i have questions

[lee]

ok, so im thinking of getting a new detector and have been looking at the Phil robertson treasure commander tc3x.
my questions are, does anyone know anything about them,are thay good or crap ?, and this khz thingie....whats all that about ? my fisher f4 works on 5.9khz and the commander has 12.98khz...is this a help in some way ?and if so how ?.
cheers lads.
lee

[Tony Two-Cent]

Apparently they are made in China by Ground EFX and sold exclusively through KellyCo.

Personally, I would have a tough time taking any Duck Dynasty merchandise seriously, kind of like a Snoopy fishing pole or a Mr. T wristwatch.

[OxShoeDrew]

I don't know Lee...my T2 is 13khz. I guess that is a happy medium?
More importantly though....that treasure commander is camo colored...the last thing I need is to make my detector easier to lose in the woods :lol:

[MangoAve]

The frequency is not always a key issue. Before anyone tries to devalue my response, I do hold a BSEE and knowledge of wireless signals. I did find a website that maybe you can use, Lee, but I did not check it for the machine you are inquiring about, nor do I know the validity of the reviews on it. Even a consumer report can be skewed as the people reviewing have no idea how to use the item they are testing/reviewing. In one sense, lower frequency actually penetrates deeper into the ground which is why they came up with the VLF detectors. So the basic thing to take from this is that a 6kHz detector has half the attenuation of a 12kHz detector in the ground (the medium) in which the output signal travels. To compensate, the manufacture to have a higher sense gain which can cause higher rate of falsing. However, the higher frequency would allow you to find smaller objects better than the lower frequency would. The microprocessor bit size is one other thing to look at. These detectors use both the amplitude and phase shift of the reflected signal to determine what's in the ground, so higher bits allows for more precision. As in the reading should stay closer with each swing with a 32 bit unit versus a 16 bit unit.

http://www.metal-detector-town.com/chart.html

[Tony Two-Cent]

From what I have read, a lower frequency machine will do better on deeper coins. A higher frequency machine will do better on smaller objects such as tiny jewelry items or gold flakes/nuggets, but may be more susceptible to falsing.

In other words, I agree with everything MangoAve posted above. :grin:

Many of your higher end machines now have multifrequency technology. The E-Trac has 28 available frequencies that can be adjusted by manually changing the Noise Cancel channel.

[MangoAve]

Thanks for the back up Tony. The one other thing I was thinking tho, shouldn't the higher frequency manchine help with the coins on edge? That only works if you know for sure the coins you are intending to find are infact on edge, and if anyone has that knowledge what are this weeks lottery numbers? lol.

[lee]

The frequency is not always a key issue. Before anyone tries to devalue my response, I do hold a BSEE and knowledge of wireless signals. I did find a website that maybe you can use, Lee, but I did not check it for the machine you are inquiring about, nor do I know the validity of the reviews on it. Even a consumer report can be skewed as the people reviewing have no idea how to use the item they are testing/reviewing. In one sense, lower frequency actually penetrates deeper into the ground which is why they came up with the VLF detectors. So the basic thing to take from this is that a 6kHz detector has half the attenuation of a 12kHz detector in the ground (the medium) in which the output signal travels. To compensate, the manufacture to have a higher sense gain which can cause higher rate of falsing. However, the higher frequency would allow you to find smaller objects better than the lower frequency would. The microprocessor bit size is one other thing to look at. These detectors use both the amplitude and phase shift of the reflected signal to determine what's in the ground, so higher bits allows for more precision. As in the reading should stay closer with each swing with a 32 bit unit versus a 16 bit unit.

http://www.metal-detector-town.com/chart.html

bloody hell my head hurts....lmao , wow jim , your not as green as your cabbage looking are ya mukka !!!.
so if im reading this right i will lose depth with a higher kHz machine but gain on smaller objects that are shallower in depth ?.
and separation will be compromised between objects that are close together .
sort of makes sense actually, they do say that my f4 has great separation and has a much lower khz.
thank you jimbo and Antonio.
lee

[lee]

Apparently they are made in China by Ground EFX and sold exclusively through KellyCo.

Personally, I would have a tough time taking any Duck Dynasty merchandise seriously, kind of like a Snoopy fishing pole or a Mr. T wristwatch.

i don't know how true it is tony but i have heard that Micky mouse wares a tony two cent wrist watch...ha ha ha ha ...love ya mate.

[Lowjiber]

... I do hold a BSEE...

I have one of those puppies too. You know what they say, "You can't spell "geek" without a double-e." :lol:

Seriously, your point about frequency not always being the most important is well stated and certainly true with the more modern designs.

That said, I do a lot of gold prospecting here in the desert southwest. About five years ago, I stumbled on a very old 71kHz Gold Bug. With a processor that rivals a crystal radio and a ground balance pot that is about as smooth as a chain saw blade, it takes a lot of experience to even think about using one in a gold field. Maybe that's why Fisher quit making them??? However, the high frequency far outweighs the shortcomings, and it just kills small 24k gold.

I only mention it here because some of the newer folks fail to realize that the modern processors allow much lower frequencies to make hunting much more pleasurable. I think the first real attempt to balance gain, sensitivity, and the VCO with one knob was the original MXT. At around 15kHz, those old puppies will still compete when in the hands of an experienced user. The original model allowed a user to add the all-metal signal to the VLF with a flip of a switch (White's doesn't do that with the newer ones.) which added incredible depth if one listened for the "whispers".

[MangoAve]

so if im reading this right i will lose depth with a higher kHz machine but gain on smaller objects that are shallower in depth ?.
and separation will be compromised between objects that are close together .
lee

More or less. The higher frequency machines do say they can still find quarters say at 10-12" depth. But that is also under ideal conditions...which any place you hit are far from ideal. Almost every place I have been, my ground monitor is always saying -3. I have not taken it to the beach to see if it will go to a positive number. If the machine can in fact reach 10 inch depth, the lower frequency machine will be better at finding the coin and the higher frequency machine will be the better at finding something like gold flakes. The low frequency will most likely miss the small targets while the high frequency can miss the larger targets. And falsing is the trade off.

[DirtWarrior]

hmm ...

Doesn't the coil size and whether or not it's a concentric or a DD play apart at all ?

[MangoAve]

Doesn't the coil size and whether or not it's a concentric or a DD play apart at all ?

Umm, not sure people buy the machine based upon the style or size of coil. Those can always be changed. If the machine is designed for prospecting and you are intending to use it for coinshooting, the coil size or style won't quite matter.

[Skamaniac]

I've learned more from this thread that reading my manual cover to cover. :thumbsup02:

[lee]

i know ska right !!!!,its like a meeting off the minds.
OK....,quantum physics ......discuss

[lee]

anyway we are gona find out shortly whats best coz i ordered my treasure commander TC3X yesterday along with some koss mossy oak headphones also in camo.
now im gona be able to creep up on thiltzy and heavy bloke and find out there cellar hole secrets without them seeing me lol.

[MangoAve]

Ska and Lee. Since you say you learned a lot, did you ever hear that the engineers at (I believe it was Bounty Hunter) tried to use an antenna inside the unit to cancel out white noise, kinda like your noise cancelling headphones? It is a sound theory but apparently it didn't prove as useful as thought.


anyway we are gona find out shortly whats best coz i ordered my treasure commander TC3X yesterday along with some koss mossy oak headphones also in camo.
now im gona be able to creep up on thiltzy and heavy bloke and find out there cellar hole secrets without them seeing me lol.

OK, so when are we gonna get out for you to break in the new machine? lol.
When I finally kill the bunch of earbud headphones Ill finally break down and get some headphones specifically designed for MDing. I know so many times I have to move the wires or I'll catch it and cut it with the digger and it's quite annoying, but I have about 4 or 5 pairs of earbuds and a bunch will just sit unused in a drawer until I throw them out.