george1971: said:
Thanks all of you for your answers and especially Monte. I was a minelab Safari owner and I sell it because it had some technical problems with the detector. Safari was very good detector for silver, copper and brass but very bad at gold. Also, it was very good to identify euro coins vdi numbers and had characteristic sounds.
I owned nd used over six Explorer II's and an Explorer SE Pro, and I borrowed a Safari from a Minelab Dealer friend. Personally, I didn't care for the Safari, and I only used the Minelab FBS models for common city Coin Hunting. They were terrible to try and go after gold jewelry and other lower-conductive targets. Also, I have mainly Relic Hunted in very heavy Iron debris since mid-1985 and always used better detectors for those conditions.
george1971: said:
Now, a friend of mine owns a Minelab Vanquish 540 and I have test it several times. What I like, is the sounds (reminds me a little bit of Safari) the better identification that has for gold in contrast with Safari and the faster recovery speed.
I do like the V-540's audio tones and better TID read-out for most of the lower-conductive coins at varying depths. As for 'Recovery Speed', it might be faster than the Safari, yes, but by comparison it is nowhere as fast as a lot o the detectors on the market today.
george1971: said:
What I do not like is the limited vdi scale, it has not very good separation when hunting in areas with a lot of trash and iron, no threshold button, no tone brake and also, I faced a problem when I used it. I am using the coin mode with discrimination from -1 to 0 and the jewelry mode. Iron bias low and sensitivity one or two bars down. When I am suspecting that I hit a coin and I want to know if it is trash or coin by using the all-metal mode, to hear if there is iron tone or it is clear nonferrous tone, the iron tone is very strong and confused me for the target. As a result, I missed the coin. I have to say that a strong iron tone is heard most of the times when using the all-metal mode. What is the mistake?
What I don't care for is the limited VDI numeric range of the Vanquish and Equinox models.
The 'Separation' or 'Recovery Speed' is not as fast as the detectors I keep in my personal outfit because I want that performance capability.
Also, the V-540 lacks an operator-controlled Ground Balance and that creates a problem. Yes, it was a mistake because the Vanquish series rely on a controlled, circuitry designed preset GB, and it is different between the Relic mode and the other two, Coin & Jewelry. When you activate the All Metal function button, the detector, in most mineralized ground, is either going to behave with a too-positive GB or a too-negative GB and that will result in falsing as you describe. A lot of noisy behavior.
Without GB control the AM button is useless and I simply selected the mode I preferred for the types of sites I planned to hunt, then Saved that program in the 'Custom' mode slot and Accepted ALL of the Disc. segments except the first two. That eliminated the unwanted noisy behavior.. Then I simply hunted inmy Custom mode, w/o noise, and could hear some of th unwanted Iron trash with a reduce Iron Volume
george1971: said:
About the detectors that I mentioned, I thought that T.R. Pro because of the 19Khz would have better separation than the other detectors in the list. Right or wrong?
Of the model you listed, the TB Pro, a 19 kHz copy of the Fisher F19 and Teknetics G2+, is a faster response & recovery model than the V-540 and many others, and so is the 12 kHz Simplex +. The problem I have with it, or at least one of the problems, is that it is a 2-Tone ONLY detector, if accepting some Iron trash.
george1971: said:
About Simplex I do not like the sounds and the single frequency, but it is cheap, waterproof and solid. Also, it has and threshold adjustment only in all metal mode if I am right.
I have seen a lot of comparison tests between Vanquish and Simplex I end up that the result depends on the company which finance the tester person.
Personally, I find the audio sounds to be 'OKAY' but not as good as what I get out of my Nokta, Tesoro and Garrett units. It is a fat recovering detector, however, so t can work well in that regard.
george1971: said:
Monte, do you believe that multifrequency is better than a medium frequency (12-14Khz) or it is a marketing trick for sales?
Hummmm, good question. I do NOT believe a Multi-Frequency detector, itself, is a 'marketing trick', but I do know that Minelab has done a lot in the pats with their BBS and FBS series models to try and 'trick' or 'fool' people into thinking they worked at a big number of frequencies all at the same time. They didn't and they don't.
Operating frequency is only part of the factors involved in engineering a functional detector. I have used SMF's from Fisher, Minelab, White's and now Garrett starting back in the '90s with a Sovereign. Some of them have and do work well for a lot of applications, but I also like to select a desired Single-Frequency with my Apex units or with the Equinox 800 I had, all based upon the particular site I am hunting.
Otherwise, other than a few exceptions in Single-Frequency, such as my two Nokta FORS Relic devices at 19 kHz, the vast majority of all my detecting, be it for coins and jewelry or at a beach or Relic Hunting, ever since 1977, has been with a detector operating in the 10 kHz to 15 kHz range.
george1971: said:
I insist in separation, correct and different vdi numbers for different targets. After that what is the final suggestion justified?
Well, I also like to have Quick-Response and Fast-Recovery to help 'Separate' good targets in a trashy environment. And I do use, or at least reference, a VDI read-out most of the time. However, since I am hunting in a trashier environment I know that the good-target masking also means a lot of the VDI responses are not going to be as accurate. Instead, they are more of a 'blended' reading between the two or three close-contact objects. That means I am going to recover more targets an more questionable r 'iffy' targets, but it also means I am going to end up with a lot of good targets that would have been
(and have been) masked for quite some time.
I would take the Simplex + from those models you listed, but if shopping for a brand new detector that provides ample performance for 'General-Purpose' hunting, I still encourage you to check out a Garrett Apex. They work and it is within your budget.
Monte