Which detector will completely eliminate iron falsing on wet salt beaches?

If one needed primariarly a beach detector only for wet/salt sand, not dry, not in the water, what detector would give the best depth and have NO iron falsing? If I'm in the wet salt sand, I will dig every mid/high tone anyway, but I do not want to have to put up with all the iron. So I'm interested in which detector will disc out iron completely and not false doing it. Does it sound like a PI with iron disc? ..and if there is such a thing, just how good is it at discriminating out all the iron? Sounds like I may need to go multi freq or PI to get the depth I want, just not sure which detector won't false on iron, or even if there is one that won't.

I never dig iron with my Sovereign GT. The threshold goes low tone to let you know it is iron. I may dig a deep rusty bottle cap every now and then, but that is all. As far as Pi's with discrimination I will let the PI guys answer that.

MLs seem to do it as well as any.... but like goodmore said bottle caps have a distinct BONG then there are washer and screw that may sound off. A PI.... well thats going to depend on your hunting style if you want to cover more beach or spend your time gridding an area digging everything. Bobbie pins and fish hooks at a foot plus. If you reduce the pulse.... you loose depth so you might as well went with an Xcal. But.... the MLs do loose some sensitivity to small or higher K jewerly more quickly than a PI... thats where the depth is. MLs are excellent machines to move quickly sucking up recent drops and larger gold with good depth.

Dew

Sort of a tossup between a CZ and a Sov. as the best under these conditions but to completely eliminate going to have to go the PI route as I understand the black sand of many beaches its the only unit that will work. Indeed some competent PI users should be able to answer your question as never used one...

Forget PI if you do not like digging iron!

Steve Herschbach

Prospecting Since 1972 at DetectorProspector.com

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2013 02:54PM by Steve Herschbach.

GT for both dry and wet and not digging any iron "once you learn the machine" It will false on iron but the feedback tells you to dig or not. OAN I have been having superb experiences with the Deus. It handles black sand and iron superbly, don't know about the salt wet sand side of It though. My GT of going to be lonely this winter. Both are about learning the machine however.

I should maybe add that micro gold will not be targeted. That's for the younger guys here :-) I would not want to lose small engagement rings thou. I would think that all CZ's are prone to iron falsing, but the Minelab sounds good so far. Don't need waterproof.

Wet Salt BEACH are you sure you dont need water proof?? Just kidding...... personally, id keep it simple and not complicate it on a beach. The Sov id say is right up you alley just because you arent trying to use a screen and finding a reason NOT to dig. This aint dirt diggin and we arent lookin for pennies.... thou we find a LOT of them lol.

Dew

The Aquasound's ID is so spot on, I've never dug iron unless I was curious to see what it was. Sounds off on targets with a 'bing' (accept) on non-ferrous, and a very distinctive 'bong' (reject) on ferrous objects. It's built around a custom circuit board designed by one of the original Nautius detector engineers I think. Very deep on targets, especially gold. Alas, it's pricey, needs to be balanced before use (just like Nautilus detectors), and can't be used except on neutral sand beaches (read NO mineralization) so it's not for everyone.

Again the CZ or Sov. line will handle the enviroment of wet salt sand as good as any and better than most. Not a unit out there that will eliminate iron falsing but to learned operator he will be able to distinguish the iron falses with some units to a high degree to dig or not...

Always remember the little old guy that hunted the N.J. wet saltwater shores and his 1266 sounded like a machine gun but when he hit a good target he knew it and dug...imagine he carried some excedrins with him but he learned his unit well...

dewcon4414...
Have you or anyone here used both a CZ and Sov GT? If so, does the GT false less than a CZ? ...and is it easier to distinguish a false iron better on the GT or CZ? I have heard the GT sounds watching youtube videos and such, never had one in my hands, but I do have a good bit of experience using a CZ3D. I learned to rarely dig anything that had a hign tone and low iron tone mixed when using the CZ. Sand might be a bit different since it's easy to dig, but hard dirt and rocks? Better be young!

If you want to avoid iron while still getting amazing depth on gold rings on dry/wet sand but not in the water then only one word out there- GT. I only dig iron with it when I'm taking chances on iffy hits for say old coin hunting or such, but 9 times out of 10 I'm sure it's going to be iron. And, despite it's built in iron rejection, the unique Iron Mask ON abilities of this machine will pull non-ferrous targets out of iron like no other I've ever owned. You said you weren't after micro gold like thin chains or tiny earrings. In that case you can be confident on even the thinnest of gold rings it'll band them just as deep and as hard as an older silver dime at depth.

It's easy to tell a false on iron with the CZ or Sovereign. Check target in pinpoint/allmetal and if it moves over from where you hit the target its iron on the side.

Rick

I think that one can forget micro jewelry and thin gold on wet salt sands, and especially when the detector has got some kind of automatic tracking GB. Might be wrog, tough, but I'm still to be proven the contrary...

The GT will false when the sens is too high, but I can live with that for a while.

Sometimes I hunt in all metal pinpoint, where most of the iron can be Ided by ear, adding a few inches depth too, and there are no false signals in this case.

I sometimes hunt wet sands with an old 100 Khz TR, 6" coil, and sometimes find small gold, but again, no micro. The GB and disc are preset on this one. Needless to say : the depth is minimal.

Beach hunting can be a real challenge !

Cheers

Jim'

I used the AT Pro at Myrtle Beach this month and after thinking it over, it did very well in the wet salt sand. The only problem I had was the small thin rusty pieces of iron that were found on the beach. They nearly always gave a high tone, very loud if near the surface and weaker if deeper. I was running with iron on and disc at 40, pro mode. The wet salt sand was GBing around 15 or so. Found one large silver earring and religious trinket about the size of a quarter, sunglasses, motorcycles (just too small to ride) several clad coins, tabs and pieces of foil. I dug everything above iron, but the rusty iron, I could not figure out how to eliminate or distinguish it from a good target unless it was laying on the surface. I am guessing the wet salt envirement was what was causing them to high tone, and would like to know if there's some way to ID them a bit better. I don't remember what the ID numbers were as I was mainly detecting by sound.

Other than the rusty iron flakes, the AT Pro did great. I used the large stock coil and I rarely had to set sen -2 bars, and usually only - 1 bar. At times, I could run at full sen. I was able to dig targets up to 9 inches which were quarters, except for alum cans which could go deeeppp! ...and this was in the salty wet sand. I found that if the target was a real good high tone, I'd raise my coil about 6 or 8 inches and if it was still loud, I would pass on it as it had always been a deep alum can. I don't remember being fooled by anything after several hours except for the rusty iron flakes. The sunglasses I found were not real deep but sounded loud like an alum can. They must not sink much.

The beach was sanded in very deep and the few rusty red clad I found deep was in an area that was visibilly lower than the surrounding area. I don't know if a detector that could detect 2-4 inches deeper than mine could have still found much in the line of gold rings. The sand was just too deep over the harder sub layer that would have stopped the gold. I had hoped that I could find some gold chains as my detector air tests them at around 4 inches or so, but the salt may have decreased the detection depth of them. I didn't find any chains in the dry sand either, so maybe they just weren't there. Next time, I will surely take a few gold chains with me and do some testing.

I think the Soverign GT will go deeper than my Pro, but in the conditions I was hunting, I don't think it would have made a lot of difference. If the gold was 2 or 3 ft down, neither would have found them. I'd still like to play around with a GT to see if I liked the tones it gives on different metals, but it's an expensive detector and I'd have to find a real deal on one to get it.

I'm sure people will have different results at different beaches, but my AT Pro did very well at Myrtle Beach SC. ...except for that dang rusty iron flakes! ...and I'm beginning to see from Keith Southern and others just how good it is at picking out a good target in the midst of iron on regurlar dirt detecting. Just wish dirt digging was as easy as sand digging :-)

Hi Connor,

Have not been out for about a month with the CZ. Just purchased a vehicle and have been busy driving up and down to the goldfields. Its something I have not down for a good 10 years.

One thing I will say which I fell for myself. Be careful of fancy marketing brochures and videos. I think you had the right detector in the CZ in the first place. Sometimes and I am guilty of this myself we read these brochures or watch these videos of new machines and we start dreaming forgetting what we have and its capability. This is why I now own 2 CZ3D's 1021 serials. In Australia most of our coins are only between 6 to 8" deep unless a truck load of soil was dumped ontop of the current surface. What I love with the CZ you know when you hit a deep target. Its a tad fainter tone and smaller but its clear. The added benefit is you don't loose depth with the discriminator and you have target ID depth.

You may need to reconsider going back to a CZ3D which may solve your beach problems. It's just a thought and you will not need to learn a new machine trying to figure out tones etc.

Hope your well.

Chat soon my friend.

Joe

I dont believe there is a lot of tones to figure out with the Sov or Xcal. Know a shallow bottle cap and you are on your way. I will kick the sand or dig about everything i know isnt iron. Those deep tones you just dig at least a scoop off. The Sov/Xcal disc MOST iron with some occassional chirps and yes i move some sand for a better tone. I hunt most of the time in the water and use PP a good bit of the time .... ive switched to disc on deep tones and heard nothing or null. I move some sand and then i trust disc to give me a better read..... some have been gold rings. I cant speak for the CZs but the Sov/Xcal they are good machines and simple to use out there.

Gary .... ive heard good things about the Aquasound.... pretty much what you said. I know Les and Ken out of Bradenton have them. Ken just got his totally rebuilt and likes it better than the CTX.

Dew

@ Connortn :

I am pretty sure that your iron flakes are some kind of an alloy with a majority of iron (bottecaps parts or something of that kind).

I am also pretty sure that these would have been correctly IDed in the dry sand, that is with a completely different GB setting (80+).

I never ground balance my Goldbug Pro on the dry sand : I leave it at factory setting and get, at least it's my impression, a much better iron ID and better sensitivity to small low conductive items.

Wet sands are, of course, a complete different menu...

Cheers

Jim'

Jim, I assumed the flakes, which were about 3/8 to 1/2 in dia and sheet metal thin, were part of demolition during the building of the high risers up the coast line. I first thought they looked like rusty scales off the sides of cargo ships or something, but I don't see how they would have wound up on the beach. Wish I had brought a few home with me to do some testing. ...and yes, I had no problem with them in the dry sand. That's why I think the wet salty condition of the wet sand with very low GBing is what caused them to mis-ID.

Maybe someone in the Myrtle Beach area or maybe visiting there will pick up a few of the flakes and see what they may be. If they have an AT Pro, see if they act the same way in the wet sand as they did with me. I don't know if moving one from the wet sand to the dry sand will be the same as one found in the dry sand w/o the moisture content of the sea in it, but assuming they are on the dry sand, they ID as iron. I say that because I don't remember digging one in the dry sand, so they weren't there, or they correctly ID'd as iron (which I didn't dig). They are fairly numerous and you can see them laying on the surface at times. I guess they're light in weight and settle on the top a lot.

C.