics. I was routinely digging coins and tokens much deeper than the concentrics would get in the iron. Not a lot of them as they have to be there of course but, the average depth was much deeper than the CZ's ever got at those sites.
The lesson to me is, do not limit yourself to one machine and one or two coils.
Tom

 

[Anonymous]

because it would be so much easier dropping the $$$ to buy some of these coils. What you say makes sense but I would still have to witness actual targets with both coils to be convinced.
I may be one of the only ones that think a DD has the advantage in iron. The problem is I have only used a concentric on a Garrett, and the DD on the Explorer. The reason I believe the DD is better is like you say, the ability to hear all targets opposed to just going inbetween with a concentric. In my hunting I don't need a clear sound, just a hint of soemthing being there and I'm digging the hole. A concetric coil either gives you a solid target, no target, or one on the middle that has you guessing. I may be way off base with that because it's my Garrett mind talking. Now with the Explorer and DD it seems to punch through as well as going around. This year I think I'll buy 3 different coils and spend an entire day in real conditions comparing signals to see what they can do that the stock can't.
I'm so used to that DD I can't even think of how it would be to detect with an Explorer and concentic coil. That's just weird dude.