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Quattro at the beach.

E

ekerce

New member
Hi, I've had this machine about 5 months and have had no luck at the beach. I've have a couple of questions for people that use this at the beach. 1. I've tried a couple of experiments like taking a penny or dime and putting it 3 or 4 inches down in the sand. Next, taking the quattro and swinging it over the buried coin and can't pick up crap. I've read stories that people are getting hits at 18 inches deep? What's going on? I have the machine set to a factory "coin" or "coin and jewelry" mode and can't detect that deep either. I've even tried all metal mode thinking I'll get greater depth but to no avail. Do you have to have the sensitivity set to a high 17,18, or maybe 20 setting? I've never messed with that setting. Always have it set to "Auto" If anybody can provide their best settings for the beach, please let me know, thanks in advanced. Also thinking about buying the book that everyone is talking about. Just a little skeptic at the moment because I'm not getting very good depth with this machine.

Thank you,
Eddie
 
Eddie, buy the book. tons of info in it. Also ,noticed you didnt say anything about noise cancel. find a spot with no signal and set the coil down on the sand, press noise cancel and let the machine go through its paces. then try hunting with it. If thats not it we'll try something else. scott
 
Sorry, forgot to mention I do go through that sequence of events before hunting. How often should I do the Noise Cancellation thing? I usually do that if I make any change to the detector (ie. change to another preprogram mode like coin, relic, etc...). Going to try messing with the sensitivity today to see if this helps. I'm going to try and bury some things to test depth, etc...

Thanks for the help,
Eddie
 
Wow, Eddie. Excuse me while I catch my breath and pick myself up off the floor after reading your post. It's not that I doubt you, but man o man, either there's something wrong with your particular unit or your not setting something right. I, too, HEARTLY agree that it's worth EVERY penny to buy the book by Andy Sabisch, Mastering the Quatro. I've never read a more comprehensive and informative book on ANYTHING, let alone about metal detectors. THIS IS THE BOOK. I really mean that. Set your sensitivity on auto, ground cancel, turn your audio up full blast, set your threshold just above hearing leval just for starters and try it again. I know for a fact that I've found pennys at a foot deep and some stuff even deeper. I'll put my self on the line here and say, from experience, this is a great detector and I'll back that up by all the posts you can read on the forum. Please get Andy's book, read it carefully, and honestly, if your still having problems, I'dd consider sending the detector in to Minelab to get it checked out. Mine is still working great at the beach and the parks, so in my opinion, it must be either your not doing something right or there's somehting wrong with that particular unit. Good luck and please let us know how things go in the near future with this. I'm certainly curious to say the least.:)
 
I think your problem is the sensitivity. I'm one of the original "18 inch guys" you speak of. I ran mine at 18 most of the time in the wet sand or dry sand and maybe 17 in the shallow water, where 18 was a little too "hot". I've seen the Quattro pull some incredible depth at the beach set that way. Also I would recommend the Coin/Jewelry mode. Never Coin, unless you don't like gold rings. But Coin/Jewelry will accept 0 to 40, so that will get you all the good stuff. If you like you could reject 39 and 40 but I wouldn't bother. The only other thing you need to do is make sure you keep the coil on the ground and go slow. If you hear a break in the threshold, double check the target that caused it and make sure that a loss of threshold doesn't become a good target. That's the purpose of the threshold, to tip you off to a target you would have missed with a non-threshold machine. Keeping in mind that deep targets will not ID as well as shallow ones, you need to take those "iffy" ones and work them from a few different angles sometimes before you hit the angle where you get a good ID. As for the Noise Cancel, you should run it when you start hunting, when you have changed sensitivity, or when you get around a source of interference...like another detector or some power source...it can work wonders in that situation. Not just for you, but for others. There are a number of machines that will go nuts and/or cause the Quattro to go nuts when operating within say 25 feet or so. Run the Noise Cancel on the Quattro and they both quiet right down.
 
I think if you have gone thru the whole procedure.. there is possibly something wrong with your machine
"I finally got to PCB yesterday. Came to the library to check my email and thought while I was here would post about the Quattro. Let me say this first...." I am amazed" I went to the water's edge and hit the noice cancel... it did it's thing.. and it ran as quite as any machine that I have ever used in wet sand or salt water....not only that but I fould coins that other people had walked over at a depth of 6" to 12"+. At that depth, I couldn't keep up with the waves as it washed the sand back in. I gave up on some signs that were just in wet sand because they were so deep. Too, when the ID said it was a coin, it was a coin, when depth became an issue, the ID would move around in the coin section. Even at extreme depths, it was correct. I
assure you that none of this is hype.. Yes I'm a dealer but not a Minelab dealer so I have nothing to gain. Minelab needs to water proof this machine and market it.... I have a new
White's Beach Hunter ID that I am going to give a whirl today. I can only hope it does as well.
Best to all and every thing you Quattro owners said about this machine on the beach, is true...
Richardntn "
Let us know what happens... Richardntn
 
Hello,

Just to let you know, I agree with all points covered in the post from Mike (Virginia Beach) and in this case with Beachguy777 too! I have dug MANY targets 18+" deep on the beach in AUTO Sensitivity in the Coin and Jewelry Mode. I do run Noise Cancel prior to starting to hunt, when I change "Sensitivity" (which is not too often) and when I go to/from wet/dry sand. Be sure that when you run Noise Cancel that you have the coil on the sand and not move it. As others have stated, "swing low and slow". You are using headphones, I "assume".(?)
 
Man, when I read this stuff my heart starts pounding. I'm so glad to read this kind of stuff, especially from a dealer who isn't even a Minelab dealer. I figure he has nothing to lose here and he's speaking his true mind. I totally agree with the "waterproofing the quatro" idea. Man, what a deal that would be. I think you'd have the best of both worlds: a great detector in or out of the water and one that would go DEEP and also have great discrimination and identification of targets. I know this can be done, I just think who's gonna do it. I have a few ideas, but I'm too busy and lazy right now to try. Maybe somebody'll grab the ball and run with this. Only trouble is, it might put a damper on Excallibur sales if it really happened.:surrender: Boy I'll probably get some cards and letters on that one. :sad:
 
Right on Mike. Glad to see you still coming over to the Quatro froum even though you have other detectors. I still love to hear from you, and I think the others do to..:)
 
Take a look at this link to see what Charles from upstate New York did with his Explorer II.

The Explorer II and the Quattro use the same housings and are pretty much physically identical except for the color.

He custom designed and fabricated all of this!

http://www.findmall.com/read.php?26,180015,180026
 
X-Terra 50 on the way and I am interested in seeing how it stacks up.
What you said about hurting Exc. sales, Minelab KNOWS that a waterproofed Quattro would beat a Excal. hands down.... Thanks and happy hunting, Richardntn
 
Yea, I kind of thought so. It probably wouldn't be a real great business move on their part to water proof the Quatro for that reason. I hear the Excal. is a fine machine too, but who has the extra grand, right now, to pick one up. I still may try and go for one some day, mainly because it is waterproof, but in the mean time, I'll just be VERY careful getting the Quatro too near the water. Let us know how the X-Terra 50 works, I'd like to hear about it.
 
Wow, Mike. What do you think of that guys waterproof setup? I'm really stoked, hope he makes some kits or something available in the future. I'll bet your excited because I know you have an Explorer. At any rate, like you probably said: "he's the guy" this week and I'll really bet he gets some emails on that one, maybe even one from Minelab. This could be interesting.!!! I hope he fairs well on it though, it looks like a great setup.
 
Hi to all you forum folks.
I'm brand new at this beach detecting stuff, as I recently purchased a used Whites Surf PI and am just "getting my feet wet"; however in this St. Petersburg Beach environment, there is just too much trash, and at my age I prefer to not spend most of my day bent over digging same.
I'm in the process of purchasing either a DFX, a CZ-70 or (as was just suggested) possibly a Quattro. I would keep the Surf PI for in-water use, but am looking for an all-purpose unit with a good discriminator and a reasonable learning curve.
Any recommendations?
tkx
 
Well, I don't like rusty nails and fish hooks so I can understand you wanting to get those knocked out. But as far as discriminating out trash, that's a losing proposition at the beach. Because the trash signals are pretty much the same as the gold signals. If you discriminate out pull tabs and foil, you can pretty much kiss the gold goodbye too because there isn't a machine made that can tell the difference.

I had a Quattro and did very well with it at the beach. I now have an Excalibur, an Explorer II, and a CZ-70. All are outstanding beach machines. The Quattro has them all beat for depth at the beach with the Explorer being second and the Excal and the CZ about tied I would say. The Excal is simple to use, sensitive to small gold, and has a nice wide range of variable tones to help you to get to know the good stuff from the bad. In my opinion, this is better than most machines with meters. The Quattro is similar in that is had variable tones but also has a meter with numeric values and icons.

The Excal of course is waterproof and the Quattro is not, so if you get it wet it's a bad thing. Both the Minelabs are "threshold machines", meaning they have a threshold hum in the background and this can be useful in snagging targets you might have missed with a silent search machine because extra deep targets and "near misses" tend to interrupt the threshold and tip you off to give it a second look.

The DFX is also a threshold machine and I owned one for 6 months. I land hunted for deep silver, Civil War relics, and also did some beach hunting and was successful at all 3 with it. I replaced it with the CZ-70 which is hands-down better at all 3 than the DFX.

The CZ-70 is a killer beach machine and very simple to use. It has 7 LED "Notch" segments ranging from "Iron" to "High Coin" and basically every piece of metal in the world falls under one of them. It hunts silently, hits hard, and locks on to deep targets well. It's "Rain Proof" and "Spalsh Resistant" and it's also a great land machine as well.

I think that given your criteria of a reasonable learning curve and a multi-purpose machine, either the Quattro or the CZ-70 would fit the bill. The CZ is lighter. The CZ is easier to learn. The Quattro is more sophisticated and goes deeper. It gives you more info. It's a little tougher to master, but not too bad. It has a nice variable tone system and the CZ has 4 tones, one of which you won't be using (Iron) so it effectively has 3. If you get caught in the rain with the Quattro it's time to go home and probably run for the car. With the CZ you can take your time getting to the car and if you like, you can keep right on hunting. There's a CZ-70 on eBay right now that ends in 8 hours and looks like a great deal. See the link...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Mint-Fisher-CZ-70-Pro-and-SunRay-Fz1-Probe_W0QQitemZ5827334156QQcategoryZ94884QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I will recommend against the DFX for a few reasons. It's the most fragile contruction in my opinion...not very rugged at all. It's the least effective at the beach, though it WILL hunt. It's just not a real wet sand demon. It does OK, but pales in comparison to the others. And it's a very complicated machine with like 50+ adjustable settings and 192 tones if I remember correctly. And some of the settings can have drastic effects on the other settings, so it's possible to dork it up pretty good. I'm a "tweaker" by nature and into computers so I found all that techno stuff appealing at first. And I did like the DFX...I actually dug a Barber dime at 8.5" with it on my very first outing. But after a while I realized I was spending more time finger banging the touchpad and tweaking my settings than I was actually FINDING STUFF, so it had to go. That and the fact that the my CZ buddies were spanking my butt on deep bullets and relics out in the woods. It lacked the depth of the CZ-70.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Best advice is to check out both the Quattro and the CZ if you can. Hope that helps some...
 
Thanks Mike,
I really appreciate your input.
Those two machines have each been recommended highly and so it looks as though I'll go for one of them.
Being a novice, I tend to fall for features such as the multi-frequency function of the Quattro vs: (I believe) two frequencies on the CZ, however if it works....it works.
These forums are pretty special to me as I have learned much about many things because of them. At least many ideas are thrown in to the ring to consider.
Thanks again and great hunting.
Glenn
 
Great graphics!
Thanks once again. I believe I'll be getting a CZ-70.

I don't have even a hint what Fisher has in mind to replace that model, but no doubt it will cost more than what I can get the "70" for,
and after all ------ this is only a hobby. (For me).
Take care and great hunting.
Glenn
 
Did you by chance see THIS?

http://cgi.ebay.com/FISHER-CZ-70-PRO-metal-detector_W0QQitemZ5828367132QQcategoryZ94884QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Looks like a great deal, if you can't find a new one with a warranty. I think they have stopped making them, but there may be a few new ones left to be had. And that would be my preference, since it carries a lifetime warranty.

Good luck!
 
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