Why Slow Recovery Speed Is Better IMHO

[Critterhunter]

Responding in the main forum to a conversation on this subject and thought I'd re-post it here...

A fast recovery speed is overrated. With a slow recovery machine you just have to slow down your sweep speed and wiggle between targets to sniff out things nearby. You shouldn't be swinging like your launching a golf ball anyway. The Sovereign has a slow recovery speed yet I have no trouble seperating coins next to trash. Not only that, but it's Iron Mask ON feature is finding me coins laying with trash that no fast recovery speed machine I've ever owned seemed to be able to find. This is when they are laying right next to each other and the coil is in effect seeing them both at once. Now it's up to the machine's ability to process and seperate the two signals. That's where Iron Mask shines. Also, I believe a slow recovery machine does a better job of locking onto and sounding off to deep targets. Think of it this way...is it easier to read a street sign when you are driving at 100 miles per hour or at 30 mph? A slow recovery speed locks onto targets better IMHO and also does a better job of reporting the characteristics of the target as you can hear the little things about it such as uneven edges.

 

[Rick(ND)]

This is one of the great things about a Sovereign and why we can find so much others detectors leave behind. This is also the reason if you want the real deep coins you have to even go slower yet as we have seen as the signals are so small that unless you are really going super slow you will miss them. Where I like to go super slow in areas i know have been hit hard that are real old and had some activity years ago, such as old playground equipment and picnic tables.
Iron mask too is a very wonderful too on the Sovereigns and feel the GT iron mask even a little more sensitive too as I find I get falses on iron a little more than the older Sovereigns when trying to get a repeatable signal on the deeper signals which is what I like as this is where the goodies are found in those well worked older areas.
The Sovereigns with the slower sweep speed will give you so much more info and let you the operator decide what to dig and what not to unlike the beep and dig detectors with the fast sweep speed.
Very good post Critter.

Rick

 

[Neil]

Fast recovery speed doesnt mean swinging the coil like a golf club at all and not sure why you have them tied together. If your referring to an F75, they can be swung slowly also and they still have a fast recovery speed. Fisher recommends a faster sweep with them, but thats just their recommendation and having used one its easy to see you can swing it slowly like a Sov also and still ID very well with it. Etracs and Explorers have faster recovery speeds and if youve ever used one you know you can creep along with one just like the Sov.
As far as the 100mph versus 30mph, have you seen the newer 4g phones or other electronic devices? Processing has sped up over time without the loss of data. I think a faster reset speed without the need to swing faster would be a heck of an improvement on the Sov. And based on the latest detectors Ive used you would loose nothing but gain alot.
Not a knock on Sovs but Minelab simply hasnt updated it much since its inception other then some cosmetic changes, coils and battery upgrades. They seem to have spent their R&D time on the Explorers/Etrac/Xterras and their high end gold machines(for hobbyists that is, they are involved in other devices as well). I hope I am wrong but it looks like the Sov is going the same way as Fishers CZ series, unchanged and then eventual extinction.

 

[wpruden]

n/t

 

[wpruden]

Neil
You very well may be right! But simplicity at high performance will be lost and there is place in that for the sovereign. Another manufacturer will fill that void. We will see what minelab does. Than again they minelab may fool us all and come out with that SUPER SOVEREIGN! It can happen!

 

[cajintex]

Whether swing fast or going slow through a well hunted, the faster any machine can think is better and then the detectorist can move carefully through the hunting grounds letting the machine do it work.

 

[dewcon4414]

Anyone who has run a ML Exp in AM knows by all the junk.... its not running that slow. A slow recovery speed will give you more depth because like was mentioned it give the machine a better look at the target.... much like doing the ML wiggle. Most fast recovery machines also have more filters requiring a faster sweep... so you arent going to creap along like you do with a ML.

Dew

 

[scoper]

I own a sovereign and i think it's a great machine.But anybody who has tried to use one on an iron infested ancient site in the u.k looking for small roman and hammered coins quickly realises the machines limitations.In this situation the sov just does not cut the mustard and a machine with a really fast response time and high sensitivity to small targets is the only way to go.So in certain situations a faster recovering machine will outgun a slower recovering machine such as the sovereign......it's certainly not an overated feature.

 

[fwcrawford]

I also agree with you Critterhunter... I have been simply amazed at the amount of old coins that I have found in areas that have been heavily hunted in the past.
The majority of these coins were only about 5 or 6 inches deep, but were mixed with nails and other bits of iron,
but the Sovereign was able to hit them with enough of a signal to let me know there was something worth digging.
I have experienced this many times over and like you I never was able to do this with any other machine that I have used and get anywhere close to the results as the Sovereign.
In fact while reading many posts regarding target masking, I never considered that this could be very common and in fact I figured that what few coins were being masked by iron couldn't possibly be worth the extra effort, but after some time with the Sovereign, I now realize that MANY coins are still in the ground that are not very deep, but being masked by iron and other trash and this is the exact reason they are still there!!
Recovery speed doesn't mean much if the detector can't see the good target there in the first place.
Great post!!

 

[Critterhunter]

One of the points I'm trying to make is that sweep speed is directly related to whether recovery speed is an issue or not. Try this...Put a coin on the ground and a rusty old nail laying right beside it so close that they are touching. Now fire up your Sovereign and wiggle over the coin. You'll have no trouble getting a 180 ID from it. That's the way to investigate trash for any nearby coins. If you swing fast over the two targets then yes you're more likely to get a null, but if you do short fast wiggles over it the coin ID will sound right thru. The only advantage a fast recovery speed machine has is the ability to swing faster over two targets and see them both. That's not the way you should be hunting with a Sovereign.

A fast recovery machine will reset faster and thus I feel it doesn't do as well of a job to sounding off to deep targets. If you try to slow down your sweep speed over the target with a fast recovery machine the machine will try to reset and cut things off short. I feel a slow recovery machine does a better job of grabbing onto and sounding off to deep targets because it doesn't have the tendency to try to cut things short.

I've owned fast recovery machines such as a QXT Pro and it didn't offer any more ability at seeing a coin next to iron than my GT. You still have to linger over the coin in order to get a response from it and not a null. And when the two targets are laying up on each other in that the machine is seeing both at once I find the Sovereign's Iron Mask feature will try to ignore the iron and sound off to the coin.

 

[Critterhunter]

Scoper, somebody a while back mentioned a test article in which a guy used a Sovereign at an iron infested site versus a fast recovery machine. I can't remember the model but I think it was a top of the line gold detector. He hunted the site with both machines and the Sovereign ended up with more keepers. If anybody has a link to that article please post it. I'd like to read it again myself.

 

[Neil]

Critter one of the things that helps a Sov is the DD coil. The QXT you were using probably had a concentric coil on it, is that correct? A DD coil helps any detector do that, fast or slow recovery.
Something I think your overlooking/missing is that the Sov, in order to get a good ID on a deep target, really needs the wiggle, which is isolating up a target and making it ignore those next to it, to get the best ID. Everyone who has used a Sov can tell you about the wiggle and what it does. So think about the nulls you constantly get with a sov in a trashy area. Dew makes a great point regarding this, run an Explorer in all metal in a trashy site and you can really see how many targets are in the ground, but in disc on the Sov you will never hear all those targets because the detector simply cannot reset fast enough.
So the wiggle actually proves the Sov is hindered in high trash settings. There is a lot of masking going on with the Sov. And of course just switch over to pinpoint mode in the Sov in a trashy area, you can get a better idea of whats there and what the disc mode is blanking out that you never hear. Forget the rusty nail tests, in ground actual hunting is the best way to see what works and what doesnt.

 

[fwcrawford]

I remember reading an article similar to this one and actually printed it out to keep.
I can't remember the persons name, but in this case, he used the Sovereign and a fisher ( can't remember the model ) and compared signals with both machines..... every signal detected with the Sovereign turned out to be a good target and some items detected with the fisher that ID'd as good targets ended up being iron and other trash items.
Does this sound like what you read?
I'll try to find the link later and post it for you.
Felix

 

[Neil]

Felix I dont think your gonna find many people who would disagree that a multi freq detector is going to ID better at depth than a single freq detector, at least those who have used both. Ive read its because of more information due to the multiple frequencys used, but Im no detector engineer so I couldnt tell you for sure why.
I know a sovereign and a CZ5 on a clean beach, both with 8" coils will ID accurately to about the same depth, already done that test years ago. but in trash the Sov has an advantage because of the DD coil versus the CZs concentric coil.

 

[fwcrawford]

You made a very good point Neil.
I agree that the DD coil probably does make a big difference when hunting in trashy sites.
Still I have only been using the 10" stock coil at an old park and am amazed at the amount of good targets
that this coil has detected for me.
I guess what I'm getting at is that even with a larger coil, I have done well at finding some nice coins mixed with iron and other trash.
I think it is more than the DD coil, but I am by no means an expert and for what ever reason it works, It works great.
It does take some getting used to to be able to understand what this detector is telling you, but the results of learning it will yield some nice finds in "hunted out" sites.

 

[Rick(ND)]

I did a actual comparison with my Sovereign XS against the Fisher CZ7 at a very old school site by the local Fisher dealer. I got one deeper signal with the Sovereign and had him check it and told me to forget it as it was a nail, when dug was a barber dime at around 9 inches deep. Now he got a signal and told me to check it as it was a deep coin and possibly a silver dime and didn't think my Sovereign would see it and I tried and got no signal,l went to pinpoint and got a slight signal and switched back to disc and it was a null and told him it was iron. I had to stand there while he dug and it was a big old nail, so that showed me the Sovereign does a better ID and will see as deep or even deeper. We did a few other comparison and the Sovereign was always right on.
As i always say the more you use the Sovereign the more you learn and the better it gets, you wont get to know the Sovereign sitting in the closet so go out and use it learn it and have fun.

Rick

 

[fwcrawford]

Rick,
This is the article that I had read sometime ago and was referring to in my earlier post.
I remember that the guy with the fisher double checked a signal detected with the Sovereign and said it was trash although the Sovereign indicated a good target. When it was recovered, it turned out to be a silver coin that was very deep.
I wasn't sure who wrote the article, but the site that I got it from had some other advice and tips also and I printed all of it to add to my library of information on the Sovereign.
I believe at the end of the article it was stated that the fisher guy now sells and uses Minelabs.... does this sound right???
By the way.. great article Rick!!
Felix

 

[Critterhunter]

No, the article was different. They didn't use a Fisher but rather a fast response top of the line gold machine if I remember right.

 

[fwcrawford]

Hey Critter,
I don't know if this is the article you were referring to, but I found the site that I read this report similar to what you are stating.
In case this is different, just thought I'd send you the link as there are several tips on the Sovereign on this link.

http://jimyce.home.netcom.com/tips.html

The one I am referring to is the test between the Sovereign and a Fisher CZ detector by a guy that is a "die hard" Fisher user and dealer.... very interesting article.
Enjoy,
Felix

 

[Critterhunter]

Here's a test to try...Take a coin or a gold ring and put it on the ground and then cover it with a rusty old nail. Make sure Iron Mask is ON and sweep over it. That's where it's up to the machine to ignore the iron and sound off to the good target.

Also, stick the nail laying to the side of the target with them touching each other. Swing in short wiggles over the target and you'll see that you can easily isolate it from the iron. That's where recovery speed doesn't matter and it's more important to use the coil properly. I like to wiggle around trash signals to see if I can sniff out a coin next to it.