Quick Response/Fast Recovery Detectors?

[berryman]

What does it really mean to say that a particular detector has a quick response and a fast recovery?

In reading a variety of posts, folks seem to cite these attributes as being highly desirable. If that's the case, wouldn't all detector manufacturers strive to design machines that are of the quick response/fast recovery variety? If not, under what circumstances would "slower" be better when it comes to response and recovery times?

 

[Elton]

There is a certain amount of lag time between detector hitting on targets and resetting for the next response.. The Fast response detectors does not lag as much so you have a better chance of next close target not being missed. As you detect and go over targets you ignore the bad hits...the machine if fast resets quickly so you hit on the next object.

Translates to more good finds as the fast reset capability allows you to detect more targets.

 

[Larry (IL)]

Fast recovery detectors are a "nitch" machine IMHO. The fast recovery is often, but not always, coupled with a higher operating frequency which is great for hunting in the trash and iron infested ground and they are very sensitive on small and low conductive targets. They also do well as a general coin/jewelry/relic hunter.

On the down side, you are losing some depth and reliable target ID at depth. Some of your deepest detectors use a slower recovery speed often coupled with a lower frequency. The lower operating frequency to penetrate deeper into the ground and the slower recovery speed to give the detector more time to analyze the return signal. Some of the best general purpose detectors will have adjustable recovery speeds and selectable frequencies.

 

[berryman]

So Larry: Am I corrrect in assuming that your M-6 would fall into the quick response/fast recovery category and that your CTX 3030 and V3i would fall into the adjustable recovery speeds and selectable frequencies category?

 

[Larry (IL)]

One out of three.......

The M6 and the MXT family is what I would consider a middle of the road higher frequency general purpose detector, neither fast or slow recovery but they do have very fast ground tracking and processing.

The CTX, Explorers, E-Trac are prime examples of a low frequency, slow recovery deep seekers. The CTX does not have a choice of recovery speeds, but it does have selectable audio responses, slow, slower and slowest better known as Normal, Long and Smooth. That is about a close to a selectable recovery speed the CTX has. (edit) I forgot the recovery fast and recovery deep features, so it does have three recovery speeds. The CTX also does not have selectable frequencies. Even though Minelab says you can change the frequencies by selecting a channel in noise cancel, the change does not significantly affect the primary operating frequencies, just the offsets to aid in rejecting EMI.

The V3i does have adjustable recovery speed called recovery delay which is adjustable 1-200 and of course the three operating frequencies 2.5, 7.5 and 22.5 KHz which can be used one at a time, all three at the same time or the best two out of three.

 

[GroundScanner]

Larry how do you get the best 2 out of 3 freq.s ? I thought it could be changed to either 1 or 3 freq's. Am i missing something? This is for the v3i.

 

[Larry (IL)]

Correlate mode picks either 7.5 and 22.5 or 7.5 and 2.5 to analyze depending if the target is a high conductor or a low conductor. The screen shows a signal on all three frequencies but the V3i is correlating the two strongest frequencies of the three.

 

[Rob (IL)]

V3i can run 3 frequencies , best 2 of 3 fequencies, and optimized single frequency.

 

[GroundScanner]

Thanks for the info. I never used correlate mode. I will have to try it out. TY HH GS

 

[jcgam]

The XP Deus has selectable frequencies and recovery speeds. It is an extremely fast detector.

 

[Diggin-it]

The XP Deus has selectable frequencies and recovery speeds. It is an extremely fast detector.

The XP Deus is insanely fast! I just can't run my V3i after running the Deus, it drives me nuts how slow it is. V3.0 should be out any day now which will further add more features to the Deus.

 

[jcgam]

I almost bought a V3i because of the color multi-frequency display options, but then I saw a video of the display update rate and I had to pass on it. The XP Deus has an XY display mode that is very cool and updates fast. With the V3.0 update it's even better because it displays more information on the target. It's my favorite display mode because it compliments the audio data visually, if that makes sense. There are a few youtube videos that show what it does better than I can explain it.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Then downside to making "lightening fast recovery speeds", is that usually costs you depth. The power house deep-seeker machines tend to have slower recovery, hence more prone to masking.

It's a perpetual trade off: The more depth you get (and great TIDs) the more the recovery tends to be longer (even if only micro-seconds). And the fast the recovery (hence great ghost-towns and ruinsy sites hunters), the less depth and less TID you get.

Another factor is that some of the fast recovery speeds machines aren't well-tuned in mineralized soils. But multi-filtered (hence slower) machines work better in high minerals. So there's another pro & con.

And the conversation gets muddied further in the last 10 or 15 yrs, because, admittedly, while what I'm saying above might have been true for all-of-time, yet in the last 10 or 15 yrs, electronic advancements have closed those gaps somewhat. Or, at least .... people will argue that theirs "doesn't suffer in minerals" or "retains a perfect TID ability" or "goes as deep as the power houses", etc....

 

[Tom_in_CA]

n/t

 

[jcgam]

Ideally then you would want the option to adjust recovery speed to suit the conditions or desired depth.

 

[SpiritRelic]

In analog based detectors such as Tesoro the recovery speed is referred to retune speed.A vlf and multi freq detectors have to constantly retune to maintain a constant threshold.In the old days this was done by hitting a retune button on the detector handle.If a metal detector has a slow retune (recovery speed it is important to go slower in trashy sites).After the detector signals on a target the detector has to retune back to original threshold each sweep.