![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.puzzlemaze.org\/df\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/072412a.jpg\" "\\"072412a\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nI’ve never bought an aftermarket coil before, and I was a bit worried, as the reviews are sparse and conflicted (translation: I spent alot of money on this coil; if I post a bad review, I look like a chump, and I ain’t wanting that, am I?\u00a0 (Never doubt the application of economics to everything)).<\/p>\n
But, I bought the coil cause it was on sale (translation: the only U<\/em>S distributor (who I would otherwise not do business with, but Detech (the manufacturer) is in Bulgaria and ordering direct is hard) dropped their prices from gouge levels to reasonable levels), and cause word on the street was that it gave an inch more on silver dimes in hunted out parks.\u00a0 We all could use another inch, couldn’t we?\u00a0 I know I can; in particular, I’m anxious to try to see what is at inch lower at some of my massive honey holes of the past that I’ve carefully gridded out.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, I’m not going to provide a review today, as much as I’d like to, cause I can’t do so scientifically.\u00a0 The only way to do that is to compare targets using the Ultimate 13 vs the stock coil, or gridding out previously gridded and hunted out parks, neither of which I was willing or able to do today (let’s face it, changing coils is hard, I do work mornings and evenings, I spend time with my son, and was working a mild honey hole (which seems a better idea than hunted out parks), as those who have been reading the past entries are aware), so time is a bit tight to do science now).\u00a0 But, what I will do, is detail today’s experience, FWIW.<\/p>\n This time, I’ll get to the silver first, cause who wants to read more bullshit to get to it?\u00a0 Here it is, 3 mercs, 1 barber, and half a copper (are you kidding me?), over 4.5 hours.<\/p>\n Now, onto the Detech Ultimate 13 experience.\u00a0 First, I started in a big open field, where I didn’t expect to find much, just to get a feel for the machine with the coil, the sounds, the pinpointing, and so forth.\u00a0 Its a low trash, low target field.\u00a0 My goal was to find one coin in this field — pinpoint, recover, and move on to more promising zones (I didn’t want to be a pinpointing moron with this new coil in the hotter, manicured lawn zone; pinpointing with large coils can be hard, and its nice to not be surprised).<\/p>\n My first observation was the the machine did not swing heavier, despite the 30% larger coil.\u00a0 That’s a win in my book.\u00a0 I found a memorial penny at 3 inches, and pinpointing was easy, another win in my book (those who actually read my blog know I think the E-Trac pinpointing is absolute garbage; the larger coil wasn’t harder to pinpoint with — in fact I think it was easier, tho there may be sample bias here, perhaps I was being more careful, who knows?\u00a0 Remember, I wasn’t doing science, but it was actually a joy to recover the target more or less under the center of the coil, unlike with the stock coil, where the pinpointing experience can more or less be described as — it beeps, the target is more or less in this universe, bring in a backhoe and hope for the best, and hope the groundskeeper is on vacation).<\/p>\n So, pinpointing was a big win.\u00a0 It actually worked, unlike the random experience with the stock coil.\u00a0 I decided to head over to the zone of the past few days which as produced the finds recently blogged, and, on the way, got that half of a copper.\u00a0 WTF?\u00a0 Where’s the other half?\u00a0 How do I score that? (cause we all know dectorists, and especially economists, are about counting and scoring things). I gridded around (losing precious time), and couldn’t find it.\u00a0 This is another win — I was already in normal detecting mindset with this coil.<\/p>\n Into the hot zone, which had grown cold on the last hunt with the stock coil on the past couple ranks of the grid, and I was moving farther away from where logic would expect old coins to be found.\u00a0 I didn’t expect much, and didn’t find much at first, but at least the coil worked.\u00a0 The experience seemed the same, and given the larger size of the coil, I could move thru the dead faster, hoping to find a hot zone.\u00a0 It added efficiency, with no apparent loss of performance (but, of course, there is no way to be sure, without going over the same zone with the stock coil (and I ain’t about to do that, I’m afraid)).\u00a0 This was a win in my book.<\/p>\n Eventually I found I silver.\u00a0 Woohoo!\u00a0 It was the ’43 merc.\u00a0 It was on its side, at 5 inches.\u00a0 Pinpointing was bitch, but it always is with coins on their side.\u00a0 This is a big win — one of the nice things about the E-Trac is its ability to find silvers on their side.\u00a0\u00a0 Didn’t lose that with this coil.\u00a0 Interesting to note that the pinpoint projected out 7 inches from the coin on its side.\u00a0 That’s good (hard to pinpoint, but shows the range of the coil.\u00a0 Never saw that with the stock coil on a 5 inch deep silver on its side).<\/p>\n I pressed on without finding much except a couple of wheats, and nothing really deep.\u00a0 I did, however, find some affected clad.\u00a0 Clad in the trash.\u00a0 No one likes finding clad, but in this case, it demonstrated that this coil has good separation.\u00a0 Another win.\u00a0 The experience remained the same w.r.t to high conductive targets in low conductive trash.\u00a0 Now, did I miss some that the stock coil would have found?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 That’s the problem with not doing things scientifically.\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 But the experience (and run rate of clad, even in trash, but not heavy trash), felt the same.<\/p>\n I did notice that the coil was noisier. With the stock coil, I just put it on man 30 and go at most sites,\u00a0 This coil was a bit too noisy to do that.\u00a0 That’s a loss in my book.\u00a0 I dropped to man 26, and it quieted down quite a bit (I was surprised by how much actually, cause this doesn’t have much effect with the stock coil).\u00a0 Shortly thereafter, I nailed 2 silvers, the ’17 merc, then the ’20 merc.\u00a0 On both targets, before digging (I knew they were silvers beforehand — those who love the E-Trac know what I’m talking about), I jacked to man 30 to test, and while I could still hear them fine (of course, I knew they were there), there was much more chatter, and one wonders whether I would have heard them above the chatter if I didn’t know they were there?\u00a0 Who knows?\u00a0 The point is I had to be more careful adjusting the sens as I moved about the site.\u00a0 That’s a loss in my book.<\/p>\n Both silvers were at about 6-7 inches, and rang clear.<\/p>\n Then I got lucky.\u00a0 I got a ferrous affected silver.\u00a0 That was the barber dime.\u00a0 See-thru with conductive trash had already been proven with clad; I had yet to prove see-thru still worked with ferrous trash.\u00a0 But it did.\u00a0 Whohoo.\u00a0 That’s a win in my book, pulling the barber out of a ferrous affected hole.\u00a0 (I rescanned the hole, and it nulled on the ferrous trash — I even spent a couple of seconds trying to recover the ferrous target to prove its existence, but could not find it, and I ain’t interested in wasting too much time digging ferrous junk, even in the name of blogging, so I let it go).<\/p>\n Summary:\u00a0 This coil is a keeper.\u00a0 While I could not prove a performance improvement over the stock coil, at least, (based on run rate of 4 silvers per 4.5 hours, in the least promising section of the zone where the better section had a 1 silver per hour run rate, and not accounting for the time lost testing the coil in the field), no performance appeared to be lost.\u00a0 If we can ever get a really deep one that the stock coil cannot see, it will be a win.\u00a0 Hopefully I’ll do that science someday, but at least it doesn’t seem like I’ll be losing anything while hoping to run into that really deep silver.\u00a0 The downside is that you have to keep adjusting sens to use this coil.\u00a0 Time will tell if that will be too much of a hassle for me.\u00a0 I will say, given how dead I expected this section to be, the fact that the coil was larger and allowed me to cover ground faster may have increased the run rate over what was possible with the stock coil.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Added some size to my unit today, taking it from 11 to 13 inches, with the Detech Ultimate 13 coil. I’ve never bought an aftermarket coil before, and I was a bit worried, as the reviews are sparse and conflicted … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n