Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| All-Purpose Detectors Voted As Top Three In The Kellyco People's Choice Awards. |
As you see, the Garrett AT Pro was voted the most popular detector in the all-purpose category. I have not used the AT Pro enough say much about it. It is obviously popular though. I have been using another Garrett detector a lot lately, and it is an excellent detector. At $600, the AT Pro costs less than one fourth the cost of second place detector, the CTX-3030.
The CTX has a lot of fancy features. Personally I am not a big fan of computer screens on detectors. And I'm not just an old fuddy-duddy. I've been using computers since the 1960s, including some of the biggest baddest computers ever made and made a good living for many years doing software development and consulting for fortune 100 companies, so it is not just that I don't like technology. I am very particular about when and how to apply it though.
As I've shown in the past, people often think they save a lot of time by reading a screen before deciding if they want to dig a target. I've studied videos on YouTube when various forms of target ID was used and counted the seconds to come up with a good reading and make a decision from a readout screen and also counted the number of seconds it takes to actually dig up a target. What I found is that on average people spend more time getting a good reading and making a decision whether to dig than it takes to actually dig a target. In the videos I studied, the targets were removed from inland sites where the recovery time should have been higher than what you would expect from targets recovered from sand where all you have to do is scoop and sift.
Of course you can save effort by not digging, and you might not get as frustrated by not digging as much junk, but when it comes to saving time, that is questionable at best. From my observations, it actually slows things down.
A second important point is that no ID system is perfect. There will be mistakes, and those kinds of mistakes can be huge. What readout system will tell you if your coil is over a Rolex or Tag Heuer. So you didn't have to dig that Tag Heuer watch - does that make you happy? You'll never know. No target ID system will correctly identify every type of target and some of the most valuable types of targets are the most likely to be missed.
Thirdly, no target ID system is more intelligent than the intelligence that was programmed into it. The system will have the advantage of being able to read the electronic signature of targets better than the detectorists using only audio signals. You can however learn to identify much about targets from the audio alone if you do a lot of testing and really get to know your detector. I find that I can tell more about a target from the audio output by not using a discrimination mode. You can learn to tell much about size, shape and depth of a target from the audio output. Using that kind of information combined with your knowledge of the environment, you can learn to do some good target ID from the audio signal combined with other acquired information. I can't get into all of that in detail now, but the point is that the human brain is a much better computer than what you have in your detector.
The Fisher F44 comes in at under $400. I have never used that detector, but am sure it is fine.
For people who are just starting, I recommend a low cost detector. Don't spend too much on a detector until you learn more about yourself and the hobby and where you want to go with it. If your detector is not great at hunting on a salt-water saturated beach for example, and you find out that that is important to you, then you know what to get in your next detector, but first learn to make the adjustments with the detector that you have so that you can improve the detector's performance in that environment. What you learn as you work to gain better performance from your first detector will help you a lot in the future. Your first detector will help you identify what you really need for hunting where going to hunt most.
It is always good to have a multi-purpose detector. You might go to the beach and
hunt the wet sand a while, move to the dry sand and then hunt an old home site on your way home. It is good to have a detector with good flexibility.
Did you notice that the same three companies make the top three water hunting detectors and the top three all-purpose detectors?
---
Relatives looking through a loved one's dilapidated house found a treasure trove worth more than $1 million in a crumpled paper bag, in the form of super-rare Ty Cobb baseball cards...
For more on that story, here is the link.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/family-finds-1-million-rare-ty-cobb-cards-article-1.2551240
I once had a huge baseball card collection. Many from the fifties and sixties. One day I returned from college and my mother had burned them all. I had a lot of valuable cards. Many worth hundreds and thousands. A big cardboard box full. I know the same thing happened to a lot of collections. Too bad!
---
On the Treasure Coast we'll have a smooth surf on Sunday. The wind will be from the southeast. Again, we'll have good negative tides.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
The CTX has a lot of fancy features. Personally I am not a big fan of computer screens on detectors. And I'm not just an old fuddy-duddy. I've been using computers since the 1960s, including some of the biggest baddest computers ever made and made a good living for many years doing software development and consulting for fortune 100 companies, so it is not just that I don't like technology. I am very particular about when and how to apply it though.
As I've shown in the past, people often think they save a lot of time by reading a screen before deciding if they want to dig a target. I've studied videos on YouTube when various forms of target ID was used and counted the seconds to come up with a good reading and make a decision from a readout screen and also counted the number of seconds it takes to actually dig up a target. What I found is that on average people spend more time getting a good reading and making a decision whether to dig than it takes to actually dig a target. In the videos I studied, the targets were removed from inland sites where the recovery time should have been higher than what you would expect from targets recovered from sand where all you have to do is scoop and sift.
Of course you can save effort by not digging, and you might not get as frustrated by not digging as much junk, but when it comes to saving time, that is questionable at best. From my observations, it actually slows things down.
A second important point is that no ID system is perfect. There will be mistakes, and those kinds of mistakes can be huge. What readout system will tell you if your coil is over a Rolex or Tag Heuer. So you didn't have to dig that Tag Heuer watch - does that make you happy? You'll never know. No target ID system will correctly identify every type of target and some of the most valuable types of targets are the most likely to be missed.
Thirdly, no target ID system is more intelligent than the intelligence that was programmed into it. The system will have the advantage of being able to read the electronic signature of targets better than the detectorists using only audio signals. You can however learn to identify much about targets from the audio alone if you do a lot of testing and really get to know your detector. I find that I can tell more about a target from the audio output by not using a discrimination mode. You can learn to tell much about size, shape and depth of a target from the audio output. Using that kind of information combined with your knowledge of the environment, you can learn to do some good target ID from the audio signal combined with other acquired information. I can't get into all of that in detail now, but the point is that the human brain is a much better computer than what you have in your detector.
The Fisher F44 comes in at under $400. I have never used that detector, but am sure it is fine.
For people who are just starting, I recommend a low cost detector. Don't spend too much on a detector until you learn more about yourself and the hobby and where you want to go with it. If your detector is not great at hunting on a salt-water saturated beach for example, and you find out that that is important to you, then you know what to get in your next detector, but first learn to make the adjustments with the detector that you have so that you can improve the detector's performance in that environment. What you learn as you work to gain better performance from your first detector will help you a lot in the future. Your first detector will help you identify what you really need for hunting where going to hunt most.
It is always good to have a multi-purpose detector. You might go to the beach and
hunt the wet sand a while, move to the dry sand and then hunt an old home site on your way home. It is good to have a detector with good flexibility.
Did you notice that the same three companies make the top three water hunting detectors and the top three all-purpose detectors?
---
Relatives looking through a loved one's dilapidated house found a treasure trove worth more than $1 million in a crumpled paper bag, in the form of super-rare Ty Cobb baseball cards...
For more on that story, here is the link.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/family-finds-1-million-rare-ty-cobb-cards-article-1.2551240
I once had a huge baseball card collection. Many from the fifties and sixties. One day I returned from college and my mother had burned them all. I had a lot of valuable cards. Many worth hundreds and thousands. A big cardboard box full. I know the same thing happened to a lot of collections. Too bad!
---
On the Treasure Coast we'll have a smooth surf on Sunday. The wind will be from the southeast. Again, we'll have good negative tides.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
