doctorbb
Full Member
- #1
Thread Owner
Here's a bit of food for thought. I have hunted for 37 years and until last week, have only had 3 detectors. I started in 1970 with a White's Coinmaster, in 2002 I bought a White's Classic III and in 2007 I bought a used Radio Shack (Bounty Hunter) Discovery 2000 for 25 bucks. Last week my DFX arrived. I've put it through its paces hard for a week, and had already read everything I could on it for the past 2-3 years, so I understand all the features and reasoning behind using the various settings. Anyway, after running through most of the preset programs and tweeking a few to create a couple of "hotter" programs, to get the hand of programming, I decided to conduct a comparison between the Bounty Hunter and the DFX. I started with air test, the Bounty Hunter with 8" concentric coil, sensitivity cranked up all the way and in discriminate mode, the DFX with the stock 9-1/2" coil, in factory preset coin & jewelry. I used a ruler to get accurate measurements and recorded only depths of repeatable signals in 2 directions. Well guess what. The Bounty Hunter was a consistant half-inch deeper on a quarter thru penny and on 10K, 14K and 18K gold and .925 Silver with ranges from 7" on silver to 5-1/2" on 10K and dime. I will say though that where I live I haven't found too many places where I can run the Bounty Hunter cranked all the way up, usually gets unstable at a little over 3/4. When I did drop the sensitivity back to 3/4 the results were just the opposite, the DFX was a good inch deeper on all targets and 2 inches on a penny and 18K. I thought the findings were interesting considering I tested both in "turn-on-and-go" fashion. I haven't dug anything beyond 4 inches with the Bounty Hunter though. The discrimination may not be reliable at depths greater than that so maybe I have scanned deeper targets but they didn't register as a good targets. I will ground test in coin garden to see how much the results vary from the air test. Considering I bought the Bounty Hunter just because it was a good deal, it looks like I may have to give it a little more repsect.
