What a quest I have been on. Ya know, from the very first, when I first started detecting just over a year ago, I remember being dumbfounded and frustrated at why I saw people getting all of these wonderful depths on youtube, and reporting digging seated dimes and what not at 11 inches.Hearing just a faint hi tone. Thus began my metal detector quest. I wanted ME one of them deep seekers to hit coins that others had missed due to a depth limitation.
I remember the frustration I felt when I first went to the test garden with my brand new Etrac and I told myself: "Now just you watch THIS!" only to be frustrated when I couldn't even get a 7.5 inch coin to show up as a coin!!! A nine inch dime or quarter would not sound off anything but a faint iron sugnal on the F75SE. Same with the Calibrated CZ-3D. Any coin over 6.5 inches in my testgarden gave a nice crisp clear.......iron tone. I woke up this morning feeling frustrated with my soil.
BUT I will say this. My AT Pro with stock coil is hotter than ususal and will air test a clad dime at 12 inches. And I don't have to swing the dime fast either....just a normal swing with dime parralel to coil and it will hi tone it. And it DOES hit my 9 inch mercs and quarters.....with a hi tone/ mid tone and with numbers jumping into the silver zone. Easily enuff that I would dig that target. My last AT Pro would barely hit a 5 inch coin (when they first came out). But I am being very careful with this unit so that I won't have to send it in and they end up de-tuning it accidentally. Now all of this talk is coming from a one year man. And you probably didn't need me to tell you that....you could tell it just from reading my post.
DanielTN has been doing an admirable job at experimenting with detectors and his dirt sounds like mine. I mean....this dirt will grow a heck of a good garden. Good tomatoes, and sweet corn, and beans, and so forth, but if a silver dime is 8 inches deep, it is probably gonna sound like a nail. Except for this newest AT Pro. But I am always on the hunt for a deep seeker in red dirt if such an animal exists. A detector that will detect a coin with almost as much depth as it air tests it.
What depresses me is this: I think that I have tried all the great detectors and there is nothing left for me to try. And half the fun of this hobby was taking a new detctor to a spot and making that spot NEW to me again. Oh well. It's been a fun ride. I'll just use my Garrett AT Pro until it peters out and then send it in and hope and pray that it comes back to me hot. Or hotter. Just NOT weaker.