Coil size?

It looks to me that most people have a preference
for either the large coils or the small coils?
I personally like small coils to me a 11 standard coil is to big unless I'm detecting on the beach.
in parks or homesites small is good (which i do most of my detecting)
The 8" coils is the best size I believe.
So much easier to pin-point which = smaller holes.
Just my thought.

I really like the 15" on the Equinox, it's very sensitive for a large coil.

Dug this yesterday, a King Henry from the 1200's
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2020 08:00AM by ghound.

Ill use the Explorer as an example. The 2 had a killer coil......which was a 10" coil at the time. Even used people were giving top dollar for those coils. 8 and 9" coils were loosing their appeal as the standard coil. Then came the Explorer SE...... 10" .... only problem was the Exp 2 had a better coil. So about a year in i believe they went to the 11" coil. Then came the 12"........now we are up to the 15". To me in the salt water...... a good 9" or 10" is still a very good sized coil for a lot of reasons. Never been a big coil fan for salt water......and in most cases you had to turn them down. By time you did that you were getting to much of an advantage over a standard 11".... or in the Xcal case a 10" plus you often lost sensitivity to smaller gold. From all these coils.....regardless of coverage or sensitivity the 11" seemed to gain us the most advantage in both depth and sensitivity on the beach.

dewcon4414 Wrote:
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>... From all these coils....
> .regardless of coverage or sensitivity the 11" see
> med to gain us the most advantage in both depth an
> d sensitivity on the beach.


Since you're couching this in terms of the Explorer II (and Etrac, etc...) : I have to agree with you : I never had much use for the smaller or bigger coils. If I ever found myself in a zone were I was fighting masking and separating (eg.; a nail-riddled zone, or whatever), then .... while it's true that the little hockey-puck coil can afford you better separation, yet let's be honest : The Exp. II was never a good see-through/separating machine to begin with . Yes it's good for the "power-house that it is", but .... if it ever came to conditions like this, I just reach for my Sabre or Bandito or 77b.

And as for the larger coil options (like the WOT, etc...) : It was generally agreed that the Exp. II hit its "point of diminishing returns" at the 11" coil (I believe you call that a 10" . It's something like 10.5, to be exact, eh ?). So while other machine (the CTX and Sov. for example) may well indeed get coins a tad deeper with larger coils , yet the Exp. II only added coverage with larger coils. Not more depth. And with the added coverage swath came the usual drawbacks of fishier operation, harder pinpointing, more potential masking , etc....

So it got to the point where I never take the 11" coil off my Exp. II .

I personally like a coil in the 9-11 inch range unless I'm hunting rocky or bushy areas. For me it's a good compromise between ground coverage, depth and target separation.

The SE didn’t come out with the pro coil initially.... until we all complained. What I did find with the explorers ....you could back off the power and even in trash they weren’t bad.... especially on missed silver running a high gain. ML just don’t give us many options..... and their math is often off when they call it an 8” and it ain’t. Now ... before they added chips in the coils.... after market coil were being made in various sizes and shapes... as well we had an in-line probe

I had the 6 inch for the Equinox. I never thought it offered an advantage over the stock coil. In fact in my opinion I thought the coil was a waste of money. Maybe Minelab with Equinox technology are on to something. Making small coils obsolete.

Goody...... the small coil is being used down here by some of the older guys wanting to water hunt and just not being able to push a larger coil around out there. The Nox is a little nose heavy so the coil has helped. Its not the most efficient way to hunt a beach...... but they seem to do very well.

In ALL of my public sites, OLD coins equate to DEEP coins. Most of my finds START at the 7-8” level and taper off at 10,,,MAYBE 11” on an odd day. The tiny coil will not get me anywhere, and I have one for my IDX, have had a 5” for the Explorer2 and had the CTX 06 coil. None of them do or did find me anything of note. Why? They just can’t see that particular strata well enough and thoroughly enough to be “deep coin hunters”. Results tell the tale, for ME. Other people love tiny coils, but they’re not hunting where I’m hunting, or perhaps looking for what I am. End of story.
HOWEVER.....when I go to the Sunray X-8....the game changes. IT can find stuff like my stock coil could, AND it is proficient in trash. JMO, the X-8 is one of the best coils ever made for anything. LOVE that coil!
Which coil do I use the MOST? The CTX 17” coil. Why? It reliably finds me the most deep old coins.
The thing that should be taken away from this thread is that while not all of us have hundreds or even thousands of dollars to spend on a whole fleet of coils for every machine we have, different coils are better in different scenarios for different people in different areas hunting different things. There is no “correct answer” or “best advice”. But...if I were to dispense advice, I would say use a FACTORY coil in a stock size to cover as many situations as possible, if many different scenarios are to be encountered.

I remember using that 17 inch coil on beach hunt. Minelab actually offered it for free with a CTX purchase. Well...sort of. If you wanted the coil you had to pay the dealers MSRP. So it worked out the same. The coil itself covered tremendous territory. I used the GPS function to track my hunt for the day. I remember finding a gold ring that day, but that coil wore me out. I never used it again. But if I was a young man with big muscular arms I sure would have. Oh well...the hobby has every one of us consistently searching for the perfect set up.

If one is a land hunter, seemingly varying sizes of coils come into play. I hunt mainly for old coins and I don't find old coins always beyond the depth of a small coil. In fact, most of my better and older coin finds are in the 1st 7"-8" of dirt.

Oh, I know, I don't know what I am missing if I don't know it there, but the same can be said for large coils. In heavy trash, small coils just work better. Of course, when a large coil is advantageous to use, I use it. What coil one uses really boils down to location. HH jim tn

Most folks will have a coils size choice preference as a everyday use coil,the normal size being a 'happy medium' one that comes with most detectors is a 10-11'' coil could be round of elliptical and for the most DD in design as well,for a everyday coil these cover most detecting scenarios but possibly not the best option on every detecting situation.

For me personally what dictates what coil i use on that specific site on that specific site are things like is the site clean reasonably free from non desirables like iron,nails and of course many many other things as well,on pasture that is not what i would call a productive site or its been done before many times and i feel that finds are below what a stock coil can detect then i will use a much bigger coil.

For say a roman/saxon site which can be trashy and littered with domestic rubbish like nails and other items allied with domestic dwelling then i will go for using a smaller coil usually 7-8'' in size but i can go down to 4'' and 5'' when stiff stubble and trashy are the main problems.

I personally try when i have access to a new site try and find out what the site conditions are like,stubble has it been detected before,soil conditions and then try and setup maybe 2-3 detectors for those conditions on that day.

I've used an Etrac regularly for the last seven years. If I could only have one coil, it would be the 12" x13" NEL Tornado. I have combed sites with the stock coil and then pulled up a bunch of slightly deeper coins with the NEL Tornado. I also use a 13" x 14" Cors Detonation coil (which is noisy), a 15" NEL Attack coil (also noisy), and a 15 Coiltek WOT (great coil for making the deepest finds). I have previously owned and disliked the Ultimate 13" coil, SEF 15" x 18" coil, and NEL Big 15" x 17" coil.

I haven't bothered using a small coil on the Etrac since I bought an Equinox 600 in February of 2018.

All three factory coils performed very well on my Equinox 800 (6", 11" and 15").

I REALLY like the 15", took it to a sea of nails site that has been pounded to death, to the point where you could get skunked there with no coins on some trips, but I dug three seated dimes using the 15" coil.

Cal_cobra Wrote:
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> All three factory coils performed very well on my
> Equinox 800 (6", 11" and 15").
>
> I REALLY like the 15", took it to a sea of nails s
> ite that has been pounded to death, to the point w
> here you could get skunked there with no coins on
> some trips, but I dug three seated dimes using the
> 15" coil. The 15" works in the nails? I am gonna get me one

coinspader Wrote:
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> Cal_cobra Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > All three factory coils performed very well on m
> y
> > Equinox 800 (6", 11" and 15").
> >
> > I REALLY like the 15", took it to a sea of nails
> s
> > ite that has been pounded to death, to the point
> w
> > here you could get skunked there with no coins o
> n
> > some trips, but I dug three seated dimes using t
> he
> > 15" coil. The 15" works in the nails? I am gonna
> get me one


I like it, it's not that heavy for a 15" coil, but it will wear you down faster than the 11" coil.

Next trip Tom and I take to one of our hot back pocket early 1800's sites with tons of ground to cover, I'm going to use it. Little extra depth with a lot more coverage should be a win-win

I actually really like the 6" Equinox coil as well, very deep for a small coil, but I just don't have a ton of applications for such a small coil, although it will get used when the need arises.