Nokta simplex vs Garrett at

Coinboy

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So I’ve narrowed down my choices for a new detector down to the nokta simplex or a used Garrett at pro or gold. What are your thoughts. I will be coinshooting and relic hunting in Iowa
 
The at pro is 3 pounds and the simplex is 2.8 I’m also thinking about the Minelab vanquish 540
 
The at pro is 3 pounds and the simplex is 2.8 I’m also thinking about the Minelab vanquish 540

The comparison means very little without actually holding and swinging them.


Where the weight is distributed and the shaft style and length have a huge influence on how heavy or light a detector feels. Two detectors with the same overall weight can feel totally different. But, smaller differences in weight only really matter for people swinging for many hours a day.

I've never held a simplex, but I do think the AT Pro can feel nose heavy with the stock 11" coil. I'm in good overall health and hunting for a couple of hours is not a problem at all. After 6+ hours of continuous swinging, then I notice it, especially if I've been out a few days in a row. On the other hand, I could swing the smaller 5x8 coil all day, every day. That coil is a very popular choice for coin shooting in parks and relic hunting in the woods. A lot of people don't feel the need for something larger unless they're trying to cover more ground per swing (large yards, big open parks, farm fields) or going for maximum depth. The extra large coils 12"+ available for the AT Pro can get tiring pretty quick if you don't learn to use the ground to support part of the weight.
 
Ok thanks. But how deep does the 5x8 go? I’ve watched depth test videos and seen dimes beep only the first few inches. I have an opportunity to buy buy a pro for 300$ with that coil and it’s the only reason I haven’t decided on it.
 
If ground balancing matters to you, as it does to many, the Vanquish line does not have automatic or manual ground balance capability that I can see.

My best friend has owned an AT Pro for 8 years and bought a Simplex a few months ago. He likes the Simplex so much that the AT Pro is now his backup unit.
 
Ok thanks. But how deep does the 5x8 go? I’ve watched depth test videos and seen dimes beep only the first few inches. I have an opportunity to buy buy a pro for 300$ with that coil and it’s the only reason I haven’t decided on it.

Lots of people hunt full time with the 5x8. It's not going to slam on 10 inch dimes, but it can get into places the standard coil can't and has good ability to seperate within trash. There are lots of coil options, including people selling the standard coil used.

The AT series is a proven, mostly hunt by audio, rugged, completely waterproof machine. If you're going to be bushwhacking through the woods, getting into rivers and creeks with rocks and so on, then it's hard to beat.

If that's not what you're going to be doing, but rather lots of parks and homes and maybe just the coil wet, and maybe dry and shallow wet sand at the beach, then you should consider the Vanquish.

The simplex, being waterproof, but not as good on wet sand as the multi-frequency vanquish (except the vanquish isn't waterproof so you can't take it into the tides), fits somewhere in the middle of all of that.

You have to figure out what kind of hunting you will primarily do, and if you do a lot of different types of hunting seriously, then you'll end up finding reasons to have multiple machines.
 
If ground balancing matters to you, as it does to many, the Vanquish line does not have automatic or manual ground balance capability that I can see.

Ground balancing is not a major issue with Minelab's multi frequency technology. Many people with Equinox detectors don't ground balance even though they can, unless they are in a single frequency mode. I assume Minelab took it off the Vanquish because (I'm fairly certain) it only runs in multifrequency mode.
 
I have the Vanquish 340 for a loaner and I have both Equinox models. I had an AT Pro and AT Gold for awhile and used the Makro Multi Kruzer which is a lot like the Simplex except for the nice adjustable shaft system on the Simplex which looks fantastic.

The Vanquish 340 has a 10 X 6" coil. It has easily hit 8" targets in bad mineralization where I hunt. It has had zero problems with ground noise so far, so its internal automatic ground balance system seems to be excellent. The 540 comes with a 12x8" coil (I think???) so it should hit 10" targets or more. There are some good YouTube vids by Relics and Rings. BTW, assessing depth from air tests with the Multi IQ Equinox and Vanquish detectors is NOT realistic. They do not air test very well. They will go extremely deep and usually well past the diameter of their coils in mild conditions. I have hit 14" rings and other targets at salt water beaches with fairly accurate numerical target IDs using the 11" coil on my Equinox. The Vanquish should do well too.

The At Pro is tried and true technology that is rugged and would do great in your generally mild Iowa dirt no matter what coil you are using.

The Simplex seems to be doing very well on the videos I have seen in milder soil conditions. I really enjoyed using the Makro Multi Kruzer for awhile but it could not handle high mineralization as well as I would have liked. It is a very deep detector in the right conditions as are the Anfibios, the Racer series and the Impacts. The Simplex has their DNA so depth should not be a problem. If you can find a used Racer 2 at the same price I would seriously consider it.

Jeff
 
But will the vanquish go as deep as the simplex or the at?

Not a simple answer. They're similar enough and there are too many other variables. The tests you see online are often not something you can generalize to your needs.

If you want to skip a bunch of dorky technical stuff, skip to the last sentence.

Soundwaves in music are a good analogy. The long waves of low frequencies (the bass in audio) can travel long distances through all sorts of objects, but aren't as capable of relaying as much detail.

The short waves of high frequencies (the "treble" in my audio analogy) can relay great detail when traveling directly and undisturbed to the listener. For that same reason it loses that detail quickly as it passes through objects and gets absorbed. As far as detecting, that's what the metal junk and/or mineralization does to the higher frequency signals.

Theoretically, a 10" coil can go about 10" deep. But, the waves traveling at the edge of detection are traveling the farthest---through the most trash/mineralization. The short (high) frequencies at the bottom edge of detection are lucky to make it back at all. The lower frequencies can do it, but not with a lot of detail.

Fortunately, silver is highly conductive and US coins are relatively large, uniformly shaped, thick, but often near the edge of the coil's detection pattern. That's OK. There's not a lot of "detail" needed by the detector to get word of a silver quarter and let you now about it. For this reason, many coin shooting detectors utilize a single very low frequency (VLF). 5 to 9 kHz. Entry level detectors with simple (or no) visual ID categories have less of a need for super-accurate IDs. They're also going to be quieter for a beginner or somebody focused on digging some coins a few times a year. Those low frequencies aren't going to report back on every speck of metal in the ground.

So, higher frequency machines are great for IDing shallower objects, and can even perform very well at depth when the ground is fairly clean. People looking for tiny gold nuggets or thin gold chains under a few inches of sand or mineralized ground utilize very high frequency detectors. (Or, choose a different technology altogether -- pulse induction.)

But, there's also a want and need for high detail and depth for medium to deep objects that are not great conductors, such as relics, small gold, and very small, thin silver.

If you were somewhere that has deep coins and very little trash because nobody has set foot on the property for the past 100 years except to mow it, then you'd want a low frequency machine and dig everything that beeped. If the ground mineralization isn't high, then a medium to high frequency machine would even do well.

An all-purpose detector is going to have a frequency in the mid teens. Low enough to get some depth out of an 11 inch coil, but high enough to ID common finds at medium depths.

The AT pro is 15 kHz. The Simplex is 12 kHz. I think the both have a stock coil that's about 11 inches. It seems Notka was leaning a bit more towards depth for coin detection and perhaps is relying on some improvements in post-processing to improve IDs.

Indeed, circuitry isn't the same, and these digital machines process could process the same signals differently based on various assumptions the engineers make about what people want to hear and find.

Processing speed as made multiple frequency machines possible. It's a blend of different frequencies to balance depth, detail, and ID.

The Vanquish is a multi-frequency machine (based on the same technology as the Equinox, although some people suspect it's a blend of 3 frequencies instead of the Equinox's 5.) It's processing a mix of very low to high frequencies.

So, I said all of that, just to say that the Vanquish might have better depth than the AT Pro and Simplex (single mid frequency machines) in some situations, or better ID in some situations, or neither in other situations.
 
Ground balancing is not a major issue with Minelab's multi frequency technology. Many people with Equinox detectors don't ground balance even though they can, unless they are in a single frequency mode. I assume Minelab took it off the Vanquish because (I'm fairly certain) it only runs in multifrequency mode.
I rarely ground balance with my Equinox 800.
I just don’t see any difference but it’s available. If I was in high mineralized ground I would.

Doug
 
My AT pro is now my backup machine. The simplex is great. My only real gripe is the iron audio is not as clear as on the AT pro. all in all very comparable. If I am looking for a hole site I will probbaly start with my At pro.
 
I owned AT Pro for 3 years, Equinox 800 since March 2018 and Simplex+ for 4 months.

Don't care for the simplex+ for one main reason. The tone system is not my stile. I like multiple tones for different ranges of targets. On the simplex it is just a same type of tone that varies a lot and you are supposed to interpret the tone and I find it impossible. But you do have numeric ID's but I don't look at ID while hunting only to try and verify a iffy signal.

But if you are ok with the tones, I think the Simplex is a good deal.

I am going to sell my Simplex and buy a Vanquish.
 
I rarely ground balance with my Equinox 800.
I just don’t see any difference but it’s available. If I was in high mineralized ground I would.

Doug

You may not see any difference, but the 800 might. In my opinion you should ground balance at the beginning of the hunt and when you change any modes. Not ground balancing does not seem to matter to some, but what your machine does not see doesn't matter because you don't know what you are missing.

I am a firm believer of taking the time to get your optimal settings for each of your hunt sites. No since wasting time hunting with a detector that is not set up correctly.

For instance on my 800 properly set up I found a 6-7" wheat penny that was shot with a bullet and found the bullet. This was in the most trashy park in the county at it's most trashy location and I had hunted that spot probably 10 times with my AT Pro and many times with my 800 before I had learned to set it up properly. This is in an area where I once use a shovel to dig up a small bucket of dirt about a cubic foot and found about 12-18 pieces of junk. Foil, nails, pop tops, bottle caps, bobby pins, lead fishing weights and screw caps. I actually took that cube of dirt home and counted out the junk.

Anyway it has made a believer out of me.

Of course one major problem in this park is finding a space clear of junk to ground balance.
 

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You may not see any difference, but the 800 might. In my opinion you should ground balance at the beginning of the hunt and when you change any modes. Not ground balancing does not seem to matter to some, but what your machine does not see doesn't matter because you don't know what you are missing.

I am a firm believer of taking the time to get your optimal settings for each of your hunt sites. No since wasting time hunting with a detector that is not set up correctly.

For instance on my 800 properly set up I found a 6-7" wheat penny that was shot with a bullet and found the bullet. This was in the most trashy park in the county at it's most trashy location and I had hunted that spot probably 10 times with my AT Pro and many times with my 800 before I had learned to set it up properly. This is in an area where I once use a shovel to dig up a small bucket of dirt about a cubic foot and found about 12-18 pieces of junk. Foil, nails, pop tops, bottle caps, bobby pins, lead fishing weights and screw caps. I actually took that cube of dirt home and counted out the junk.

Anyway it has made a believer out of me.

Of course one major problem in this park is finding a space clear of junk to ground balance.

I agree. Ground balancing becomes more important as ground mineralization increases so as to help get a cleaner response when in moderate to heavy trash. This helps to clean up the ID on deeper targets. It also helps by allowing for a higher sensitivity setting and getting a little more depth.

One should look at their finds and judge if they are finding difficult things. Are you finding deep targets? Are any of the coins green or red? What kind of trash targets are you accumulating?
 
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