ON THE HORIZON = MDT-8000

Great information Tom. Im in the infancy of learning this machine. Still trying to wrap my head around Fl sand GBing where it just may not GB. So that leaves me with an option ... and of course some questions lol. I can GB 500 or near that........ OR again take it to the high wet sand where minerals may exist and my well be more similar to IN the water hunting. If this machine doesnt see salt ... and i have my last salt setting ON and GB ..... then theres no salt right? What is the concern..... that this area might have more black sand, because its not supposed to see the salt right? Big difference id say working near a 500 GB here in Fl than what Calf is and NOT working in the water but the wet sand. Maybe im wrong? Even the Nox here ..... in the wet sand will GB at 4 to 7..... thats just above default...... and close to the 500 neutral GB of the 8000. Next question........why is the 18Khz much more chatty in the water than wet sand if its not seeing some salt..... shouldnt it react the same as the wet sand? I know the salt setting does change the deep out i go. This is something im going to play around with.

If this was answered in an earlier post, I must have missed it.

Since the Tarsacci is not a VLF and not a PI, what is it? Is it a hybrid? What are we supposed to call this new technology?

People keep asking me what it is and I can only tell them what it is not.

.

Thanks for the recap info Tom and others. I’ve been trying to save all your info posts as an ‘addendum’ to the manual. As has been said, the Tarsacci is a different breed of cat so we continue to discover new way to set it up and refine the use every time we go out. For me, I am working on using the mixed mode more as it’s more useful in determining nonferrous targets than using all metal which has been my favorite mode for the beach. Mixed mode takes a good deal of ‘ear training’.
I have a question for the primarily relic hunting owners, what settings have you found most useful in moderate soil conditions? I’m not referring to Culpepper type soil conditions, just any general area in Virginia or other states where relics can be found. I’m headed up for a hunt on a good site next month and will be putting the 8000 to the test for a least a day or two. All the help I can get to save time getting the 8000 set for optimum relic hunting would be very helpful. Would love to share photos of some good finds with y’all TIA.

Gary....... why mixed mode if you are relic hunting? Seems AM and the screen would be a better choice. Tom also mentioned the advantage of various iron readings/digits....... for say nails or shallow iron over deeper more desirable targets.

My understanding is that it is Multi Domain Technology...thus MDT8000. Where that falls in describing it against VLF or PI, I have no idea. I'm at the bullet field now, on my phone waiting on Chris to get here so we can give it another spin here.

I do remember the phrase Multi Domain being used. I guess that works. Thanks.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/2019 02:10PM by Badger in NH.

Gary....... I've probably got more hours on my Tarsacci relic hunting than salt water hunting at this point. I have moderate to moderate/high mineralization in my area depending on the site.

When I get to a site the first thing I do is GB, set 12 KHz, threshold -2, sensitivity 6, Disc 0, black sand and salt OFF, mixed mode. If I'm running quiet I first raise the threshold up to -1 and then 0 if it will handle it but most times it won't. Then I start raising the sensitivity, usually can't get it above 7 in my area though. Black sand for me has boosted the performance in my soil so I will usually turn it on. 12 or 9 KHz works the best for me, if 12 is too chatty I'll lower it to 9. I haven't done much with disc yet but plan on using that notch feature the next time I'm out. I like mixed mode the best as it gives more information about the target you're over IMO. However, when it starts getting trashing I switch to disc mode as it helps with the separation. I really don't like AM mode as I'm not a screen watcher, I hunt by sound. Key is to get the machine quiet, you can work with a few chirps now and then but you need to keep them to a minimum.

In my area I'm finding the Tarsacci is giving me pretty solid ID down to 9 or 10 inches after that it takes some practice to know what the machine is telling you. But I'm starting to recognize nuances with deep iron vs good targets that are deeper. Just for comparison the Equinox gives a solid ID to 7-8 inches after that its up to you to recognize the nuances of that machine. Not having a problem finding the small stuff either.

The other week when I went to my buddies permission he ran the GPX and Equinox for about 2 hours each. I ran the Tarsacci all but about 30 minutes. When we compared finds at the end of the day he had mostly larger and fewer targets than I did, Same thing when I went to the bullet field with him about a month ago, he ran the Equinox the whole time I ran the Tarsacci most of the time, used my Equinox for about an hour. He found 16 bullets I found 26. I'm starting to see a pattern with the amount of stuff I'm finding compared to other machines. Maybe coincidence, maybe not only time will tell.

dewcon4414 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Gary....... why mixed mode if you are relic huntin
> g? Seems AM and the screen would be a better cho
> ice. Tom also mentioned the advantage of various
> iron readings/digits....... for say nails or shall
> ow iron over deeper more desirable targets.

Wasn’t really referring to relic hunting to be honest with you I agree with you I was referring to beach hunting over in max mode because there is so much iron down there and deep iron Is a challenge and all metal but not so much in mixed mode

Thanks Avencent, that’s good and useful information. Sounds like you’re getting the results too. What made you decide on mixed mode?

As I said before one really needs to try various combinations. Dimitar strongly recommended, for relic/in land hunting, leaving on the Salt and dropping Black Sand to see if that worked better. As I recall NASA Tom explained the BS was a toggle filter and Salt was like a fine tune in this connection.

Past(or)Tom
Using a Legend, a Deus 2, an Equinox 800, a Tarsacci MDT 8000, & a few others...
with my beloved, fading Corgi, Sadie

Pasttom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> As I said before one really needs to try various c
> ombinations. Dimitar strongly recommended, for re
> lic/in land hunting, leaving on the Salt and dropp
> ing Black Sand to see if that worked better. As I
> recall NASA Tom explained the BS was a toggle filt
> er and Salt was like a fine tune in this connectio
> n.

Thanks Pasttom, so if I’m understanding you correctly you’re saying Dimitar recommends leaving the salt mode on at all times inland, and setting it at say 25 or mid-range? Also, when you say ‘dropping’ Blacksand do you mean turning it off? I rarely use BS, so that’s why I ask. I Really want to get these setting clear in my head because Since they straight from the designer and seems counterintuitive to me. But then I’m still well within the learning curve lol. TIA

I know this is not rocket science but we have NASA-Tom for that. The learning curve may flatten out but never really ends. As I see it, the key to learning any detector but especially the Tarsacci is running through the frequencies and settings to see what woks best for you and your ground. You don't have to do it forever, just until you see what effect each has and learn to adapt to the needs of the target and setting. Then finding what to check or use as you determine the unique requirements of the hunt. The total auto-memorization of settings for each frequency is brilliant. I am ever so grateful for the 6 hours of face time I had with Dimitar and nearly an hour on the phone with Tom to validate and formulate my understanding of this unique machine. Reading all the posts has clarified some things too. I don't consider myself an expert yet, but a fairly confident, competent user.

Past(or)Tom
Using a Legend, a Deus 2, an Equinox 800, a Tarsacci MDT 8000, & a few others...
with my beloved, fading Corgi, Sadie

In my soil black sand ON works better than OFF, Salt mode ON hasn't seemed to make any difference one way or the other. But like Pasttom said you need to find a target and start playing with the settings to see what enhances the signal. I did a video on the settings if you didn't already see it. I find a target and then go through the settings to see what adjustments do to improve the signal.
YouTube

Interesting day of testing for me. I found ..... that swoosh you hear running N. and S. against the grain can be lessened with the BLK SAND off. 9khs...... runs VERY VERY smooth in AM in the water. Blk sand seemed to react much like having another Threshold digit as far as the chatter it can create in the water. Even 18 and 12khz runs better in the surf with it OFF. Now..... it does seem to give a bit more depth OUT of the water in the wet sand. I can run this baby pretty HOT in 9khz..... so having to adjust the sensitivity and threshold for the other two freqs and reduce the chatter right now is good for me. This thing is WAY more quiet that an Xcal in the salt water in AM 9khz. I buried that same ring today..... 12" at the surfs edge with water going over the hole i careful measured hole i put it in..... IMO 9kh sounded better that the other two. Ive tested a LOT of gold in 9kzh..... just a couple of tiny crosses and 1 small chain it cant find. I had to figure out how to ID iron when going from AM to Disc....... i think i did. My problem was falsing off the iron..... still getting ping pongs but couldnt see the screen. I kept hearing what appeared to be EMI..... that all went away when i adjusted the threshold to -1 sensitivity was still 7...BLK sand off Salt 33. Once i got the digits stabilized i set my disc at +29. Not certain what the gain is going to be to run with an unstable machine in 18 or 12khz...... but that may be my tweak once learn the targets. I also tested a lot of BIG silver... i only had one HEAVY silver ring hit at 27.... most were 25 or below.

Just a reminder Threshold runs backwards to me. Zero is all signal and as you go to -9 you are eliminating signal. So noise at zero is eliminated at -2 or -3 (usually that is enough). It is explained well in the manual, but who reviews that? We all should and especially with a new and unique detector! Just sayin...

Past(or)Tom
Using a Legend, a Deus 2, an Equinox 800, a Tarsacci MDT 8000, & a few others...
with my beloved, fading Corgi, Sadie

Just curious Shovel Nose... did we find out about your coil? Mine acted a little strange today. Box underwater as I was digging. It started to sound like EMI...but I wasn’t moving it ...could it have been the GB in some way. Cleared up after a couple of swings. I do review the manual but this is a pretty simple machine. Now who reduces their sensitivity before they GB or water balance? I like to run my machine somewhat hot but like you said with the threshold back it off some to help cut back on noise/EMI. I’ve about got my 9khz dialed in for good hunting and being able to ID targets when reverse disc is used. Rough out there today where I wanted to get. I was right on the edge digging sinkers. They sounded shallow but were much deeper than expected once I started digging them.

I'm just gonna pop in a post on the 8000 from the other day.

Last month, Chris W and I got together at my bullet site to test the new machine out. Neither of us really knew much about it then, and were just kinda spitballing settings and experimenting on our own. I marked several bullets with my GPX and then went back with Chris to try and dial the machine in. We never could get it there. Oh sure, you could stand over a marked bullet and eventually get it to where it made a signal on it...but at that point, the machine would sound off on everything the same exact way...including just random spots on the ground. Neither of us said anything about it on the forum and Chris was in immediate contact with Tom and the creator of the machine, looking for any suggestions, tips, or an indication that maybe the machine was faulty. So he sends it in for a checkup....and got it back a while ago. We got together again a few days ago. Since that first hunt, I had been behind the scenes picking the brains of other people that have the MDT and getting more familiar with things we could try.

Out of the gate, I marked 4 bullets right in a row, just a few feet from one another and Chris spent the better part of the next hour playing with the machine over those 4 bullets to see what he could get it to do. I feel satisfied in saying that we pretty much covered all the bases and gave it a fair go on those, and I also marked about a half dozen more while he was doing that. None of these were deep ones either; they all seemed to be about 9 to 10 inches deep, with a couple that were only 6 to 7. Now in all fairness, it did get those shallower ones with a good signal but only via the all metal side. The deeper ones required much tweaking to get a signal on them, and just like before, once you did that, the feedback from the ground itself rendered it unhuntable. Once you made the ground feedback disappear and the machine quiet again, you were back to the bullets being non detectable.

Just my take and my opinion...I don't want to be accused of bashing. But if it were me based on what I've seen and experienced now, for relic hunting purposes, if I were deciding between a MDT and GPX or even a TDI for bad ground...I would go with the GPX or TDI hands down. At the price point of the MDT, you are already beyond what a TDI costs and knocking at the door of the street price of a new GPX. Pulse machines just currently are king of the bad ground. I think we were all hoping for a machine that could handle it and be able to have better iron disc....not necessarily to knock a pulse machine off the throne but to go give it a good run anyway. I just don't see it doing that.

How does it stack against other VLFs for relics in bad dirt? I personally think there are better machines currently out on the market. The big part of the MDT is the mixed mode and most of the signal you are hearing is the all metal side reporting. An F75 or T2 in motion all metal mode will actually get a better result in that dirt. Add a larger coil to it, and now you are getting those deeper bullets as well, and after a while you can cipher what is iron and not iron. The Equinox lacks the true motion all metal mode but does a decent job in its disc mode. It's deeper in its disc mode than the MDT's disc mode...running it in Park or Field mode but it too wants to throw things into the iron range. I played with Chris's Nox 800 and the Gold Modes that my 600 lacks. On individual bullets, the gold modes slammed the bullets hard....problem was...it too was unhuntable in those modes due to the false signals. So in all fairness there, while the Nox is semi capable in bad dirt....it's still not the deepest one either. You will dig some things in its disc mode but not everything that is there...you're gonna walk over some items that read as iron and some items that don't read at all.

I can see why the beach hunters really like the MDT, and in mild to moderately bad ground it is an awesome relic hunter too. This report is just representing some of the worse ground you can hunt in.

Daniel,

Yes ….. the MDT is certainly not a PI...…. and I hope I never portrayed it as a PI...… or a unit that would trump all PI's. . . . . . . especially the GPX series. The MDT is not a PI.
And yes. I would only use a GPX in ……. as you very clearly stated: "Some of the worse ground you can hunt in"...…. where you tested the MDT. I know that you had a glimmer of 'hope' that the MDT would (at minimum) ........ present some form of: 'encroaching' GPX PI performance in the most severe mineralized dirt. Apologies to you …. that the Tarsacci is NOT a PI!
Just curious: How many hours do you (now) have on the Tarsacci?

Tom,

I don't own one. I am just the bird dog guy that marks the bullets. I can tell ya there's a bullet here, here, and here, and approx how deep they are. It's Chris's unit. He does all the settings and testing. We hunted Thurs from around 9 am to 2 pm. The other hunt was about the same length. I grabbed the machine up while he was taking a break and played with it some but otherwise I just mark the signals with the pulse machine and observe, as that's the whole point of the testing. I couldn't tell you how many hours or different machines I've had at this place though. It would be in the several hundreds on hours.

Daniel...…. copy! Somehow...…. my brain was queuing that you were sharing this unit with Chris.
In any regard...…. thanks for your input! Looks like the new/different coil did not help. . . . . and possibly...… reduced performance slightly...….. by the sounds of it.

The beauty of the MDT is its target ID ability. It should only be tested against detectors that have target ID.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2019 01:21PM by Badger in NH.

I found by setting the GB to 560 it help settle it down. But the chatter is still there even with other freq. I do turn my sens down when GB and not sure if necessary as now Im just setting mine to 560. I have found the machine will not GB in the sand on the beaches around this area because the sand is so "mild". I stay on 18k because I'm a jewelry hunter. Really could care less about the coins here. Rare to get silver and the clad is normally unusable. I really like that Dimitar and Tom are available to give input in situations like this. I have not seen a nickel in a while but am digging a ton of tiny targets. Getting to the point I want to stop digging below 6. You can see the small aluminum pieces in pic but there were some so small I just found with PP and they were not much larger than the sand grains. Yet it hits so hard you would think it is a larger target.

Dimitar called me Friday and I am going to ship mine back and he is sending me a demo unit while he tests and repairs if necessary my unit. I mentioned that was not necessary but he wanted me to be able to hunt with the MDT 8000. This customer service is above all I have experienced. I hunt 2 to 3 times a week and while I have back up units I have gotten spoiled with the balance and weight that I would have just waited till mine had return causing me to missing a lot of swinging. I would come home after swinging my ET with my upper shoulder around area a rotor cup tear would happen and eat Advil like candy. Was about to give up hobby or slow down a bunch and now I have no pain. I swing longer and with the conditions I have here it's required to get the time in.

Badger -- If you are referring to my post, I think you have totally misunderstood what we were doing in the first place. We weren't testing any machines against one another. At my bullet site, the easiest way to test a detector out is to use a machine that we know works well to flag/mark bullets with. Think of it as a 155 year old test garden with bullets at varying depths. Without a bird dog machine, aka somebody locating the bullets....it makes testing a lot harder than it should be. I could walk around with the GPX and mark/locate a half dozen bullets in short order. Then from there, we put the pulse machine away and just play with whatever we have brought down to the site and see if we can dial it in or not. With the GPX, I can tell you there's a bullet right there, and it's probably going to be around such and such inches deep...just going by the sound of it.

There are some machines that I've had down there, that you could walk around in the field all day long and never find the first signal with them. So if that's all you had to start with, then you'd never know if it was working or not because you would never know if you actually had the coil over a target. We've been using the cliche of "you don't know what you don't know" and running new machines this way eliminates the not knowing part. When you know for certain there's a bullet in the ground at that exact spot and approx what depth it is at...well then it's just up to you to figure out settings to make the machine work, if it can at all. There are some machines you can quickly exhaust all available settings on....and it's not a matter of signal interpretation of something you hear and trying to decide whether to dig or not dig...but rather not hearing a signal at all. You can't dig what you can't hear. Thus eliminates a LOT of machines down there. In the aspect of target ID...and a machine IDing a target in the ground like it does the target out of the ground...in bad soil that is a guarantee you to not dig much, IF ANYTHING. The Nox is probably the closest machine to being capable of that, that I have seen in a VLF, and even that is extremely limited.

Daniel..... That's exactly the method I use to test machines in my bullet field. Totally agree that if you don't know it's down there, how do you know what you're missing. Once you know where a deep bullet is located then you can pull out the other machines and start testing.

Badger.... Yes I agree when you're testing the Tarsacci it should be compared to VLF's not a PI but it totally makes sense to locate targets with a PI.

I'm taking my Tarsacci to VA the last week of March, by them I will probably have a 100 plus hours on it. The more you use the Tarsacci the more you can run it hot and interpret what it's telling you. I remember the first time I ran it on the beach I was expecting something different, but the more I used it the more I knew what it was telling me. I'm going to dedicate a good 8 hours with it in the hot soil and see what it can do. I've got some ideas of how to set it up, we'll see what happens.

Shovel....next time out turn off blk sand. Run -1T, 7 sensitivity if you can, AM, Locate a target in 18khz....then switch to 9khz tell me that ain’t a cleaner sound. Also try slowly manually moving your salt up if using 18Khz....curious what you hear. Ive tested over a 100 various pieces of gold jewelry only a couple of very very tiny crosses and small chain I couldn’t get in 9khz. That’s in the water.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2019 11:07PM by dewcon4414.

Daniel Tn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>But if it were me based on wha
> t I've seen and experienced now, for relic hunting
> purposes, if I were deciding between a MDT and GPX
> or even a TDI for bad ground...I would go with the
> GPX or TDI hands down. At the price point of the
> MDT, you are already beyond what a TDI costs and k
> nocking at the door of the street price of a new G
> PX. Pulse machines just currently are king of th
> e bad ground. I think we were all hoping for a ma
> chine that could handle it and be able to have bet
> ter iron disc....not necessarily to knock a pulse
> machine off the throne but to go give it a good ru
> n anyway. I just don't see it doing that.


I think it was this that made me think you were comparing the MDT to a PI, but that's okay.

The bullet testing proved what the MDT can't do. I want to see proof of what it CAN do. To do that, we need to test it against other target ID detectors.

.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2019 07:21PM by Badger in NH.

Daniel...….. just curious. What coil (size) are you using on the GPX? I ask …. because of the 11"x8" coil on the Tarsacci….. as being compared 'to'.

My first impressions of the Tarsacci:

Real nice sturdy build
Initial charging of the batteries seems like it takes forever. Approximately 8 hours for initial charge.
Supplied headphones sound real good and were loud enough I had to turn down the volume...."Not waterproof" so I didn't use them today.
"Feels" heavier then the Equinox BUT it isn't....may be due to me having the shaft fully extended and the connection point of the shaft to coil making it feel nose heavy.


I wired up a modified set of Minelab Excal headphones to the machine and had to turn the volume back up to hear with the Minelab piezo headphones. Still plenty of adjustment in volume and the headphones will be usable for in the water.


First hunt (3 hours) nothing to brag about...2 cell phones, 1 EBT card, little over a dollar in clad, normal canslaw and a couple bottle caps. Finished off with a carbon fiber designed SS ring.


Tested a 2.5 gram 10k band in wet salt sand at a measured 12" ensuring ring was laying flat and then filled in the hole. 8000 had no problem hitting it in AM and Mixed Mode, in Disc, it didn't hit on every pass over the ring. Pulled the ring up 2" so the ring would be on edge and the machine hit it on every pass in every mode.

Settings used: Black Sand OFF, Threshold -2, Sensitivity 7, Salt 27, 9 KHz and disc set at 29 (for any potential wrap around)


Overall pretty happy with how the 8000 worked today for not knowing what I was doing with a new machine. Going to wire up another set of headphones (with speakers) today which will give me better representation of the tones over the Piezo Minelab phones.


Cliff

Tom -- Not sure why the coil size of the GPX would matter since we are only talking about 7 to 9 inch Civil War bullets and not even comparing it to the GPX. I would think it would matter more of what other VLFs have been used with similar sized coils to the Tarsacci, and how those compare to it. If you are just looking for raw data on the GPX itself for coil sizes to depth ratio, I can sorta do that. The smallest coil I have for the GPX is a 5x10 Commander DD coil. It is actually my 2nd favorite coil for the machine but I usually don't have it on while at the bullet field simply because the field is over 30 acres in size and you can cover ground faster with the larger coils. These bullets tend to come in clusters but you may walk 50 to 75 yards or more between clusters of them. Once you find a cluster, you will find several there. In years past when it was newer, some of these clusters would have 80 to 100 bullets in them. Over the years, and especially now that other people are hunting it (site looked like a mine field the other day where people had been digging) the bullets have gotten fewer and the patterns of the clusters is harder to see. Back to coils...I HAVE had the 5x10 on down there in the past while testing it out and I can tell you the GPX with the 5x10 coil can pull bullets out of there at 11-12 inches. That's about the deepest I have personally pulled with it but in all fairness, I haven't actually marked a deeper bullet with the larger coils and then tried the 5x10 to see if it could obtain them but I know around 12 inches for sure. With the 11 inch round coil, I have dug bullets there down to around 15 inches deep. With my large coil, a 15 inch Spiral coil, I have dug them past 15, but this field seems to not have them much deeper than that in it. With any of the coils I have for it, those 7 to 9 inch bullets are no brainer signals. I can tell you to within a 98% accuracy of whether I'm over a bullet and not dig any iron doing it. The average depth of the bullets down there is 7 to 9 inches, usually about the length of a handheld pinpointer.

With that said, every since the T2 came out, that general 11x8 stock coil size has been popular on units. To give you an idea how the T2 and F75 compare with the stock coil there...those bullets are practically un detectable in disc mode. They will come in with an iron reading as the dominate signal and then do somewhat of an occasional bounce up into the zinc/tab range about once out of every three sweeps across them if you are really sweeping the coil fast. Motion all metal mode will eat them alive though. I've dug some pretty deep ones with the stock coil down there utilizing motion all metal mode, and deeper ones with coils like the NEL Tornado. An AT Pro fares about the same as the F75 in disc mode, mostly an iron signal and occasional bounce. The AT Gold and Max did better because of having an all metal mode but theirs isn't as great as the F75 or T2. An MX Sport does better in disc mode than the afore mentioned machines...the shallower bullets hit pretty good on it but the stock coil on it is a 10 inch round DD coil. The Nokta/Makro machines do not do well at all down there. Total wipe outs. I've had the Fors Core, Fors Relic, Red Racer, Impact and Multi Kruzer down there with an array of coil sizes. I've yet to find one that worked halfway decent there. There have been many more machines I've had there but those are the ones that stand out in my mind. Will have the Deus with newest software and X35 coil down there sometime in the near future; I'm interested to see how it does.

The Equinox is the best detector I've used to date with target ID at the bullet place. But you are talking about an 11 inch round coil too. Its Minelab cousins did not though...the CTX, eTrac, and Explorers were horrible down there. The old CoinStrike with 10.5 inch coil was also a surprisingly good unit down there. Not so much with the 8 inch coil but the 10.5 inch was worth hipmounting and hunting with. I found a lot with it....but at the same time in hind sight, I left a BUNCH in the ground with it too that I simply didn't know was there. The number one VLF machine I have found for down there though....don't laugh....was the Blisstool. I only got to use it with the stock coil down there but it would pop those bullets in that 7 to 9 inch range really well in disc mode. But the site is cookie cutter design for that machine....wide open, hardly any iron trash other than shallow farm implements....set it up and roll with it. It's the only site I found it to be amazing in.

Daniel,excellent report on different machines in your bullet field---minnies and big projectiles are my game and your report is very enlightening.