Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Search coils and settings

I am a search coil junkie, which can be a little tough on the old wallet as some search coils cost as much as a metal detector now.
One important thing to remember when changing search coils on your metal detector is you have to adjust your settings to suit whatever search coil you have installed on your metal detector.
You have to make sure you use the right metal detector settings for the size search coil being used.
For example, you should not be concerned about discrimination or settings geared towards recover speed or target separation when using a large search coil.
Large search coils are always best used for ground coverage and target depth at non trashy beach sites.
The opposite is true when using small search coils at trashy beach sites, where target separation not target depth is the most important factor. 
You can run much hotter manual sensitivity settings using smaller search coils than you can using large search coils.
The reason why there is not a lot of difference in target depth between the 8 and 10-inch search coils on one of my favorite metal detectors the Minelab Excalibur.
Hot or high sensitivity levels will result in a noisy ride at the beach, so you often have to lower the metal detector sensitivity control to operate smoothly.
A chattery metal detector because of an incorrect sensitivity setting for the size of search coil, may cause you to walk over valuable targets missed in the threshold chatter.
If you dumb down your metal detector to use a large search coil, any potential target depth advantage of using the large search coil is wiped out. 
It is not just settings you have to adjust, a fast sweep speed will also negate any depth advantage of using the large search coil.
You have to sweep large search coils slower than small search coils.
If you are using different size search coils on a regular basis, more than likely you know how and why they serve a purpose in your beach or water hunting arsenal.
Unfortunately, people new to beach or water hunting use different size search coils but do not understand their "Normal" settings do not always do a different size search coil justice.
To get the maximum benefit from investing in a different size search coil for a metal detector, you have to find the best settings to run the new combination at.
Different set ups require different settings to make the reason you are using it work. 











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