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Question...."Is A Minelab Explorer a Pulse Machine?"

A

Anonymous

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From some of the information that I have been reading, I'm under the impression that those multi-frequeny machines are pulse machines, which tend to do better in high mineral and salt water conditions. Any comments appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
 
Hi John,
The Explorer, and the Sovereign for that matter are not Pulse Induction machines, but a type of Induction Balance. The ruff difference is, a PI produces a pulse of current through the search coil while the receiver is turned off, and when this current has almost dissipated the receiver is turned on to look for any extension of the decaying signal present on the coil. The signal will be remnants of the initial pulse combined with any ground response, EM interference, and hopefully a target response.
The Minelabs pass an alternating current through a transmitter coil that is continually monitored by a receiver via another coil. Complex components of the received waveform when compared with that transmitted provide information about the target that can assist in determining the metal type. The more frequencies that are used the more cross-referencing can be done to better discriminate the target, and exclude ground effects. This is what gives the Explorer such depth and sensitivity on the beach, but it still doesn
 
multi-frequency advertizing made by Minelab(and now others) which is considered deceptive to the public by a lot of people. Minelab promotion has made a lot of people believe that the frequencies transmitted by these detectors are actually being received by them.
I suggest you read "Multi-Frequency B.S. Really Getting Thick" by Steve Herschback on the Feb. 21 post on the Metal Detecting Forum.
George
 
then you think that consumer authorities would have been notified and would have done something about this "deception" by now. This would have been the case especially if there where a "lot of people" that had the same "gripe".
I'd really like to know if you can tell me <img src="/metal/html/shrug.gif" border=0 width=37 height=15 alt=":shrug"> as I am curious to know why, if it has been so deceptive, that the notion if what is implied in ANY of the advertising or claims made by Min/lab or any other company that is officially registered and with a reputation to uphold and protect in such matters, has NOT had these "bad business practices" stamped out.
Realise that the first people who would have made a motion to discredit the abilities of multifrequency abilities of BBS or FBS products and on what they CAN actually do or what any promotinal material available to the public at large, says it could do, would have been done by the competition(IMO and I believe that the other MDing companies would have known from the beginning and probably would have been the first to jump on this opertunity) or ANYONE else who was aware of such "deception", if there were any, to do with these products and in the contents of the material that was used promote them with ANY of it's claims.
I am sure that there are rules in a "Trade Practices Act" of most developed countries where this kind of "deception" as you put it, would have put these ideas that may cause some hardship to the consumers and other companies, would have been put to rest a long time ago.
So why has it not happened so far?
Hardnosed
 
Hardnosed
I respect your opinion but I still disagree with it.
Let me quote you some advertizing from Kellyco for the Explorer. "EXPLORER DOES WHAT NO OTHER DETECTOR CAN" "Super deep 1.5Khz all the way up to ultra sensitive 100khz gives you more depth sensitivity and better discrimination"."The Minelab Explorer XS transmits 28 Simultaneous Operating Frequencies from SUPER DEEP 1.5khz to ULTRA SENSITIVE 100khz".All of the above is deceptive.
"ULTRA SENSITIVE 100 khz" is the reason why I bought my Explorer. I wanted to be able to nugget hunt with it also(the seller said sure). Nugget hunting requires high frequency (e.g. GOLD BUG2 71 khz) to be "ULTRA SENSITIVE" for tiny pieces of gold .
At the time I did not have access to these forums and was a newbie with regards to the truth. Eventually I discovered the truth that the Explorer did not receive most frequencies and certainly not high frequencies. As it does not receive high frequencies it is not sensitive to tiny piecs of metal and of course I had to sell the Explorer.
Did I feel deceived on this?- you bet.
The Explorer and Sovereign are excellent detectors which simply do not need this "hype" to sell themselves.
By the way, our hobby is not closely monitored for deceptive advertsing. Ask anybody who has been in this hobby for 40 years like I have. Usually word gets around amoung users pretty quickly.
By the way,you can buy an OMNI-RANGE MASTER for $3500. It "Makes Metal Detectors Obsolete". It "can scan an area of at least 64 miles and..."
George
 
No disrespect to anyone, but let's try to keep it PI related.
You want to tout the Minelab VLF detector's, take it to another forum. I don't want it to get into a battle of the detector's war.
Most experienced uses of the Minelab units, are aware of the hype that surrounds them from advertisements, and users. It doesn
 
Sounds to me it's time for another detector, lol???
You just itching to try out a multi frequency and or maybe a pulse?
I was itching to buy a HH Pulse unit myself just to have one but, decided currently there would be no advantage over a VLF here in the freshwater. No if I decide to move to the salty coast, then I would be bore inclined to get one.
Have read all about the claims for multi-freq. detectors didn't impress me much. That was not the reason I bought a Minelab Sov. Elite. Bought for the reason that it seemed to be finding stuff no one else could or have missed. The forums here made it very clear the Sov. were number 1 or 2 on the scale for VLF detectors on the salty beaches. Cheaper and easier to use than the Minelab Explorers. Had to have one to try out. Found a great deal on a new one that I couldn't pass up. All I can say about it is , it will be one of the detectors that will remain in my arsenal for a long time!!!
AAAAAAAhhhhhh but, a pulse unit still begs to enter the arsenal..............
So Johnski in land of the Snowski, put your mind to ease, go out and buy a pulse....you know you want a HH unit to go along with the WADER...LOL. and tell your wife you need to buy her a Minelab..... you'll test it out to make sure it is working correctly....
 
As I understand it, at least from the patents, the Explorer transmits a digital waveform, but the receiver demodulates and processes like a VLF. That is, it looks at phase information, not time-domain pulse decays.
The transmit signal for the Explorer is shown below, and the Sovereign is identical. Huh? A 17-frequency machine has an identical transmit signal as a 28-frequency machine? Yup. And if Minelab's next product is a 104-frequency detector, it might also use the same transmit waveform.
However, the receiver processes only 2 or 3 frequencies, according to the patents. Someone is currently tracing out the Sov, so we will know soon. Minelab skirts the edges of truthful advertising, with their number-of-frequency claims, but they are consistent to claim that as the <I>transmit</I> frequencies, not the processed frequencies. Folks who don't pay attention to the advertising, and assume that which is not stated, become victims of effective advertising.
In my opinion, Minelab makes some really good detectors, and the Sovereign is one of the best buys on the market today. But their marketing folks don't believe they are really good detectors, and feel the need to make misleading claims, instead of simply telling the truth. But Fisher now feels the same way about their new CZ detector, so Minelab is in good company.
- Carl
 
I think the reason Minelab has never really been called on their advertising is that the bottom line is the detector works extremely well. If it is false advertising and if the machine performed like a piece junk then there would be a public outcry. But since it is oen of the top performing machines on the market especially at the beach no one is complaining. Just my take on it..I wouldn't be without mine!!!!!!! Still this is the year I will be adding a PI to my arsenal of detectors! They are pumping 5-10 feet of fresh clean sand onto all the beaches that I normally hunt so for a year or two I will not have any iron to deal with...yippeee <img src="/metal/html/smile.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":)">
HH
Beachcomber
 
I'm in the same situation out here. There are no salt water beaches and you can nearly run the sensitivity nearly wide open because of the low mineralization. I love the discrimination feature on my machine and use it to my benifit. But, I am saving for a possible new machine to be released this year by Charles. There is so much information out there for single freq., dual freq. and multiple frequency that I am trying to separate the nice to know from the need to know.
Hope you have a good year Sven. All the best to you! <img src="/metal/html/wink.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=";)">
 
Hi Carl,
Looking at this in the time domain, does seem "pulse like". Still What's happening in the frequency domain, spectrum analysis may show much more, after all that's what matters in the end.
Sorry Bill.
Ta
Kev.
 
Here's some old MathCad plots I did for the Explorer. First is the time domain:
<IMG SRC="http://www.thunting.com/images/expt.gif">
An FFT of that signal is:
<IMG SRC="http://www.thunting.com/images/expf.gif">
You will see that there are only 11 frequencies at or above -10dBFS, which is 1/10th the power of the largest signal. I'd have a hard time believing that even -10dBFS is a very useful amount of power. Personally, I think it's more likely that only the largest spurs -- at 3kHz, 4.5kHz, and 24kHz -- are used. Interestingly, exactly 17 spurs are at or above -20dBFS.
For comparison, here is the time-domain signal for the DFX:
<IMG SRC="http://www.thunting.com/images/dfxt.gif">
and the FFT:
<IMG SRC="http://www.thunting.com/images/dfxf.gif">
Note that the DFX has two major spurs, at 3kHz and 15kHz, just like advertised.
- Carl
 
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