True story - I usually like coils that I find gold with in short order, and tend to not to want to take them off after that!
I know people in the metal detector industry that are technical wizards. Jonathan Porter is one. He knows every little technical detail of what works how and why. He obviously spends a great deal of time analyzing and comparing performance issues and discerns very fine differences in performance factors.
Me - not so much. I do not consider myself to be bleeding edge knowledgeable and am in fact constantly learning. I rely mostly on my patience and love of detecting and just putting in lots of hours. I try to get the basics right and then just work real hard at it.
After 40 years of metal detecting I pick a detector up, get it set more or less correctly, and use it. Things feel right or they do not. I put that 18" mono on and it felt right. It has solid construction. The sensitivity seemed very even at any point around the perimeter of the coil. I could swing it all day with my harness and bungee set right. It ran smooth and quiet no matter the ground. I was hitting small nuggets at extreme depths. It covered ground well.
Now, I had an Coiltek Goldstalker 18" mono briefly. It felt kind of hollow and plasticky by comparison. It seemed to have uneven areas of sensitivity around the perimeter that lead to uneveness in the signal. It did not feel right and I sold it.
One thing detector and coil manufacturers would prefer we not think about - not all detectors and especially not all coils are the same. Making coils especially is a sort of black art. Lots of rejects come off the production lines. Most are acceptable. Some are hot. Analog detectors had more variance, then new digital models are more consistent.
So you can get different detector and coil matches from person to person and what works well for one may not work well for another. In my case, maybe I got a not so good Coiltek that time. Would not surprise me.
One of my all time favorite coils was the Coiltek UFO on my old GP 3000. Found pounds of gold with that coil. It really seemed a match for that GP. but when I ran it years later on my GPX it just had lost its magic. I can't say I tried hard, I just ran it a bit and it seemed less stable, and I fell out of love with it. And no longer have it.
I used to really favor elliptical coils, now I prefer running round coils. No particular reason except the knowledge that a round coil is perhaps the best, most basic shape for a coil. The only time I will turn to an elliptical this summer will be for nosing around in the bushes. My big four at the moment are the 18" round mono, and old Nugget Finder 16" round super light mono, the Commander 11" round mono, and Commander 8" round mono. I have a Commander 15" x 12" DD I need to use to force myself to try and get better with the hated Minelab discriminator (hated by me, never use it) as friends say they are having success with it now on the GPX. Doubtful I am but I need to give it a try.
Oh well. I am wandering now so time to wrap it up. I will close by saying I really have no big brand preference. They all build some coils I like and some I do not. I have always considered brand loyalty to be a bad idea. I can see being loyal to my country or my wife, but a brand? I just use what works for me and will change horses in a second if I think it will benefit me. The guy building junk last year may build the best thing ever next year so pays to keep an open mind.
