Today was my first day out on the beach with the Minelab Quattro and I thought I would share my experience with all of you. Just a little background about me first - I have been using Minelab GP series detectors for about 3 years and been fairly lucky finding nice gold in the deserts of California and Nevada. I am not a dealer or reseller of Minelab products, just an average detectorist who loves Minelab products. I have never tried coin or jewelry detecting so I was looking forward to something new and different. Best of all the trip to the Ventura County beaches from my house is only about 15 minutes while a drive to the Mojave Desert is 2+ hours one way!
I had previously spent about an hour air testing various objects to get an idea of the target responses I might expect. I even made a list of target id?s to use as a cheat sheet. I also read Andy Sabisch?s book ?Mastering the Quattro?. I found Andy?s book very helpful since the Quattro manual has basic information only.
Luckily, we have just experienced a huge storm here in California and the beaches have lost a large volume of sand. The day was a perfect California winter day, 70 degrees, no wind and flat sea conditions. The first beach I stopped at had a 6-foot vertical drop off and I concentrated my initial efforts in front of this is the semi-wet sand. I powered up the machine, pressed the noise cancel button and waited for the machine to select the best frequency range to use. I then did a cross save by selecting relic mode and then pressing and holding the coin and jewelry button. This gave me coin and jewelry mode with ferrous audio and icons ? just what Andy suggested in his book for beach hunting. I also made a threshold adjustment with the simple menu to match my Black Widow headphones so that I could hear it clearly over the background surf noise. All other settings were left in the default state.
As I started to swing the 15? Coiltek WOT coil I experienced tremendous chattering and instability. I noted that there was a thick layer of black sand about 5 inches below the surface and after digging a few targets I switched back to conductive audio. The threshold then calmed down. Can anyone explain why this is?? From reading about the Quattro, I have heard it was excellent in heavy black sand areas?? I continued in this spot for about 45 minutes and got used to pinpointing with the WOT and general balance of the machine. I found that the ?Swingy Thingy? harness and bungee that I fitted to the detector really helped with the weight of the machine and made it effortless to swing. I recovered a number of targets with my stainless steel sand scoop including pull-tabs and aluminum shards and was delighted that all iron targets were nulled out (I wish my GP 3000 would do this!!). I also noted that there were many can tabs separated from the pull rings in the area and I used the accept/reject button to discriminate the tabs out. I found the WOT coil easy to pinpoint with using the machine?s pinpoint button and it was very easy to use the heel or toe of the coil tipped on edge to pinpoint surface targets in normal search mode just like when searching for gold with large DD coils on my GP 3000. I did note that one should not engage the machine?s pinpoint mode anywhere near the target or you get a constant tone no matter where you move the coil. The machine also made a constant tone in pinpoint mode if I laid it down to dig, which was kind of annoying. Better to move the coil to the side, engage the pinpoint mode, center the target and then turn pinpoint off.
I then drove a few miles to a huge sand dune beside the Pacific coast highway that people have been sliding down for many decades. I switched back to the ferrous audio here and it worked flawlessly. I recovered a number of screw caps, pull rings and a single penny at about 8 inches in the dry sand. My first coin! After about ? hour I then drove to a popular public beach in Malibu and worked the wet and dry sand for about an hour. My total take for the day: about 1 lb of trash consisting of pull rings, screw caps, beer bottle caps and aluminum shards, 3 recent pennies and a clad dime recovered from about 12 inches. This certainly impressed me with the depth abilities of the Quattro/WOT combination! I achieved my goal for the day to get familiarized with the machine and find a few coins. I know there are gold rings and silver out there somewhere! We?ll see what happens tomorrow.
I had previously spent about an hour air testing various objects to get an idea of the target responses I might expect. I even made a list of target id?s to use as a cheat sheet. I also read Andy Sabisch?s book ?Mastering the Quattro?. I found Andy?s book very helpful since the Quattro manual has basic information only.
Luckily, we have just experienced a huge storm here in California and the beaches have lost a large volume of sand. The day was a perfect California winter day, 70 degrees, no wind and flat sea conditions. The first beach I stopped at had a 6-foot vertical drop off and I concentrated my initial efforts in front of this is the semi-wet sand. I powered up the machine, pressed the noise cancel button and waited for the machine to select the best frequency range to use. I then did a cross save by selecting relic mode and then pressing and holding the coin and jewelry button. This gave me coin and jewelry mode with ferrous audio and icons ? just what Andy suggested in his book for beach hunting. I also made a threshold adjustment with the simple menu to match my Black Widow headphones so that I could hear it clearly over the background surf noise. All other settings were left in the default state.
As I started to swing the 15? Coiltek WOT coil I experienced tremendous chattering and instability. I noted that there was a thick layer of black sand about 5 inches below the surface and after digging a few targets I switched back to conductive audio. The threshold then calmed down. Can anyone explain why this is?? From reading about the Quattro, I have heard it was excellent in heavy black sand areas?? I continued in this spot for about 45 minutes and got used to pinpointing with the WOT and general balance of the machine. I found that the ?Swingy Thingy? harness and bungee that I fitted to the detector really helped with the weight of the machine and made it effortless to swing. I recovered a number of targets with my stainless steel sand scoop including pull-tabs and aluminum shards and was delighted that all iron targets were nulled out (I wish my GP 3000 would do this!!). I also noted that there were many can tabs separated from the pull rings in the area and I used the accept/reject button to discriminate the tabs out. I found the WOT coil easy to pinpoint with using the machine?s pinpoint button and it was very easy to use the heel or toe of the coil tipped on edge to pinpoint surface targets in normal search mode just like when searching for gold with large DD coils on my GP 3000. I did note that one should not engage the machine?s pinpoint mode anywhere near the target or you get a constant tone no matter where you move the coil. The machine also made a constant tone in pinpoint mode if I laid it down to dig, which was kind of annoying. Better to move the coil to the side, engage the pinpoint mode, center the target and then turn pinpoint off.
I then drove a few miles to a huge sand dune beside the Pacific coast highway that people have been sliding down for many decades. I switched back to the ferrous audio here and it worked flawlessly. I recovered a number of screw caps, pull rings and a single penny at about 8 inches in the dry sand. My first coin! After about ? hour I then drove to a popular public beach in Malibu and worked the wet and dry sand for about an hour. My total take for the day: about 1 lb of trash consisting of pull rings, screw caps, beer bottle caps and aluminum shards, 3 recent pennies and a clad dime recovered from about 12 inches. This certainly impressed me with the depth abilities of the Quattro/WOT combination! I achieved my goal for the day to get familiarized with the machine and find a few coins. I know there are gold rings and silver out there somewhere! We?ll see what happens tomorrow.
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