what % do you use Large, medium and small coils overall

Would be nice if the numbers could be calculated and showed. I know it's going to vary. Some will use a small coil almost exclusively and the other way around. Just would be interesting to see. Also depends on the type of hunting you do. Still would be interesting.

I just got a 6" coil. All my hunting before was with a medium size coil. I'll see how I like using the small coil on my Explorer II.

Rick N. MI

My area has plenty of old coins. But if you want to find them you will contend with old iron. So I have always found myself using smaller coils more. Large coils on the beach only.

Since my early days of detecting I noticed I had better days with smaller coils.

But since I have the Deus I really don't worry about coil size that much. The stock 9" coil is very good at many applications.

I've mainly chose to hunt with larger coils most of the time. The excellent left/right separation of the 12x10 makes it even harder for me to want to strap the S-5 on. I'm still hooked on that super deep sweet clean silver signal, and since the GT is deeper in my soil than any prior machine I've owned, and since the 12x10 pushes it even deeper, I always prefer to go out hunting for the deep lone silver tones. Now, lately I've been digging more of the one way or badly masked iffy coin hits as my lone clean deep silver signals continue to dry up, and I'm finding a lot of old coins by digging even the super bad stuff that my criteria would normaly have me pass as probably not going to be a real coin. For that reason, and for the excellent Beneath The Mask article on this site, I will try to force myself to use the S-5 more in my high trash/iron sites, as I know those coins exist out there that only a super small coil is going to find.

Depends , when I nugget hunt, if I use a VLF I use a small coil for small gold, when I use a PI, I use a large coil. I have a old dump area thats really trashy that I use a small DD in, that has worked great for me. Its amazing how a piece of non ferrous can be located in a mess of small iron. In fresh water I use a 6 or 8 inch. Since I don't do too much coin hunting, most of the time I end up using a small or med. coil. I prefer DD coils most of the time.

Equal distrib between all 3 coil sizes:

1/3
1/3
1/3

Fisher CZ-3D - stock 8" coil. 100%
Garrett AT-Pro - (93%) 5x8 DD coil in the woods and narrow areas. (5%) Standard 8.5x11.5 coil for the large green spaces to cover more ground. Although I really like to keep the 5x8 on all the time mostly. I also have the (2%) 4.5" hockey puck coil for tot lot work and fences.

It's out there fellows! Go get it!
"Ged Peacehavens"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2012 02:38AM by TheGeorgiaCanuck.

Over the time I've had my Explorer (15 months), it's been probably 60% 11" coil, 30% 6x8 SEF, and 10% 5" SunRay...

Over the past 6 months, it's been roughly 60% 6x8 SEF, 25% 5" SunRay, 15% 11" coil...

Over the past 3 months, it's been roughly 75% 5" SunRay, 20% 6x8 SEF, 5% 11" coil.

The longer I use the Explorer, and the more "cleaned out" my old standby spots get, the more I have gravitated to smaller coils.

If/when I change locations, I usually start with the 6x8 SEF, and see whether the spot is particularly trashy (in which case I might go smaller), or whether coins seem fairly deep (in which case I might go larger).

Steve

So we should have all 3 coils then depending on the area, how new it is, how hard it has been hunted, how trashy it is. I take it
Tom takes all 3 coils thru an area over time. Then you have everything covered.

I think it's all great info,
Thanks,
Rick N. MI

SEF 8X6 ON explorer all the time.

Rick........... correct!

Basically I have used a lot of different units over the years but usually use the stock coil as I feel it was built.. tuned for the unit you are using.

Certainly small and large coils have their place in the hobby but in some cases depth and ID indication will differ and whatever works..

If I had the choice when buying a detector and one extra coil is included would take the small one for those really trashy areas as swinging a garbage can lid usually gives you little depth increase more coverage and are easily masked not to mention they do not handle wet salt water sand as well if you are in that enviroment..

Having said the above I know one fellow that has a CZ with stock coil plus the hockey puck 5 and the different configuration 10.5 and is an old yard hunter and surprising what one coil will get and another miss so perhaps I am the oddball as indeed acc. coils work, perhaps a little different but many do well with one unit and several coils versus 3-4 different units...

Personally I don't buy the 1/3 analogy as looks good on paper but would bet stock coils are used over 50 percent of the time and again many do well with acc. coils...and if going to a new area do take all 3 coils if you have them as you will be ready for the situation at hand...

I've heard the "stock coils are tuned for the machine" thing in the past from people. I've researched building my own coils and in reality every coil that is compatible with a machine is "tuned" for it. If you take various readings at the pin outs on any two coils for a machine, small to large, made by any company...All of them will have the exact same readings of things like resistance (with small errors in those numbers that are not worth even mentioning). The number of turns to make the coil windings, gauge of wire, etc...All have to be done in such a way as to equal the operating parameters that machine expects to see.

The truth is a machine (unless you want to count certain high end whites in certain ways) can't tell what the coil is that is being used. They are all going to look the same to it.The only minor exception here is that different coils can make targets read a tad different then others. That's not due to any internal differences in the coil per say, but rather in how well that coil "hits" or "lights up" that target. That's why there is ability to tweak the VDI number on a Sovereign, to adjust for such minor differences in the way those targets are hit by various coils. For instance, a smaller coil can hit harder on a small object than a larger coil. So it might push that tiny target up the scale a bit more due to how well it "sees" it's conductivity.

on the beach and in the water i have gotten used to larger coils, cannot go back to small ones.

inland is where i will use small coils and not be worried about coverage.

small coil: 80%

medium coil: 20%