F75 LTD or ____ or ____

I hesitate to ask this question because I have seen on other forums where questions like this get out of hand, But I'll post it anyway and hope for the best.
I am having a hard time deciding between the F75 LTD, or the Spectra V3i, or the E-Trac.
I like the five year guarantee the Fisher has along with it's light weight. It also looks easier to program than the others. The Fisher also seems to have a lot of knowledgable users on forums that are willing to help others learn the detector.
I guess my main concern is if the Fisher can pick up silver as deep as the other two. I have also heard complaints that the Fisher is noisy.
I notice some of you have two or maybe all three of the above detectors. Based on your experience, which one would you recomend.
My main use would be coins and relics, and I have a lot of trashy areas I would like to check out.
Thanks for any help you can give.

I have checked out the whites forum on the V3 and the findings look slim.....I used one for a few months and hated it so much to do to get it to work right...E-trac is a good machine...but it all comes down to how will you understand your new machine. I had the F75 and it was chatty but that noise was telling me about a lot of info. Then came the LTD and it was a way better machine the changes they made were few but it worked like a new machine and found me a lot of relics that I missed with the F75 you can test the new boost mode against the DE mode and hear the difference on some of the fringe targets that I would not have dug...

So good luck because even no the the LTD is great it may not be your cup of tea!!!!!

LowBoy

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If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
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All three are exceptionally good units. I would recommend the Minelab if your dirt is heavily mineralized. I would recommend the F75 LTD for high iron/trash areas. I'm not as astute with the V3......and cannot pro/con that unit......as I do not have one. I have tested one for a short period of time....and was fairly impressed with the short duration test results. Yes, the F75 LTD is noisy......but, once learned, should trump all other units.

It depends on what your hunting for.

Relics = F75 LTD
Gold jewelry = V3
Deep silver turf hunting = Etrac

I have all three and without hesitation I would choose the E-TRAC over either the V3 or the F75 LTD for the hunting I do in my ground. Let me try an explain my reasons.... but first let me say that what works here may be totally wrong where you live and hunt. I live in NW GA and I like to hunt "hunted out" parks and lawns. I also jump on any site that I may get like a construction site (which is becoming a rare thing) or a wooded campsite or homeplace. The wooded homesite is comparable to any older lawn though. The ground here is red iron bearing clay and the old sites are, of course, infested with cut square nails and an assortment of old and modern trash. The main factor though is the ground... medium to high mineralization. There were numerous iron furnaces in our county before and during the civil war. So..

1: The E-TRAC trumps the other two in handling the mineralized ground. However the V3 can be set up to handle it if you want to take the time to read a bunch of posts and try a bunch of things to figure out whaty works best at a site... it will get it done. I find that 7.5 works best here for depth and for getting a good TID. The F75 LTD can be set up to work too if you can bring yourself to turn things down to the point where you feel you are wasting to potential of the machine... not in every place but in some.

2: Unmasking good targets in heavy iron and trash. The F75LTD and V3 may do it after a good bit of experience and if you set it right but the E-TRAC will perform exceptionally well at this with minimum experience and a few simple settings.... just the relic pattern-auto+3-ferrous/2-tones... The E-TRAC's ability in this area is due to Minelab's straightening of the conductive line of numbers. Even at depth the conductive number is very reliable and if the ferrous number is reasonable and you are getting a good tone and number from even one direction it will be worth digging and many times is something that the other machines just miss unless the user is really tuned in to that machine... the ET is very forgiving to the beginner unless... UNLESS... the user tries to make it be an Explorer. It is NOT an explorer even though it has many similarities. Running the ET with no disc and in ferrous will NOT umask targets as well as it will using a little disc and switching over to Quickmask with no disc will NOT confirm that there is a good target hiding in the iron. What will happen is that the iron will take over, the conductive number may still look good but the ferrous number will rise into the 30s. Any of the three will find masked targets but neither of the other two will approach the ability of the ET in the hands of the casual or inexperienced user... maybe after many, many hours of use they will.

3: TID/VDI ability. The F75 LTD loses the ability to give a good TID over a few inches in my ground. On a sand beach with little or no mineralization this may not be the case... but in most cases I find it to be jumpy. You have to learn what it is telling you with all those jumping numbers and you can learn it. Some of the tone settings are different in their TID response and are more stable, you have to learn which. The F75 LTD is very good at IDing crowncaps.. better than the others IMO. The V3 if set right (you have to set the ground filter and the recovery to match your swing speed, the mineralization, and the trash) will give you a good VDI at depth... as in 10" I can get a good VDI if I have it set right. Also, in my experience the ET and the V3 are more likely to stop me if I pass over a good but deep target. The F75 LTD is less likely to stop me because of two things. One I am hearing a lot more signals with it and two I may be moving a little faster, but not so much with the LTD. With the original F75 faster sweep speed will give a better TID and signal. With the LTD in BP a slower swing will do better... however, still the ET and the V3 are better at alerting me to a good but deep target and are much better than the LTD at giving a good TID/VDI on deeper targets.

Conclusion... I like all three and in the woods or in an ivy bed I would use the LTD because I can run the coil a few inches above the ground in BP and still get the goodies. For everything else i'd choose the E-TRAC first and frankly I was at a construction site last year where the ground was like a plowed field. My friend had the F75. I had a T2, a Tejon, and the E-TRAC. I chose the Tejon because I could move fast with the 5.5" coil and because it hits hard on lead and brass. (This was a site just outside the New Hope battlefield site). I made some finds with the Tejon but after a while I switched to the E-TRAC because I had not had it that long but my confidence in it was high. It didn't miss a beat with the 11" Pro coil and up and down big furrows, moving fast, it was easily finding relics. It is the only Minelab that is better than the Sovereign generally. The Sovereign, moving slowly, may still give a better, more stable TID than any machine made.

They are all three great machines but the ET is easy to learn, there in no ground balance to fiddle with, just noise cancel, set the sensitivity (usually) to auto+3, set some disc pattern (ALWAYS), and then set a few things to your personal preference and you're off... not much to fiddle with on it. If you're after silver set some disc and use conductive/multi or 4 tones. If you're after relics use the relic pattern or a slightly enlargedrelic pattern and use the conductive number, if you're in iron or minerals the ferrous number may run between 8 and 18 give/take.
The F75 LTD in BP is a great machine but you have to learn how to read the bouncing TID numbers on anything slightly deep in trash, iron, or minerals... but it will work for you. You will make exceptional finds with the F75 LTD.
The V3 will mimic the F75 if you set the ground filter and recovery speed right and will, in many places work better in a single frequency than in all three but it just seems such a waste to me... You have to be aware of your filter and recovery and your swing speed... I usually set those things to match my swing speed so that I don't have to be concious of it but it the conditions dictate that I change the filter and recovery delay then I have to keep in mind how fast or slow I am swinging. Then there are all the different choices for tones and all kinds of other settings. I prefer the SEF 8x6 coil or the D2 with the V3. The 5" coil on the LTD is really good and the 11" Pro coil is excellent on the E-TRAC it has a razor edge seperation. I also have and love both the 8x6 and 12x10 SEF coils for the E-TRAC.

So, if you are in neutral soil the LTD may be the best machine going. If you're in minerals or masked targets i'd recommend the ET. If you like to tweak and hunt in all sorts of places maybe the V3 will do it but, as for me... I have had and am having a hard time warming up to the V3. It would be my third choice of the three. The F75 LTD would be my second choice and the E-TRAC would be my first choice without a second thought... i'd never second guess that decision.

Julien

Julien,

Ever so exacting report. Yes, it is your exceptionally high.........nearly crippling........lateritic/iron oxide bad dirt that allows the E-Trac to take the trump card. I would strictly/exclusively/only hunt with the Minelab in that territory. So far........this has always been my recommendation. You will witness the most pronounced delta/differential between the performance of the detectors......in your specific dirt. And,,,,,,, by virtue of the Minelab's NOT having ground balance,,,,,,, sets up for a MUCH easier operation/understanding for detectorists.....skilled or novice.
Good thorough report!

Thanks Tom.

I have not had time yet but am sort of hyped to go to the place I took Tony and use the F LTD in BP mode, disc=0, tone=1, and play around with iron signals that are not whatever the common TIDs are for all the cut hails etc that infest the place. I want to see what, if anything, is hiding in the iron that the LTD with the 5" coil and those settings might show me. I've never understood the "why" of using those settings before.. even though you wrote it quite clearly, I probably skimmed over it instead of reading it through. I'll be sure to let you know what I find or what I find out.

Julien



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/04/2010 07:05PM by jbow.

I would NEVER use Disc '0' with all of those settings. It would be Disc '6'.....for starters. Then.....maybe Disc '5'......or even as low as Disc '4'.

Monotone
Disc '6'
Sens '99'
BP
Grnd Bal



Disc '0' is reserved for multi-tone option only.

NASA-Tom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I would NEVER use Disc '0' with all of those
> settings. It would be Disc '6'.....for starters.
> Then.....maybe Disc '5'......or even as low as
> Disc '4'.
>
> Monotone
> Disc '6'
> Sens '99'
> BP
> Grnd Bal
>
>
>

I had those same thoughts but someone posted something that makes me want to try dsic=0 with tones=1 I am sure I wouldn't want to do this everywhere but I have a site where I want to try it. I usually run either 6 or even up to 15 or so but this has my interest... I will copy/paste the post.

The author was Buckeye Brad.

"this will only be pertinent to a similar site that I'll refer to. I have a site that has somewhat normal ground phase readings (65 to 80) but the ferrous mineralization is varying from medium to high. No matter what the Fe3O4 reads in that mentioned range, non-ferrous targets usually read as full time ferrous or mostly ferrous with an occasional non-ferrous bounce. This pertains to any target deeper than about 4". MOST of the cut nails and nails short enough to not double hit read 8 to 11. MOST non-ferrous targets read 1 to 6 or 12 to 15, and more often than not, THE FORMER. Think about that for a moment and you'll figure out that at least in these conditions, disc 6 alone will be detrimental to making desirable finds, regardless of the tone selection. I know this is probably an exception to what most have to deal with BUT you at least should be aware of it. J, you've been around long enough to know that someone Else's settings may well not work well in the conditions you encounter so while you should try 6D/1T, just be aware that it MIGHT NOT be the end all cure all by any means. The key here is that once you've been on a site long enough to see where the undesirable trash items fall out and you're comfortable in making that bet for all additional time spent at that site, you need to pay attention to and have your detector set up to accept all else or depending on your intended quarry."

Julien

Hmmmmmm. Sounds like severe ground mineralization conditions. Let me know how it works for you. Sounds like it would be a nightmare.....as EVERY little piece of metal will present audio output.