single frequency vs multiple frequency - what

[skookum]

High,
After an over 20 year brake, I recently got back into the hobby.
Bought myself the back then top of the line detectors, or newer models of them made since then. They are all single frequency machines.
In the latest post in the metal detecting forum ( explorer II vs dfx 300 ) a few of minelab owners stated that their muliple frequency detectors were suppoed to be way ahead in comparison to single frequency detectors.
Now, what gives ???
I do not mind spending an extra few hundred bucks to avoid missing potential targets, cause my search time frame is still limited, meaning I don

 

[kai_gold]

A whole book could be written on all of the pros and cons for and against each technology under various detecting conditions, locations and style. I would not get too hung up on getting a broad answer to this question. Finding a metal detector you like to use and that works well at your location is what matters.

You mention that you don't look for nuggets or water hunt so that helps narrow it down some. Here are some more questions for you:

Does the ground you hunt most of the time have mild, moderate or heavy mineralization?
Are you mostly interested in finding microjewelry like small gold earrings and chains, most gold jewelry minus the micro stuff, old coins, silver coins and jewelry, non-iron relics, iron relics?
Are these items shallow or deep at your hunting locations?
Do you prefer audio id to visual display?
Do you like to tweak a lot of settings or more of a turn on and go?
How much are you willing to spend?

Choosing a metal detector has a lot to do with finding the BEST fit as a perfect fit for everything is nearly impossible. To get the best performance in one aspect of this hobby you will usually have to make some sacrifices in other areas. For some, owning multiple detectors for specific hunting scenarios helps solve this. Others can only afford one detector and must be realistic by not expecting one detector to do everything perfectly.

I am not going to go into every pro and con but here are some aspects of this debate that directly affect my style of hunting looking for small gold jewelry. Others will see it differently as their hunting styles are different from mine.

Multi-frequencies: Tend to perform better in mineralization and wet salt sands especially for coin and ring sized targets. They have been stable in some places where no single frequency detector that I have tried can remain stable without reducing sensitivity to the point of only detecting a couple of inches. When I used to look for deep old silver coins at parks and other city locations, the multi-frequency minelabs were my go to machines for the extra depth and audio qualities. I also liked them at the beach.

Single: My gold detectors are single frequency and they all pick up small pieces of gold jewelry that the etracs, explorers, and sovereigns I have used cannot detect. I like using my prospecting detectors at totlots, volleyball courts, and occasionally prospecting.

My final advice: How you like to detect and what you like to use are more important than my opinion or anyone else' opinion. It is better to enjoy what you are doing than getting too entangled in metal detector analysis paralysis.

 

[Nauti]

n/t

 

[skookum]

High kai,
Thanks for your answer.
To answer the questions you posted:
1.) I do not always know aforehand, what kind of ground I will encounter
2.) I do not search for "micro-jewelery" - but would not like to pass by a substantial gold ring/bracelet/silver coins. I am also not a relics-only hunter.
3.) Depth is not foreseeable in an by me yet unsearched area. I rarely if ever go back to areas that I have swept.
4.) I am basically a dig all on solid beeps type of guy. I will rather keep my eyes on my footing rather than glued to the meter and rely on what my detector is trying to tell me by emitted signal(s).
5.) I most often search in "all metal" and do ground balance manually every half hour or so - when I do see severe ground changes, then I rebalance right away.
6.) money is not really an object. My time is quite limited. I persue this hobby,

 

[kai_gold]

Along with the stability in wet salt sands and mineralization, a huge plus for the minelab multifreq detectors is in the audio and visual target id area. For some this is very important for selective digging. They are very powerful for selective digging and let you make adjustments to how the audio and visual id respond as well as the ability to set complex discrimination patterns. In this area, the minelabs have made some big advances.

You say you like all-metal beep dig so the extra cost of these features would probably not be worth it to you unless you are planning to change to the selective digging style.

If you plan to continue in your style of detecting, then I see not reason to change since you already know your machine. I haven't used a 1270 so this may be irrelevant, but if you are looking for a change, you might try a cz that has 2 frequencies. They can handle the wet sands better than many single frequencies and get good depth. Most are only available used.

 

[skookum]

High kai,
Thanks again for your answer.
I have to date not used a single detector ( even on loan ) that could precisely distinguish foil/pulltabs accurately from gold targets.
My 6000 gives vague targetID - though pretty good target depth - latter actually very accurate.
On my 1270 I can, with a trigger switch, go from all metal to disc (with according disc settings).
All im all, my own "brain-computer" still has to make according choices.
Are you implying, that the Minelab target ID combined with audio ID makes diggings more selective/precise ??
This is a real honest question,

 

[kai_gold]

For separating gold from aluminum foil, tabs... I have yet to see a detector do this very well.

However, if you are at the beach and want to ignore higher pitch sounds of coins and focus on digging items in the gold range, then you can listen for the lower tones and only dig those (both gold and aluminum trash) without needing to look look at a display.

If you are interested in silver coins and jewelry, you can listen for the higher pitched sounds and ignore much of the trash. On the explorer and etrac, silver gives off a nice flute like sound. You can then use the visual display to watch for the way it behaves as some patterns are more associated with silver coins. Is it a perfect system? No. But it provides a lot information that allows someone to play the odds.

Of course a dig everything person will not miss anything in a given area, but as a hypothetical lets assume there are several 20x20 foot squares of park turf and each contains 5 silver coins, 5 clad quarters, 10 clad dimes or copper pennies, 20 zincs, and 20 pulltabs or foil so thats 60 items. Lets assume it takes 1 minute to locate and dig a hole (not realistic but for simple maths sake) and recover a target. It would take a dig it all person 60 minutes find all targets and recover 5 silver coins. In a 3 hour hunt that is 15 silver coins.

Now lets assume that due to the amount of trash, a selective digger only digs 12 of the copper pennies, clad dimes, and clad quarters and only finds 3 of the silver coins due to masking. 15 items have been dug and it took 15 minutes to find 3 silver coins. Assuming all sections were as rich in silver coins, after 3 hours the selective digger would dig 36 silver coins and have missed 24 silver coins.

Who has the better poke at the end of the day?

In real life there aren't usually that many silver coins in a given area, but it demonstrates selective digging logic. Play the odds game to get more good finds knowing that you will miss some.

The minelabs work really well for this type of detecting especially with silver. Gold as I mentioned earlier is more difficult as it shows up all over the place and you have to dig trash to get it. With silver you can avoid most trash. This is why many explorer/etrac detectorists focus on silver and accept that they will miss gold.

Now as a disclaimer, there will always be bits of trash that will fool the detector, but this is greatly reduced with some of the top detectors not just minelabs.

If you are hunting for gold with a minelab and want to improve your odds, you can set up discrimination patterns that knock out coins and maybe a specific type of pulltab if it is present in huge numbers and increase the odds of finding gold jewelry even though you may miss a few pieces that fall into the zinc penny range or discriminated pulltab. The x-y grid of the explorers and etracs lets you be very specific on selecting certain areas to disc but even with this ability, mineralization and really deep, fringe depth coins can start to wander in id. There are strategies for working with this by listening to the audio first, checking depth readings and watching display behavior. These do not guarantee a good item, but they increase the odds.

Hope this helps. HH

 

[Nauti]

High kai,
Thanks for your answer.
To answer the questions you posted:
1.) I do not always know aforehand, what kind of ground I will encounter
2.) I do not search for "micro-jewelery" - but would not like to pass by a substantial gold ring/bracelet/silver coins. I am also not a relics-only hunter.
3.) Depth is not foreseeable in an by me yet unsearched area. I rarely if ever go back to areas that I have swept.
4.) I am basically a dig all on solid beeps type of guy. I will rather keep my eyes on my footing rather than glued to the meter and rely on what my detector is trying to tell me by emitted signal(s).
5.) I most often search in "all metal" and do ground balance manually every half hour or so - when I do see severe ground changes, then I rebalance right away.
6.) money is not really an object. My time is quite limited. I persue this hobby,

 

[Nauti]

Just another quick one.....i nearly forgot to say....if you did ever search in discrim,minelabs multi frequency units have the best iron discrim available....you won't dig iron and you won't dig coke.

 

[Jason in Enid]

No detector ever made can distinguish gold from aluminum. The first company that makes a detector like that can charge $10,000 a piece and not keep them on the shelves.

 

[MarkCZ]

Just another quick one.....i nearly forgot to say....if you did ever search in discrim,minelabs multi frequency units have the best iron discrim available....you won't dig iron and you won't dig coke.

The term "multi-frequency" and MineLabs is a bit confusing, because they actually only run on one frequency at a time (from the research I did). When you first power them on, they search for a clear frequency (one) and then operates on that. They do not process but one at a time. And minelabs loves to set back in the shadows and let this conversation roll on.

You can't choose a frequency,
The display doesn't give you anything about the other 27 frequencies,
If you want to hunt lets say gold, you cannot select the best frequency for that, its chooses the quietest one.
It doesn't even tell which one its selected.

They would have you believe that the detector is constantly scanning the ground with 28 frequencies and then based on what metal it hit it uses the best one for that metal, not so! its running a pre-selected one based on it was the one with the lest interference.

Now, I'm not running down minelabs, I would like to have an E-Trac but at a $1000.00 used its just not going to happen. One thing that goes with the E-Trac and that's Silver! and if it starts out on the right frequency it most of the time will hit it deep.

What I don't know for sure is do they have a REAL 28 frequencies to choose from, or are the 28 just harmonic frequencies and the detector actually has a much less number to run on, like 3, 5, maybe 10 Who knows, but one thing for sure Minelabs isn't going to come out and settle this, in the shadows they like all the talk, its keeps the name in the top of the post in forums all over the world.

As much as I would like to have one, I still think its deceiving to mislead people with there marketing.

Mark

 

[kai_gold]

Here is some technical info from minelab. It discusses the frequencies and other aspects of the technology:
http://www.minelab.com/consumer/page.php?section=349

 

[TerraDigger]

I think Minelab (Trac's/Explorers), from my reading, have more going for them than just the multi-frequency aspect. Its their whole software package that needs to be considered. Thats what makes them what they are in certain situations like deep silver in highly mineralized ground. Do they have shortcomings. Of course. As every detector does. Its really a matter of what type of detecting one does and researching to find the best machine(s) for the detectorist's particular needs. Thats it in a nutshell.

 

[Critterhunter]

Minelabs aren't running on one frequency. You're confusing the noise cancel function, which shifts through all the frequencies to find the cleanest channels to run on. It's not finding ONE channel to run on, it's finding the cleanest channels. BBS (17 frequencies on the Sovereign) and FBS (Etrac/Explorer) don't use a ground balance feature for the very reason of multifrequency. It's able to handle the ground signal in a very different way than single frequency VLF detectors. The multifrequency BBS/FBS machines get better ID at depth, better discrimination, can handle ground minerals better, and so on...because of multifrequency.

 

[MarkCZ]

Minelabs aren't running on one frequency. You're confusing the noise cancel function, which shifts through all the frequencies to find the cleanest channels to run on. It's not finding ONE channel to run on, it's finding the cleanest channels. BBS (17 frequencies on the Sovereign) and FBS (Etrac/Explorer) don't use a ground balance feature for the very reason of multifrequency. It's able to handle the ground signal in a very different way than single frequency VLF detectors. The multifrequency BBS/FBS machines get better ID at depth, better discrimination, can handle ground minerals better, and so on...because of multifrequency.

All other multi frequency detectors list there frequency,
What are they on the E=Trac?

How can other companies state the "FIRST" true two frequency machine?
Or,
The World's First true three frequency machine?

What is the Frequency range?
Higher frequency is better for gold, how can I select the higher frequency so I can gold hunt?

I would like to use the lower frequency to gain maximum depth?

I have the E-Trac emulator and the PDF manual, with all these really cool frequencies it would be nice for the user to be able to do something with them.

These are the shadows that the company hides in when this topic comes up.
The manual doesn't give you a clue to ALL these frequencies?

Even my co-worker friend who now owns TWO E-Tracs, plus he had one last year that he sold couldn't clear the multi frequency issue up, he just runs it like most other people, searching for over looked silver coins, he has played and PLAYED with different patterns but him like many E-Trac owners they look for a signal in that upper right corner of the display.

Like I said I would like to have one for hunting deeper silver, but at a $1000.00 used its not going to happen.

HH
Mark

 

[jmaryt]

yes! this is the 'TALE OF THE TAPE' with the e-trac,and why it is a
premium detector commanding a premium price,because it can go into trashed, hunted to death parks ,and "find"
stuff walked over! its all over the forums,and continues to "get it done!" just sayin'

(h.h.!)
j.t.

 

[jmaryt]

yes! this IS the dilemma! lot of people "know" this detector will find the stuff we all want,but the price tag,AND the weight are a deal breaker
in most cases!,just sayin'

(h.h.!)
j.t.

 

[jmaryt]

perhaps,but in the final analysis,it doesn't really matter,and if you don't think so,just ask
the guys that use 'em! they swear by them for "walked over silver!" and this IS the way it is!
as a hunter with over 34 years of experience,it's really all i care about! i don't care HOW it gets done
but it gets done with the trac,and that's why everybody else is playin' catch up! best coin (silver) detector on earth!

(h.h.!)
j.t.

 

[jmaryt]

this precisely WHY people pay the bucks,and grab the e-trac!
after 34 years of hunting,i do NOT want to screw around diggin'
a lot ,unless i have a "good " chance of opening a hole,and finding silver!
it's what i do,and what i want,and the trac gives me the "best" chance for this!
to wander around findin' a little clad here,and an occasional silver there is NOT
why i am in the hobby! if it was,i would have disappeared a long time ago!
i'm one of those guys that could care 2 craps less about gold,no matter what the price,i want the
old silver! period! until somethin' else does it better,many guys will continue to hunt with the trac!
just sayin'

(h.h.!)
j.t.

 

[Jason in Enid]

perhaps,but in the final analysis,it doesn't really matter,and if you don't think so,just ask
the guys that use 'em! they swear by them for "walked over silver!" and this IS the way it is!
as a hunter with over 34 years of experience,it's really all i care about! i don't care HOW it gets done
but it gets done with the trac,and that's why everybody else is playin' catch up! best coin (silver) detector on earth!

(h.h.!)
j.t.

Yep, nail on the head!

I just posted a video of my hunts this week. I was with a partner on most of those hunts. My last hunt I worked an area he worked last time and I pulled a standing liberty quarter. It was on edge, and had iron bits stuck to the coin. My partner didn't dig this spot. I don't know what it read on his machine, but it was good enough on mine to dig!

He's not using a bad detector, but he hasn't dug a single silver coin yet. Meanwhile, I dug four from this park, with at least one in his footsteps. I truly believe it's because of the abilities of the E-Trac to see the silver that looks bad to other detectors.