OK..Once again no pictures or detailed write up about the amazing V3i...prosecution rests...
It is no secret that the enormous flexibility of the 3Vi is its own undoing. IF you don't understand how dial "a" affects switch "b", you are in for a long day. I think my one gripe with the V3i is that the ground balance seems to slip quite a bit, and if you don't stay on top of it, things get squirrely. A lot of places I hunt, I have to use autotrack on my ground balance because the ground can be -95 in one place, and 5 feet later it can be -88. I hate having to continuously re-balance. It seems more pronounced when using single frequency (2.5khz in particular).
I will be the first to say that I am not a silver magnet. But, I don't blame the V3i. I am just bad at what I do. I have no patience and the attention span of a gnat. The longer I go in a hunt without finding something interesting, the more frustrated I get, and it spirals out of control to the point I can't focus on doing what I am supposed to be doing. I end up swinging too fast, cherry picking on "perfect signals", digging targets I know I shouldn't be digging just so I can dig something, etc, etc.
On the plus side of the rig, there is no machine that can provide you with more information about the stuff under coil. As a test on a night when I was having a tough go of it, I followed Cellrdwellr around and scanned his deep targets to see if I could see what he was seeing. Out of the four I scanned, I definitely would not have dug three of them based on what my display told me. One was iffy and I probably would have dug it out of curiosity. Of the three deep targets I would not have dug were all in fact trash. The Iffy one was trash too, but, it was iffy and deep so it was worth the time. I have no problem digging iffy deep signals. Really deep silver is going to sound iffy anyway. With the V3i, I don't dig a lot of iron. If I do, it is usually a deep, bent, rusty nail that sounds real good in all directions. I sometimes dig the straight rusty nails as a sanity check to make sure the discriminator of last resorts (that underpowered piece of circuitry between my ears) is exercising proper judgement.
I don't find a lot of silver (by the standards of many here - I think I hit 30 last year). I think much of it has to do with bad judgement over which patch of ground to put my coil over and my other patience related failings. But, the silvers I do find tend to be deep, under roots, and with other bits of iron and/or other conductive metals in the hole with it. Of my meager five silvers for the year, they came in at 6", 8", 9", 6.5", and 10.5". The 8" merc and 8" barber both had nails in the holes with them. The barber had three nails. All of my IH's have come 7"+ as well. The machine can certainly get the depth.
The road to V3i mastery is long and wrought with frustration at times. Too many knobs, buttons, dials, and switches can be just much as a hindrance as they can be beneficial.
The biggest mistakes people make with the V3i are:
1) Running settings too hot for the patch of ground they are hunting.
2) Using the wrong ground filter for the patch of ground they are hunting.
3) Swinging too fast for the set recovery delay
4) Too much discrimination (not DISC setting), too much bottlecap rejection, or too much modulation
5) Not experimenting enough - especially with base threshold and bar thickness
6) Not keeping on top of ground balance settings.
7) Looking for "perfect" signals. (I am so guilty of this one)
8) Not using correlation or consistency when the situation requires it - and when using correlation, it is set too tight.
It took me long enough, but, I am starting to understand the language the machine is speaking and I am finding things deeper in places I have been over before. The V3i is definitely not the machine for you if you just want to turn it on swing the coil, not give a second thought to settings and hope the machine is taking care of the host of factors that can make or break your hunt.