sgoss66
Well-known member
Took the Gold Bug Pro out briefly in the yard, just to try it out.
I did some VERY preliminary air-testing, nothing scientific, just to be sure I was "in the ballpark" with some other air tests I have seen posted. I was...(maybe up to 12" max in all metal max sens for a quarter, up to 14" or so with my gold wedding band) so...
I had 15 to 20 minutes, and I ran this puppy in the front yard; I can so far say that I LOVE the Gold Bug Pro! I love my F70, too, but it was not as much "love at first sight." I am "growing" to love that machine -- sort of like when you meet someone but you can't quite figure them out at first; intriguing, bug mysterious, but over time you learn them better and grow closer and closer to them? That's me and the F70. The Bug Pro? More like love at first sight (or in this case, love at first swing!)
Seriously, this is a very smooth, simple-to-operate, "intuitive" detector. Feels light, easy to swing, and I just LOVE the audio; I turned up disc to 40 so the iron "grunted" and anything else hit "higher," in the VCO audio zone. My yard has little trash, except some occasional nails (I really tried hard to clean up most of the nails during construction). I quickly found an old shotgun shell's brass down 3-4" (must have been an old paper one, not the newer plastic, because the "hull" was gone and only the brass and primer were left). It hit unmistakably. Pinpoint was great, but really didn't even need pinpoint mode -- but the depth readout feature when in pinpoint is cool, and very similar to my F70's pinpoint mode, so I'm used to it. But, there is a bit "more" in the audio in pinpoint mode, it seems, with the Bug Pro vs. the F70. Hard to describe. Anyway, this detector is so smooth, it's "burp, burp, burp" in the iron, and then WHOOP -- a totally different, VCO sound for a "good" target. You can REALLY hear the higher VCO tones amongst the iron grunts. A shallower stronger target really "announces" itself -- "YO, I'm HERE;" meanwhile, a good, but deep, weak target is more of a "whisper" -- soft, but clearly noticeable and different from the iron tones; sort of like a friend leaning toward you and trying to get your attention in class or something -- a hushed, whispered "HEY." This thing is smooth, can be run on HIGH sensitivity most times, appears a bit deeper in all-metal mode than disc, and it is SMOKING FAST. Also, this machine CLEARLY likes a quick swing speed; even when narrowing down for pinpointing, short and choppy back-and-forth swings will work, but keep them QUICK. Even in air testing, more depth is acquired by QUICK passes, without question. I WAS fooled by a thin rusty nail at 8"; it was clearly iron, but with a few higher hits into the 80s and 90s, especially on the VDI readout. I thought maybe, just maybe, it was a partially iron-masked coin in there with the nail or whatever, but it was not. So, there's clearly going to be a learning process to figure out the "occasional higher VCO tone among the grunts" being a coin under a nail, and the "occasional higher VCO tone amongst the grunts" that is just iron falsing, but I do think this one nuance will be more clear, and easier to learn to "read," than it has been so far with my F70 (which still fools me all the time).
Just a few initial impressions...
Steve
I did some VERY preliminary air-testing, nothing scientific, just to be sure I was "in the ballpark" with some other air tests I have seen posted. I was...(maybe up to 12" max in all metal max sens for a quarter, up to 14" or so with my gold wedding band) so...
I had 15 to 20 minutes, and I ran this puppy in the front yard; I can so far say that I LOVE the Gold Bug Pro! I love my F70, too, but it was not as much "love at first sight." I am "growing" to love that machine -- sort of like when you meet someone but you can't quite figure them out at first; intriguing, bug mysterious, but over time you learn them better and grow closer and closer to them? That's me and the F70. The Bug Pro? More like love at first sight (or in this case, love at first swing!)
Seriously, this is a very smooth, simple-to-operate, "intuitive" detector. Feels light, easy to swing, and I just LOVE the audio; I turned up disc to 40 so the iron "grunted" and anything else hit "higher," in the VCO audio zone. My yard has little trash, except some occasional nails (I really tried hard to clean up most of the nails during construction). I quickly found an old shotgun shell's brass down 3-4" (must have been an old paper one, not the newer plastic, because the "hull" was gone and only the brass and primer were left). It hit unmistakably. Pinpoint was great, but really didn't even need pinpoint mode -- but the depth readout feature when in pinpoint is cool, and very similar to my F70's pinpoint mode, so I'm used to it. But, there is a bit "more" in the audio in pinpoint mode, it seems, with the Bug Pro vs. the F70. Hard to describe. Anyway, this detector is so smooth, it's "burp, burp, burp" in the iron, and then WHOOP -- a totally different, VCO sound for a "good" target. You can REALLY hear the higher VCO tones amongst the iron grunts. A shallower stronger target really "announces" itself -- "YO, I'm HERE;" meanwhile, a good, but deep, weak target is more of a "whisper" -- soft, but clearly noticeable and different from the iron tones; sort of like a friend leaning toward you and trying to get your attention in class or something -- a hushed, whispered "HEY." This thing is smooth, can be run on HIGH sensitivity most times, appears a bit deeper in all-metal mode than disc, and it is SMOKING FAST. Also, this machine CLEARLY likes a quick swing speed; even when narrowing down for pinpointing, short and choppy back-and-forth swings will work, but keep them QUICK. Even in air testing, more depth is acquired by QUICK passes, without question. I WAS fooled by a thin rusty nail at 8"; it was clearly iron, but with a few higher hits into the 80s and 90s, especially on the VDI readout. I thought maybe, just maybe, it was a partially iron-masked coin in there with the nail or whatever, but it was not. So, there's clearly going to be a learning process to figure out the "occasional higher VCO tone among the grunts" being a coin under a nail, and the "occasional higher VCO tone amongst the grunts" that is just iron falsing, but I do think this one nuance will be more clear, and easier to learn to "read," than it has been so far with my F70 (which still fools me all the time).
Just a few initial impressions...
Steve
