Sov GT in heavy iron

[Anonymous]

I visited Ron from Dixie Detectors this week and he took me to a corn field around Jackson, MS. and we hunteded it for about 3 hours. I had a new GT in my hands for the first time and was really impressed with it's iron handling abilities.
This field was laced with big iron pieces like horse shoes, many large equipment parts on down to wadded up square nails. I was using the small 8" coil and Ron was using the 10" on his.
My settings for most of the day was Fixed,Silent, Iron Mask ON, Zero disc, and sens set at about 95% wide open.
<BIG>A pleasant surprise for me </BIG>was when I encountered a large piece of crusty/rusty iron just laying on top of a corn row. Just for the heck of it I swung the coil over it at about 3-4" above the target ... the GT made one small blip and that was it. It tuned that large iron completely out. The ONLY WAY I could get any response from the GT was to go in to all metal mode.
<span style="background-color:#ffff00;">In my opinion </span> even an Explorer II won't handle iron this well. The only iron that fooled it was the deep wadded up square nails and I soon discovered that even they would start sounding a little trashy after a few extra sweeps of the coil and would most of the time go completely silent. When they didn't go silent I would dig them and there would alway's be something else mixed in with the iron ... like a piece of brass or copper. So really, the GT wasn't fooled at all, it just needed to teach me a lesson about target approach and listening closer.
I must have dug at least 10 of these targets to make SURE the GT was telling me the truth.... and it was !
It was hitting very small pieces of brass and lead shot consistantly in the 5 - 9" range with nice diggable signals. The 3 ringers, musket balls, and grape shot we found had nice clean sounds at depths of 7 - 11". REMEMBER ... I was only using the small coil. The recovery rate on close together targets was like slicing bread with a sharp knife. I checked several of the 3 ringers and brass targets before digging them in all metal and could NOT hear ANY increase in sound over the fixed mode. I could however tell a small difference in the sound of good targets when running the GT with Track set to On, it seemed to make the sounds "shorter sounding" or not as drawn out if that makes sense.
Bottom line " first impression" as it stands for me right now ? Well the new GT is the BEST Soveriegn I've ever used and just maybe the BEST all around detector period ! It performed extremely well and was FUN to use. Sorry for the long post, can you tell I had some FUN with the GT <img src="/metal/html/lol.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":lol">
Good Hunting
Mike

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Mike,
First of all thanks for taking the time to make that post. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there, like me, that are curious about what Minelab may have done with the GT compared to previous Sov's other than the obvious control changes.
I was VERY interested in your comments about non-ferrous next to iron and just need to know, did you compare those signals that did not "tune out" on resweeps where you found non-ferrous targets near iron with how the GT handled them in threshold mode?
If so, was there any indication of a good target or did you get a null?
Put simply, does the GT handle iron better as far as masking of good targets when using silent search?
David you can chime in here too.
As you can probably tell I'm a little sceptical and need some honest solid answers before I would spend the money on one just to try out the new silent search disc mode.
Thanks Tom

 

[Anonymous]

HI Tom,
Yes I did compare the targets using threshold and the "good targets" broke thru the null like an Explorer would do in heavy iron sites. I'm sure my Explorer would have stayed in almost constant null at this site but would still sound off on good targets is the best way to explain it .. if you ever used an Explorer.
Silent search on the GT is the BEST I've ever encountered on any detector. As stated before, most of the time you never hear more than a click or pop when running over iron and the recovery time is noticeably faster with several targets close together.
I liked running in all metal with the Elite but the silent search on the GT may change my way of thinking. I use to think that listening to the threshold was "most important" but so far everything I've checked and re-checked with every option the GT has tells me it doesn't lie and doesn't get fooled easily in silent search.
To be totally honest with you, after encountering that big nasty iron laying on top of the ground and seeing what the GT was doing with it I called Ron over with his and he got the same results. We both said out loud with a smile on our face that if they were both broke ... we were NOT going to send them in for repairs <img src="/metal/html/lol.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=":lol">
H.H.
Mike

 

[Anonymous]

Some of my most favorite machines for use in iron infested sites can be a little noisy and do sound off on large iron a little more that I like to put up with at times. Good iron disc (quiet) yet with excellent seperation sounds good to me and appears to be a big improvement over what I saw with the XS2A Pro I had.
Thanks again for the report and the followup to my questions.
Hey Mike, where did you move to anyway? Sounds like you are closer to relic country. <img src="/metal/html/smile.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt="">
Tom

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I had to get away from that hurricane infested Pensacola, Fl. area <img src="/metal/html/smile.gif" border=0 width=15 height=15 alt=""> I now live in north east Alabama just below lake Guntersville. There was some CW activity within 100 mile drive but so far the pickins are slim. I have allot of research to do but aint that just par the course.
H.H.
Mike