Which detector for the beach

Just back from Batemans Bay.
     Used the Vallon VMH3CS, Whites SST and the Gold Bug Pro .
The Vallon is brilliant in the wet or dry sand and finding stuff that was deep enough to make me give up on recovery efforts of some targets.
     The SST is fine in the dry sand but even though it has a salt mode this tecta is not a good wet salt beach sand  metal detector. The ground balance range is not wide enough and the sensitivity has to be turned down a lot to get the thing to run quiet which results in a drastic loss of depth. Remember that it runs at a silent threshold and being quite chirpy over the wet sand is a good indication that depth will be lost on many targets because a repeatable target signal has to be strong enough to rise above the salt noise. That said, the tecta will find items in the wet sand but you will have to listen carefully to hear them and have to check that they are repeatable signals that do not seem to move about. So! Use this machine over the dry sand and as an inland coin, jewellery and relic machine.
     The Gold bug Pro works great and will make any beach hunter happy. Ditch the Disc mode over the damp to wet sand, All Metal VLF mode with full TID  is best. Just don't drop the detector  in the water.

this is good info thanks.

Thanks for that Adrian , it all helps , trying to get your head round what detector to get , you dont often  here anyone say it was detecting targets to deep !,  although you did not use those words exactly , for beach work I know what you mean .

Thanks Mogy

I am in the throws of trying an EQ 600. (The back Lighting failed yesterday and now it is on its way to Minelab for a fixit job) It is good but so is the Vanquish range of detectors that operate on the same principle as the 600 and 800.
If you need discrimination and the ability to handle wet salt beaches as well as ok in the gold fields then The 800 is a good choice.
There are so many tectas to choose from these days, it is a matter of finding one that suits you primary purpose and fits your budget.
If you are wanting a jack of all trades then the 800 is a good choice. The Vanquish series although lacking bells and whistles have almost equal detecting ability as the Equinox's

Received the 600 back from ML service. Replaced the control unit.
Excellent & fast service by Minelab Service & repair.


One aspect I like a lot about the 600 is how quiet it is over small ferrous items in the factory set disc modes.
    My back yard that is chockers with iron rubbish that produces an low iron tone or no tone on all of my other machines do not signal on the 600 but it still gives a good tone over small gold items even though small iron is notched out. The result is that detecting my back yard has become very quiet when using the 600.

I have not taken the EQ to the beach yet but I think I can say that I will not be detecting bobby pins and screw caps very often now and small gold will not be mistaken for a ferrous items. Which means!! Wait for it! wait for it!....I will no longer absolutely have to recover all signals. Man O man that will be good....I will of course check all signals until I know I can trust the machine.

Adrian,
The Equinox isn't infallible.
The TID on gold rings at depth can be inaccurate.

In what way?
Gold that I have tested can signal between 2 and 28 but so far all small iron that I have checked reads negative numbers.
Have you had negative readings on gold?

I've had a deep gold ring start off reading quite low, but not negative.
If I recall, it was a 2 and by the time it was exposed was round the 14. Saying that, it was early on in my ownership of the Nox and I "may" have had some settings out of whack from experimenting.

It is not uncommon for disc readings to be off a bit in mineralised ground although from 2 to 14 is a large increase.
Other than using individual frequencies, it is not easy to get the 600 "out of whack"

i have tried impact detector , and i think this is great device for searching and finding treasures in the beaches

Hi murice 1990

Agreed the Impact is a nice metal detector and performs very well.
I wonder a bit about the need for 12 operating modes though. This would confuse a beginner and for myself who has worked my way through roughly 60 different metal detectors over 60 years, I doubt that I would use more than maybe 3 of those modes . I have not actually used an Impact but from reports from a couple of blokes who have this detector it is clear that it works very well and worth the time spent in learning the various features.

Finally after approx 4 months I managed to get out for a detect today with the Vanquish 340.
Was surprised to discover that the area I went to ( a coin detectorist hot spot) was literally carpeted in pull tabs and bottle caps that read between 10 and 16 on the vanquish and produced a combined high and low tone in  all modes. After a while I decided to trust the TID reading and ignored the tones...5 cents and 10 cents also give similar readings. There were so many pull tabs and Bcaps that I decided to not bother looking for these coins at this particular location... Be digging bottle caps all day otherwise.
    The only worthwhile items found were an St Christopher pendant and chain and a small silver ring. The ring also produced a combined low/high tone. (might not be silver).
So as well as the 340 performed in depth and ground handling ability it is still necessary to dig all combined high and low toned targets if you want to find all  good targets with this detector.
Thin light weight 9k gold rings can give a TID reading anywhere from 1 through to 18 and large ish gold rings of 14k to 22k read between 18 and 29 with a medium tone
Sil rings can be 18 to 29 also but will often produce a high tone.
One and two dollar coins are 18 to 22 with medium tone.

If you were going to detect a salt water beach which of these would you think would give you the best over all results for coins and jewellery over the sand in and out of the water?
Garrett Sea Hunter MK2, Safari, EQ 600, Whites TDI, Gold Bug DP, Sand Shark, SDC 2300.

Blimey don't all answer at once.
I know people read this section but nobody posts.
I realise that Australia has almost zero history compared to all other countries on the planet and has only ever been occupied by aborigines with no knowledge of metal (as far as we can tell) until the Irish and British arrived here and as a result there is not much in the way of ancient metal objects to be found. There has however been enough to keep me occupied for 60+ years.......Some of those stolen Cob&Co strong boxes contained a lot of gold and jewellery.

Kon Mate I reckon you may as well ditch this part of the forum. It is a waste of bites.

In the States and Europe coin, jewellery, relic, beach/scuba and treasure detecting are the prime metal detecting topics and occupies most of the forums.
In Australia it is deader than a dead dingo's donger.

Adrian,
I doubt there would be many people with your experience over the range of detectors you mentioned and I'd hazard a guess that in consequence, not many people would be able to make a genuine comparison.
In my opinion, the Equinox wins hands down, based on it being waterproof, lightweight, and it's capability in both wet and dry sand.
The Safari, Surf PI Dual field and the AT Pro are the only other beach hunters I've owned or trialled.

Adrian the most gold rings found I have seen by one person (my bother in-law) over 300 were found by a Garrett ADS. I must admit that I got over 50 from the same beach. However the Garrett got thrown in the bin when all of the knob could not be moved because of rusting up. So the answer to your question any old detector would do.

adrian ss wrote:If you were going to detect a salt water beach which of these would you think would give you the best over all results for coins and jewellery over the sand in and out of the water?
Garrett Sea Hunter MK2, Safari, EQ 600, Whites TDI, Gold Bug DP, Sand Shark, SDC 2300.

All above mentioned detectors can be used for beach hunting, however I would pick a detector to match the beach and its condition.
If a newbie asked which of the detectors would be the best, I would pick the one that best suits his/hers ability.
But to answer the question. . . If I could  spend 8 hours detecting on the beach and to make it easy on myself. . . . I would pick the Gold Bug DP for the dry and damp sand and the Garrett Sea Hunter MK II for wet sand and water hunting.  

bicter wrote:Adrian,
I doubt there would be many people with your experience over the range of detectors you mentioned and I'd hazard a guess that in consequence, not many people would be able to make a genuine comparison.
In my opinion, the Equinox wins hands down, based on it being waterproof, lightweight, and it's capability in both wet and dry sand.
The Safari, Surf PI Dual field and the AT Pro are the only other beach hunters I've owned or trialled.

I agree that the EQ is pretty good on the beach but I find that my safari is consistently getting better depth than the EQ600 over wet sand with the EQ fitted with the standard 11 in DD and my safari fitted with a Cores Fortune 5 x 10 DD Booster coil

geof_junk wrote:Adrian the most gold rings found I have seen by one person (my bother in-law) over 300 were found by a Garrett ADS. I must admit that I got over 50 from the same beach. However  the Garrett  got thrown in the bin when all of the knob could not be moved because of rusting up.  So the  answer to your question any old detector would do.

Yes get to know your tecta well and understand its limitations and use it where it works best and you will do well. I still think my old GS15000 is great but the more modern tectas are no brainers to use and easy to learn.

ivanll wrote:

adrian ss wrote:If you were going to detect a salt water beach which of these would you think would give you the best over all results for coins and jewellery over the sand in and out of the water?
Garrett Sea Hunter MK2, Safari, EQ 600, Whites TDI, Gold Bug DP, Sand Shark, SDC 2300.

All above mentioned detectors can be used for beach hunting, however I would pick a detector to match the beach and its condition.
If a newbie asked which of the detectors would be the best, I would pick the one that best suits his/hers ability.
But to answer the question. . . If I could  spend 8 hours detecting on the beach and to make it easy on myself. . . . I would pick the Gold Bug DP for the dry and damp sand and the Garrett Sea Hunter MK II for wet sand and water hunting.  

Hi Ivanll.
Yes I have been pushing the GB DP for a while now and it comes with me to the beach every time. Really gets good results from the dry to the water line.
My sea Hunter is much easier to handle than the Infinium in the water and I find that there is little difference between the tecting ability of these two detectors.
Sea hunter is nice and sensitive and target signals are clear and obvious even on deepish coin size items. It can get a bit warbly in EMI areas.

bicter wrote:Adrian,
The Equinox isn't infallible.
The TID on gold rings at depth can be inaccurate.

My last trip to the beach seems to have verified what you say re misidentifying some items at depth in the sand.
I received several combined blanking and iron tone signals from non ferrous items ( high qual sunny's, an ankle chain and 5 cent coins) while in All metal beach mode 1 & 2. This was annoying because even with the high tech 600 you still need to check all targets if you don't want to miss any good items.

Thanks Adrian,
In the wet sand, I follow the philosophy of "if i doubt, dig it out" given how easy it is digging in the wet sand

Dunno mate. Pulling that bloody long handle scoop up out of muddy sand from 2 foot down is heavy from the suction beneath the scoop. Damp sand is fine but soggy sand is heavy going in the small waves. I spent a few hours in the water the other day and was stuffed by the time I got out. That is when I go up to the dry sand for a bit of easy digging.

Have to agree with you on water detecting, bloody hard work for all but the young and fit, especially when the surfs hitting as well

Went to the Bay for another detect with the TDI yesterday.
The ability of this detector to find bloody tent pegs and bobby pins at two foot + is becoming a tad annoying. I was using the All conductivity non gb setting so as not to miss anything good. Fair enough the pegs and pins give a double blip type of signal in one sweep direction but so do some nice items. Even if I had been using the EQ 600 I would still have dug those signals although the 600 would not have responded to a lot of the targets at the depths that the TDI was locating them; not even in the All Met mode.

Wet sand detecting can be hard work due to depth of detection when using PI detectors.
On some PI it's better to turn the sensitivity down and save your back while knowing depth is still beyond VLF detectors, especially when many users of VLF detectors use discrimination.
Impulse AQ is Not a detector for everyone, but it does work well on our ocean beaches.

Hmmm not saying much yet Ivanll.
It will be interesting to see what comes to light after you have given the AQ a good try out.
Where the TDI is concerned I normally run the gain at approx 50% while at the Bay because the is a fair bit of EMI chatter in the Batemans bay area.
Broulee South Beach is no so bad. This is a large beach that still produces deep coins and rings. (Deep for me means better than around 18 inches in the wet sand)

From midweek low tide outing, small ball bearing was 20 metre from spinner.

One person came over for a chat, said he had done this same beach day before but didn't get anything, not even a piece of rubbish.

Didn't show him what I found, no need to make him feel bad, it was a southern state tourist which took a metal detector on his travel.





This is a PI detector, No matter how posts in the past on this detector have been interpreted . . . . It does Not detect Gold only.
As for depth, my back tells me when not to keep digging, whatever I left in some of those diggings are still there.
This is a detector for a younger/fitter person than I.

ivanll

Those few words say a lot Ivanll. Thanks for the feedback. Sounds as though  it is  a pretty decent metal detector for the beach.

OK I'll bite! What are those little yellow dots in a couple of your pics ?

Follow the yellow dots to see the target in the sand.