The Blisstool has Arrived

Interesting video, not sure if it was just me or not but it seems like when the coils sweeps over the target (centered) you get a repeatable signal, but when you sweep the coil 6" north or south of the target its choppy. The target was still under the coil but the foot print seems to not pick it up as well. Is that the unit or a characteristic of your soil? It might play a role in how well it does in iron. Just an observation.... I think the European's have figured something out about hunting in iron. Thanks for sharing!

Its the soil at that site. But I noticed if the Disc Depth control is set high, it will break up on targets without any ground matrix...in other words we were have having no trouble gettin signals in ground but once they came out, it would break it up. Crucial control.

Hi Schultzie and Dan...
That video had 3 targets - one bullet and 2 pieces of iron. Once piece of iron above the target and the other adjacent to it..so the chop we heard was actually the iron in the hole with the bullet??
Dan - please correct me if I got his wrong...
Thanks,
Barry

I see where you are coming from Daniel on using the disc depth function in bad ground ...tuning it for the bullet's...In different dirt's...

But what do you think happens to say buttons at a shallower depth like 6 inches Vs a 12 inch bullet....do you think the Blisstool will break up on the button when tuned for the Bullet at depth...

I wonder why so much tuning has to go on with the disc depth...that's one thing I wondr about ...the targets seem to have to be tuned in...not a real problem but SOME of the iron hits might be good target's till you get them SOUNDING right?

Am I mistaken?

Keith

Keith -- Seems like that is the case if you have disc depth set high. The thinking then becomes "well why not set it as low as it will go all the time" If you set it too low, it has a tendency to make deeper iron start to sound diggable UNTIL the coil gets close to it. So it does appear that the disc depth does actually do something with the depth of discriminating iron....set it wide open and you wont dig iron but you also loose deep non ferrous by being broken up....and set too low, you will start chasing signals that initially sound halfway decent and then when the coil gets closer to it, it starts breaking it up. Very similar to iron disc on the GPX....set wide open and you wont dig iron but it also starts breaking up on deeper non iron....and set too low...then it makes it harder to hear the tone break on iron until the coil is near the iron.

There is indeed a major relationship between the actual discrimination controls (there is a 3 position toggle switch and a separate disc knob) and the disc depth. Right now I am in tweak mode trying to figure it all out and how one setting affects the others. Once I get the swing of it I don't think as much tweaking will be needed from site to site. Right now all I know is: too much disc depth = bad. and too little = bad.

Side note: "Fringe depth" targets need to be directly under the center of the coil (on any detector). If the coil is several inches forward (or aft) of a 'fringe depth' target......... the target will become 'broken' or completely non-detectable. This is dictated by the physics of the electromagnetic footprint of any coil.

Maybe Barry or Carter can answer the question of how to correctly set it to site you are on being beach or field to get maximum performance?

We've all three been talking and sharing info about the machine as we find it out. You have to realize that Carter and Barry are still somewhat new to the machine too. I've spoke to Carter on the phone a couple of times now and been sending emails back and forth too. Carter said he only had about 60-70 hours on his machine and is still learning it....he probably has more time on it than anybody else in the US. I've just got about 12 hours in the field with mine now. We are all learning it as we go. In one of the Culpeper videos, Barry started out with his Disc depth of 8 or 9...and when Don got the bullet signal on his GPX, he called them over to signal check it...Carter couldn't get it to do anymore than pop/breakup....he started playing with disc depth and found that by lowering it to 7.5 he could get that bullet to tune in. Thus when I got my Bliss, I immediately started with it on 7.5. It works good in my test site...but on my bullet site, it was breaking up on bullets. I couldn't understand why it would work good in the yard and at Culpeper on 7.5 but not down at my bullet site...but I lowered it a bit and was able to get them to start showing up just like he had done in his video at Culpeper. The only way we've figured out how to do it thus far, is just to experiment and play around. To me, it seems like there is a sweet spot...you don't want it too high and you don't want it too low....just somewere right in the middle.

So you would find a ratty signal and see if you could dial it in to make it sound better? I guess when you can find a good signal you should be good to go at site you are hunting. Sound right?

Hello – I am new to the forum and wanted to share some of my experiences with the Blisstool. I’ve been hunting for 39 years and used many different machines. As you guys know, different machines for different areas; e.g. I use a TDI Pro in Culpeper VA, an E-Trac in NY City parks, a Surf PI or Excalibur at salt water beaches, etc. In the NY area we have some mineralized soil but not like down south. When I called John Kendrick (who does the DIV hunts) and asked him if we could test the Blisstool out, he was a willing to do so and we met in Culpeper. I had videos made that are posted on youtube. We found the lower your gain is set, the lower you can keep the discr depth and still knock out iron . If you run your gain around 2, keeping your discr depth around 5-7 will still knock out most of your iron scrap. Iron Buckles or iron rings will still sound good even when your knocking out nails and bits canteen cans.

Two days ago in upstate NY, we spent 6 hours hunting a grown over old farm field that used to produce very well. A new Blisstool user said he pounded this site with several people for years and that it was clean. They all used E-Tracs and V3i’s but now he wanted to see if the Bliss could kick out any deeper targets. I helped him set up his machine and we were able to auto GB. He kept the gain at 2 which was low for this area but it still went deep and ran stable. I started off in auto GB but switched to manual and put the gain at 4, Discr Depth at 8, Discr Level at 5, Silencer at 2 and threshold at 5. There was a lot of activity on this field years ago because the Bliss was “popping and clicking” almost every swing with iron everywhere. The good signals were far and few between but we both found musket balls and buttons amongst the iron. The non ferrous targets will read through the iron; I have seen this many times. One of the buttons I found was a flat button about the size of a half dollar that was 10” deep. I knew it was a good target by the way it responded and I could tell it was deep by picking up the coil and having the signal disappear quickly. I spent a few minutes tweaking the controls to see if I could make the signal improve or go away. The first thing I did was turn up the Discr Depth to 10 and the signal became “iffy” by breaking up a little. Turning the Discr Depth back to 8 made the signal good again but turning it down to 7 made it sound even stronger. The gain was at 4 so I turned it down to 2 and the signal still sounded very good. After digging out the button, I turned the gain back to 4 and left the Discr Depth at 7. At these settings, the Bliss was still knocking out the iron. After 6 hours of hunting, I had five nails that were all found while digging good targets in the same hole.

Every “cleaned out” place I have gone with the Blisstool has produced. You may think “missed targets are missed targets” and I agree there are always missed targets. So how do we make sure what we’re finding with the Bliss are not just missed targets? We bring along a friend with an E-Trac to double check our signals. I did just this last week at a Rev War British outpost site. In one area, about 15’ x 15’ we have found several dropped musket balls over the years that were very deep. We cleaned this place out with the E-Trac over the past two years. The productive area was small so we literally raked it over until there we no signals left. My friend with the E-Trac was correct when his said this place will be a real test for the Blisstool. We went into the woods and hit the old hot spot; within a minute I had a signal that he could not hear with his E-Trac; it was a dropped British musket ball. He stuck around for the next three signals and when he could not hear any of them, he wandered off to a different area. The Bliss ended up pulling out 17 musket balls that were all 12”-14” deep. The E-Trac found none. My Bliss settings were Discr Depth 7, Discr Level 5, Discr Switch III, Gain 5, Threshold 5, Silencer 2, manual GB rudely 7.

This machine certainly takes some getting used to but once its tuned in, it will impress.

Carter

Good to have you and your knowledge/experience Carter, The Blisstool is getting good first hand reviews. Thanks!

For your first post here I think you did a great one. Welcome and thanks for contributing. We have some relic hunters here that I'm sure will be very interested in your post and want to pick your brain some more about the deeeeeep Blisstool.

Carter, glad to have you here at the forum. Are you the Carter that runs Blisstool USA? If so that is great as we will have a good resource for information if needed.

Tom in SC

Welcome Carter and excellent post you did. Steve

Does anyone have a good closeup picture of controls? I am reading directions on the Blisstool UK forum and would like to see some good pictures of controls as i read. Thank you! Be nice have this detector in my hands, when is the next shipment coming?

Found the pictures i need on the forum, great closes ups!

Yes - Carter is the USA Distributor.

barryny Wrote:
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> Yes - Carter is the USA Distributor.


Think I am going to cancel my order(Blisstool)..been a month and a half waiting...going to be two months..........not good......should not sell them if it takes that long!!!

Someone asked for a test between the Omega with 13" Detech and the Bliss. Well this is as close as I can get to that. When I had the Omega and 13" coil, I buried a minie ball in my yard at 12 inches. I'm glad I did this video now. LOL I had something to fall back on. The bullet is still in the ground at the same depth and I got the Bliss out to see what it would do on it. The target itself ain't been in the ground but a month or so...both times it was very very dry conditions. Ahh here we go with comparison videos....let the criticism begin.

[youtu.be]

I found a few mins to upload a couple of the videos. This one is of my first hunt with the Bliss, so we are kind of going backwards in order of how they were filmed. I am bouncing back and forth between different cameras here as well; this camera is my Pentax W90 that I throw in my pouch. It has a mediocre video mode in it. My other camera is much better quality but is a bigger camera and not suitable for lugging around most of the time. My next camera will be the Go Pro or something similar. At any rate, this was the first hunt I ever went on with the Blisstool.

For a little site back ground...we started hunting this site about 2007. They were clearing off a hill in my town to put a subdivision in, and to our knowledge, there wasn't any Civil War activity in this particular area of town. But ANYTIME you see dozers doing work around here, you want to give it a go, as you never know. This was one of those places that took us all by surprise. I remember the first time I hunted it, I got in touch with the land owner and got permission and went when the work crew had left. I had been detecting a few minutes and not had a signal as of yet and was thinking "well that's good...at least they wont be destroying another Civil War site" and as I was walking down the track of a bulldozer, I saw something green and round. My detector coil went over it and I heard the signal...reached down and picked up a flattened Civil War eagle button. Well from there, bullets began popping up and long story short, the site wound up producing my first plate from the Civil War...an eagle breastplate, and has gave up 3 other plates, well over 200 dropped and carved bullets, and other misc items. In branching out from this area of town that we had never even considered to have war activity, we have found additional sites on adjoining hillsides and such...some were just picket posts, others are camps too. But needless to say, when the houses started going up, and more dirt began being moved, and more hunters started finding out about it....well the pickings have got slim. I went up there when I got the GPX and made it like new again, getting probably 20+ more bullets out of it and a few buttons, but after a few trips, it petered out to not producing anything at all. So I basically went up there with the Bliss just because it was close to home and I had to work that night. All of my finds came from areas of the place we have pounded and pounded some more...but there are certain spots in it that is littered with iron from what use to be a barn and house that are early 1900s, that was torn down when they started clearing for the subdivision. These bullets came from those spots...the GPX is great in open areas but once you run into a lot of iron, its easy to overload your head with signals.

[youtu.be]

Hi Mascard1 - yes it is taking longer than expected. I'm sure you are frustrated.

But since they are delivered in the order they were purchased - you just made the next guy on the list a very happy camper!

Good luck and HH.

I was one of the first people in the UK to buy a LTC64x v3. There is a big learning curve with it ,but once you get to grips with it, it does start to get easier . Depths are mind boggling, and blow the Etrac out the water . Its just over a 1/4 of the price of a 3030. they say the 3030`s no deeper than the E trac. So why pay thousands of dollars for a detector only to get a greatly reduced depth capability ? OK it hasn`t got GPS , it isn`t water proof. I can live without those easy.
What it is, is extraordinary well built and as light as an Whites XLT. The only downside to it is, the availability from the factory. At the moment Its got a hefty waiting list to buy one and no wonder the way it performs.
I know which I`d rather own though & it don`t cost thousands of dollars.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2012 09:17PM by Jeb.

barryny Wrote:
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> Hi Mascard1 - yes it is taking longer than
> expected. I'm sure you are frustrated.
>
> But since they are delivered in the order they
> were purchased - you just made the next guy on the
> list a very happy camper!
>
> Good luck and HH.

Havn"t canceled yet......it just takes way to Long!

Is Daniel the only one that has one, haven't seen any post on forums from other buyers in the states!

I saw one guy that got the ML 3030 and the Bliss at the same time .


Mascard I ordered a ultimate coil with the big store , that thy were already dealing with and thy still are
back ordered . Feel your pain.

I have a ultimate coil.......................just got me a GPX 4800......I must be nuts!

You just got the ultimate detector too!! I would love to have a GPX again.

Carl Moreland from White's Electronics who runs the Geotech forum has one, arrived yesterday. Everyone is waiting with baited breath for his review at Geotech.
[www.geotech1.com]

DeepTech Vista X with 3 search coils.
Works for me

An engineering manager from another metal detector manufacturer - that will be an interesting independent review - I look forward to seeing that.

Let's see if he reaches out for any learning assistance...

Speaking of learning experience...let me relate a story from my hunt yesterday. I am still a newbie on this machine...I have now logged about 26 hours on it...most of that coming this past week, in which I was off for 5 days in a row.

I went early Wednesday morning before it was too humid and hot to breath, and was hunting along enjoying the morning at the site I first took the Bliss to. As I was hunting along, I look up and see a round pulltab laying on top of the ground. And I don't know what made me do it, but I ran the coil over the pulltab. Expecting to hear a nice beep....I heard nothing but a click. I ran over it again...click. I fiddled with settings...disc and disc depth....still nothing. Now this is a tad concerning because Civil War bullets will read right between a pulltab and zinc cent on an ID machine...so if I'm not picking up a pull tab, I'm not picking up bullets either. So I think "maybe it's because it's on top of the ground and not in it". So I dug a plug about 6 inches deep and put the tab in there, and covered it. Nothing. Now at this point I'm a bit puzzled and frustrated. I decided to ground balance right beside of the pull tab and see if that made a difference. When I was trying to ground balance, there, I couldn't get it to NOT make a noise when I was bobbing the coil up and down. I tried all 3 ground modes, and from one end of the axis to the other....still made a loud noise when I would go to the ground. It was then I remember seeing/reading that if the machine was doing this, that it was telling you the SENSITIVITY was set too high. So I'm thinking "man I have this thing at 2...it can't be too high at 2". But I decided to give lowering it a try....sure enough, when I got it between Min and 1, I could balance it without a peep as I raised and lowered the coil to the ground. I ran the coil over the buried pulltab...and there was the signal I was expecting to hear. This baffled me. While I was still there, I raised the gain back up to about 1 1/2, and instantly, the signal was gone....tried to balance it again, and it wouldn't balance until I lowered the gain to around .5..........the area between Min and 1 on the dial. Once it was there, I could pick the pull tab up. So I turned right around and rehunted the little section I just had came from and got two signals that were just as sweet sounding as could be....BUT when I raised the gain near 2 and beyond, they would vanish. They were just shotgun brass but hey....I learned something while out and that's always a good thing. I did learn this though.....the Bliss at .5 to 1 on gain level is still going to get you down to 8-9 inches on coin size objects. I think that's pretty good for as bad of ground as I was in, and on top of that, it being bone dry.